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Even if he is approachable in general, he would probably be reluctant to discuss that issue with a stranger. For all he knows, it'll appear on Eater.com the next day: "Colicchio Agrees: "This Year's Cheftestants Sucked." He's a Bravo employee, and is surely contractually limited as to what he can say about the show. Now, if you asked him something about one of his restaurants—where he is the boss—you might have a better shot at getting an answer.

That's not what the pro reviews and quite a few of the amateur ones are saying. That doesn't mean I agree with them—I liked Shang—but I can certainly see the pattern.

Grub Street has what appears to be a spoiler here:

If that was indeed the plan, it strikes me as a flawed strategy, because a wave of adverse word-of-mouth is building up while he fiddles around.

The challenge in NY is that with so many restaurants opening all the time, one has a very short time to develop a following before the public mindshare moves onto the next new thing. Compounding the difficulty, the reviews tend to come in a big clump, which means that even if the chef were inclined to make adjustments in response to early criticism, there is usually not any time to do it.

I am not so sure about that. Generally, a fad is a passing fancy that is sure to die off. I don't see how you'd conclude that—unless you just don't like it, and are expressing a wish that you hope will come true.

This is a guy who has received three stars from The New York Times for three separate restaurants (Mondrian, Gramercy Tavern, and Craft) none of which are steakhouses. There are very few other chefs who can boast such a record. Whatever you think of this particular commercial, he's no "steakhouse king."

You are assuming that "sell out" and "earn an honest living" are synonymous. I don't think they are. Normally, the definition of "sell out" is to do something so alien to your values that "cashing in" is the only conceivable explanation. If Colicchio were hawking Swanson's Fish Sticks, that would be selling out. Appearing as a judge on Top Chef is not.

I think sickchangeup gave the wrong impression. The prices of everything at Per Se, including alcohol, include an implicit 20% gratuity. You could tip more, but need not do so. If you want to do a wine pairing, the cost begins at around $100-125pp, and the sky is the limit. Unlike many restaurants, Per Se does not have a set wine pairing. They customize it to your budget and interests.

For those of us who live here, the beauty is that we don't have to. We have both, and the city is richer for it. A little birdie told me that all of the restaurants in that area are having trouble attracting patrons at that hour. It requires a bit of a detour to get there, which not enough people are willing to do past 10:00 on a weeknight.

The comparison to Damon: Frugal Fridays didn't immediately occur to me, partly because D:FF is only on Fridays, whereas Halfsteak is every night. Taken on its own terms, I liked Halfsteak a good deal more than Bryan did, but I ordered only two dishes, the lamb ribs and the smoked chicken wings. That plus two half-pints of beer was only $20.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a small stipend, though I doubt it entirely covers all of the lost income. After all, being on this show has a huge intangible value, even for those who do not win. Still, they need a situation where they can get 5-6 weeks off while being guaranteed a job to come back to. Those who own their own business presumably need to have a trusted deputy to manage in their absence.

I do not believe the show is scripted, but there's no doubt the editing is manipulated to create the drama and suspense that the producers believe will pull in viewers and keep them hooked. (Whether they're succeeding or not is a whole other question.) I am quite sure the cheftestants are given guidelines that, among other things, encourage mentioning favorably the vendors that have donated food, services or equipment.

I don't think they are altogether unimpressive. Several people have noted, though, that the challenges are dumber than they used to be. Also, it may be getting harder to find 18 great new people year after year. My reaction was to the comment that the whole lot were "dump-on-the-floor wretched," which does not seem to be borne out in the judges' comments.

You wouldn't expect them to be, as there just aren't that many brilliant chefs in the world, and those who are don't necessarily make it onto this show. It also can't be emphasized enough that the contrived and time-bound nature of the challenges makes every chef on this show appear worse than he or she really is. In "real life," some of them are probably pretty good. But whatever skill level they may have as chefs, I would expect them to be worse at mixing cocktails unless that's something they do regularly.

If the cocktails were that bad, then apparently Emeril, Tom, Padma and Gail were just as ignorant as the chefs, since they certainly didn't have the extreme reaction that you did. Having said that, none of these chefs is a career mixologist, so I would not expect them to be brilliant at it, just as I wouldn't expect a mixologist to be a brilliant chef.

I think "can't lose" is more like it. If skill will out, Stefan should win, but he has to stop acting like it's in the bag.By the way, what is the reason for moving the last two episodes to New Orleans? Obviously last night's episode had a Creole theme, but I believe the last episode is always freestyle: chefs cook what they want, which means they could be cooking anywhere. So did they move the thing to New Orleans just to get one episode with Emeril? Or is there something more subtle that I'm missing?

I think it happened because: A) Remember, Jeff made two dishes, not one; and B) Though he obviously made some kind of error with the sterno, it does not undermine other technical decisions he made that turned out well. I simply interpreted it that they were being gracious, which is admirable. Exactly. Remember, in those contestant reactions there's a producer asking questions, probably along the lines of "Do you feel any competition from Stefan???"

My understanding, and Colicchio has said as much, that if you heard the entirety of their comments it would seem much more balanced, but sometimes significant pieces are lost in the editing. I've read elsewhere that the whole Judges' Table sequence sometimes goes on for hours of real time, of which we get about 10 minutes.If the "sterno taste" was a factor in their decision, I cannot conceive of a reason for them not to have said so. But I can conceive of a reason for the producers to have omitted that in the editing, if they were trying to maximize the suspense over who would be going home.

Apparently the whole cast was in New York last night, where they attended a "viewing party" at Tom Colicchio's new casual restaurant Halfsteak, which occupies the front room at Craftsteak. A blogger for New York ran into Stefan and several others at a bar 3:00a.m., where he was just as arrogant in person as he is on TV. I am not sure how Bravo justifies the cost of flying the whole cast in and putting them up in New York just two watch a 75-minute episode in Colicchio's restaurant, but hey, whom am I to say? I'm sure Colicchio was glad to have the seats in his restaurant occupied, but there were probably cheaper ways of doing that, e.g., just give the food away.

Poor or brilliant, depending on one's viewpoint. If the idea was to give the impression that all five were still in the running, they succeeded.

Colicchio explained all of this on his blog. Unfortunately, there are factors weighing in the decision that sometimes don't make it into the final edit. The judges/producers felt that since Jeff had already been eliminated once, and the others had not, he had to meet an extra burden to make it to the final. That seems like a reasonable rule, and having announced it, there could be no principled justification for changing it at the last minute.Colicchio also explained why, objectively, Fabio's dish was worse than Stefan's, which meant that Stefan stayed and Fabio went home. I've said this before, but there's a huge element of luck, and Stefan has gotten lucky two weeks in a row. But remember, there were plenty of times that Carla got lucky.

Yeah, but I don't think anyone could be really adept at pairing food with wine without deep experience. The range of flavor possibilities is too vast.

Just to give the benefit of the doubt...perhaps he has rotating specials that aren't shown online. Also, my understanding is that he owns more than one restaurant, and perhaps the one you looked at isn't his flagship.Mind you, I think the difficulty of doing standard Italian cuisine really well is often underestimated. A typical put-down is, "It's a red-sauce joint," as if there were something intrinsically wrong with that.

That is still probably a good deal more than I sampled (five dishes plus bread). Actually, I don't recall that he has been quoted, insofar as his "concept" is concerned, or how it may have been altered (if at all) because of the recession. But I do recall that he was pretty quiet about his plans for the menu, and as late as 2-3 weeks to go it was said to be "still in flux" (or words to that effect). A lot of people asked if he intended to offer a version of his famous reverse tasting menu: he never said, and nobody seemed to be sure until the final menu was published, about a week or so before opening.