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Thanks for mentioning the Chef Bayless blog. Very interesting -- and he sounds nice.

I have a few of their items. I like the veggie peeler but I've gone through two paring knives -- both fell apart. They aren't terribly expensive but even still I don't find them to be very durable.

And one more thing -- are the "winners" of the elimination challenges not receiving anything but bragging rights? Didn't the guest judges used to bring some sort of a trinket for the winners?

Oh! I thought that right away, about Richard double dipping. I just forgot about it until you mentioned it. I agree that they are better off cooking for the judges. Speaking as someone who grew up in Chicago, I would have rather had good food ... I can get crappy pasta salad any day.

I had the same reaction. The judges are very nitpicky, I think, when it comes to what dishes are "supposed to be." I think the chefs would be better off with a strategy to avoid the names of classic dishes. Like Richard's could have been "Spanish Inspired Rice with Sausage and Seafood" and they couldn't have nailed him about the crusty stuff on the bottom of the pot. And the product placements were ridiculous. The lingering close-ups of the sauces/salad dressings they "happened to find" in people's houses? I refuse to mention or remember the brand names because it was so annoying. Less swearing, although Andrew has regained the "annoying" title. And fewer close-ups of Padma eating although I was sure the s'more was going right down her cleavage, and the camera along with it. My question is how does Richard feel about his taco being on Rick Bayless' menu? I know that's been an honor before and I would think it's kind of a mixed blessing -- seems to me they are taking someone else's idea and profiting from it.

CrustyBread, I'm glad to know Jay's Diner is open 24 hours. I'm in a band and every so often we're looking for a good late-night nosh. Would love to know any other late-night or all-night spots you recommend. As for Conesus Inn, that was our go-to place for celebrations for many years. Dinner plate-size prime rib -- but more important than the size, the flavor of the aged prime rib would make you swoon. Unfortunately, our most recent experience was not as good -- the flavor and tenderness of the prime rib just wasn't as good as we had had in the past. Our suspicion was that they weren't aging the prime rib as they had in the past, because the info about aging of the prime rib was out of the menu. Given that it's a long drive and pricey (at least by the area's standards), we haven't gone back in a couple of years. If anyone has had a good experience in recent years, would love to know about it, because I hope it was just a bad night -- we'd love to go back if the quality was back up to snuff. I posted a full review of that visit on my blog (it was one of my first posts) but I've gotten away from restaurant reviews -- I'm not comfortable doing a review based on one visit, and also I can't deal with the geekiness of taking a camera to a restaurant.

I'm in the same part of the country as you are, and I've been a member of a CSA for a few years now. I divide a share with a friend. There are some things I'd say a new CSA member should be ready for: - Be prepared to eat a lot of what's in season. That might mean greens for weeks on end, then weeks of zucchini, then weeks and weeks of winter squash. And sometimes it's in a quantity not easy to use in a recipe, like one leek or one turnip. - If your CSA is organic (mine is), know that the produce may not be as pretty as the stuff you see at the supermarket. - Remember that the idea of a CSA is to help farmers reduce the risks of farming. There are years that I've received an abundance of produce from my CSA, but there are years where the weather has been such that the bags can be kind of paltry. Or years where diseases wipe out a certain kind of veggie (we had a ton of great snow peas the first year but none since then). People who join a CSA for a "good deal" are sort of missing the point. I have found it very helpful to have a binder of recipes organized by vegetable, so that it was easier to figure out how to use all of the veggies.

Bummer. Whatever the reason, I'll miss it.

← Philippe (the owner) and Tony are good friends, and yes, the publicity for LH would have been terrific to have Tony on the line again. But I'm sure Philippe was understably cautious about having a 51 year-old rejoin the line after 5 years' absence - the potential for bringing the busiest line in the kitchen down, or getting it backed up, at least, was quite real. Which is why he assigned both Eric and Tony a babysitter each, to leap in there, if necessary. Happily, neither babysitter was necessary; however slammed Tony might have been, the line kept moving. And Ripert never missed a beat.However delighted he might be to have his superstar ex-exec chef and Ripert working his line, Philippe still had to keep his eye on the bottom line. To allow two chefs to come in and take over two stations with which they are either totally unfamiliar (Ripert) or not quite as familiar as they once were (Ripert) WITH a production crew (two cameras and at least one producer, maybe two, in a very long, narrow kitchen) is being kind of warm, trusting and supportive, I think (!) ← Fair enough, I guess. Since my career has been in advertising/PR, I guess I have a different point of view than the restaurant owner... Thanks for your birds-eye reporting! Very interesting.

I went to journalism school and worked for many years in advertising and public relations agencies. My PR clients rarely believed me, but at reputable publications (and not all of them are), advertising does not affect editorial content. The reporter's job is to provide an unbiased article. Consider it further ... if one of the political parties purchased more advertising than the other during election time, should the newspaper give better coverage to the party that spent more? Or if a large company bought lots of ads, should the newspaper turn a blind eye to layoffs and pollution from that particular company? I could go on and on, but you get my point. I am assuming the restaurant chose to spend its advertising dollars with that publication because it saw business results from doing so. I would argue that the reason the advertising garnered results is because its customers found that publication to be a useful one to read. Generally speaking, publications who let advertisers influence their editorial content are not as trusted as an information source, and therefore have less readership, which in turn delivers less desirable results from advertising dollars. Hope this helps.

Am I the only one who thought there was an inordinate number of shots of Padma stuffing her face with messy food? They showed the other judges eating, but not the way they showed her. (Or maybe this is a duhhh thing ... of course they are going to show close-ups of her...) I agree about the gorilla menu -- it should have been vegetarian. And I'm excited to see Rick Bayless on the show.

My favorite potato gratin recipe has boursin in it. Yum. Busboy's post was hilarious ... except I think of boursin as being loaded with garlic. There must be other flavors.

AMEN!!! I was actually thinking that the mayo jars were getting smaller but didn't really check it out. Seriously, I couldn't agree with you all more about the downsizing business. It's nice to have recipes by weight or volume, but when you're jotting down a recipe from someone else, it often is "one can" and the like. And it's not like they trumpet "NEW! Smaller size!" on the label so you're aware of the change.

I agree with you on all counts. Wanted the gal from Chicago to win ... thought they sent the right one home ... enough with the profanity ... and the guy who took two pans was a jerk. I also wondered about Tom not being in the kitchen, them not naming a winner, and not giving a prize to the winner (other than picking your opponent). And where the heck is Bourdain's blog on the whole matter? BTW, I don't know if anyone else reads the official Top Chef blogs, but I always like Harold's. And when Tom read the description of the piccata, I remember him saying something about capers being optional.

I knew about Christmas and Chinese food but not the rest. Very interesting.

I loved the Les Halles episode. My only complaint is that I wanted to see more. Like how he dug himself out from under the piles of pans on the burners. And more of the food he was cooking. And more of Eric Ripert. I could have watched 2 hours of that particular episode. And I'm curious to know the business story behind how Les Halles has fared since Chef Bourdain found fame. Do I understand that business has roughly doubled? (From 300+ covers to 700+ covers?) Judging by Tony's reaction, it seems that the kitchen space has gotten lots bigger. If that's the case, why wasn't the owner of the place strewing rose petals before Tony? He seemed kind of aloof, or did I miss something?

I assume for the same reason the ovens are GE Monogram, they store everything in Gladware, and they use Kingsford charcoal... ← Agreed ... on both counts.

Explain this then...... ← Ha ha ha ha ha ha.... nailed. Of course I'd hold up a bottle of piss too if you paid me enough. Hell, if you paid me even. ← Too funny! I'd draw the line at piss. But I can't imagine a beer I wouldn't put on a big happy face for. And I wouldn't have a problem with Bourdain doing the same. My motto for beer: "It's all good."

Yes, there were several shots (albeit brief) of a big mass of pizza dough sitting on a table for the chefs to use. ← I must have missed it, thanks. Gotta stop working on the laptop while watching TV ... I miss stuff. Given that, that's probably the first challenge on Top Chef where I've thought, "I could do that."

I like the Dino in general but haven't been there in ages. I remember both the pork and the ribs being excellent. Good sides, too. I'll have to try the brisket at Beale Street ... and get to Sticky Lips. Whenever I'm on Culver Road I wind up down the road at Lorraine's because she's a friend.

Yeah, but you can have some ready in your head. Remember Hung coming ready with a memorized chocolate cake recipe, just in case he needed to make a dessert? That's the kind of preparation needed for that contest. Those cheftestants should have been ready to roll with that one. It was a fair and obvious challenge, much easier than making an amuse bouche from the buffet table. I'm guessing they got the dough given to them? They couldn't let it rise and so on in the 90 minutes, right? I probably can find the answer to this on one of the Top Chef blogs. Come to think of it, I wonder who's blogging this year ... I hope Hung is... The elimination challenge was a little less fair, but it seems to me that they considered degree of difficulty in their judging. The one that went home didn't have a recipe that was difficult to make. I felt bad for the chicken piccata guy -- when I thought of that in my head, all I could envision was capers. I'm glad the cheftestant from my home town won!

I make no claims to knowing the Rochester food scene. As mom of 2 boys and wife of a guy with a limited palate, my dining experiences are mostly confined to burgers at Don's Original in Penfield -- they make a mean patty melt (aka Penfielder) but I don't love the steak fries. A few recent restaurant experiences... Mykonos in Pittsford -- my first time there since it moved from Village Gate (so obviously it's been awhile). I could have wept. As you probably know, it's now a diner that happens to serve Greek food. My son and I split a sampler platter of Greek stuff -- gyros, spanokopita and bistekia -- and I think the platter hung out under a warming lamp too long because everything was dry. When we ordered extra pita, it was warm and soft and chewy, unlike the cardboard on our original platter. I still love their dilly tzatziki and the pita (when it's good) but the place was a bummer otherwise. But can you blame them? Everyone around me was ordering burgers, fries, etc. Tasteology in Pittsford -- Its concept is healthy food, which I think is a worthy one, but the implementation was a bit schizo (you couldn't get a Diet Coke, but you could get pink packets for your coffee ... desserts were somehow exempt from the healthy concept). They have a tv studio/demo area in the back -- I don't get that aspect of the concept at all. Food was decent but not as described in the menu (a spicy shrimp had no heat and roasted cauliflower wasn't roasted). I would like to see them succeed, though. The owner was friendly as we came in and came around to the table, which I appreciated. It is nice to have an option for when you're trying to eat healthy but I think they are going to have to do some tweaking. Beale Street in Webster -- The first time I went I ordered crab cakes, which I know verges on idiotic in Rochester, but why have them on the menu if they are going to be lousy? They were beyond awful. I wouldn't have gone back but a friend had a coupon . This time I had pulled pork, which was better but didn't blow me away. The sides were forgettable (literally ... I have no recollection). JC's Backyard Barbecue in Penfield (I think that's the name) -- Pulled pork again. Not bad but not great either. The side was chipotle potato salad. The texture of the potato salad was great, and it tasted like a good homemade salad, but no chipotle that I could discern. Nothing too exciting for an epicurean such as yourself...

I live in Rochester, and my favorite place in town is 2 Vine. Unfortunately I don't have the opportunity to do much fine dining these days. Chris, I'll keep my eyes open for good restaurants with a spot at the bar for solo diners. Unfortunately I've had a string of so-so dining experiences in Rochester lately.

Ugh. Double ugh. I tried one once and hated it. It didn't come close to resembling any rib I've ever had in flavor or texture. I suspect they are the same basic formula as the chicken nugget, only with pig parts instead chicken. On the other hand, it must be almost time for Shamrock Shakes! I will definitely make a trip to Mickie D's for one of those.

I used various flavors of crushed Bugles as a breading for chicken ... they were a qualifying ingredient in a cooking contest I entered. They were actually quite tasty.