Top Chef: New Orleans

[huiray]

My speculation about the winner of the final LCK turned out to be correct. :-)

Here's a screenshot of the "pose' I was referring to in my previous post, plus the article I was talking about where I looked at the posture of the LCK winner and the featured chef:

The comparison: http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2012/03/15/louis-maldonado-is-the-new-chef-at-spoonbar/

Regarding this first part of the finale - I am very sorry to see that Louis Maldonado did not make it through. His variability in the cooking of his fish was so unfortunate. What's that they say also about not trying something new or unknown to you at this stage of the game, though. :-(

With that being said, I am not unhappy with Nick and Nina being the final two. I would have preferred Louis and Nina but, eh, it did not turn out that way.

In case it is not obvious, I do not share in the Nick-Hate that is out there.

In a more general sense, the spam challenge was an illustration (I thought) of how sometimes unfamiliarity with an ingredient can be an advantage of sorts because it forces one to think about said ingredient without carrying into the situation all the previous experience with it that one may have had. Yes, it could have turned out horribly - but I thought it was a sign of a "thinking chef" that one who had no preconceptions about an ingredient made of it something that had not been "obvious" to one who had more familiarity with said ingredient. ;-) Nevertheless, I thought Louis' spam mousse was quite a good dish.

in any case, I have developed a great respect for what Louis Maldonado has done and will think of his food and whatever establishments he sets up with a very good frame of mind.

Edited January 30, 2014 by huiray (log)

[Shelby]

I haven't watched yet, but I take it that it was a double elimination. Well, I'm definitely team Nina. GO NINA!

[Brown Hornet]

It was a pretty decent semi-final episode and I thought the final 4 this year was overall a strong bunch. I'm glad Nina made it to the finals since she's been my favorite all season. I'm fine with Nick, although I probably would ave preferred Shirley or Louis. One thing about Nick that I really appreciate in a Top Chef contestant is that he is always pushing the envelope with his dishes. It often comes back to bite him but I respect that he never coasted through a challenge. Hope its a great finale.

[Shelby]

Ok, I just watched. Yep, I agree Brown Hornet. It was a decent episode. It left me wanting to try that fish and breadfruit and even got me hankering for Spam lol.

[huiray]

Grubstreet recap of TC (NOLA-->Hawaii) episode 16:

http://www.grubstreet.com/2014/01/top-chef-season-11-episode-16-recap.html

Heh. Interesting photo chosen by the recapper. I allowed myself a smirk at Tom Colicchio and Sam Choi eyeing the larger set of tits on display...(and it wasn't Padma's). :-)

Dave Holmes (the recapper) mentions that Louis had bad luck in having the wind and wetness mess with his grill and hence his cooking of the fish, whereas Nick and Nina had the wind at their back...and wasn't bothered by it... Hmm, was that really so or really was a factor?

[annabelle]

I hate it when they make the chefs cook out on the beach.

"What's that crunch? Oh, it's sand."

[Jaymes]

Can't say I'm happy about Nick. Wanted Louis & Nina. But here's hoping for a good finale.

[Toliver]

I haven't watched yet, but I take it that it was a double elimination. Well, I'm definitely team Nina. GO NINA!

I am trying to recall past years of Top Chef finales. I thought it would get down to a final three which I thought was the norm for the show. A final two is going to be less dramatic. Especially given that Nick is a loose cannon (one week great and the next week, not so great).

[huiray]

I haven't watched yet, but I take it that it was a double elimination. Well, I'm definitely team Nina. GO NINA!

I am trying to recall past years of Top Chef finales. I thought it would get down to a final three which I thought was the norm for the show. A final two is going to be less dramatic. Especially given that Nick is a loose cannon (one week great and the next week, not so great).

They have had 50% of each version (two-person vs three-person).

Final-Two finales:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_1%29#Episode_12:_Las_Vegas_Finale.2C_Part_2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_2%29#Episode_13:_Hawaii_Finale.2C_Part_2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_8%29#Episode_16:_Finale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_9%29#Episode_17:_Finale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_10%29#Episode_17:_Finale_Part_2

Final-Three finales:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_3%29#Episode_15:_Aspen_Finale.2C_Part_2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_4%29#Episode_14:_Puerto_Rico_Finale.2C_Part_2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_5%29#Episode_14:_New_Orleans_Finale.2C_Part_2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_6%29#Episode_14:_Napa_Finale.2C_Part_2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_7%29#Episode_14:_Season_Finale.2C_Part_II

The last three seasons have had two-person finales. After this current season (season 11) with a two-person finale they will have had MORE two-person finales than they have had three-person finales. I thought the last few finales have been pretty good and dramatic...I particularly remember the Season 8 finale with Richard Blais & Mike Isabella (remember the Pepperoni Sauce thing?)

In the preview (at the end of this just-shown episode) for next week's finale there is a brief clip of Padma Lakshmi saying that it is (will be) the closest finale that she has ever experienced.

[Shelby]

Humph…..grrrr….I disagree judges! Frankly, I was shocked that Nick won. Hands down, I liked Nina's dishes better tonight, but maybe I'm just biased.

[gfweb]

I've eaten his food. Nick is darn good and seemingly a good person. http://citypaper.net/article.php?For-two-Top-Chefs-fatherhood-is-the-hardest-and-most-rewarding-job-18248

[huiray]

I am happy enough that Nick Elmi won. Nina Compton did not lose, she gained in stature and experience and will be regarded well in terms of how she is a definitely capable chef.

Nevertheless, I was pulling for Nick in a sense as a sort of "arc of redemption". It was fulfilled. He can cook, and so can Jason Cichonski.

And as for that yelling - heh, hasn't it been mentioned here that he worked for Perrier at LBF? ;-)

ETA: In WWHL after the show, Nina mentioned that she wasn't surprised that Nick won, that she "knew" she had not nailed it. Nick, on his part, also said that he was not confident about his win and actually thought the worst about what it meant when Padma Lakshmi started calling out his name.

Edited February 6, 2014 by huiray (log)

[gfweb]

Good Season. One of t he better ones, I think.

[gfweb]

From the Phila Inquirer http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/the-insider/Top-Chef-Nicholas-Elmi-season-11.html

[Brown Hornet]

I was rooting for Nina all season but unless you can taste the food it's hard to take issue with the final decision, especially since it was obviously a close call. Hindsight's always 20/20 but I think Nina made a tactical mistake by insisting on making a desert after she discovered her restaurant had no ice cream maker. I've got to think she could have come up with a killer dish using the ingredients for her 2 amuse/intermezzo dishes.

Regardless, Nick certainly earned the win and I was glad that both Nick and Nina brought their A game to the finale. Overall it was a decent season of Top Chef

[gfweb]

Always an error to make extra dishes or to make risotto. No good comes of it.

[annabelle]

Risotto is the dish of death on these cooking shows. When my son used to watch Chopped with me, we would both shout "NO!" when a chef would announce his intention of making risotto.

Way to go, Nick.

[huiray]

Antonia Lofaso won the EC in episode 12 of TC Season 8, though, with a dish comprising fava bean risotto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_(season_8)#Episode_12:_Give_Me_Your_Huddled_Masses

Sarah Grueneberg (TC Season 9) also made several risotto or risotto-based dishes (e.g.: http://www.bravotv.com/foodies/recipes/search?st=risotto+sarah&cost=&skl=&total_time=) and did well with them, while Lindsay Autry won the first of the three sequential challenges in episode 15 that season with a quinoa "risotto" dish (made in those moving, swaying gondolas!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_(season_9)#Episode_15:_Culinary_Games.

Still, there has always been the concept of the "risotto curse" on the show, yes, and has got quite a number of cheftestants over the seasons dismissed because of it. Including the chef who was "Jimmy Sears" in Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" and who was the "popular" villain on that season: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_(season_10)#Episode_9:_Past_Suppers

(I didn't mind him; I thought the worst person there was that person with the ridiculous mustache ;-) )

There was a recent exception to the "no extra courses" thing also - Richard Blais won in Season 8 where he made that extra oyster amuse-bouche course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_(season_8)#Episode_16:_Finale

I think the worse "curse" on Top Chef is the "car curse", actually, whereby the people who win a car do not go on to win TC. The only one who has broken that curse, I think, was Michael Voltaggio.

Edited February 6, 2014 by huiray (log)

[gfweb]

There's also a Padma curse. If you are her favorite....doomed.

[annabelle]

Speaking of Padma, I was hoping she had given up her booze-swilling ways. She seems to slur her way through Judges' Table more often than not.

Season 8 was pretty much engineered as a vehicle to get Blais his Top Chef win. I still can't stand him.

[huiray]

Grubstreet recap of TC NOLA-->Hawaii Finale (episode 17):

http://www.grubstreet.com/2014/02/top-chef-season-11-episode-17-finale-recap.html

[Shelby]

I was rooting for Nina all season but unless you can taste the food it's hard to take issue with the final decision, especially since it was obviously a close call. Hindsight's always 20/20 but I think Nina made a tactical mistake by insisting on making a desert after she discovered her restaurant had no ice cream maker. I've got to think she could have come up with a killer dish using the ingredients for her 2 amuse/intermezzo dishes.

Regardless, Nick certainly earned the win and I was glad that both Nick and Nina brought their A game to the finale. Overall it was a decent season of Top Chef

I agree that without tasting the food for ourselves we can never be good judges. However, how many times did we hear that Nick under seasoned his dishes?

I'm happy that Nina won the fan favorite award of $10,000. I would have picked either her or Stephanie.

[huiray]

I think Tom Colicchio & Co. have established over the seasons that they all have palates that require a lot of salt. Other talented chefs have also got in trouble with them - Tom in particular - over "lack of salt". Kelly Liken (TC Season 7) springs to mind immediately. There were others. I believe they have said that their palates deem the amount of salt they add to the food they normally serve to be sufficient, and I remember Kelly Liken saying that she was simply not accustomed to using such large quantities of salt as the TC judges seemed to demand. I think Nick Elmi said something similar during this just-concluded season. Liken got into trouble when she tried to compensate for this by heavily salting her porterhouse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chef_%28season_7%29#Episode_7:_Power_Lunch) and went to the opposite end instead and was now faulted by Tom C for food that was TOO salty. I've said before - this show really should be "Who Wants to Cook for Tom Colicchio & Co."

As for other judges who also commented "needs salt"... I suspect that their palates also demand relatively high saltiness? Grant Achatz who murmured this about Nick Elmi's fish dish in one of the earlier episodes this just-concluded season - well, what I can say is that I've eaten Achatz's food and he (and his crew, under his direction) can have a heavy hand with the salt - for my taste.

On a related note, isn't it the case that in general restaurant food is heavily salted? I'm sure the professional chefs here on the board will say that the "correct amount" of salt is used but one also reads about how the "secret" of making restaurant food tasty is to salt, salt, salt it... Or fast food and some processed foods (including potato chips/crisps) being so darn tasty because they are drenched in salt (and MSG). Other than personal variations there would also seem to be (in the US, at least) regional differences, and this has been discussed in other places/boards (e.g. on a certain other food forum). For myself, when I first moved to the Mid-West from the East Coast I could barely eat anything in restaurants here in my area because I found everything so salty - but over the years my salt tolerance and preference have headed up and up...acclimatization/desensitization to salt, it would seem.

Here's one interesting article about the need to salt food to promote the taste of the food, yes, but also contains this at the end:

Which raises the issue of salting that goes on in restaurants. Thanks to open kitchens and endless cutthroat competitions on TV, we can watch chefs regularly toss in enough salt to handle an icy stoop. More is more! Salt equals flavor!

Some attribute the heavy hand to chefs’ palate fatigue. West Coast cooking teacher Linda Carucci has an additional theory, which came to her on a second visit to a restaurant where she had enjoyed a good-tasting meal. On this occasion, however, just about everything she tasted was too salty. As she was leaving, she saw chefs on a cigarette break in the alley.

“I thought, ‘Smoking dulls the palate. How many chefs do I know who smoke?’ ”

Well, one of the meals I had some time ago at a certain restaurant in Indy thought by many (including myself) to be the best or amongst the best in Indy, run by a certain very highly regarded chef with the initials G.H., had a couple of dishes that were SO SALTY I could not finish them. I know who made them that night, and when I left I exchanged a few pleasantries with said (sous)-chef [at that time] sitting on the pavement outside, who was smoking. :-D

Just stirring the pot. :-)

p.s. Some of the commentators on this article report that they did not find Nick Elmi's food at Laurel (his new restaurant) to be underseasoned at all. :-)

[gfweb]

I've eaten Nicks food and it was seasoned just fine.

Re Achatz. He had tongue cancer and may well have screwy taste buds as a result.

[Shelby]

I've eaten Nicks food and it was seasoned just fine.

Re Achatz. He had tongue cancer and may well have screwy taste buds as a result.

Regarding Nicks food, the seasoning in his restaurant , that's good to hear.

I wonder why he under seasoned during the competition?

Edited February 7, 2014 by Shelby (log)