Top Chef All-Stars

Mike is wayyy more likeable this time than on his season!

All the contestants, especially Mike, Dale & Spike seem a lot more mellow this time around. That stuffing challenge was some bullshit. Not having utensils was a pointless handicap. the 20K might as well have been handed out at random.

'. . . and make sure nobody uses that peppergrinder anymore'

Yeah that stuffing challenge was ridic.

The stuffing challenge aka the "we give the judges food poisoning" challenge

lol

I could see the no utensils twist if it was 'cook an awesome paleo dish' but yeah... random and kinda wtf for stuffing. carla was a+ this ep, had me laughing a lot.

Her soup looked great. Didn't Marcus Samuelsson make it on Masters? It was great that she won despite her teammates telling her not to make the dish altogether.

i thought the stuffing challenge was hilarious, and a pretty good way to challenge their ingenuity. esp since tre figured out that freezing/crushing is basically the same as chopping, and i think it showed in his dish

Bourdain channeling Debbie Downer:

Fabio improvised a polenta and cheese stuffing by grating cheese on a wire rack shelf, congratulating himself while doing it by commenting "That is genius!!" No, Fabio. Actually, that is "clostridium perfringens," the third most common cause of food poisoning.

I know Jamie is the least competent contenstant this season and has to go soon, but that chicken feet disaster had to be punished.

least competent remaining contestant, I should say

surprised that there was no deference given to carla & casey for stepping up & doing front of the house -- that alone should've sent jaime home

Also, Jamie hasn't made anything good yet!

If you've never made chicken feet before as a dim sum dish -- just don't.

Exactly. At least the other dishes were reasonable concepts, executed poorly. Also, giving 8000 chickens a pedicure with a paring knife, wtf? Haul out the cleaver and get busy, eh?

Yeah, or use kitchen shears.

I hope last night's show discourages chefs to stop cooking chicken feet in general.

I've rarely seen it outside of dim sum.

OTM upthread about the cleaver & chicken feet: that was the first thing I said is WTF is she using that stupid tiny knife? Butcher schmutcher. Expected a bit more from Casey. Her dish looked wretched and she didn't leave it in a good position to be cooked right anyway. but omg will Jaime ever go home. She is THE WORST.

oh and huge lols at Marcel's impression of Isabella in the Prius "goin to the cohnah faw sum cawfee". And I'm still big time loving Isabella.

Tiffany no bra shenanigans: dude she scared ME with that, never mind scaring dudes. Cannot unsee that.

I still miss Jen though. She would have busted the hell outta the dim sum challenge. She feeds off crazy stress like that.

Really? In Jen's season, she totally wilted under the stress until she got booted, if I remember correctly.

Hmm. Maybe my memories are being clouded by nostalgia. ;_;

She had a good run for about half the season, but she totally started to crumble near the end iirc.

Nostalgia, ruined

Yeah, she started out tough as nails, then seemed to fall apart. I remember it being kind of weird, it was almost uncomfortable.

On a lighter note, Anthony Bourdain's recaps of each episode on the Top Chef website are friggin hilarious.

I forget to read them, I'll have to go catch up.

whoever comes up with the concepts for the challenges is killing it this season. the Tom quickfire was great.

^ for real

Yeah that was amazing. A+ television.

I forget to read them, I'll have to go catch up.

― VegemiteGrrrl, Friday, January 7, 2011 2:11 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you gotta. the one about the chinese restaraunt episode almost had me spitting my coffee all over my office computer.

I had two ideas this week that I'd like to see on the show. Never watched any previous seasons, so I don't know if they've already done anything of the sort -

1. The challenges usually have a very tight deadline, speed is essential, etc. I'd like to see this reversed and have a slow-food challenge that takes 4-5 days. Someone might try sauerbraten, someone might make gravlax, it'd be an opportunity to make really good stock from the bones up, etc. Cures, pickles, whatever. They could have one or two regular elimination challenges between the start time and the end time of the slow food challenge -- if an eliminated player happened to win the slow-food challenge, they'd be brought back.

2. They always have the best ingredients. Make them work with cruddy salvage-grocery canned-goods and (especially) commercial-grade or US#2 produce one week.

Seems like doing anything front of the house is the kiss of death on Top Chef. Never volunteer!

yeah, fuck if imna be on that show and let someone else finish a dish for me

xpost -- I believe they have done #2 at least once before. It was kind of a weird snack challenge where the main ingredients had to be something that was packaged (like Fruit Loops and Twinkies).

wasn't that season 2 or 3? they had to make an amuse bouche where the main ingredient came from a snack machine?

That's cool...not exactly what I had in mind, though. I'd like to see them picking through a box of lemons to find the few that don't have citrus mold on them, or trying to figure out what to do with wilted lettuce.

'cooking with leftover product on the day before grocery day'

xpost Maybe Season 2 because I didn't see it -- I started watching with Season 3.

"just how soft does a potato have to be before it's too soft"

I just read Bourdain's recap. Lol'd at "durian souffle."

Exactly...step into the kitchen the rest of us cook in, hotshots...if you dare. xp

Love this opening line from Bourdain on the Tennis episode:

I was watching from home this week and I'll tell you straight off: I thought this episode was going to suck. Early on, as I got the idea that somehow "tennis" and "Swanson" were going to be involved, I reached blindly for the bong

'cooking with leftover product on the day before grocery day'

Doorknock Dinners w/ gordon elliott was kinda like this. used to be on Food Network.

wasn't there a challenge where they had to reinvent classic "American" dishes, but only using the ingredients of the classic dish?

or am I confusing it with something else?

xpost yeah Tyler Florence did a similar show...way more watchable with Tyler bc hello CUET

Gordon elliot is just...ugh...WHY

yay, so long Jamie, gtfo

otm

wanted marcel out too though

ditto, at the very least for the gang-ish hand jive and the "oh the camera's on" aggression