Posts Tagged ‘Tom-Colicchio’

Top Chef 4

Mar 12, 2008 chefs

topchefFrom the hilariously inappropriate but appealing dressed Padma Lakshmi who acts as the comedic straight-woman as she delivers her product placements as if she was having a normal conversation; to the celebrity chef guests and Tom Colicchio who actually attempt to judge these challenges as if they were everyday situations for a cook to be in; Top Chef and all it’s ridiculousness returns tonight and I can’t wait.

At the end of the day most of these people can cook, and aside from a few of the quick-fire challenges which give an unfair advantage to the long-straw wielding chefs, we mostly get to see good cooks cook decent looking food from scratch…and isn’t that what a television show about food should be Sandra Lee?

With each season the contestants have improved immensely and I think this year will prove to be the most entertaining yet. Though, if history repeats itself they will be getting the winner wrong again as we find ourselves once again in a flop year where deserving winners will succumb to the snarkiest and strangely-haired deserving ones.

  • Flip - Howard was the obvious win.
  • Flop - Ilan totally robbed Sam…and Marcel for that matter.
  • Flip - And last year Hung showed us that yes, being a good cook/chef has nothing to do with being a likable fellow.
  • Flop - ???

I could wax on about the quick-fires and take a guess at what this year’s candy machine or supermarket aisle will be, but Michael Nagrant at hungrymag.com has far funnier remarks about possible Chicago quick-fire challenges than I do.

Our major fear is that quick fire challenges will revolve around hackneyed ideas like re-inventing deep dish pizza or the Chicago style hot dog…

Fear not Nagrant because according to the Entertainment Weekly I was reading this morning, not only will we be getting the deep dish pizza challenge in the first episode, but the Top Chef crew will be pulling all the stops in the season opener by giving us an apparently less puffy version of Rocco Dispirito right out of the gate.

I guess that means the BOTOX has settled in.

I’d love to type more in this post on my Dell Precision Workstation which offers both the ultimate performance and reliability before the post is uploaded to Hostgator’s state of the art servers housed in their World-Class facility, but I’ve gotta go…I just spilled something and need to locate my Quilted Quicker Picker Upper Bounty paper towels so I can clean it up and place it into my Glad ForceFlex bags.

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Symon Says

Nov 17, 2007 chefs, general food

mike symonMichael Symon has a blog now, and it’s titled exactly what you’d expect it to be: Symon Says.

And as I can’t mention Symon without people instantly thinking about his recent claim to fame, I might as well comment on that too.

Honestly, I hate Iron Chef . Maybe that’s a little strong, but the silliness that surrounds it annoys me. The few episodes I can stand are the ones with Jeffrey Steingarten judging because really, how could anyone be more of a hilariously jaw dropping asshole?

For me, as I’m a big Tom Colicchio fan, my personal choice in the realm of reality based food programming is Top Chef. But don’t think for a second I’m not aware that it’s equally annoying for a totally different set of reasons. The over-the-top product placement is incredible, and I love watching Padma Lakshmi try to keep a straight face as she says more and more ridiculous things with each passing week. The big reason I like though, and especially so this year, is that many of their challenges show whether the chefs involved have real culinary chops; even when they’re silly.

So it came as a surprise when The Next Iron Chef reeled me in and flung itself forcefully into the number two spot. I knew I’d be watching from the start because if you look over on the right, in the list of blogs I like is Chris Cosentino’s Offal Good.

But I knew even though I’d be watching the show, it came as an especially big surprise when I was actually lured into liking the show.

Unlike Top Chef there appeared to be no ringers chosen for personality over skill. Every chef on the show was outstanding, and while some had TV friendly personalities, it was more of an added bonus than their main reason for selection.

More importantly, the challenges were well conceived (mostly) and did an excellent job showing who amongst a cast of great chefs was the truly outstanding one.

And there I was rooting for my man Cosentino until a couple episodes in it was pretty obvious that although he was putting up some killer food, it would be coming down to Mr. Southern, John Besh, and the seemingly insane Michael Symon. I made the the only logical decision and quickly jumped ship like the true fair weather fan I am by realigning my cheers with Symon. You should know, however, that although Ellie and I chose to go to Kansas City in September for our anniversary, Cleveland was our second choice, and specifically so we could eat at Lola and Lolita; Symon’s restaurants.

In the end Ellie was right all along proving to be an admirable alternate .

You can tune in Sunday for the first Symon battle royale, and as you would expect, with so much ridiculous Thanksgiving program cluttering up FoodTV right now, it’s the Thanksgiving special. I’ll actually be watching for once, because let’s face it, Symon makes good TV — he’s insane. Plus, it should be interesting to see what they’ll be giving them to work with. Turducken anyone?

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