- Nee Nee offers up our favorite solution yet for the great how to peel a hard boiled egg mystery:

This is en egg-peeling solution only for cooking solo and not sharing food. If you crack a bit off the hollow end of the egg and put your mouth around it while making a seal and blow hard for a few seconds, it loosens the egg from the membrane and makes it much easier to peel. Gross, I know, but it work really well.

A-mazing. That might have to be the official ES-endorsed way to crack an egg.

- Meanwhile, bcarter3 disagrees with Fuchs Foodie’s Top Chef dismay:

Nonsense. “Top Chef” is a game show, not a cooking lesson. Does anyone watch “Survivor” for tips on how to survive in the wilderness? “The Price Is Right” for shopping hints? “American Idol” for singing lessons?

But rose saunders expects more from the Emmy-winning Padma & Company:

On Top Chef, the contestants are “experts” in their field, not at all analogous to “Survivor” or “Price is Right,” which features everyday folk trying to excel in an arena where they have no expertise. “American Idol” is a different case, but is still not analogous to Top Chef, because the AI audience is viewing to (a) be entertained (which they can fully appreciate via their eyes and ears) and (b) see how their everyday appreciation of various performances coincides with that of the judges. Obviously, Top Chef viewers can’t taste the food (we’d like to see it, as this blog points out there is decreasing opportunity for!). The audience is viewing to learn about food preparation and food appreciation. I’ve learned a lot from Top Chef over the years, not so much this season.

- Finally, yet another Glen Beck-ite checks in to bash our Top 10 Foods Only America Could Have Invented. Tav68:

Someone needs to set this poster straight. America is actually number 11 on the list of the worlds fattest nations.
This is Directly from the UN web site. Not from some reporter who wants to bash America but from the UN who keeps statistics on this type of thing NOT used for the purpose of Nation Bashing.

Australia is the world’s fattest nation, with 36.2 percent of adults being obese.

Here are the Top 15 fattest nations according to Actual Data from the UN Web site.
Not from some nation Hating Reporter who has an Agenda.

Australia 36.2 percent
Nauru 35.7 percent
Federated States of Micronesia 35.1 percent
Cook Islands 34.9 percent
Kiribati 34.5 percent
Germany 34.5 percent
Egypt, 34.1 percent
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 33.9 percent
United Kingdom, 33.2 percent
Israel, 31.9 percent
U.S.A 31.7 percent
Croatia 31.4 percent
New Zealand 31.0 percent
Cook Islands 29.9 percent
Argentina 29.4 percent

Well I stand corrected (aside from this very reputable UN website data listing the Cook Islands at both #4 and #14). By no means did I ever mean to say that only America has the ability to make people obsecenly obese. If someone wants to tackle it, I would love to see a Top 10 Foods Only Australia Could Have Invented post.

(Photo: artbandito)

This week’s episode of Top Chef saw our Chef’testants pack their knives and say goodbye to DC, heading off to Singapore– but they still had one last showdown with the good folks at NASA.

Yes, that is Buzz Aldrin sitting next to Padma. Oh, and Anthony Bourdain.

Shocked, we shared Tiffany’s tears as she was sent packing.

Endless Simmer: A lot of people thought Ed might be going home, were you surprised it was you?
Tiffany: One thing I’ve learned is never to be too surprised and never act like you know exactly what is going on (laughter). I was a little uneasy with myself and not quite wanting my dish the way I wanted it. I felt like it was going to be me. Everyone else seemed more confident at the end with their product.

The mussels were frozen, in retrospect do you think there was something else that would have made the dish more dramatic?
(Laughs)… The whole thing was kinda crazy. What I would have done is definitely cleaned the plate up a little bit more, the rice was not quite sticky enough to hold in the ring mold and so if I was to do it all over — don’t get mistaken, the flavors of this dish were good — The mussels would have just been added to it. I think I would have just cleaned it up. I heard that the judging came down to plating.

What exactly happened, the food was just too cold?
Yeah, supposedly. I don’t know if the refrigerator went into a defrost mode or it just dropped the temperature. It killed all of my herbs, it froze my tomatoes and it froze the mussels completely. I didn’t want to get into it at judges table. I didn’t want to bring it up because I knew it was going to upset me even more. The reason you might be going home is the refrigerator froze, something you have nothing to do with. You trust it with your food. I’m thinking technically I should get more mussels, that’s not what they thought.

After you’ve served the dishes to the judges and you’re back in the kitchen sampling each competitors’ dishes, what runs through your mind?
It’s funny you ask this question — when I went back into the kitchen and tasted everyone’s food, I kind of felt like I’d be OK. People didn’t pull it out the way that I though they would with crazy bold flavors. For the space challenge we wanted to give them very good flavors. Eddie’s dish I thought was bold, but there was so much going on, so I didn’t know if they’d appreciate it. I thought I might have been OK but I knew my plating was horrible.

Did you meet any exciting politicians through the show?
I was really excited to see Anthony Bourdain (Editor’s Note: not a politician). I really enjoyed seeing Marcus Samuelsson but when I saw Anthony I was so excited. I think its because that he does the type of show I want — I want a cooking show (Editor’s Note: he has a travel show), so it just excites me that he’s able to do what I’d love to do. I’d so go with Anthony and go try out all that crazy stuff.

What about any politicians?
No, not really.

In last week’s episode, we saw Ed in your  yellow dress, what was up with that?
(Hysterical laughter)… I have no clue. I was sitting in my room and Eddie said, “Let me see one of your dresses.” I had only two dresses and I was like, “What dress for what?” He took the yellow dress and I was like oh… my gosh. It was just a moment to lighten everything up.

(Photos: Bravo)

Editors’ Note: DC-based blogger Fuchs Foodie just can’t take it anymore. Today, he joins the ES team to point out just what’s been bugging a lot of us about Top Chef this season.

Recent press about Top Chef reads like the notes of a marriage counselor trying to figure out why a once-meaningful relationship has taken a nosedive. In a July poll, the L.A. Times found that 60 percent of people surveyed thought that Top Chef is “losing its heat.” Food writers have offered plenty of opinions to explain the sudden disaffection towards this once exceedingly popular show. The chefs this season aren’t talented enough, says John Horn in the L.A. Times. There aren’t any villains you love to hate, says Josh Ozersky in Time magazine. Yumsugar is tired of the same challenges recycled from previous seasons.

As a long-time watcher of the show, I see some truth to each of these theories, but I can think of a more fundamental problem: Top Chef is a show about food that no longer teaches us much of anything about food. Instead of actually entertaining its foodie audience with inventive dishes, the producers obsess over portraying every personality quirk they can mine from the contestants. In between quirks, the producers share mundane details about the contestants’ lives.

To see if I was imagining things, during last week’s episode, I kept track of the information I learned about cooking in one column, and, in a second column, information about the contestants’ personal issues/dog-walking habits.

Here’s what I learned about food:

- There’s something called bacon froth that was mentioned once, but the show never bothered to say how you make bacon froth or the best way to use it. Why not?

- Cabbage is a good way to cut the sweetness of a dish.

- Oyster sauce is a good ingredient for glazing pork buns. Mysteries that remain unsolved: what were the other ingredients in the glaze, and what cut was used for the pork (belly?).

- If you don’t add oil to tuna tartare, it will become oxidized and turn an unappealing gray. This last bit was actually kind of interesting. It was the only kind-of interesting information I learned about cooking during the entire show.

Now, here’s what I learned about our problem-plagued contestants:

- Angelo is “weird.”

- Angelo “needs to clear his head.”

- Ed likes to wear the dresses of plus-size women.

- No one likes Amanda.

- Amanda throws herself “pity parties.”

- Kevin wants Angelo “to go home.”

- Ed “looks like a potato” (close to learning something about food, but not quite).

- Kevin says the rest of the competitors do things he wouldn’t do.

- Amanda has been surprising herself.

- Kelly “only thinks about herself.”

- Ed’s “falling victim to the pressure.”

- Ed is “like the Tasmanian Devil.”

- Kelly is “ingenious and ballsy.”

- Angelo “can’t be trusted.”

- Kevin “needs to calm down.”

- Ed tries “to do too much.”

- Kevin’s “perspective needs to be more open and optimistic.”

- Angelo misses his Russian fiancé and compensates by French kissing telephones.

- Ed needs to “stop doubting himself.”

- Kelly starts her day by walking her dogs.

- Amanda is “pushing herself harder than ever before.”

Over the course of an hour-long show, Top Chef shifted the spotlight to the dishes prepared by the chefs only three times: there was a five-second shot of each dish produced during the Quickfire; a five second here-it-is-now-it’s-gone peek of the food for the elimination challenge; and, later on during the judges’ table, a barely perceptible three-second clip of the same elimination challenge dishes. Doing the math, that’s 13 seconds for each contestant’s food, and just over one minute to admire their work during a 42-minute show. Then consider that, while you’re trying to comprehend what you’re seeing as you get flashed like a paparazzi watching Lindsey Lohan get out of a car, you also have to process the voice-over (often, a chef discussing various insecurities) and the words on the screen describing the food. In other words, not only are you unable to taste all this amazing food, you never even get a good look.

Admittedly, screentime for food has always been scant on Top Chef. In the past, however, I was happy with Top Chef despite the oddly fleeting glimpses of food because the show educated me in another way: it introduced me, however briefly and superficially, to cooking techniques and ingredients with which I wasn’t familiar. But now it seems Top Chef just rehashes the same repertoire of once-novel-to-gobble concepts: chimichurri, sriracha, sous vide, wasabi foam, harissa, tartare, rinse-repeat.

So here is my recommendation for how Top Chef can win back its peripatetic viewers next season: Get out of town. In fact, get out of the entire country. Maybe spice things up with Top Chef Thailand. The cast should travel to Bangkok for a competition that’s focused on perfecting Thai flavors for a judges’ panel that includes Tom Colicchio and a couple of prominent local Thai food critics. Guest judges would range from government officials to champion Muay Thai kickboxers. The foodie audience will have a unique opportunity to learn about obscure Thai spices and ingredients like makrut lime and native chilis.

If Top Chef takes my advice and shifts its focus back to interesting food, there may be those who miss learning all about the contestants’ personal lives. To satisfy appetites for stuff that has nothing to do with food, maybe Kelly can do a spinoff reality show about her dogs.

What do you think? Has Top Chef outworn its welcome?

(Photo: Bravo)

The six chef-testants left were really starting to smell the finale this week. But one got sent packing. We chat with them, after the jump.

Can’t say we didn’t see this one coming. Her fellow chef-testants had been angling for weeks to see Amanda pack her knives hit the road. But she’s not bitter.

ES: Was it hard to watch your fellow chefs say you didn’t deserve to be there? And did you sense their feelings during the filming?
Amanda: I didn’t feel like that during filming. You know, I guess I’m sorry that they felt that way. I think I deserved to be there and I definitely do not think I got lucky. There’s no getting lucky with those judges.

Speaking of the judges, who was the most intimidating to cook for?
A lot of the other chefs had personal relationships or a history with the guest judges, and I didn’t. I never worked for any of them. So I just tried not to think about who they were, because that can throw you off your game. I just did my thing and tried to put out the best dish I could every time.

The judges gave you some flack for serving tuna tartare at the ballpark. Would you do that differently if you got another chance?
I wouldn’t pick something different. I was trying to stand out from the others. I was trying to take ballpark food and elevate it.  You go to the Staples Center now and you can get sushi. Anything’s available at stadiums nowadays, so I think it was a good choice.

You and Kelly both seemed pretty awe-struck by those gigantic Nationals players.
(Laughs.) I don’t know that I thought they were cute as much as I thought they were massive. I was trying to get ready to serve these throngs of people, that kitchen was really small and Tom just strolls in with these goliaths, and I’m like, what is going on here? Tom, this is not OK.

Who was your favorite guest star that you got to cook for?
Nancy Pelosi! I thought it was really awesome that she took the time to come judge us on Top Chef.

You were also pretty tickled by Angelo getting into Zen this week. Is that a regular ritual for him?
Yeah…(laughs). Yeah, definitely. I like Angelo. The Angelo that I know is kind of a goofball. In the beginning when he came off cocky, I thought that was funny, because that’s not the Angelo I know. He’s a pretty funny guy.

Last week, Alex told us you were the one chef who could clear his name in the great pea puree scandal.
Alex did not steal the pea puree. He made it right next to me.

(Photos: Bravo)

I always knew one day there would be a Top Chef episode starring Leon Panetta. WTF! Seriously though, Padma and Co. have some good D.C. access this season. But one chef-testant had their cover blown…and they tell us what happened, after the jump.

Uh-oh, it’s this season’s most controversial chef-testant. Can Alex explain it all away?

ES: Obviously, we have to let you try to clear the air about the Great Pea Puree Debacle.
Alex: You know, it’s been a lot of fun with this whole pea-gate, it brought a lot of controversy and drama to the show and it gets the viewers engaged. Let me say this — I take a lot of pride in my food, so when people accuse me of stealing something, that makes me really mad. That’s just not in my vocabulary. I don’t steal, I don’t lie, I don’t cheat. I bought the peas, I pureed the peas, I plated the peas. When you talk to the others, it will come out that Amanda saw me make the pea puree; others saw me buy the peas.

What do you think about how you were portrayed on the show?
I’m a passionate guy, and sometimes passion gets portrayed badly on these shows. In reality, I’m a really nice guy.

Some of the other chef-testants have had less than nice things to say to you. Did you feel a lot of hostility in the house?
I can’t speak about other chefs. All I can say is I’m a positive person. I always try to keep everyone in high spirits. Was there gamesmanship? Yeah, I’ll say there was a little. People wanted to win. It’s challenging, but we had a great time and I love all the chefs.

Let’s talk about last night’s dish. Did you think the judges’ critique was fair?
Let me say this — the judges’ critiques are always fair. They’re judges, and it’s entirely within their job to critique the food. As a viewer last season, I was never sure what they were basing their decisions on, but as a chef-testant I can say it’s 100 percent on the food. Last night, I made a mistake, no question. I executed the dish not to my abilities, and I definitely deserved to go home.

Which judge was the harshest?
Tom Colicchio has an incredible palate. He notices every single thing that goes into the dish. There is no fooling Tom Colicchio. For me personally, it was Jose Andres, to have to cook Spanish food for one of the best Spanish chefs in the country, I just had a hard time coming up with a concept.

Who do you think is the strongest chef left in the competition?
I don’t know if I can pick a best, they’re all great chefs. Tiffany cooks from her heart and soul, and that always shows up on her plate. If you’re talking about technique and finesse, Angleo is pretty amazing. Kevin is also an incredible chef with a lot of talent. Amanda — that girl can cook, I don’t care what anyone says.

Top Chef pulled in a political heavyweight this week — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, but that was by far not the only highlight of last night’s episode. Down to eight chef’testants, we were given what many of us consider the best elimination challenge the show has to offer — Restaurant Wars at Bethesda’s Redwood Restaurant & Bar.

But before you see which chef’testant was sent packing (spoiler alert!), lets take a moment to discuss which pant suit was better!

ES: When you realized that someone from your team was going home, did you think the judges would have pulled a wild card and sent Alex home?
Kenny Gilbert: That would have been the correct decision based on him not completing a dish. I don’t think they wanted to follow through with the rules is what it boils down to. They thought their food was better than ours. Fine. But the rules that we signed up for, we signed up for restaurant wars which was to put out a perfectly executed restaurant. Ultimately the red team should have been disqualified, or at least Alex, because he didn’t conceptualize and make a dish. The right thing would have been to send Alex home.

At judges’ table, instead of defending your own dish and those of your teammates, you went out and attacked Alex — do you think that might have contributed to you going home?
It’s interesting, they asked if there was anything else we wanted to go over and Kevin said yeah — he pointed out that Alex didn’t prepare his own food — that’s when the explosion took place. Kelly and Amanda made their statements and I made my statement, we were all being supportive of each other and what the rules had implied. But what they showed was me defending it.

Frank Bruni compared your dish to Hamburger Helper. Was that the harshest criticism you’ve received?
You know, I felt like he was getting his Simon Cowell kind of fame on Top Chef. To me it was a very ignorant response. One of the judges couldn’t articulate what was wrong with the dish, they just said it didn’t come together. I thought the critique was terrible, especially compared to having a Chef Ripert or Jose Andres or some of the other judges that we had make fairer critiques, not just a bunch of statements that make good TV.

Was the rivalry between you and Angelo that aggressive or was it played up?
I don’t think it was really played up. In the house hanging out we were cool, it was like we were friends from high school. I was a swimmer and diver in high school. I associate it as if my arch rival were in the same hotel and we were there to compete. Yeah, we’d be sitting there having drinks but when we take it to the blocks, it’s like you don’t like me and I don’t like you — that’s what it was like in the kitchen. I think he was most intimidated by me. He told me later that he was nervous because he thought I made things look so simple.

(Photos: Bravo)

It only took 8 episodes for the producers of Top Chef to show some true love to DC. Not only did they focus on our fascination with Ethiopian food, they also sent a hefty $10K donation over to DC Central Kitchen, in the name of José Andrés. I tip my hat to you, Bravo.

Keep reading for what this week’s loser has to say.

ES: What was your strategy when you came onto the show? Did you even have one?
Stephen Hopcraft: My strategy on the show was to be myself, that was the first thing.  I wanted to really portray who I was and to treat the people I came into contact with with respect. Cook from the heart, really put out food that I loved and what I thought people would love.

You appeared to be this season’s comedian, is that something you were trying to achieve?
My personality is not conceived. I am who I am. The more I get pushed into a corner or the more nervous I get my personality and humor come out even more. That being said do I think people would like that; I think I’m a cool guy.

We saw Angelo put the plastic wrap over the toilet, were there many pranks played at the house or was that an anomaly?
I don’t know what anomaly means — but first of all, yeah I was really hammered so I didn’t want to pee on the toilet seat so I sat down and my nuts hit the plastic wrap. Angelo is hilarious, we went back and forth on a bunch of different things, basically lightening up the scene.

When you pulled Brazil do you think it put you at a disadvantage? If you drew the 1st knife what country would you have chosen and what would you have made?
I don’t think the country Brazil put anyone at a certain advantage or disadvantage, but I do think my absence of knowledge on the cuisine of Brazil put me at a huge disadvantage.  If I had drawn the 1st knife I would have chosen Spain and would have done some type of crudo, some type of raw fish maybe with some of the flavors of Spain- definitely toward a cold dish.

There was some doubt of your rice and how you were going to make it hot, even Kenny mentioned it. Did you think about that?
Kenny, the awesome chef and sportsman, confronted me on that. He was like “Bro, how are you gonna plan on heating that up tomorrow?” I could tell by his quizzing that he though it was a bad idea… I appreciated that very much. I think a big part of being a chef is to check your ego. You go out and buy your knives and then you learn how to cook. I know my ego was like, ah fuck — I can heat this rice up, don’t you worry, Steve-o.

Our man Brit was live at The Palm DC last night, where one sniveling, pea-stealing Top Chef-testant had their portrait unveiled on the walls of the restaurant. But of course, one other chef had to pack up some knives and leave. We hear from them, after the jump.

ES: Obviously, we have to get your take on the great pea puree debacle.
Andrea: You know, it’s almost good that that happened, because it took the focus off of just how much the judges hated my dish. I didn’t see Alex take the puree, so I can’t say for sure. But I did see Ed buy peas, and I didn’t see Alex buy peas, and, well, innocent until proven guilty I guess, but….it was a little stinky, the whole situation.

As someone who is already a pretty established chef, with your own restaurant that has been highly praised in Food and Wine and The New York Times, did you have any trepidation about whether going on Top Chef was the right move?
Absolutely. There was much trepidation. Especially with having three businesses and a family, I didn’t want to leave anything. The reason why I did it was I needed a little boost. I was kind of in the spotlight at one point and I stepped back a bit to raise my family. The economy has hit my career hard and I guess it’s just that being a good chef and working hard isn’t enough anymore. You need to get your mug out there.

Gotta ask about Michelle Bernstein. Is there really that much of a rivalry between you two, or was it played up for TV?
I don’t know that it was played up on my part. There certainly is a little bit of a rivalry and I didn’t think it was quite fair. All those faces that you saw me make on TV were certainly real. We’re in the same town, and I absolutely do not think she’s more qualified than me to be a judge, so I wasn’t really happy.

How about the other judges? Did you find their criticisms fair?
Um….you know….I don’t want to be rude. But as I said when I exited last night, I don’t need four people behind a table to tell me I’m a good chef; I know I’m a good chef. Of course it’s their job to critique. Some of their critiques I respect more than others. Some of the judges kind of liked the same things over and over. I really did enjoy Eric Ripert, how’s that? I felt he was fair and honest in a way that he didn’t have to make you feel like an idiot.

Is Angelo really as conniving as he comes across on TV?
It may be played up a bit, but Angelo wasn’t the most popular cat on the show. I don’t think he was there to make friends. He was there to try to play the game. I saw that from the begining and I distanced myself from him because of that, so I didn’t really get to know him. But I would like to get know Angelo outside of the show to see if he’s a different person.

The Top Chef’testants served up cold food this week, but the drama was still hot. One disbelieving chef was told to pack ‘em and leave. Their exit thoughts, a the j…

Even though she made guest judge Michelle Bernstein feel like she had two tongues in her mouth, DC-based chef Tamesha sure didn’t see this one coming from her confident vantage point in the stew room. Here’s what she has to say for herself.

ES: It looked there was a whole lot of gamesmanship going down in this episode, especially with several people hoping to put Kenny on the bottom. But didn’t anyone point out that putting a strong chef like Kenny on the chopping block was the worst thing your team could do?
Tamesha: No, not at all. Most people were actually saying they wanted Amanda to go, not Kenny, but he just served the worst dish. We were judging it on the plates, not the personality, and I think we would have done it the same way even if we hadn’t known who made each dish.

Speaking of wanting Amanda to go, several chefs in this episode said she didn’t deserve to get this far. Do you think she deserves to still be there?
Uh………….not really (laughs). But you know, it is what it is.

You said you were just about ready to strangle her. What about her bothers you so much?
Just her personality and the way that she works. I’m very cool, calm and collected and I can pretty much get along with anybody. I don’t know what it is – there’s just something about her that rubs me the wrong way.

You said last night you saw Angelo as a mentor but also that you shouldn’t have trusted him so much. Which is it?
My words weren’t put together the way they should have been. I see him as a mentor for young cooks — not for myself. I knew of him prior to this, but I didn’t mean that he’s my mentor because I hardly know him. He had no hand in seasoning my dish at all. I am 100-percent confident in my skills and in preparing what I need to prepare. He asked to taste the dish because he wanted to taste it, but that had no effect on what I did.

You seemed pretty confident in the stew room that you weren’t gonna get kicked off — how come?
This is a pretty hard question for me. I was very surprised to hear my name. I went in with a lot of confidence. I didn’t think it was a bad dish. I know there were some problems, but I just don’t think it was bad enough to get me sent home.

Tell us about long pepper — many of us had never even heard of that ingredient.
Long pepper is an Asian spice, very peppery, similar to Szechuan pepper. It has a numbing effect on your tongue when used in large quantities, but a sweet and spicy taste when used in smaller quantities. I was honestly surprised that they didn’t like it because it’s not the first time I’ve used that ingredient or that flavor combination.

You used a lot of ingredients and flavors we haven’t seen before — even on Top Chef. What’s your culinary background?
I worked at Jean-Georges in New York for two-and-a-half years, straight out of culinary school, and I was introduced to a lot of different flavor profiles and flavor combinations there. Here at The Oval Room, where I’m a sous chef, we try to do different things like that, where you look at the menu and go, ‘huh?’ But then you eat it and say, “oh my god.” As a chef, I think that’s the whole point, putting together flavors that people might not expect.

Can you give us an example of something people should definitely try at The Oval Room?
Right now on the menu we have a jerk foie gras with ginger gelee.

Where else do you like to eat in DC?
I like to go to Palena — anything he makes is good. 2 Amys for pizza. I’ve had a really good burger at Central; also a really good burger at The Source.

(Photos: Bravo)

Look at Padma and those knee highs, hawt.

But I digress- this week’s episode of Top Chef felt more like farmville than anything politico. The chef’testants murdered Chesapeake Blue Crab before our eyes and headed out to Ayrshire Farm in VA for the elimination challenge.

Read on to hear what last night’s loser has to say about packing his/her knives.

Endless Simmer: Was there a lot of pressure being the only chef who was born and raised in the DC area, or do you feel you had a home turf advantage?

Timothy Dean: It was a little bit of both, more of a distraction than anything. I knew everywhere we were going, including Whole Foods. I did feel like I had the home rule advantage. At the end of the day I wish I could jump on a plane for a Top Chef elsewhere, but DC is a beautiful city. I had a great time showing the other chef’testants and the producers the city.

What are your top 3 restaurants in the city?

I would say Michel Richard’s Citronelle, Jaleo and KAZ Sushi.

If you had a chance to cook for the First Family what would you make?

I ran into the President once at Ray’s Hell Burgers, I think he kinda likes his hamburgers.  I would make him a pretty damn good TD burger, cook him up a nice burger. If he wants me to put a slice of foie gras on there I definitely would do that for him.

You decided to go simple, “let the stars sing,” with the hard shell crabs in the Quickfire challenge. What was your rational with that?

If they were soft shell I would have definitely tempura them up. These were hard shell which are sweet, beautiful and meaty. The particular crabs we had that day had mustard in them which are like a prize of the Maryland blue crab, so you don’t have to do a lot to it. Season it up nicely and the crab was singing.

Tom suggested that your elimination dish had a, “Total lack of inspiration and it was neither here nor there.” What do you have to say about that?

I would love to put Tom in that same situation and judge him. I was just very surprised at the lack of product that we had out there on the farm. I spent a good deal of time roasting and helping other contestants on the team. Everyone thought if you look at it and look at the criticism last night—they have to bring me back, they have to.

I do not regret my dish. I would have preferred to work with beets. I wouldn’t have done anything different. Had the weather been different and not 35 degrees outside I would have done a mousseline.

Who was the most daunting judge to appear before?

I would have to say probably Tom.  Eric I’ve known since I was 18 years old. The question did come up on whether Eric would be able to judge me as he could the other contestants. He brought out the baseball bat and went to school on me. Tom was extra critical.

Now that you are out is there any particular contestant you are rooting for?

I’m rooting for me; I think they are gonna bring me back. They’ve gotta bring me back. If I had to pick one I would definitely say, because he’s a good friend and my roommate, Angelo.

Do you have any advice for future contestants?

From my point of view and after last night- stay away from turnips.

What’s next, especially with your National Harbor project?

I’m going to keep cooking. I’ve been doing it since I was 14 years old. Serving up some great steaks in Baltimore and I’ll be coming to Prince George’s County pretty soon.

In reference to National Harbor, I’m trying to get my investment back. I put up seven figures of my money and with one other investor and we just want our investment back so we can move on. We’re getting close right now to finding a solution to it, I think I want to move on at this point because of the way they carried things. To be in PG County, which is predominantly African-American, and not have a restaurant down there that represents that, speaks volumes.

Photos: Bravo