Chocolate Jesus is back. But the real question is, when will he fight Butter Harry Potter?
Anthony Bourdain is picking a fight with Rachel Ray over her ‘evil’ Dunkin Donuts campaign. We love you Tony, but don’t make us choose between you and DD. You won’t like the results.
Top Chef reject Josie is opening her own restaurant (a few blocks from my new house!) No word on when Sanjaya’s album comes out.
Reporting Credit: JoeHoya
Editor’s Note: I didn’t use any silly puns in the headline today because I don’t want to give anything away, in case you haven’t caught the finale yet. That said, this is a recap, so, you know, it says who wins. If you haven’t watched yet, don’t read on if you don’t want to know.
OK, so my fav part of the Top Chef finale is that Frank Bruni penned a lengthy rant in Wednesday’s NYT about how all these celeb chefs (Collichio, Bourdian, etc…) get the big bucks to appear on Top Chef and similar shows, but never even have to cook anything anymore. Then, in the finale, they actually made the the big guys get in the kitchen, awarding each of the cheftestants a big name sous chef.
Hung got Rocco, Dale got the ubiquitous Todd English and Casey was paired with that lady who looks like Sandra Bernhrardt. The catch was that none of these guys got to offer any advice, and they were only there for the prep part, just to chop garlic, boil water, and allow Dale to say “Todd English is my bitch.”
There weren’t any dumb cowboy or airplane themes for the finale – just pretty basic orders: make the best damn meal you can. The only trip-up was that with an hour left, Collichio came in and told the cheftestants they had to make one extra course, and their sous chefs this time would be the losers from earlier episodes.
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After a long, delicious season, the third Top Chef reaches a conclusion on Wednesday. Both the MSM and the blogs are abuzz about the finale, and the biggest focus? Hung.
4th Place Brian on Hung: he’s an angry little man.
The Hater defends Hung; takes on Bravo’s very questionable text message polls.
Hung defends himself, hates on Casey, and claims Bourdain wants him to win.
We won’t have to go Padma-less for long: Season 4 is already filming in Chi-town.
And, in case you missed any of my ramblings, all our Top Chef recaps, along with our famed Padma Lakshmi photo gallery, can be found here.
Photo: Men.Style.com
The “finale” of Top Chef aired last night (actually the second-to-last episode) and the cheftestants have made it to Aspen, Colorado, presumably for the Food and Wine Classic, but clearly just an excuse to unleash Cowgirl Padma.
For the Quickfire, the nervous chefs were given fresh-caught trout and had to gut and prepare the fish themselves, and cook a meal on a campfire stove for Eric Ripert of Le Bernadine. Kinda boring challenge – they all screwed up, and Casey won again.
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I hope all you haters are happy with this fully-clothed Padma picture. For those of you who are fans of the previous photo gallery, here’s a very NSFW link.
Moving on, Tony Bourdain says this was the best Top Chef episode of the year, and I’m inclined to agree, because if I didn’t, I think he would yell at me. Seriously though, there were some awesome dishes from every cheftestant, except of course for that Jamaican cheesemaker, who set a Top Chef record by serving raw fish and raw chicken in the same episode.
The episode started at Le Cirque, where Sirlio Maccione stepped in to guest judge the cheftestants’ attempts to replicate a classic Le Cirque dish, halibut wrapped in thin strands of potato (I’m sure there is a much fancier description). They all did surprisingly well, except of course, for the aforementioned Sara, who forgot to cook hers. Maccione turned out to be the most honest judge yet, admitting that he wanted to award the quickfire to Casey just because he’d like to bone her, but instead Hung took the prize.
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This episode of Top Chef was down to a mere six cheftestants, and you know what that means: less stupid cooking, more Padma Lakshmi.
The chefs were rudely awakened by a cheerful Padma for their 6am quickfire challenge – a perfect fantasy morning making breakfast for Padma. Without any pesky guest judges around, pleasant Padma was free to like everything. The best part was the not-so-surprising revelation that Padma is a total boozer, and all the chefs found it hilarious that Hung took the easy road to victory by spiking Padma’s breakfast smoothie with Grand Marnier. Brilliant idea – I’m drinking one right now as I type this – hey, I’m a blogger.
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It has taken me two full days to digest the craziness of this week’s Top Chef, which was chock full of spam, fruit loops, and IMHO one of the worst sins a reality show contestant can commit.
The Cheftestants started out with a supermarket sweep style quickfire challenge, where they only got ten dollars to spend in one aisle, so they were limited in their ingredients to a comical degree.
Michael Schwartz served as perhaps the snottiest guest judge they have had yet, most critically showing absolutely no respect for what in my mind was the dish of the competition so far: Hung’s fruit loop-potato-leek-smurf-village whatever it was. Bravo has for some unknown reason not included this genius recipe on their site. What gives Bravo? As far as I am concerned, this should be on the menu at every haute cuisine restaurant in America.
Instead Brian won for his spam-filled dish, which did look pretty fancy, but come on, it had spam in it.
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