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Premierewatch: 'Top Chef Chicago'
Top Chef is back, baby, and it's in my town -- Chicago. You can keep your New York and your San Francisco -- I'd stack this city's food scene up against any place in the country. So how does the show introduce the culinary wonderland that is the Windy City to the viewing public? By smacking them in the face with a good shovelful of cheese. Thanks a lot.
We have a plate of recap garnished with a soupcon of spoiler.
Our hardy band of cheftestants start their sojourn in Chicago at Pizzeria Uno, where they're confronted by the heart-stopping delicacy that is Chicago deep-dish pizza. Personally, I think they should have gone with stuffed pizza, which is more uniquely Chicago, but alas, I was not consulted.
We meet the usual array of cheffy suspects -- culinary ninjas from all over the country. It's still early, so I haven't developed an opinion on all of them yet. A few, however, stand out:
- Andrew, who is going to annoy the crap out of me with his big talk and his constant disparagement of other people. I'll relish every moment he's forces to dine upon his ill-chosen words.
- Brian, out of San Francisco, who tells us he got a couple of line cooks at his father's restaurant canned before he hit puberty because he took to the stove and "outcooked them at 11 years old." We'll see, boy wonder.
- Zoi, who apparently let Avril Lavigne teach her to spell, and who is a chef out of San Francisco. She's dating...
- Jennifer, a FauxHawked Brooklynite who is now an executive chef in San Francisco. There is some kerfuffle about that -- will Zoi and Jen have an unfair advantage? I think not.
- Mark, who gets points for being from New Zealand and having an accent (What? I'm shallow.) Of course, he immediately loses those bonus points by revealing he brought Marmite as his special ingredient. One, you're a Kiwi -- it should have been Vegemite. Two, that stuff is DISGUSTING.
- Plus, there's Valerie and Stephanie, a couple of Chicago's finest, so I'll be rooting for them. You have been warned.
Rapid-fire challenge
After a fortifying, artery-constricting nosh at Uno's, the cheftestants have to create their own deep dish pizza, and you can already start to see things fall apart. Yes, the crust on a deep dish pizza is supposed to be thick. Four inches thick? Not so much. I often think the crust is the best part, but that's ridiculous.
Richard impressed with a pizza that melded Chicago crust with a homage to Atlanta, including peaches, fennel sausage and a sweet tea reduction. Mark actually gets praise for his Marmite-spiked 'za: "I can't think of a more foul flavor," guest judge Rocco di Spirito says, "but you managed to work it into a number of ingredients in a very harmonious way." I... I'm sorry, I must have blacked out there for a moment. Let us forget that Marmite moment ever happened.
Elimination challenge
The cheftestants go toque-to-toque in battle over classic dishes. Here's the line-up:
- Richard vs. Andrew, preparing crab cakes
- Mark vs. Stephanie, preparing duck a l'orange
- Antonia vs. Nimma, preparing shrimp scampi
- Dale vs. Manuel, preparing steak au poivre
- Spike vs. Lisa, preparing eggs benedict
- Ryan vs. Valerie, preparing chicken piccata
- Jen vs. Nikki, preparing lasagna
- Erik vs. Zoi, preparing soufflé
Again, it quickly becomes clear that some folks are in over their heads. Neither Erik nor Zoi is happy they got stuck with the soufflé, a delicate dish. Ryan, for all his talk about outcooking his elders, apparently doesn't know what chicken piccata actually is. Mark mercifully doesn't whip out the Marmite for duck a l'orang, but he's doing a fiddly little presentation with everything lined up on the plate. Nimma tries to make a cauliflower flan, but it refuses to set so she scrambles the cauliflower instead.
The big drama comes from Andrew and Richard. Andrew didn't buy mayo for his crab cakes. Richard did. Richard initially declines to share, but he does tell Andrew the components of mayonnaise. (How do you become a chef without knowing how to make mayo?) While Richard was kind of an ass for not sharing his condiments, Andrew had no call to get all huffy. I kind of want to smack him.
In the end, the judges give Chicago girl Stephanie the win -- they love her whole-duck presentation of duck a l'orang. Guest judge Anthony Bourdain says he kept eating it long after he had to. High praise.
Nimma is singled out for oversalting the shrimp and being unable to pull of a flan. She packs up her knives and hits the road.
Highlights, thoughts, and odds and ends
- How much do you think the producers budget for antacids every season? Just taking a bite of two of 16 slices of incredibly dense pizza could play hell on your digestion.
- Hey! Anthony Bourdain! If I'd have known you were in town, I would have
stalked youattempted to make your acquaintance! - Some things are worth spending time on, like making your own pasta for lasagna. Other things -- like attempting to make your own chicken stock as a component of a meal during a 90-minute challenge -- are not.
- Richard reveals himself to be a sci-fi chef (or molecular gastronomist, if you want to be pretentious about it) -- he's got a spiffy little blow-torch/smoker device that he uses to create a whiff of smoke scented with a North African spice blend that wafts out when the judges open up the dish. It's an impressive little show, and apparently his dish lives up to it.
- Bourdain asks Erik and Zoi if they've ever actually prepared soufflés before. Ouch. Zoi made a good strategic move by using rice as a base for her soufflé and by making it sweet, not savory. Erik messed up by using mashed potatoes as a base and by loading the delicate top with tortilla strips. "I made glorified nachos," he admits. "I'm not proud of it."
- But at least Erik admitted he was wrong. When the judges call Ryan on not knowing chicken piccata from a hole in his head, he keeps talking and spews a bunch of nonsense about mashed potatoes being what he remembers from his childhood. The starch wasn't the issue, dude -- the fact that you breaded the chicken, and therefore made it not piccata, was. Afterwards, Rocco said "it wasn't only his gnocchi that were dense."
What do you think of the new batch of chefs? What Chicago-esque challenge to you want to see them take on? What were they thinking giving the chefs deep dish from Uno's instead of stuffed pizza from Carmen's?
SO excited that Top Chef is back!
Be fair to Richard -- he did ultimately offer to share the mayo. And I adore Rocco, but am I hallucinating? Did he not refer to Mark's ingredient as Vegemite, when Mark clearly stated it was Marmite?
Beth | Mar 13, 2008 7:03:05 AM | #I can't stand Rocco. Where is TED???
tv | Mar 13, 2008 8:00:39 AM | #Rocco was a guest, not a regular. It's interesting, last seasons chefs (presumably less experienced then this one) didn't seem to have much regard for Mr. DiSpirito (who I don't much care for either after watching him self-destruct his own restaurant). This seasons all seem to have a little glow when they talked about him at the beginning.
I was looking to not like Richard when I first saw him but he seems to be fairly humble and into cooking most of all. His pizza was the most creative by far and he wasn't pretentiuous about the use of his secret ingredient-smoker. And he really had no call to share his mayonaise when the person he eventually shared it with could have been the cause of his elimination. Kudos there. However, the name of his restaurant/buisness seems to have his last name incorporated in it. We'll see if the humbleness lasts.
I was pleased that this time the show seemed to spend more time showing the dishes that were created by the contestants. Last season some of the Quickfires, they didn;t show every contestants dish. That's the primary reason I watch the show, to see and judge for myself somewhat.
Lastly, at the end they said that there would be 24 challenges the chefs would compete in. Not sure how that number calculates. 2 a show is 12 meaning 4 contestants at the end, instead of three. Anyone else have an idea.
sac | Mar 13, 2008 8:26:57 AM | #sac, before last season I knew Rocco DiSpirito only by reputation, as I hadn't watched The Restaurant, and I found I really liked him. Judging from numerous online comments, there were a lot of people who disliked him from his show but changed their opinion after seeing him several times on TC. Perhaps that holds true for the cheftestants as well -- Season 3 knew him only from The Restaurant and Season 4 saw the "new and improved" Rocco.
As for how the eliminations shake out, not sure about that. In Season 3 they went to a final three instead of two, supposedly because of the level of talent involved, so maybe they'll say this season warrants a final four.
Beth | Mar 13, 2008 9:02:19 AM | #Real New Zealanders eat Marmite, not Vegemite. Plus that was English and not New Zealand Marmite which while not as heinous a crime as using Vegemite is pretty much right up there.
Matt | Mar 13, 2008 11:28:57 AM | #Thanks, Matt. I did notice that the label was the British version. Guess I was just surprised that I (Queen of the Non-Cooks) knew Marmite and Vegemite were two different things and it sounded like maybe Rocco didn't.
Beth | Mar 13, 2008 11:41:20 AM | #I have officially been schooled in the delicate cultural balance that is varieties of noxious yeast extract consumed by various populations of the Antipodes. I apologize for the error. But Marmite of Vegemite, that stuff is NASTY.
And you're right, Richard did eventually offer his mayo to Andrew, who was snotty about it. I should have mentioned it.
Sarah | Mar 13, 2008 12:50:43 PM | #Both Marmite and Vegemite are what one could best describe as acquired tastes.
I grew up on marmite and think nothing of slathering it on toast with butter and going to town.
Mark really should have made more of an effort to acquire the real thing, it's possibly to do in New York, you just need connections. I even demand friends and family bring me jars from back home.
Matt | Mar 13, 2008 4:17:48 PM | #www.topchefseason4.blogspot.com/
renato | Mar 13, 2008 5:40:31 PM | #matt -- Send us your location and we'll get a deprogramming team out to you stat. No one should have to live with Marmite.
And does anyone else think Marmite sounds like it should be the name of some sort of small, bug-eyed South American monkey?
Sarah | Mar 13, 2008 6:29:19 PM | #I'm a Kiwi and most of us prefer Marmite, Vegemite is more an Australian thing and yes they do taste different to each other ;-)
Emma | Aug 19, 2008 3:21:39 AM | #
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