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RSS'Top Chef Masters': Burgers for Morgan Spurlock and vegan for Zooey Deschanel
First rule of "Top Chef Masters": don't watch on an empty stomach. We're down to five extremely versatile heavy hitters, who swung from beef to vegan without blinking an eye. (Well, they complained a little, but whatever.) And I dare you not to have gotten hungry.
The competitors:
Rick Bayless, former anthropology student with a mastery of high-end Mexican food, who appears to be an adorably very nice guy.
Michael Chiarello, whose Italian pronunciations I don't find even a little bit annoying and whose Napa compound I want to visit.
Hubert Keller, French chef with godlike powers in the kitchen and an equal flair for burgers (including one that costs nearly three months' rent) and vegetables.
Anita Lo, who works with Asian ingredients and likes to stir things up a little (get it?) -- sometimes to mixed effect.
Art Smith, who I've seen judge a bunch of Food Network challenges, and whose skills with Southern food simply cannot be questioned.
Quickfire
The quickfire is a veritable festival of charred animal flesh, and I love it. The challenge: create a gourmet burger and side dish. Aside from finding out that Hubert Keller has a $5,000 burger on his menu (with what looked like giant slab of foie gras on top of it, which certainly makes it worth a couple hundred, but come on), the best part was the judges: Spike Mendelsohn, "TC" competitor from Chicago and owner of the Good Stuff Eatery in Washington, D.C.; Sang Yoon of Father's Office of Santa Monica, (and Culver City) Calif.; and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who managed to make "Super Size Me" without having a heart attack. Bravo.
Bayless works up a queso fundito burger with three different flavors of guacamole; Smith comes up with a hoecake ("Hoes gotta eat too!") burger with fried green tomatoes; Keller nearly steals my heart with a burger sporting a giant ball of Roquefort; Lo goes a different way by putting bits of burger into a cheddar cheese soup; and Chiarello throws down with a 2 1/2-lb. opus with truffles and Manchego cheese potato chips. And just like that, Chiarello beats Keller -- this time -- at his own game.
Elimination
The chefs need to prepare a vegan lunch for charming and lovely actress/singer Zooey Deschanel (who coincidentally has a movie in theaters) and her friends -- 20 in all. Oh, and she's also gluten intolerant and doesn't eat soy. Which explains to me why she's so thin and glowy-skinned: she clearly can't eat much of anything that's not, well, raw. So that's what I'm doing wrong.
A little nonplussed, they divvy up the courses: Keller on first course, Lo on second, Chiarello third, Bayless fourth, and Smith on dessert. Given how so many chefs don't even like vegetarians, they're pretty good humored -- though uncomfortable to varying degrees -- about the restrictions of the assignment. Keller makes it awfully hard to follow him with a white gazpacho made with cucumbers, almond flour, and rice milk, coupled with a timbale of avocado and asparagus and a red beet salad topped with edible flowers that just charms the hell out of everyone. Keller also schools everyone on what it's like to be a pro, because he had backups ready when a couple of the dishes were ruined when the servers knocked over the gazpacho shot glass.
Lo makes spicy grilled eggplant, a lentil salad, and a cashew sauce -- Indian flavors that end up looking a little monochromatically brown on the plate. Diners and critics all agree that the eggplant's a little oily and a little over-spiced.
Chiarello finds a quinoa pasta, which he dolls up with a salsa verde, beautiful oven-roasted cherry tomatoes, a crispy basil leaf, and a pine nut gremolata with Meyer lemon, parsley, and a gluten-free cracker, which pretty much knocks it out of the park. One of the judges tries to ding him for using a store-bought pasta, but Chiarello's comeback about celebrating artisans of what they do -- which means dried, store-bought pasta -- staves off any real problem.
Bayless kills with a sweet corn tamale with chili-braised black beans and braised greens, which looked so great I was forced again to lament the PB&J I'll end up eating for dinner. I also find myself wanting to alternately hang out with Bayless and pinch his cheek, because he just seems so lovely that I want him to be my friend.
Smith wraps things up with a strawberry and champagne soup (Champers? Yes please!) with a strawberry ice cream that he makes by stirring a strawberry puree into a store-bought rice milk ice cream. If it weren't for the almond brittle he managed to make without butter, there really wouldn't have been a whole lot of nice comments -- and this one spurred a lot of discussion, both among diners and critics. And in the end, it's what gets him sent home.
Thoughts, odds and ends, etc.
- I love to watch these master chefs have to shop and prep for themselves, since they probably haven't done either for years. Even more, I love that they're all so game to do it. It's really a pleasure to watch this crew.
- Could anyone but a French guy get away with putting Roquefort on his delicious burger? Methinks no.
- Nice move by Chiarello helping Keller out when he had some time, even despite his talk about wanting to school Keller where he lives. If he's trying to accumulate nice-guy points, it's working.
- Zooey Deschanel appears to be as sweet and adorable as I would have expected her to be. And her mom and friends were on the adorable train too -- none of the kind of snotty attitude we've seen from other dining group guests.
- "It's so rare that I get to have anything except raw vegetables -- so lovely." -- Zooey Deschanel. See?
What did you think? Should Smith have gone home? Have you ever splurged on a Waygu beef burger? Are you planning to go and see "500 Days of Summer"?
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this week really ****ed me off. although the diners weren't happy with art's dessert they didn't knock him as much as they knocked anita, while the judges did the opposite with their scores, making it obvious they wanted a woman and person of color kept on the show. plus it didn't hurt that she's been an outstanding chef compared to art, but that's not right nor fair.
and yes, i can call the gender and race card. i'm african american and female, have worked in the industry where demographics are important and it irks me how viewers and readers are robbed.
Weird. Normally I call the gender/race card, too, but this time I thought they were just offended that he didn't make his own dessert. I thought for sure Anita was a goner.
BTW: Loved 500 Days of Summer but I actually disliked Zooey's character soooo much.
although either could've been eliminated, given the comments about art's dessert it was reasonable to send him packing. can't really defend the race/gender argument here because i think it was just edited to cut down comments against art to create suspense of who would be going home. if they aired it all, it would've appeared more clear-cut.
I love zooey deschanel especially in the go getter
Did Art *really* make the brittle *without* butter? The way they cut the part at Judges Panel where they were discussing his brittle, in my mind, suggests that perhaps he made the brittle *with* butter after all, seeing that no one asked how he did it or mentioned that he had used margarine instead. So, what did he use instead of butter? Margarine? What?
Lisa, I agree with you that watching these chefs shop is probably the best part of the show. Rick just cracked me up last night. Looking around and asking "Where is the produce guy?" If he's smart... hiding. I know I would if I saw the four of them walk in for a vegan challenge. Also Rick's complaints about the lack of English green lentils and no real watercress (what does fake watercress look like?) makes me think I need to be MUCH more discriminating the next time I go shopping.
The darned crack is still in the floor of the Judges' Table room! Couldn't they have patched it up for the finals?
I'm really pulling for Michael Chiarello in this competition; I like him a lot. I like Bayless and Keller, too, but Michael is my favorite.
I'm amazed that any of these folks was able to concoct any kind of edible stuff considering the restrictions placed upon them. Bravo!
I'm guessing Anita will rebound next week. . . and I won't miss Art one bit!
Most margarines contain soy, which is an allergy to Zooey, so I think that would have been a really huge risk on his part if he did use it. And the same for using butter - a good number of vegans become lactose intolerant from avoiding dairy for a long period of time, so if he did include butter there's a good chance it would've made a vegan at the table kind of sick.
renee - way off base. One of the main pieces of Art's dessert - the ice cream - was store bought. Sorry, I too find that unforgiveable from master chefs.
i like Top Chef Masters much more than the regular show. this one is all about the food, with none of the annoying reality show personality conflict drama on the regular series.
i have been waiting for this challenge for so long. as a vegetarian (with many close friends that are vegan), i can appreciate how difficult it is to go out and find a restaurant that caters to the non-meat eaters.
there are so few vegetarian only restaurants, but so many vegetarians.
a chef that cannot handle this challenge should not be called "master". Art was the only chef to seem worried that he couldnt come up with something. and he was right to be worried, and deserved to be eliminated. i liked his personality a lot...but all of the other chefs were up to the challenge (even if Anita failed in execution, the vision was there at least).