My Top Chef Rant

I originally posted this as a comment on www.pleasepackyourknivesandgo.com, but I'm gonna post it here as well.

First of all, last night's episode:

I'll start off by saying Anthony Bourdain is awesome, and he seemed like the only real, down-to-earth, non-pretentious judge on last night's show. He also was honest, and wasn't trying to impress anyone like "My friend, The Ripper." (He also wins bonus points for calling himself a "slut for fish sauce.")

I nearly choked when Kevin said he was going to braise a pork belly in 1 hour. I've never even MADE pork belly, and even *I* know that you can't braise one in an hour. What was he thinking?!

I'm personally a little disappointed that Top Chef doesn't actually make the cheftestants do the full challenge anymore. Their dish was supposed to be able to be freeze-dried for consumption in space. Not only did nobody have to freeze-dry their food for the challenge, which I think they should have, but nobody had to prepare the food in a way that would work in one of the foil pouches. Who can stick a big cube of shortrib or a lamb chop on the bone into a foil pouch and suck it through a hole?

Before you say this is unreasonable, think of some of the challenges of past seasons. What about the Bertolli frozen pasta dinner challenge... where they had to not only create a pasta dish, but IQF (Individually Quick Frozen) it, package it, and then cook it in a pan on a hotplate in the grocery store and serve it/sell it to shoppers? Or even in Masters where they had to create a meal, box it up, and then reheat it in microwaves? I see no reason they shouldn't have had to freeze-dry their food, if not personally, then bring in people to freeze dry it for them to see how well it reconstitutes. I'd like to see Tiffany pull off freeze dried halibut, heh.

Oh, and Tom sassing an astronaut? ("I think if NASA can put a man on the moon, they can figure out how to freeze-dry this." [in response to an astronaut saying it would be difficult to freeze-dry the amount of liquid in one of the dishes]) Why bring on experts like astronauts if you're just going to give them the middle finger when they give their expert opinion? You may be Mr. Sandwich, but you don't work for NASA. Zip it.

I'm thoroughly disgusted at this season of Top Chef, and not just because I really liked Tiffany. She deserved to go last night, her food wasn't her best. But that's what's so frustrating... there's no way to know what anyone's best IS, because nobody's been consistent.

You know... I love Top Chef, but this season so far has been a disappointment. I've not been surprised with any of the people they've sent home so far, and it's entirely because not one single chef on this season is talented enough to be consistent. Look at the 5 in this week's episode... I believe every one of them has been in the bottom on past challenges, and been up for elimination. It's impossible to guess who might win or be sent home each episode when one week a chef pulls off a stunningly perfect dish, and the next week they overcook their protein, make doughy gnocchi, use store-bought frozen puff pastry, or oversalt their dish. Basic mistakes.

Any one of the final 6 cheftestants of Top Chef Season 6 could have crushed any one of season 7's cheftestants without even trying.