Kind of an uneventful episode, especially since, of the five teams in the elimination challenge, four of them made extremely similar variations on chili – similar cuts of beef, similar flavor profiles, the chili even looked the same. One team took a gamble on a non-traditional approach and they failed. I respect the gamble, but making chili that tastes like mole is out there enough that the chefs couldn’t miss on execution, which they did.
The quickfire challenged the chefs to build dishes around the chile pepper of their choice, from poblanos to ghost chiles (although the latter is no longer the world’s hottest pepper, surpassed earlier this year by the Naga Viper cultivar). Still, the ghost chile is damn hot, and carries with it the biggest cash prize if the winning chef uses it in his/her dish … so why does only one of the chefs, Paul, choose it? They’re practically commanding you to pick that pepper, and we get wimpy chefs going for Anaheims and poblanos that toddlers in India use as palate cleansers. On the other end of the spectrum, Beverly – who might be insane, although I’m still refining that judgment – serves her peppers raw, which would be great if this was something other than a cooking show. Anyway, the result here was fairly obvious: If you use the most difficult ingredient effectively – and putting chiles with dairy or a similar rich fat like coconut is a great way to carry the heat while protecting diners’ mouths from gustatory Ragnarok – you win. And so it goes.
(Also: Chuy uses canned tomatoes. I can not imagine that there was any lack of fresh tomatoes in the Top Chef Kitchen, and he went for canned. Never mind the judgment call of that moment when he bypassed the genuine article – what chef ever looks for canned over fresh in any situation?)
Then the chefs head have to prepare giant pots of chili (now we’re talking about the stew) for the Tejas Rodeo. Split into five teams of three, we get the ridiculous battle for equipment and cooking space at the house – really, you built a beautiful kitchen for the chefs to use, but won’t let them use it? I’m not seeing the point here except to stir up a little drama – followed by an all-nighter that has the chefs dragging like an Atlanta reliever at the end of September. We get meat shortages at Whole Foods, which makes no sense, because you know the producers are calling the store ahead of time to say, “Incoming!” and perhaps give a heads-up on what items they might want to have on hand. As much as I love short ribs, though, I’m having a hard time picturing that in a chili – the fibers would get very stringy after they fall apart during all that time in the heat, right?
The shots of the chefs getting slaphappy overnight … whatever. I’m just here for the food. Although they are setting Chuy up to be a villain character down the road by giving him every chance to show off his ego on national television.
Judging: Not enough comments from patrons, in my opinion. The actual judges’ comments were helpful, but if the winners weren’t their call, then let’s hear more from the customers who voted. As for elimination, asking three sleep-deprived chefs to cook again is probably a bit much, but I thought Richie and Beverly were potentially the two weakest chefs there, and as long as Nyesha stuck around, I was fine with either of the other two leaving.
Random thoughts:
* I wonder if Paul’s dish will make the next Top Chef Quickfire Cookbook
* Speaking of which, I think Chuy was the only chef to pronounce “habanero” correctly. There’s no tilde on the n, so it’s ha-bah-NAIR-oh, not ha-bah-NYEH-ro. The latter pronunciation reminds me of New York Italians who dropped the final vowels from words like mozzarella and locatelli. Maybe there’s some dialect of Italian where that’s correct, but in New York, it’s just affect.
* Really, the emphasis on all the waterworks seemed very overblown, given how little sleep the chefs had had by the time the elimination rolled around. I don’t care how stoic you are with seven hours of sleep, you’re going to struggle with your emotions after 30 hours or more without any rest.
* Did you know Texas chili has no beans in it? Man, I’m glad they reminded us of that fact … about fifteen times.
* No Hugh Acheson? Nothing against the ladies of the Border Grill, but this show definitely missed Hugh’s dark humor. His recap was typically hilarious: “Chuy wants to die under the table. This can be arranged but is not good TV.”
* Chris C. is going to end up with multiple restraining orders against him at this rate. Dude, we know Padma’s hot. Dial it down a notch. And really, you compare one of the most beautiful women in the world to Fabio?
* Last Chance Kitchen: I thought Tom’s “looks inventive, isn’t really” critique of Richie’s food spoke volumes about Richie’s style: In effect, he said Richie’s cooking was superficial, and I don’t think that would play on Top Chef anyway. It seems like Richie has the techniques down (aside from salt), but not the deeper understanding to deploy them in ways that can make an old dish feel new. It must really suck to lose, get ready to leave, and then lose again. Glad to see Keith moving forward – it seemed like Tom’s only real criticism was the weird pumpkin pie smear on the plate, as if Keith was trying to seem a little more avant garde than he is. I’m guessing whatever success he has on LCK going forward will come from sticking to his style of smart comfort food, rather than trying to be something he’s not.
* I was going to pick a final three, but I feel like we’re not seeing enough discussion of winning dishes for me to make anything more than a random guess, skewed by how much screen time they’re giving chefs who say weird things. Next week, I’ll take that plunge.
For what it’s worth, there are rare instances in which I prefer canned to fresh tomatoes. If your choices are some flavorless, off-season, meat-is-way-too-white tomatoes against a can of the Carmelita San Marzanos, I’ll take the canned ones nine times out of ten. It’s ridiculously hard to find tomatoes that taste anything like, well, tomatoes these days. This is true even though I live between the flagship Whole Foods and a Central Market.
My impression, watching the episode the first time, is that beating the “Texas chili has no beans” into our skulls was an attempt to make the result of the competition more understandable to the audience. You could see the trainwreck coming when people chose to add cheese, onions, tomatoes, and, yes, beans. None of these belong in a tradtional as-per-Frank-Tolbert Texas Chili. When I saw that the rodeo crowd were doing the judging, the result of that one was a foregone conclusion.
Canned tomatoes have more intense flavor than fresh (this was the complaint made by the judge, that it overpowered the chile, not that canned were inappropriate for Top Chef). In fact, Mario Batali says there are only a handful of dishes where he would choose fresh over canned. Your favorite pizza uses canned San Manzano tomatoes. Don’t knock canned tomatoes!
Beverly is definitely insane. Or, at least, the producers want us to believe she is. Why else would they show her crying all the time?
As to the final vowels in Italian: these are often dropped in rural dialects. Hilaire Belloc discusses it “The Path to Rome.” Those same rural Italians made up many of the immigrants to New York (and Philadelphia, where my Italian ancestors settled). Thus, the only Italian their descendants heard was this rustic dialect, not the Tuscan hybrid that is called Standard Italian. It’s an affectation now, maybe, for people who know how the word is actually spelled, but it was once legit and may still be legit for some folks.
My point on the canned tomatoes is that on Top Chef, the chefs likely have access to the best produce, like what you’d find in a top restaurant kitchen. Why wouldn’t you make use of that.
I don’t watch Top Chef, but, having worked in some high end kitchens (all on the east coast, fwiw) if tomatoes are out of season, there is little to no hope in getting tomatoes that are better for a chili than quality canned business. At least, not without considerable cost, and if you’re forced to make quick decisions, the safe route is certainly with canned, since in winter fresh tomatoes are more likely to be mealy and sour than anything you’d call delicious.
As for pronouncing Italian: I second Kyle’s thoughts. It may well be an affectation with some folks, but certainly there is no small number of Italian-Philadelphians whose immigrant grandparents dropped the final vowel, and so that’s the pronunciation they learned. Of course, food tv is replete with people who mispronounce French, Spanish, Italian, (and lately, Chinese and Japanese) with enthusiasm, so I’m not prepared to suggest that everyone is learning from Abruzze grandmas.
Keith, is there anyway to contact you privately? Nothing inappropriate, I promise. I have a question that I do not want someone else to see. I will be happy to go through a third person as long as it is not public like Facebook ,Twitter, Blog, etc. Thank you in advance!
Let’s just say for now that Beverly is a little “off.” The crying is one thing, and by itself wouldn’t really be anything but overly emotional. It’s the crying juxtaposed with her habitual nuclear meltdowns at the meat counter and her barky instructions (“The one with the Korean lady on it!” shouted while pantomiming into the PHONE) that really underscore her imbalance.
As for Chuy, the truly dumb thing he did in this episode wasn’t using canned tomatoes (which for all the reasons recited above is forgivable or even wise). It wasn’t even the bizarre little “muscle” dance he did in the yard. It was mentioning on national television that he (or his family’s business – not sure) owes the IRS money. His family thanks him, I’m sure.
And, as for the Italian dialect thing, I lived many youthful years in a predominantly Italian neighborhood on the East Coast. It wasn’t until I moved to California that I actually learned that “mozzarella” and “prosciuotto” had vowels on the end. Why all the Italians in the neighborhood dropped the vowels, I can’t say. It might be affect, but I think it’s just learned by generation-to-generation passage. Ultimately, I don’t care as long as it gets my mortadella and provolone on that sweet roll, thankyouverymuch.