Top Chef, S13E01.

We’re back! Top Chef season 13 has a two-night premiere this week, with part one airing last night and part two airing tonight. The season will have the chefs running all over California, starting in Los Angeles and eventually ending up in San Francisco. I’m a little disappointed that this season didn’t go somewhere new, though; it’s not like the LA/San Fran food scenes need the press.

Since you’re here, and possibly interested in food, may I also point you towards my 2015 gift guide for cooks and my latest cookbook recommendations?

This is a pretty strong group of contestants by their resumes; nearly every contestant is an executive chef, and only one is a sous chef (but at Buddakan NYC, a highly-regarded offshoot of a Philly mainstay).

* The self-intros are usually pretty awful, and we get one right out of the chute when Renée from Kansas City says “I’m the super sassy chef,” causing a lot of eyerolling in the crowd. Is it actually arrogance or just nerves that makes people say dumb things like that when introducing themselves? Hi, I’m Keith, I’m a sportswriter, nice to meet you all, I’m really excited to be here. It’s not that hard. Save the shtick for later.

* Grayson is back! She says she “mentally quit” during season 9 in Texas, when Paul Qui lapped the field anyway. I hope Eric Ripert comes back to pronounce her name “ghray-soh” again. (Speaking of season nine, runner-up Sarah Grueneberg’s new restaurant, Monteverde, just opened last month in Chicago, with house-made pastas and what seem to be reasonable prices for a high-end restaurant in that city.)

* Quickfire: we get two parts, starting with a mise en place race, where each chef gets to pick one task – turning four artichokes, prepping 45 stalks of asparagus, separating 20 eggs, supreming eight oranges, or breaking down five chickens – and must be among the first nine to finish to get to the second stage. I’d say the eggs or chickens would be the easiest. I’ve never turned artichokes but it just looks like a huge pain in the ass.

* Frances, the lone sous chef in the group, says they’re the “bitches” of the executive chefs, but “executive chefs take the credit.”

* Sassy Renée chooses chickens and finishes first; Wesley (executive chef at the Spence, Richard Blais’ old place in Atlanta) also chooses chickens and comes in second.

* Garret calls for a check (meaning he thinks he’s finished), but he has just 19 whole yolks, and can’t seem to get that last one out whole. I’ll defer to any sous chefs in the audience but I didn’t think breaking yolks was that huge of a problem; I usually waste more time trying to get those last few globs of albumin off the yolk instead.

* Anyway, that’s all pretty anticlimactic – mise en place is important but it’s not exactly riveting television – so let’s skip to part two. The nine chefs who advanced split into three teams of three, and each team has 30 minutes to create a dish, but each chef can only cook for ten minutes while the other chefs on the team are blindfolded and can’t communicate with each other. The winning team gets immunity for all three chefs.

* Frances confesses “that the last time I was blindfolded was the first time I met my wife,” so it appears that Grayson will be getting a run for her money in the ribald commentary department.

* Isaac reveals his superhero identity as “Cajun Man, Cajun Man 5000,” which is great, but in a team challenge, when you’re the first chef, should you be making such a narrow dish when two chefs have to follow you and you can’t tell them what you’re doing? Anyway, his nickname reminded me of the ingruous appearance of metal band Powerman 5000 on an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, something I thought I’d dreamed until finding it online maybe fifteen years after it happened.

* The red team is the designated disaster. Jeremy takes over for Jason, can’t figure out where Jason was going with the dish, and ends up putting chicken in the oven where Wesley can’t see or find it. Wesley ends up taking the now half-burned drumsticks that Jason had put on the grill, cutting off the raw halves, and finishing them himself.

* Amar, who hails from the DR, says people make fun of him for loving yellow mustard. I would too. That stuff is vile – it’s like mustard-flavored white vinegar. I have several other mustards in the house at all times but never yellow mustard. Even on the rare occasions when I eat a hot dog, it’s Gulden’s spicy brown over French’s yellow paste every day and twice on Sundays. (Scratch that. Twice on Sundays means heartburn into Monday.)

* The dishes … Green team, which was Carl, Grayson, and Isaac: breaded chicken breast with brown butter, asparagus, and mushroom sauce. Sounds very solid but kind of straightforward.

* Red team: grilled chicken leg with orange, anchovy, and potato. Padma this must be “an appetizer portion of the meal,” and Tom says it’s a “lot of anchovy,” which is never a good thing in any context. Besides, who would even think to serve a fraction of a chicken leg?

* Blue team, which was Renée, Amar, and Frances: sweet and sour chicken with marinated slaw. Padma likes the mint, and overall it seems like this was the most ambitious dish of the three, so they end up winning.

* Over the next three days the chefs will face two elimination challenges, which is how we’re getting two episodes in week one (fine by me). The first one comes at the Dine LA showcase, serving 200 VIP guests including local food critics and bloggers (Murray Chass among the latter, I presume). Chefs can cook whatever they want – “just make a standout dish that lets you shine,” which seems like a fairly clear direction to do go big or go home. The critics will vote on the top five and bottom five, from which the judges will pick the overall winner and loser. Emeril and Gail round out the judges.

* Grayson is at it already, planning to make pork and veal meatballs and saying “I’ve gotten raves about my balls.” I like the saucy humor too (pun intended), but only if the food backs it up.

* Frances is using bitter melon, Momordica charantia, a member of the gourd family and relative of squash, cucumbers, and watermelon, but the only member of the Momordica genus that we eat. As the common name indicates, and as Frances says, “duh, it’s bitter,” which I believe is due to the presence of triterpene saponins in the plant; saponins, which you’ve probably encountered on the exterior of quinoa seeds, are very bitter and provide the plant with a natural defense against predators. I’ve had it once and found the bitterness overwhelming; if I were working with it, I’d want to include a lot of salt, especially as a finishing flavor, to cover some of the receptors that might otherwise grab those bitter compounds. Frances says “for some who try it the first time, they think it’s poisonous,” and I can kind of see why.

* Amar is also making pork meatballs, like Grayson, but his will be spicy and it sounds like they’re non-traditional in just about every way.

* Wesley is blending tomatoes to make tomato water and you can see one of the stickers in the blender, which is kind of disgusting. His station is an absolute mess, which will not endear anyone to Tom, who believes cleanliness is next to codliness in the kitchen.

* Frances and Renee are fast friends after which Grayson points out a slight resemblance between Renee and Frances’ redheaded wife, which I guess would be much funnier if I had the picture to show you. That said, would this joke even have gone over so well ten years ago? Now we’ve got several openly gay, married chefs on the show and it’s unremarkable – as it should be, but I still take it as a good sign of a cultural shift. Their love lives are not our business.

* Garret fires a shot at former Top Chef All-Stars runner-up Mike Isabella, saying he’s “serving one of the worst bastardizations of kind of Italian food in the history of the world.”

* Philip is smoking something over dry grass he grabbed from the ground in the field where they’re serving. That’s weird, I guess, but I can’t say I shared the reaction of one of the other chefs (Marjorie?) who said it was disgusting. I mean, most of your food grows in dirt and, very likely, manure. Humans spent centuries cooking over burned dung. Food is not inherently clean, nor is “clean” quite what it was cracked up to be.

* Now, the many dishes, moving as quickly as I can … Cajun Man 5000: his grandmother’s shrimp and court-bouillon, pronounced “coobiyonh,” gaining good marks all around … Angelina: goat cheese croquette, smoked romesco, caramelized parsnip puree, and a touch of cider vinegar. Padma says there are “too many purees,” while Tom says his croquettes were not that crispy … Garret: Vietnamese chicken brodo, Emeril likes toasted garlic and noodles, but later Padma and Tom get awful versions of the same, with broken noodles and burned garlic chips … Renee: citrus marinated pork tenderloin atop soft polenta; Tom says both are a little underseasoned, and I don’t know why you’d pick the most plain cut of pig for something like this … Kwame, the man we all know and love: spicy romaine and mah haw (minced meat served on pineapple) with shrimp, pork, charred pineapple, and toasted peanuts, with a habanero foam … Amar: spicy sherry-glazed pork belly meatballs, celery root puree, with “everything spice” like you’d find on an everything bagel. This earned raves and I thought it sounded like the best or one of the best dishes, mostly because, you know, it’s pork belly.

* Karen: salmon and apple tartare, with pomegranate pickled cherries and walnuts; I’m not huge on salmon tartare, as raw salmon can carry a nasty parasite and you’d better be dead sure you’re getting the good stuff … Grayson: pork and veal meatballs with spicy tomato sauce, gremolata, and Parmiggiano; Padma is not impressed and Tom calls it “Jersey red sauce,” which is a mortal insult in my book … Carl: spiced carrot soup with turkish spices, garbanzo beans, almonds, and feta, which has great colors and gets high marks … Jeremy: oh, hey, a raw fish dish, never seen that on Top Chef before! He serves a crudo of pacific snapper with kombu gel, lime zest, and chiles; Tom and Padma both love it and say it was smart to go lighter … Wesley: potato salad with mustard, shrimp clams, and ocean herb broth. He tastes it with a spoon that goes back into the food, and now that is actually disgusting. Padma says “if you put a spoon in your mouth don’t put it in my food,” and I wouldn’t have been surprised if Tom had axed him right there, but they didn’t, mostly because they loved the dish itself.

* Philip: selection of different vegetables cooked in different ways, including three colors of cauliflower, all pickled; roasted radish; avocado mousse; red grape; puffed amaranth; and more. Emeril says it’s “new California cuisine,” while Gail justifiably mocks Philip’s man-bun … Giselle: vegan cauliflower almond soup, paired with prosciutto “which is not vegan,” so why call the soup vegan? Just say you thickened it with almond milk and leave it there … Marjorie: lamb tartare with smoked egg yolk and a shaved veg & herb salad; raw meat dishes are almost as cliché here as raw fish … Jason: poached heriloom chicken with salsa apicius (an ancient Roman recipe that probably used fermented small fish), toasted long pepper, caramelized honey, and fish sauce … Chad: tangerine aguachile (a Mexican ceviche) with scallop and shrimp cake, seasoned with ancho chili hash and a little bit of ground grasshopper (yep, that’s what he said … insects are the new black pepper, I guess) … Frances: mung bean soup with yuzu and pickled bitter melon.

* Isaac, Amar, Jeremy, Carl, and Kwame came out on top for critics; the bottom five were Angelina, Renee, Grayson, Garret, and Frances. Tom thought Chad should be on top, while Gail thought Jason should be, and none thought Kwame was really top 5. Tom’s least favorite was Garret, with the same for Padma, while Emeril says he got a different dish. Gail said Angelina’s was the weakest, calling it “forgettable.” Tom criticizes Grayson’s lack of ambition in a dish that was very New York (or, the horror, New Jersey) Italian restaurant.

* Judges’ table: Tom says everyone did really well, with nothing God-awful as they often get in the first elimination challenge. Amar, Jeremy, and Carl were the top three. Emeril tells Carl, “I felt like I was eating at your house,” which would probably have been an insult if he’d said it to Wesley. Tom says Jeremy’s was “predictable” (yes, it was) but a really really good version. Emeril liked Jeremy’s “organization,” after which Padma says, “There were others who should take note of that” while looking daggers at Wesley. Winner: Jeremy. Raw fish wins too often on this show. And if predictable can win here, why is Grayson on the bottom for predictability too?

* Bottom: Angelina, Garret, and Grayson. Angelina’s didn’t seem to push the envelope, while the parsnip didn’t make much sense. I think the execution was worse than they’re letting on here, based on the comments we saw earlier in the show. Padma and Tom loved Garret’s concept, but Garret says he failed to provide the “due vigilance” to make it consistent, which sounds like some xenophobic politician’s talking point on admitting refugees. Grayson’s dish wasn’t interesting, and Gail says it could have come from anyone. Grayson’s pissed off, somewhat justifiably so, although I’m not sure what saying “I’ll put sparkles on it” is supposed to earn her. When Emeril says, “I wanna cut through the bullshit, I expected more from you,” you have to listen, because in all the times we’ve seen him on this show, he’s never been an asshole to anyone. If he’s calling you out, it’s legit.

* Garret is eliminated. That’s rather surprising, but Tom says his dish was “the only one that was a real mistake.”

* Since we’re getting a second episode tonight, I’ll save the too-early rankings for after that show.