What's next for the final five contestants? Photo: Bravo
Come back, Natalie! O, Nigella, where art thou? After a couple of heavy-hitting, sweeps-month episodes, last night's "Top Chef" was, well, a little subdued.
With the albatross that was Robin finally gone, and five not-quite-equal cheftestants left, the mysteries left in the season are few. Will Jen get her mojo back? Will the brothers Voltaggio go at each other's throats, like we've been hoping they would all season? Will snarky Toby Young disappear for good, already?
Instead of high tension, we got slow-burn dread and buttoned-down critiques, not to mention portentous montages of the chefs getting dressed, sleeping, or, in the case of Kevin, hanging rosary beads around his neck.
Apparently, someone at Bravo decided they needed their very own Gordon Ramsay. And he needed to be, you know, sexy.
We know this, because on the series premiere of "Chef Academy," we were reminded about 20 times within the first 15 minutes of French chef-extraordinaire Jean Christophe Novelli's tall, dark and smarmy good looks. First by his right-out-of-central-casting flamboyant personal assistant, then by the contestants, then by the reference to a New York Times' survey naming him "The World's Sexiest Chef."
Personally, we think he looks like a cross between "Charles in Charge"-era Scott Baio and an aging Jon Lovitz, but beauty is in the eye of the network, apparently. What struck us most in this inaugural hour was "Chef Academy"'s weird mix of elements. Cooking-competition program, ridiculous-amateur freakshow and yuppie lifestyle catalog all converged to give Monday night's premiere one of those "Is this thing going to last?" vibes that it couldn't quite shake. To quote one of the student-contestants, "This isn't 'Top Chef'!" Don't we know it.
Donatella Arpaia
calling out the bullies.
Photo: Food Network.
Last night, we entered a world of pain on "The Next Iron Chef" -- quite literally. With only three chefs left in the competition, we no longer had to rely on the show's Ritalin-addicted cameramen or the barked commands of stoic "Chairman" Marc Dacascos to make us anxious. The misty, unforgiving environs of Tokyo seemed to be doing a fine job all on their own.
Never mind Jose Garces being shouted at by the fishmongers at the legendary Tsukiji fish market, or the now openly evil Jehangir Mehta announcing, "I'm not bothered by bringing other people down to make myself look better." We knew there was pain in the air last night from the very first, utterly geeky "Reservoir Dogs"-style shot of the three chefs walking down a rain-slicked street to get their latest assignment from Dacascos and host Alton Brown. We wondered: Why are they walking so slowly? And why is Seamus Mullen limping along in what appears to be utter agony?
Leave it to "TNIC" editors to have downplayed Mullen's ongoing struggle with rheumatoid arthritis until this late in the game. Whether or not the affliction had hindered him in previous episodes, we're not sure, but last night, attempting to run around both the market and the kitchen for several hours on end, it was clear he was suffering. Add to that the indignity of Mehta leaving the forever-temperamental ice-cream machine (when will you guys throw in the towel on that thing?!) in strategic shambles, and the damning comment of "Have you ever cooked rice?" from guest judge Dr. Hattori, and Mullen was having one of those Very Bad Days we all dread.
But more about that later. The challenge was to cook a five-course kaiseki -- a very formal meal composed of local, seasonal ingredients -- that reflected their own "integrity" as a chef. For Mehta this meant buying half of the food in the market and littering his serving trays with edible flowers ("I'm a happy person! I like beauty!"). Mullen may have dubbed it all "smoke and mirrors," but Mehta still managed to produce a fresh clam salad with chili flower that was a standout of the evening.
Jen, quit hating on yourself! Robin, what weird technique are you attempting now? Eli, get a clue! Was it just us, or was last night's "Top Chef" one of the most unexpectedly emotional, perversely suspenseful, scream-at-the-screen entertaining episodes in weeks?
By all indications, it shouldn't have been a standout night. Were there big surprises? No. Did the show's editors play up the usual themes -- "I miss my kids/significant other," "people misunderstand me as a chef," "this show will make or break what little reputation I have"? Of course. Are all the chefs who remain all equally deserving of the "Top Chef" title? Not at all.
Still, the show had a weird cumulative power, in large part because we've gotten to the point where we've invested a lot of time and faith into this motley crew. They may be burnt out by the sweltering Vegas sun and the even-more-searing comments of the judges, but we're not ready to see them throw in their aprons. So when Jen grumbled "I'm ready to go" before she was even called to the loser's circle, we wanted to stage a self-esteem intervention, stat.
Dacascos and his suggestive brows.
Photo: Food Network.
It took a transpacific flight, but finally last night, "The Next Iron Chef" deviated from its status as a "Top Chef" also-ran and finally started getting ... weird. Or maybe it was just the goofy opening montage of our four remaining cheftestants standing in the busy rain-slicked streets of Tokyo, crossing their arms in slo-mo and acting all alpha-dog dominant.
In any event, the show is finally getting down to its high-stakes, high-drama Japanese roots after an extended period of trumped-up, low-stakes challenges in Los Angeles. Our trio of alternately grumpy and spunky judges have come along for the ride, and eyebrow-cocking "Chairman" Marc Dacascos is no longer beamed in via satellite to bark oblique commands to the chefs -- now he can do so in person!
This week's mission was the pursuit of umami, the Japanese concept of a so-called fifth flavor -- something beyond savory -- that seems to be everywhere these days. The word was mentioned about a zillion times in the course of last night's episode, and -- surprise! -- it just happens to be the current marketing catchphrase of "TNIC" sponsor Kikkoman, whose umpteen varieties of soy sauce were littered around the challenge kitchen. The umami theme also allowed host Alton Brown a moment to do what he does best: Explain all the geeky details of how soy sauce is made.
That food chemistry lesson out of the way, it was up to our remaining pro chefs to get down to the flavor at hand, a challenge made all the more confusing in the Hattori Nutrition College kitchen, replete with weird can openers, stoves operating in celcius and ice cream makers that seemed to deep-freeze their wares to a glacier-like consistency. Asked to fill five spots of a bento box each with a different rice-based dish, the foursome didn't need to engage in the usual reality-show sabotage -- the people who arranged the kitchen seemed to do that for them.
Have we really gotten so far into the current season of "Top Chef" that Bravo feels the need to start dragging out the suspense -- namely, when will Robin be eliminated -- with an arbitrary, 11-chef reunion special? In retrospect, we should have known that that Very Special Natalie Portman episode was preparing us for an agonizing, two-week hibernation. Wake us when it's sweeps week.
In actuality, "Top Chef All Stars" was less a "where are they now" gift to loyal fans than it was a five-season clip compilation for non-fans, reminding them that the current Vegas edition, entertaining as it is, can't hold a candle to the pissy dysfunction -- or bad hairstyles -- of seasons past.
Presided over by Season Five's grade-A diva Fabio, the evening mostly succeeded in being a mellow, low-tension meeting of 11 "fan favorite" cheftestants. And don't think they got a free trip to Los Angeles without having to cook, either, although at least this time they were granted a luxurious $500 budget at Whole Foods. Still, drama and revelations were in short supply, while the most prominent theme of the evening was -- newsflash -- Marcel is still a dick. (Although he and Ilan seem to be legitimately chummy nowadays.)
The Season Two pipsqueak with the loud mouth and Robert Pattinson-on-steroids hair dominated this so-called reunion, both in present tense and in lovingly edited montages. You want a replay of Marcel talking over the judges during his critique? You got it. Care to revisit the unsuccessful attempt by his housemates to pin him down and shave off his downy brown locks? We don't, if only because it didn't produce the desired result: Marcel crying like a bald-headed baby.
At the mid-point of any reality show -- let alone one involving a bunch of ambitious, successful, mostly alpha-male chefs -- a clear villain emerges. And the way things have shaken out on "The Next Iron Chef," we're left with a strange mix: Two are the nicest chefs you could imagine (Jose Garces, Roberto Trevino), two are boy- and girl-next-door types (Seamus Mullen, Amanda Freitag, respectively), and two are the meanest, cockiest, backstabbing-est bastards the Food Network casting director could hope to find (Nate Appleman, Jehangir Mehta).
Picking from among the nice ones is hard -- Garces and Freitag are constantly offering up help to the others and downplaying their talent -- but the heart of banal evil of "TNIC" is a little easier to pin down. Sure, former A16 and soon-to-be Pulino's chef Appleman is your average aggressive, tatted-up, overly confident young chef. And yes, his quote during last night's Indian-themed "pressure" challenge was enough to make us hurl: "I'm a white boy who never cooked Indian before and I just cooked 5 dishes -- I think I've pretty much won this."
But if it's the devious grin, the glint of sabotage, the air of smug condescension you're looking for, there can only be one choice: Mehta. We're sure Graffiti's wunderkind is, as its Web site puts it, "truly a nice guy." But if you've been watching the way "TNIC" editors slice-and-dice Mehta's reaction shots -- not to mention his own proclivity for undermining his co-contestants by hoarding ingredients and gadgets whether he needs them or not -- he's the leading candidate to be the show's mustache-twirling bad guy. And judging by the voting, he'll continue to be.
At this point in the usual "Top Chef" season trajectory, you might expect a certain focus and discipline that naturally comes with narrowing the playing field down to seven ambitious young chefs, each working at the top of his or her game. This year, however, is another story.
Maybe it's that the talented and reliable Jen is off her game, or that the universally derided Robin is still around or that the twerpy Eli can actually put together an interesting plate of food for once. In any event, Wednesday night's episode felt like a detour into a "Top Chef" bizarro-world, where up is down, left is right and nobody knows anything anymore. Well, almost anything: Robin still sucks, Michael V. is still a cocky jerk and Kevin is still the model of modest brilliance.
Rattling off the random highlights of the episode sounds as scattered as Robin's cooking philosophy: Dirty jokes! Vegetarianism! Natalie Portman! No Toby Young! A Quickfire challenge that revealed itself to be a desperate marketing ploy! Make that two marketing ploys! In fact, Portman's description of one dish neatly summed up the entire episode: "It makes me smile and laugh -- and I'm confused!"
Let us pause now to reflect upon Jeffrey Steingarten, award-winning writer, fearless gastronomist and utterly irascible judge of "The Next Iron Chef." Every cooking competition show needs its Simon Cowell, after all, a grumpy, hard-to-please, perpetually underwhelmed quipster whose general lack of enthusiasm makes for great, nasty sound bites. But Steingarten is in another class entirely: He's so disaffected, it's hard to tell if he's got a pulse half of the time.
Week after week, Steingarten regards the Iron Chef hopefuls in the same way a crusty professor might deal with a snot-nosed student who happened to stop by his office outside of office hours. The man may certainly have his cheerful side, but by now we've gotten the feeling that every week, the "TNIC" editors decide to save up and splice together all of his best "You got me out of bed for this?" looks, and parse them out over the course of the last 15 minutes of each show.
When in doubt, they zoom in on one of his particularly befuddled stares -- no doubt there are plenty to choose from -- and try to give it some sort of significance, as if the man can't believe what he's hearing. You imagine that a Steingarten comment like "my flan is a little curdled" was probably delivered politely, gingerly to chef Jose Garces -- but when the tribal drums of failure are added to the soundtrack, man, does it take on a sting.
If you're like us, you've been waiting all season for the ultimate knock-down, drag-out Voltaggio brothers showdown on "Top Chef Vegas." Ah, the boys next door we love to hate, with their cutting comments, their undermining of each other's abilities, their constant bickering. ... We're not sure what dinner was like in their house growing up, but no doubt it involved lots of flinging of peas and acting out, followed by long, unbearable silences.
You can even see it in their food: Robotic big-bro Bryan and his classically flavored, cooked-to-perfection entrees; sneering bad-boy/skate-punk Michael and his crazy textures, flamboyant technique and exotic flavor profiles. It may be a few episodes too early to say it, but last night -- on the occasion of "Top Chef"'s customary restaurant wars challenge -- we finally saw the their sibling hatred in full effect.
Jehangir Mehta: 'The Next Iron Chef' villain?
Photo: The Food Network.
What was that on the Food Network Sunday night, you ask? Thudding sound effects, suspenseful music, extreme shaky-cam cinematography -- it had to be one of the "Bourne" movies, right? The opening of a scene from "Saving Private Ryan"? A straight-to-video "Mission: Impossible" sequel?
No, that trumped-up spectacle you witnessed was not the next John Woo movie -- it was, of course, the semi-celebrity chef competition "The Next Iron Chef." It's unlikely that anything can challenge Bravo's "Top Chef" as the premiere American cheftestant show, but as an old ad once put it, being No. 2 means you just try harder.
And trying really, really hard is what "The Next Iron Chef" is all about. In fact, all the music, fancy editing and bright lights are beginning to take their toll: Even the eight remaining chefs can't muster up quite that much energy. When your losing chef can utterly shrug off his failure -- something along the lines of "even great chefs have bad days; at least I have two great restaurants and my lovely family to go home to," yadda yadda yadda -- you know you've got a low-stakes kind of show. It's not as if these folks are going to go back to toiling in obscurity, with the added insult of "reality show failure" being tattooed on their foreheads.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. "The Next Iron Chef" has its pleasures, even if they're in a watered-down, "Top Chef"kind of way. Any episode that sings the praises of Los Angeles' myriad strip-mall Asian restaurants can't be all bad, especially when the four chosen for the show are all authentically, unequivocally tasty. Even the blatant product placement of the overexposed-but-still-delectable Kogi Korean-taco truck didn't bother us -- in fact, the mere thought of their short rib tacos gave us the Pavlovian impulse to check their Twitter posts to see if they were nearby.
Since the very beginning of "Top Chef Vegas" -- when she sheepishly chose immunity over a prize in a quickfire challenge -- the spazzy, chatty 40-something firebrand with the Kool-Aid hair has been courting the hatred of just about every mammal on the show, including the dead ones she's overcooked in the kitchen.
Even the cameramen seem to be joining in the slander. Each week, her pancake makeup looks a little worse, her puttering around the house more aimless, her early morning pilates routine more ridiculous. If you're looking for someone to teach you the doggy paddle on your front lawn, Robin's your girl.
Call it ageist, call it sexist, call it discrimination against the uniquely untalented, but certainly the bile and vitriol directed her way are disproportionate to her overall annoyance factor -- or are they? This week, the show's editors played up the Eli-vs.-Robin smackdown, wherein the elder stateswoman of "Top Chef" had the gall to suggest a nice serving platter for the Weeble-like Eli's scallops.
"You're not my mom," the snotty 25-year-old shouted, just after reminding us that he still lives with his mom and dad -- and is quite happy with the arrangement, thank you.
Not enough tension in your cooking competition shows? Do you find your blood pressure leveling out to near-normal readings during "Top Chef"? Do you wish that "Chopped" had more creepy smoke-machine fog piped into the set? Would judges' decisions be more exacting if only they were accompanied by loud, metallic wooshing sounds?
You're in luck. Last week brought the return of "The Next Iron Chef," one of the Food Network's variations on the legendary Japanese cook-off show, and with it a heaping helping of adrenalin-fueled, hacksaw-edited mania. After just two episodes, it's clear the show isn't going to give us a moment's peace, whether to pour ourselves a nice glass of sherry or grab our anti-anxiety meds -- or both, should it ever come to that.
Now it gets ugly. This is when the tears start flowing, the chefs get sick to their stomachs and the not-quite-least-deserving go home just a little bit before their time. That's right, we're over halfway through the Vegas season of "Top Chef" -- episode seven, to be exact -- and for the most part, the wheat has been separated from the figurative chaff. Only the best remain, and the smallest misstep could cost them.
Well, that's not entirely true: Cheftestant consensus would have it that Robin -- she of the fiery red hair, weird lips, incessant nattering and "I will survive" cancer back story -- should've been gone weeks ago. And in a double-shot of reality-show irony, this week saw her randomly partnered on a team challenge with her nemesis, Jersey Mike -- just about the only person who annoys us more.
Admittedly, the man can pull together the occasional impressive dish, and once you get past his egotism -- best signified by his countless rocker-fist salutes to himself -- you might uncover the Fonzie-like charm that lurks somewhere within. But when he's presented with a grocery bag full of Asian ingredients and doesn't have a clue as to what to do with them, you kind of wish he would just suck it up and play second fiddle, if only for a moment.
Instead, we get the team-challenge friction that only "Top Chef" can provide: Jersey Mike blithely quipping that his game plan involves "throwing out all the stuff" Robin cooks. The ever-humble Ash makes suggestions to would-be superstar Michael V., but, after being rejected, chooses instead to decorate the dinner table, tail between his legs.
Robin, the thorn in Top Chefs' sides. Photo: Bravo.
Toby Young really missed his potatoes last night. In his return to the "Top Chef" judges' table, the snarky British author and all-purpose pundit was presented with a couple of deconstructed dishes that, at their best, would've celebrated his homeland.
At their worst, however -- and as prepared by Ash and Laurine, respectively, they were at their worst -- the two concoctions were an outright affront to the dear old Blighty: fish 'n' chips and shepherd's pie. Even guest judges Penn and Teller, chosen for their skill at deconstructing magic tricks, couldn't contain their disgust.
Credit Laurine for at least trying: Her cube of halibut, pile of zucchini relish and smear of tomato confit was what an eager community college-student might think deconstructed cuisine should look like. But the all-important tuber was merely represented by a tiny communion wafer of chewy, parsley-infused potato. Missing "what you call fries, what I call chips," Young and company summoned her to the loser's circle.
Ash's, meanwhile, was a mess of elements on a plate, ranging from inconsistently cooked lamb chops to pea puree, glopped on in a desperate attempt to make up for a potato-parsnip side dish that was "too gluey" to serve. As if that admonition wasn't enough, the young cook went so far as to confess that the only shepherd's pie he had ever tasted was his own, which brought to mind nothing so much as Jodie Foster in "Nell," living by her own special language that no one else could understand.
10 More Dirty Restaurant Tricks
5 Things You Didn't Know About Turducken
10 Catchiest Food Jingles We Love to Hate
