"ed cotton" news and stories

Earlier today, Slashfood posted an interview with Top Chef: DC Runner-Up Angelo Sosa, now, here's our one-on-one with Ed Cotton.

If you could have chosen to not have a sous chef, would you have?
EC: Well, I definitely knew I needed a body to help me. For the amount of things I decided to do for my menu, if I would've done that myself, they would've just told me to stop cooking. Because it wouldn't have been good.

That would've been a first in Top Chef history: to just say stop.
EC: Yeah, I think so [laughs].

What was the thinking behind your final menu?
EC: Chef Tom and Eric went out to the market and brought back some beautiful slipper lobsters and duck, so I was excited and really wanted to showcase the ingredients and be really seasonal about it. Respect the ingredients. I love clean, straight forward and flavored food with great technique behind it.

What good is Singapore if we don't get to experience it through Tiffany's awestruck eyes? That was the question we were asking ourselves when we sat down to watch the endurance test -- for the chefs, at least -- that is the Top Chef finale. We know we should be over our favorite cheftestant's elimination by now, but we weren't.

Instead of Tiffany's brilliantly skewed, down-to-earth worldview, we got Angelo's weird, "I'm Asian on the inside" commentary on, well, just about everything. From the moment he arrived, he acted like he owned the continent. Boasting about his wok skills, mocking Ed's aversion to black cockles, Angelo loudly announced his dominance early on -- which, of course, made him a prime target for being taken down, something Ed was more than willing to attempt (and rather successfully, at that).