"jody adams" news and stories

After winning "Wedding Wars" on the previous episode of Top Chef Masters, Chef Jody Adams wasn't able to keep that momentum going into this week's "Exotic Surf & Turf" challenge. As the owner and brains behind Cambridge, Massachusetts's Rialto Restaurant, Adams has made her mark on the culinary worlds by fusing New England ingredients into traditional Italian cooking. Slashfood spoke with Adams about working with exotic ingredients on Top Chef, Susur Lee's advantages and where she'll finally learn to cook goat.

Did you attend the viewing party at Rialto last night?
I did. I was surrounded by friends and families and customers and a lot of love.

Did they boo?
There was a little booing, I have to say. It was like "huh! You're kidding, not our Jody!"

More with Jody Adams after the jump.

One question: Who decides which lucky newlyweds get to be a part of Top Chef's perennial "Wedding Wars" episode? And do they take bribes?

Frankly, we weren't planning nuptials anytime soon. But based on the spread served up by eight of the nation's best chefs on this week's Top Chef Masters, we'd like to know the shooting schedule for next season now, so we can get to the top of the list. Forget the registry -- we'd be marrying for the food.

"Wedding Wars" team challenges, of course, are a staple of the Top Chef franchise, along with piercings in strange parts of the body and the creative use of the f-word. But never has the challenge been done like this: Jonathan Waxman can make tarragon roast chicken for us anytime. Even the "boring" wedding food -- potatoes au gratin by Tony Montuano, crab cakes by Carmen Gonzalez -- looked mouthwatering, perfectly crusted and crunchy. And then there was the literal icing on the cake: Five -- five! -- separate desserts by Susur Lee.

Memo to Bravo: Can you bring back this week's Top Chef Masters contestants? Like, for a whole season? Whatever casting mojo you conjured to create the alchemy of this final group of five utterly-professional-but-unpredictably-funny pros, keep it coming.

Pot jokes, unvarnished egotism, shoeless cooking, radish carvings so intricate they looked like origami -- it was all there and more. Oh, and great-looking food -- although, ultimately, the judges' ratings suggested otherwise.

Maybe it was the multicultural, multiregional, melting-pot quality of the cheftestants. Maybe it was their obvious kitchen smarts. Or maybe they were just the kind of people you'd not only want cooking for you, but hosting the dinner, as well -- not to mention getting a little drunk and telling you stories about becoming a chef.

Interesting piece over at The Boston Phoenix. The writer asks several chefs what dish they order in a restaurant to see if the kitchen knows what it's doing. That one meal that you would judge the entire restaurant by.

Rialto chef Jody Adams orders a simple pasta dish, because she says that if a restaurant can screw that up, then they'll probably screw up a more complex meal. Michael Schlow (who is chef at two Boston restaurants, Radius and Via Matta), has a different dish for each type of restaurant. At Japanese restaurants, it's the rice. At steak houses, he goes by the side dishes and the wedge salad (what the heck is a wedge salad?). Michael Leviton over at Lumiere goes by the simple dishes at Asian restaurants: Shrimp and broccoli, drunken pasta, and for Italian restaurants it's the risotto.

I'll have to agree with the author of the article and say I often go by the chicken dishes, since they're a pretty basic dish, and I also go by the salads. But then again, I've had some awful meals at some restaurants where everything else I've had is first-rate, so I go back. Readers, how do you judge restaurants overall?