Thursday, November 13, 2008
Restaurants Top Chef New York
Posted by Besha Rodell @BeshaRodell on Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 4:40 AM
Guess what? This is Omnivore Atlanta's one thousandth post!!! What a grand ride it's been - we've laughed, we've cried...ahem...
OK, enough of that, what did you think of tonight's "Top Chef" premier? Of course, I'm having a much harder time being fully invested because there's no hometown chef this time around, but it does seem to me that the show is continuing their trajectory of getting better and better quality contestants every time. I also liked that the first challenge was about basic knife and kitchen skills - last season I was appalled at how few chefs knew very basic things, even after four or five shows. Weed out the non-souffle makers early, I say.
I'm going to save my top three predictions for week three or so, but feel free to opine away. In honor of our 1000th post, I'll be giving away one of the cookbooks I'm writing about on the blog and in next week's Holiday Guide (it's a good one, and expensive too!!) to the first person who correctly guesses the top three finalists. Guesses must be made by Dec 5th in the comments section of the blog. One guess per person please - I'm sure you can figure out how to cheat, but don't. I trust you.
Comments (3)
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Oh no, that was tonight?! Thank god Bravo repeats everything incessantly, because I missed it - glad I read your post though, so now I know.
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I'm not ready to say the quality of contestants is as high as, say, the Chicago crew or Miami, which seemed to have some chefs with very impressive resumes or at least working in nationally-known kitchens. The fact that there was one student and one fresh-from-CIA in the 17 stood out to me. We shall see....
I agree about the basic skills being a good way to justify the contestants' presence early in the competition. I do wish the second challenge (neighborhoods) had been less haphazard and more designed to demonstrate what each person was bringing to the table/kitchen as their strength. Instead, there was a huge element of luck. I think that luck (or lack thereof) is great for differentiating between the good and the great as we get closer to the finals, but I would rather have seen more elimination based on basic qualification early on. Maybe everybody should have to cook the exact same classic dishes in the beginning. That would be interesting. Maybe not to the judges though. Imagine eating 16 of the exact same thing, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
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