Thursday, November 20, 2008

top chef 5, episode 2

okay, so the first thing that stands out about the quickfire: radhika is so concerned that she is going to be pigeonholed as the indian chick that she makes an indian dish for the second consecutive quickfire. but those jerks are probably going to think that's all she can do anyway.

apparently, this week, it worked.

"i finally proved that i CAN make good food." um, it was a hot dog. even if it was good, it was one quickfire.

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ntil she tasted fabbio's, i got the impression that donatella didn't like any of them. she hadn't reacted at all when she tasted radhika's.

whatever. at least the loser of the quickfire didn't get sent home this week. although, as it turns out, that would've saved us some time.

when they announced the elimination challenge, i thought it was weird that everyone seemed to jump up and down that they wanted to do dessert. have they not see the show? then, the best part, they all later seemed to be acting like they never wanted to make dessert. like they were somehow relegated to it.

i have been to that whole foods. it's pretty crazy. its on two floors, which makes getting around with a cart. and i never saw ostrich eggs. i'm definitely going to look next time. and they had an amazing selection of seafood. it's hard for me to believe that they didn't have fresh crab.

it's too bad that apparently, jill didn't see what happened when patrick got excited about an ingredient he had never used last week. sure an ostrich egg is cool. but if you don't know how to open one, seems like a really bad idea.

of all the nasty things that people have said about dishes on this show over the years, "dog food" and "glue" are about as bad as it gets.

as far as the winners, certainly interested in the spherical olives. all over it. the chowder sounded good, carla probably didn't need the cheese. but wasn't the difference. fabbio wins. makes sense. and hey, carla's crust is flaky. who'd've guessed?

i don't know that i see the purpose in bringing in the people who weren't good enough to get on the show to talk smack about the people that did. i mean, makes for some catty comments, but their opinion seems less than useless.

hosea seems good enough that being in the bottom three is an aberration. ariane seems to be a fixture. jill seemed to have no idea where she was, much less why. when padma said that the choice was clear, have to say that i was pretty sure it was ariane. i mean, she spit it out. but i guess at that point i had forgotten about the gluey dog food.

i think ariane needs counseling. life just seems to be too much for her. she seems nice enough, but i don't know how you can cook with that little confidence.

postscript: hosea and leah appear to have no chance of getting into team rainbow.

discuss.

3 comments:

Laura said...

Jim, you're so right on your Radhika comment. She's pigeonholing herself. That said, she seems to be a fairly good cook.

I'm wrestling with cooking show vs. reality show concept. A judge had to SPIT out Arian's dessert. Jill's quiche wasn't great, either. Perhaps they should have pulled a Donald Trump and sent them both home.

I was a HUGE fan of Spike last season - not because I thought he was a great cook, but because he was a good reality show player and it was fun to watch him play the game

That said, Jill went home instead of Arian because she stammered and hemmed and hawed and that's what the judges talked about at the table. Her personality lost this one for her. (Not that Arian is Miss Personality).

Changing the subject, here's the dishes I would have wanted to try this week
- Crazy Carla's pastry thing (I'm liking Carla!)
- The cold corn soup (don't even remember whose that was)
- Jeff's chicken mustard thing.
- And the peanut butter dessert (I have the taste of the 5 year old).

Next's preview: I'm hoping Jeff loses his temper at Judge's Table. His arrogance came through in his 20 seconds of screentime today.

Melanie said...

Fabio was a clear winner. He seemed to be the only one doing something unusual (ostrich eggs notwithstanding). But wasn't it hilarious when he got all defensive about his dish?

Also, I was disappointed when the judges were dismissive of the peanut butter dessert. I would have ordered that.

jim webster said...

spike drove me crazy. i wanted to like him because he was from here, but he seemed to be better skilled at navigating reality tv than a kitchen.

i agree that ariane probably survived because she kept her mouth shut. jill couldn't explain why she did what she did, and dug herself into a hole by not cutting herself off.

at least, that's how they edited it. who knows what really happened.

the corn chowder was jamie rainbow.

see, i liked jeff in those 20 seconds of screen time, and everyone seemed to respond to him giving direction. and that's a chef's job, so that could bode well. but again, could've been in the editing.