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Top Chef New York Season 5

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apskip:
I have developed a theory from observation of past topChef episodes. It is that when the number of cheftestants left is evenly divisible by a any whole integer, then you have the potential for a grouping of cheftestants. This means that the potential when starting with 17 cheftestants was for these factors(which are reversible; since flip is the same I am not going to show it):

15 (5 x 3)
14 (7 x 2) note that this episode 3 was actually exactly such a contest with Leah picking her group
12 (6 x 2 or 4 x 3) tonight could be a group experience
10 (5 x 2)
9 (3 x 3)
8 (4 x 2)
6 (3 x 2)
4 (2 x 2) this has happened in the semi-final episode of TC4

I am not saying it is mandated, just that it is somewhere between possible and probable.

marigold:

Tom Colicchio's Blog:

Speak Up, Listen Up

This challenge involved cooking for Gail Simmons' bridal shower. While that was a noble reason to cook and a beautiful affair, many of our chefs were overly concerned with the fact that they were cooking for a bridal shower, when, in fact, that was a red herring: The important thing was to use the theme they had drawn (old, new, borrowed or blue) and simply make good food. (I was also surprised to hear how often people mentioned the fact that they were cooking for 45 guests. This number should not rattle a chef.)

OK, the "Blue" team had it the toughest conceptually. There is no such thing as blue food (even Hubbard Squash, which is as blue as food gets on the outside, has orange flesh on the inside). The team came up with a good idea - the deep blue sea - but then didn't follow it through particularly well. Chilean Sea Bass was a terrible choice. Aside from not being associated with blue water, the Patagonia Toothfish (it's real name) is one that nobody should ever use, as it's been fished out and is endangered (for more about that, you can check out Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish, by G. Bruce Knecht). Even if it weren't an ethical gaffe, this fish is never fresh, but always arrives at the store frozen and is defrosted there. Choice of fish aside, the dish itself just wasn't very good. The whole thing was very pedestrian. Between the very soft fish, the crust that wasn't crisp, and the corn sauce, there was no texture in the dish at all. The team could have done something dynamic and interesting with the deep blue sea concept, but they just didn't. It was a boring dish.

Far from playing it safe, the "New" Team went overboard in the other direction and, ultimately, imploded. Where to even start...? An interactive dish could have been OK, but to pull it off would have required a team of very good technical chefs. Nothing was cooked right. This was not a dish where everything could be cooked in advance and reheated. The shrimp was ridiculously overcooked. Beef has some tolerance to it and might have withstood reheating, but Daniel overcrowded the pan, so instead of being sautéed, the beef was just steamed. There is a way to cook mushrooms, but Daniel doesn't know it, and they were horrible. The rice was made incorrectly, and Eugene actually thought he could fix it. You cannot fix bad rice. I always tell my cooks that invariably something will go wrong and they should not try to sneak it past the chef - they'd just be passing bad food along to the diner. I just opened a new Craft in Atlanta this week and on opening night the fingerling potatoes were undercooked. One of the cooks put a lid on them, cranked up the heat and started boiling them to death, but I stopped him. There was no fixing the potatoes in time to plate them; they need to be cooked slowly. I turned to the waiter and told him to please go out and apologize to the diner, explain that the fingerlings weren't ready, and we'd be sending out gratin instead. Then I turned and reminded my chef that he needed to have tasted every single thing in the kitchen to make sure everything was seasoned and cooked correctly. Luckily, the chef from Craft Dallas, who was visiting to help with the opening, caught it in time. Checks and balances. Team "New" should have had checks and balances (note: Carla didn't even taste the mushrooms that Daniel added to her salad), but I don't think they had the judgment. They would have relabeled the fingerlings, "crunchy potatoes," and sent them out. Half the table at Gail's bridal shower work for Food & Wine magazine. There's no way bad rice could have been passed off as something else no matter what Eugene added to it or how hard he beat it with that pan. The team had plenty of time to redo the rice the following day. Why didn't they?

This is a good argument for why Eugene should have been thrown off, so why Daniel? When you point out what's bad about a dish, most chefs say, "OK, I see that." Here, not only did every person at the table share the same opinion about the dish, but as we're explaining it, it becomes clear that Daniel doesn't even have the baseline knowledge to understand what we're telling him. He made every bad mistake you can make with every element he brought to the dish, and yet he stood there and defended himself instead of listening and learning. Quite honestly, all three of the chefs had a hand in this mess and all three of them should have gone home, but here's the inherent problem of a team challenge: Once you've figured out that a certain dish is the worst one, we're left with figuring out who caused the least and the most detriment to the dish. While Carla should have spoken up and fought to fix the problems with the dish, we let her off the hook, because her contributions were the least problematic. But Daniel was oblivious to the problems and not only didn't try to fix them, he kept compounding them. He was clearly lost. He had the least amount of skill and know-how, and when certain things were pointed out to him, he just point-blank said, "You're wrong." Part of my role, aside from judging, is to help the cheftestants become better chefs. I'm not allowed to advise them outright while they're cooking, but time and again chefs from past seasons have told me afterwards that they've really learned from my comments and our conversations about the food. But you can't even begin to have a conversation with Daniel, because he's not listening. There's no common ground. It's like having a relationship and wanting to talk about the problems in order to improve the relationship and having the other person say, "There are no problems." There's nowhere to go with that. You get a sense that Carla and Eugene were willing to listen and grow, but Daniel wasn't. He really believed that they'd created a great dish and wasn't open to learning anything.

A note about the winning dish: Viewers typically think that we judges are privy to all the info the viewers have by the time everyone's at the Judges' Table, but we're not. The cameras were rolling when the cheftestants conceived of their dishes, the viewers heard the chefs at the supermarket, in their loft, during prep in the Top Chef kitchen, but the judges don't see any of that footage in advance. While I pay a visit to the kitchen and ask some questions while the chefs are cooking, we basically just sample the food at the challenge and judge it from there. We give the chefs a chance to explain, clarify, and illuminate us when we're questioning them at the Judges' Table, and I, for one, wish they would use that opportunity more than they do. Jamie's carrot puree was terrific; Ariane's lamb was perfect. That's what the judges knew, and what they based their decision on. Jamie could have spoken up and taken deserved credit for having conceptualized the dish and been the team leader on it, but she didn't. That information would have been salient to the judges, who loved the whole dish, and it might have tipped the scales in her favor and earned her the win.

Link: http://www.bravotv.com/Top_Chef/season/5/blogs/index.php?blog=tom_colicchio

marigold:

--- Quote from: apskip on December 10, 2008, 08:12:56 PM ---I have developed a theory from observation of past topChef episodes. It is that when the number of cheftestants left is evenly divisible by a any whole integer, then you have the potential for a grouping of cheftestants. This means that the potential when starting with 17 cheftestants was for these factors(which are reversible; since flip is the same I am not going to show it):

15 (5 x 3)
14 (7 x 2) note that this episode 3 was actually exactly such a contest with Leah picking her group
12 (6 x 2) tonight could be a group experience
10 (5 x 2)
9 (3 x 3)
8 (4 x 2)
6 (3 x 2)
4 (2 x 2) this has happened in the semi-final episode of TC4

I am not saying it is mandated, just that it is somewhere between possible and probable.

--- End quote ---

Now your talking mathematically your predictions make perfect sense 

I have to say Hosea was in my top 3 when we first learned about the contestants based on their bios, he continues look promising

As for Ariane you know I’m now eating my words lol surprising but I still don’t think she will win top chef

apskip:
Marigold, that blog by Tom Colicchio is pure gold. Thanks.

I have some opinions developed from the first 5 episodes and even before the beginning of Top Chef 5. On paper I picked Jamie as having the best background. She has not quite reached her potential, but she has been in the Winner's Group of Elimination Challenges most of the time. I expect her to be in the final 3. Ariane is going great now, but I do not expect her to make it to the final group as one bad episode and she will be good without any regard to all her wins. For the final 3 I expect Fabio to be there and Stefan (if other chestestants don't lynch him first). There are several other good chefs in this competition (Leah, Radhika, Hosea come to mind), but I don't think thye can beat the ones I have identified.

apskip:
Episode 5

Padma told the cheftestants that this would be a tasting challenge where they would be the judge. Knives were drawn for the initial pairings. The dish was shrimp lobster bouillabaisse. The challenge was to win each pair of competition by being able to name the most ingredients, with each member of the pairing bidding for the highest number they could handle. Jamie said during it that they were told there were 30 ingredients in the first dish. Results were:
 
Hosea vs. Daniel - Hosea said onions, shrimp, lemon, carrots(he won)
Jeff vs. Ariane - Jeff said fennel, salt, crab (which was wrong and meant he lost)
Stefan vs. Jaime  - Stefan says salt, lemon, pepper, lobster, olive oil and Jamie is out
Leah vs. Eugene -  Eugene misses on his first nomination (I could not discern precisely what he said)
Fabio vs. Radhika - it was disappointing that neither could request  for more than 3. Radhika said salt, celery, lobster for an easy victory
Carla vs. Melissa - Carla says cream, sale, lobster, fennel to move forward
 
The second round was based on Thai green curry. Results were:
 
Hosea vs. Ariane - He claimed 7 and named coconut milk, sugar, Thai basil, ginger, salt, pepper, Thai chili
Stefan vs. Leah - He claimed 8 and named onions, turmeric, lemongrass, coconut milk, salt, ginger, vegetable oil, sugar,
Carla vs. Radhika - Radhika claimed 7 and named coconut milk, lemongrass, salt, chili powder. She lost because the last one was wrong.
 
The final round was Mexican mole sauce, renowned for having many ingredients, and was round robin. Carla went out immediately with the nomination of peanut butter. Stefan nominated chocolate, Hosea nominated sesame, Stefan pepper, Hosea raisins, Stefan coriander, Hosea garlic, Stefan tomato paste(which was wrong). Hosea went for vegetable oil and won.
 
Elimination Challenge
Padma stated that the cheftestants would do a bridal shower for about 40 guests. The bride is Gail Simmons! Gail came in to tell them that these were her best friends, all female,  many colleagues at Food and Wine magazine. Knives were drawn to determine which people were on teams of 3. They are summarized below.
 
The dishes were:
OLD
Jeff- Heirloom Tomato Carpaccio w Tomato Sorbet
Hosea - Heirloom Tomato Gazpacho w/ mint, cucumbers and watermelon
Stefan - Heirloom Tomato, Eggplant and Basil Terrine
NEW (Daniel, Eugene, Carla) - tempura shrimp and beef, frisee salad on wonton(plus mushrooms Daniel added without the other two aware), Peach Miso BBQ sauce, yuzu sorbet
BORROWED
Radhika - wilted leek  cucumber raita and sauce for lamb
Ariane - Indian spiced lamb marinated in yoghurt
Jamie - carrot puree, sorbet
BLUE
Melissa - sorbet
Leah - Swiss chard and corn puree
Fabio - blue corn encrusted Chilean sea bass
 
There were a number of interesting comments that arose during the cooking process. Eugene decided to modify his sushi concept into "roll your own"; there is a lot of risk there, [articualrly because he forgot to tell the diners. Fabio stated that the target audience is 43 people who are well educated and have good palates. Multiple people comment that being on a team with Stefan is a liability for you personally since there is no "I" in team and Stefan is only about "I". There were very positive comments from Gail and Dana about Ariane's lamb. In the kitchen with 14 minutes left it was undercooked, but the decision to leave it in the oven for 7 more minutes and take the plating risk was correct. All teams provided help on plating to get it done on time.
 
So for Judges Table I was not surprised to see Team Borrowed there for the determination of the winner. In my mind, there wasn't much doubt about who would win, as she has proven equally adept at roasting turkey and lamb. Ariane won her 3rd straight Elimination Challenge. Team Old earned an OK and was not involved in any judging.
 
Losers group was Team New and Team Blue. I could tell that Team Blue was really there for contrast and for filling time to make this a 75 minute show. Leah was told by Dana that her flavors were very good, but her texture was lacking. Fabio was told it was easy to cook forgiving Chilean sea bass. What he was not told was that it was a poor choice for multiple other reasons(see Colicchio blog in an above post). Melissa was not addressed at all. However, this was a brief interlude and Team Blue was dismissed after Tom warned them that a repeat performance of lackluster dishes like that would see them gone very fast.

This left Team New as the real culprits in bad performance. Tom made the strong statement that if he could he would fire all of them. Carla got off the best because her frisee salad was OK except for the mushrooms on the bottom. Tom stated that the mushrooms were terrible and asked Daniel (who had volunteered that he had put them under the salad) whether he tasted them. Daniel did and stood by them. Carla was asked the same question and had to say that he had not. Tom said that the major problems were both concept (Eugene's) and execution (all 3 of them). Eugene's use of bad rice was commented on; the judge said he should have ditched it and started over(but obviously very quickly). There was no doubt in my mind who was leaving. Although Eugene made huge mistakes, Daniel's were equal plus he demonstrated that his palate is way off in tasting his own food and rating it way too positively. Daniel was eliminated.
 
Next week is Martha Stewart as Guest Judge for a holiday party.

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