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Around the World in 80 Plates

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This is a new series that will be telecast starting May 2012 by BRAVO. It involves a culinary race around the world by 12 chefs to 10 countries in 44 days.

A new cooking competition series that takes its contestants around the world to test their skills in some of the world's greatest - and most demanding - restaurants. The budding chefs will be on the run across the globe, navigating a gauntlet of culinary tests along with changing cultures, customs and cuisines.

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The chefs were introduced as they arrived in London. They were:
Nookie Postal
Hometown: Cambridge, MA
PROFESSION:  Executive Chef, Fenway Park
CULINARY EDUCATION: Cambridge School of Culinary Arts

Sai Pituk
Hometown: El Paso, TX
PROFESSION: Chef/Owner of Tara Thai in El Paso
CULINARY EDUCATION: Self-trained

Nicole Lou
Hometown: San Jose, CA Resides: San Francisco, CA
PROFESSION: SousChef at Bushi-Tei in San Francisco
CULINARY EDUCATION: A.O.S. from California Culinary Academy

Nick Lacasse
Hometown: Burlington, VT Resides: Chicago, IL
PROFESSION: Executive Chef of The Drawing Room, Chicago
CULINARY EDUCATION: Graduated from: New England Culinary Institute, 2002

Liz Garrett
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
PROFESSION: Chef de Cuisine, Hotel Wilshire, Los Angeles, CA
CULINARY EDUCATION: Self-trained

Keven “Cheven” Lee
Hometown: Chatsworth, CA
PROFESSION: Executive Chef and CEO of My World on a Plate Catering and Events.
CULINARY EDUCATION: C.I.A. (Culinary Institute of America) located in Hyde Park New York and Dominican Carlton Tivoli located in Luzern, Switzerland.

John Vermiglio
Hometown: Clinton Township, MI  Resides: Chicago, IL
PROFESSION: Sous Chef, Graham Elliot Bistro
CULINARY EDUCATION: Education: B.S. Culinary Arts, Johnson & Wales University

Jenna Johansen
Hometown: Boulder, CO  Resides: Denver, CO
PROFESSION: Chef/Restaurateur, Cooking Class Instructor and Blogger: thelastthingweate.com
CULINARY EDUCATION: B. S. Restaurant and Resort Management from Colorado State University; A. O. S. Culinary Arts from Johnson & Wales

Gary Walker
Hometown: Detroit, MI  Resides: Los Angeles, CA
PROFESSION: Private Chef and Instructor
CULINARY EDUCATION: Culinary Diploma, '03, Institute of Culinary Education, New York, NY

Clara Moore
Hometown: St. Louis, MO
PROFESSION: Chef and General Manager at Local Harvest Café and Catering, also teaches and writes about food
CULINARY EDUCATION: Cooking and Baking at Baltimore International College

Chaz Brown
Hometown: Voorhees, NJ
PROFESSION: Chef de Cuisine at Fatty Crab in New York City
CULINARY EDUCATION: French Culinary Institute

Avery Pursell
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA  Resides: Sherman Oaks, CA
PROFESSION: Executive Chef/Owner, All Diced Up Catering, Sherman Oaks, CA
CULINARY EDUCATION: Los Angeles Culinary Institute

I rate their experience as higher than the competing chefs on Hell’s Kitchen and lower than those on Top Chef. At this point I cannot identify who the better and worse chefs are. The first assignment after meeting up with co-hosts Curtis Stone and Cat Cora is to separate into two teams of six chefs. They were:
RED Team – Nicole, Gary, Nookie, Jenna, John, Nick
BLACK Team – Cheven, Chaz, Liz, Avery, Nick, Sai

The real assignment was to navigate a “course” first to win a special ingredient. In this case the BLACK team put themselves far behind on the way to the first of 3 gastropubs by choosing to walk instead of hiring a taxi and they stayed way through the third gastropubs. The final assignment was to go back to the same 3 gastropubs and do this:
Pub 1 – drink a Pimm’s Cocktail and eat black pudding hash
Pub 2 – choice of eating 3 Steak and Kidney pies or drinking 3 “yards” of ale (a “yard” is a mostly cylinder with widening on the bottom and the top that is 36 inches long
Pub 3 – eat 6 plates of fish & chips and scrumpy (strong cider) 

The RED team finished first and won the special ingredient, potatoes. That became important because the final assignment was to make 3 classic British dishes (fish & chips, steak and kidney pie, black pudding) plus a choice of 2 other British dishes. 800 pounds was available to each team to spend to buy ingredients for 20 regular diners plus Curtis, Cat, British food celebrity Nigella Lawson and the owners of the 2 pubs which would be taken over by the chefs. The owner of Drapers Arms pub, Nick Gibson, was a commentator as was the owner of the Duke of Cambridge pub, Geetie. The decision power rested with the regular pub diners, who ate at each pub and voted.

The vote went decisively to the BLACK team. RED had poor steak and kidney pie and its extra good service was not enough to offset that. The BLACK team had both exceptional execution and bread pudding. There was a decision by the judges on which team member had contributed the most. They picked Chaz for his organization of the entire team. They did not know that Chaz had lied about his role (actually none although he claimed a primary role) in the bread pudding concept, which was Kevin’s. Chaz was awarded immunity for the next episode in Paris.

The RED team had to fire one member of their team. The top candidates were Nookie for his bad steak and kidney pie and Clara for general incompetence. Nookie threw her under the bus and Clara was eliminated.
Having experienced the first of 10 episodes as they cook their way around the globe, I would say this is a reality show worth seeing. However, be forewarned that it is more Gordon Ramsay-style than Tom Colicchio-style.

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The second leg of this series started with a flight to Lyon, France. Chaz as MVP got to change out his team and he chose to dump Nookie. His team got to fly in first class.

The leg 2 course started with finding a sheep farm near Lyon. The teams had to locate its cheesemaster, who gave them 6 sheep cheeses to identify. Success there took them to an area of the farm where the BLACK teams had to herd black sheep and the RED team red sheep out of a mixed herd and move them into a pen WITHOUT touching them. The most appropriate solution was for a team to link arms and act like a "flying wedge" from football around 1900.  RED had finished the cheese identification first, but BLACK killed them on herding sheep. Next they had to find a specific barge in the Rhone River at Lyon. Once there a team had to pair 8 wines with food. The winner of this was BLACK, which gave them the Special Ingredient, which was very special indeed. It was a cooking lesson from a Meilleurs Ouvrier de France (M.O.F.), Chef Joseph Viola of the restaurant Daniel and Denise. They focused on a typical Lyonnaise meal including quenelles so the BLACK team knew exactly what ingredients they needed for that. RED demonstrated a lot of moxie by walking around Lyon until they found a restaurant serving quenelles and figuring out what the key ingredients for it were and how to make it (it was likened to gefilte fish with a fine sauce).
 
The challenge was a 4 course Lyonnaise meal including quenelles, with the most lingual in French (definitely Jeanna for RED and I think Kevin for BLACK) serving as Front of the House. RED cooked and served this meal in Bistrot du Palais:
Quenelles w/ ? and potatoes
Haddock Sous Gibbert by Nicole
Salad by Sai
Chicken in obscene portions by Chaz

I expect that Bistrot du Palais is the restaurant of Jacotta Brazier, an icon of Lyonnaise cuisine, but that does not appear to be the case.

The BLACK team was cooking and serving in Daniel et Denise. Joseph Viola was a judge along with Jacotta, Cat and Curtis. Their menu was:
Quenelle w/ Nashua sauce - Avery
Lyonnaise salad (4 major components)
Haddock

The diners clearly preferred the BLACK food, so BLACK won this round. The judges selected Avery as MVP. Chaz was attempting to denigrate her efforts, but he was ignored. That was more than appropriate since his only positive results were obtained after Avery cut up his chickens into much smaller portions. RED now had the responsibility for eliminating one member of their team. The individual who the rest of the team considered least helpful due to taking far too long to do something simple (a salad) was Sai, who was elected to walk the plank.

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Teams have arrived into Barcelona and are sent to a port area. The BLACK team has the 4 remaining females plus Nookie. The RED team has Chaz, Kevin and 3 others. BLACK reached the port area and Curtis Stone 10 minutes ahead. Their task was in 3 parts: take out the livers for separate use and cut up monkfish; process merluza (hake); take the ink sacs from the monkfish and possibly also the merluza and transfer their contents into bottles. The winning team would get more euros to spend at the market on a cookie challenge later, with some unspecified formula based on liters of ink produced and number of monkfish and merluza. The RED team produced more ink than RED but Nookie almost overcame the RED lead with his skill in cutting up monkfish. Nookie was a machine. The end result was that RED was awarded 386 euros for shopping and BLACK was awarded 356 euros.

Each team caucused to develop a menu. Teams went to La Bouqueria market and bought what they needed (such are Serrano ham, spices, cheese, wine) to make the dishes they had specified. The exceptional ingredient was gamba  roja (red prawns).

The cooking challenge took place in Dos Cielos, the Michelin1 star restaurant of Sergio and Xavier Torres, who were on the judging team along with their friend Jose Andres, who apparently came from Washington DC to participate. Because Jenna is multilingual she again did the Front-of-House honors and she was very effective. Kevin was chosen by the RED team to be FOH and he spent less time on the floor of the restaurant and was not able to communicate as much because he lacked Spanish language skills.

The first course was a combination of the camarones and a second component for the RED team. The BLACK team had a trio of tapas. The judges rated the first course as a win for BLACK. The second BLACK course was based on the monkfish. For BLACK it was a merluza totally destroyed by Chaz with their gamba roja wasted by being paired with it. The judges preferred RED.  The final course was dessert.  RED had a cava sabayon with fresh fruit. BLACK had a brulee custard with macerated fruit. That custard had not set enough to give a good brulee, but the judges found the BLACK dessert better.
 
The decisions on which team won is solely made by the diners. It was a close call, with only 2 votes separating the teams. BLACK won and Nookie was given the MVP by the judges.  RED had to decide who to jettison. Chaz has made himself unpopular (with his teammates and with the TV audience) and he was responsible for the problems on the first course. However, Kevin’s limited Front-of-House skills were judged by his teammates as a worse performance. He was sent home to his fiancée, who he said would be happy to see him sooner rather than later.   

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ATWI80P ep. 4   

This episode takes the remaining 9 chefs to Marrakesh, Morocco. Its 3 teams of 3:
Black- Nookie, Avery, John
White – Gary, Chaz, Nick
Red – Liz, Jenna, Nicole

Their course is to locate Ben Boubker spice shop in the vast array of shops throughout the Medina. One person on each of two teams (Gary and Avery) speaks French, which is the main language used in Marrakech. All teams find that shop, where the task is to assemble the 9 ingredients of the ras al hanout spice blend. After that they have to race on foot to find a specific restaurant where Curtis and Cat wait for them. The Black team overcame a significant lead of the White team in reaching the shop and later on to El Waha Restaurant to win the Exceptional Ingredient plus $15,000. The final part of the course was to pour mint tea into a huge array of tea glasses on a table. The Special Ingredient was a local guide (Ahmed) to lead them to where they could get recipe advice and find specific ingredients.

Teams were given 5500 dimhars ($625) and 3 hours to buy their ingredients. The White team stood out with their choice of live chickens. The related task was to cook a meal in the Palais Soleimon rooftop restaurant with a tagine and 2 other dishes. A tagine is slow braise cooking in a special vessel that has a shallow bottom with about two-inch high sides and a conical top which allows the moisture from the cooking ingredients to circulate and steam back into the food. It’s less brothy than a stew and usually has lamb or chicken and vegetables in it with a full complement of spices usually the freshest of spices. The other 2 teams were allowed to roam Marrakesh on their own to discover whatever they needed to learn about tagines and Moroccan cooking.

The chefs cooked initially for a group of elders in traditional fez, then some other tables in the huge restaurant were filled with locals (with at least one in each group who could speak English). Curtis and Cat dined with the restaurant chef Moha and his wife. Here are the actual dishes:

White Team
Chaz Brown - Couscous with Roasted Vegetables
Gary Walker - Chickpea, Carrot and Tomato Salad
Nick Lacasse - Chicken Tagine with Green Olives and Preserved Lemons

Black Team
Avery Pursell and John Vermiglio - Trio of Moroccan Salads
Steve "Nookie" Postal - Beef and Vegetable Tagine
John Vermiglio - Saffron Stewed White Beans

Red Team
Liz Garrett - Saffron Couscous with Onions, Vegetables and Harissa
Jenna Johansen - Lamb Tagine with Garden Vegetables
Nicole Lou - Rice Pudding with Orange-Flower-Water


Black elected to bring all of their food out at once, which I think may have been unwise. We’ll see. White had couscous separate from their tagine. Some of the diners thought it should have been part of the tagine. John undercooked their beans. The fresh chicken in their tagine was appreciated.  Black had a difficult time with their courses. Avery was sabotaged by somebody (it turned out to be the wait staff who had taken her roasted beets by mistake) and made accusations to the other teams on trying to ruin her salad, who did not appreciate that. Nookie’s tagine was more like a stew, but it was also too spicy. Liz made a dessert of sweet rice with orange flower water that won many diners to Red.

It finally was feedback time. The Special Ingredient was wasted on Black as they only achieved average results. White’s couscous by Chaz were rated poor; he also received negative comments for failing to have them cooked into the tagine. Red got superior ratings for all of their dishes, particularly the dessert by Liz. The diners chose the Red team as the winner. Liz received the MVP award both for her Front of House work and for the dessert, which was the favorite dish of many diners.

 That left the 6 members of the Black and White teams to eliminate someone. This was totally a political battle, as it was obvious (and has been throughout the competition so far) that Chaz is all bombast and no performance. There was no question that he should have been selected, but his team was solid in voting for Avery. Her team was solid in voting for Chaz. I expect this kind of Mexican standoff will happen often in the rest of this competition. The judges had to choose Liz to break the 3-3 tie in the vote. She cited difficulty in getting along (certainly true, but a side-step of Chaz’s performance issues) to select Chaz for elimination.
 
The final commentary at the end of the episode had Avery stating that Nookie is playing chess while all other chefs are only playing the game of checkers. Avery’s main fault is that she is a superior chef and that makes her vulnerable to jealousy from her peers.

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