TopChef-related stories
Posted Nov 19th 2009 2:30PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Food/Home/DIY, OpEd, Top Chef
Okay, take the idea of
Shark Tank (or
Dragon's Den if you're a BBC America fan), mix it with the
Top Chef folks, offer a great grand prize and hope for the best. That's the recipe behind
NBC's new food competition show, United Plates of America. The network is turning to the Magical Elves from
Top Chef -- no, seriously, that's the production company's name -- to succeed in the food field where NBC has flopped in the past. Remember
The Chopping Block? Remember Rocco DiSpirito's
The Restaurant? NBC has more luck with the dieters on
The Biggest Loser.
This go-round is not about a single restaurant. It's about a chain of restaurants. To me, that's a questionable goal. Most successful chains start off with one great restaurant and then take off. This concept is go big or go home. Maybe it's more complicated, but it doesn't sound that way.
Continue reading NBC cooks up a new food reality show with a big prize
Posted Nov 19th 2009 1:05AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Episode Reviews, Top Chef
(S06E12) When I saw that the title of tonight's episode was "Culinary Olympics," I didn't really imagine what the chefs would be going through. Were they going to be pole vaulting into the kitchen, did they have to prepare a meal on an ice skating rink? What could be the Olympian angle? Well, apparently there's a culinary competition that's as intense as the Olympics -- and it's not held in a kitchen stadium with Alton Brown doing play by play.
That said, this may have been one of the toughest assignments ever on
Top Chef. I tried to envision how past season winners -- let alone the runners up -- would have done in the same circumstances that these final five faced. I can't say for sure that I can think of one that would have aced it ... and for how this five did, read on.
Continue reading Review: Top Chef - Culinary Olympics
Posted Oct 29th 2009 12:40AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Episode Reviews, Top Chef
(S06E10) After last week's restaurant wars, which I found really disappointing, I was hoping for a really tough challenge tonight. As
Hemal guessed, having Natalie Portman as a guest judge did turn this main competition into a vegetarian duel. Oooh, yum. Vegetables. More about the kale and mushrooms after the jump.
Continue reading Review: Top Chef - Meat Natalie
Posted Oct 26th 2009 10:02AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Food/Home/DIY, OpEd, Pickups and Renewals, Top Chef
If you're a fan of
Top Chef, there's nothing tougher for the contestants than desserts. Just this past week during 'restaurant wars,' did you notice that one team decided to have no desserts on their menu at all. They just didn't want to risk blowing it.
Well, Bravo noticed, not just last week but all through the
Top Chef series.
Bravo's creating a Top Chef spinoff called Just Desserts in which chefs will have no choice, they'll have to deal with sugar, icing, cakes and struedels.
Top Chef: Just Desserts is the second
Top Chef spinoff, after
Top Chef Masters. I'm anticipating
Top Chef: Maitre D's down the road, aren't you?
Continue reading Bravo orders from the Dessert menu
Posted Oct 15th 2009 1:10AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Food/Home/DIY, OpEd, Episode Reviews, Top Chef
(S06E08) Well, things have certainly heated up on
Top Chef, haven't they? Oh, I'm not talking about in the kitchen; I'm talking about in the house. These chefs are getting testy, or some are. Eli mentioned in the open that there was a lot of "emotional stress." Well, he should know because he's behind some of it. Then there's motor mouth Robin. Could she really be as yappy as she appears to be on camera?
Continue reading Top Chef: Pigs and Pinot
Posted Oct 8th 2009 1:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Interviews, TCA Press Tour, Top Chef
Given the
popularity of the second-season opener of The Next Iron Chef, I figured it was a good time to pull out this interview I did with the show's host,
Alton Brown, at the network's TCA party in July. It was definitely the tastiest party of the tour, as each
Iron Chef contestant plied the critics with delectable morsels of their creativity at various stations.
In a bit of a surprise, one of the contestants,
Amanda Freitag, was being assisted by her friend
Ariane Duarte, one of the more popular contestants from rival program
Top Chef's New York season (I was so flabbergasted by the turn of events,
I snapped a pic of the two with my cell phone). When I pointed this tidbit out to Brown, his response was very interesting...
Continue reading Alton Brown calls Top Chef a "sous chef kind of show"... then takes it back
Posted Oct 8th 2009 11:26AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Food/Home/DIY, OpEd, Ratings
Even though I watch a lot of programming on the Food Network, I have to admit I missed almost all of the
The Next Iron Chef in season one. Last Sunday, the second season of
The Next Iron Chef blasted off with the best ratings for a series opener in Food Network history. Over two million viewers, a 1.1 rating among adults 25-54.
Why the big jump? Well, I think a lot of other people are like me. On Sunday, before I switched over to watch pro football, I clicked on Food Network where they were showing a marathon rerun of the first season of
The Next Iron Chef. It only took half an episode for me to kick myself for not having watched the whole first season when it aired. It was terrific.
Continue reading The Next Iron Chef is sizzling
Posted Oct 8th 2009 10:25AM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: OpEd, Episode Reviews, Top Chef
(S06E07) Here's what I love about this episode of
Top Chef: Jen and her illness. Yes, it was lovely how she triumphed over adversity and made a kick-ass dish, but mainly, I like the way that it didn't change her at all. She had the exact same dead-eyed expression and monotone that we've all come to know and love. Sick Jen or well Jen, they're both pretty much dead inside-- and I find her hilarious.
This week's Quickfire Challenge involves a slot machine (as all good challenges in life do). I really enjoyed seeing what the chefs came up with, based solely on three random words that came up on the machine. Even when they pulled words that would seem to make it easy, like Ashley's "Blue Cheesy Middle Eastern," they still don't go in the expected direction: there was no blue cheese in her dish.
Continue reading Top Chef: Dinner Party
Posted Oct 6th 2009 9:02AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Food/Home/DIY, OpEd, Pickups and Renewals, Top Chef
Amid the real housewives and matchmakers, millionaire real estate brokers and house flippers, there is one unscripted series that has been top shelf on Bravo. With
Project Runway not on Lifetime, the best of Bravo's reality is
Top Chef. In the five seasons past and the current season playing out,
Top Chef has been a winner for the cable net, so it's not a big surprise that today
Bravo renewed Top Chef for a seventh season.
If I were a drinker, I'd drink to that.
Top Chef is in the midst of season six, which is shaping up to be one of the best yet. The location, Las Vegas, has opened up a lot of options for challenges, including a
French food episode that might have been one of the most intense ever on the series.
Continue reading Bravo bringing back Top Chef for seventh season
Posted Oct 1st 2009 8:35PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd, Celebrities, Project Runway, Top Chef
Three stars have been born on Bravo! Well, at least three personalities from successful reality shows.
Bravo has plucked three stars for new reality shows, Bethenny Frankel,
Cristian Siriano and Fabio Viviani, giving each of them their own series.
Bethenny Frankel of
The Real Housewives of New York City has been rumored to be spinning off into her own show for a while. She'll be appearing on the upcoming season of
Real Housewives -- they're already filming in NYC -- but then she'll have her own program after that. It will be about her social life in NYC as well as her career as a natural foods chef. Bethenny has lots of personality and should do well on her own.
Continue reading Bravo spinning stars into three new shows
Posted Sep 10th 2009 12:27PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Food/Home/DIY, OpEd, Episode Reviews, Top Chef
(S06E04) If the names Joël Robuchon, Daniel Boulud, Hubert Keller, Laurent Tourondel and Jean Joho don't strike fear in your heart, you are probably not a
Top Chef contestant. Even
Tom Colicchio seemed über-impressed by these French chefs. This season the producers have really turned up the heat on
Top Chef, pushing the chefs to truly earn the title of
Top Chef as never before. This challenge -- cooking for the aforementioned master chefs -- was the most difficult in the series yet.
Continue reading Top Chef: Vivre Las Vegas
Posted Sep 3rd 2009 3:41PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Food/Home/DIY, Episode Reviews, Episode Recaps
(S0603) Bacon might be one of America's unhealthiest foods. But as comedian
Jim Gaffigan pointed out in his last special, bacon also holds awesome powers that are far beyond the grasp of mere mortals.
Given enough patience and time, bacon can move mountains, eradicate poverty and help scientists discover a lifelong cure for herpes simplex one.
Bacon's divine power proved itself once again in last night's
Top Chef.
Continue reading Top Chef: Thunderbirds
Posted Aug 20th 2009 2:46PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Food/Home/DIY, OpEd, Episode Reviews
(S06E01) The producers of
Top Chef must have listened to the criticism from the last edition of the show, the one set in New York with the contestants housed in Brooklyn. Despite being in perhaps the most exciting culinary city in the world,
TC-NY was pedestrian. Well,
Top Chef season six, is in Las Vegas and judging by the premiere, the stakes -- as they said a few times -- have been set very high. The round-up of players was filled with James Beard awardees, Michelin star cooks, people who have restaurants already... and a couple of others who have something to prove.
Continue reading Top Chef: Las Vegas (season premiere)
Posted Aug 18th 2009 3:01PM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Interviews, Celebrities
Kelly Choi grew up in a family and a culture build around food -- an upbringing that made her a natural gourmand and foodie.
That led Choi to a career on local New York City TV as an expert on Manhattan restaurants and global cuisine. Her popularity in the Big Apple led Bravo to sign her up as the host of the ultimate exhibition of culinary competition,
Top Chef Masters.
The daughter of Korean grocers, Choi grew up in and around her parents' store. Choi's friends and family would gather to share, enjoy and discuss food. So, her gig as host brings her back home to her roots.
I spoke with Choi as
Top Chef Masters fans prepared for the series' season finale on August 19.
Continue reading Kelly Choi: Top Chef Masters bickering was "unnecessary"
Posted Aug 16th 2009 1:16PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Food/Home/DIY, OpEd, Celebrities, Reality-Free
If you think this image of french fries looks delicious and appetizing, this post is for you.
There are so many cooking shows and food competition shows, everything from
Hell's Kitchen to
Top Chef to
Man v. Food, but there's a new one that started up recently that I'm really, really enjoying. Maybe because it's just about the joy of eating! Whatever the reason,
The Best Thing I Ever Ate is a winner.
Continue reading Yummy TV: The Best Thing I Ever Ate
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