TV is the New Reading

‘Top Chef’ judges comments

to be taken with a grain of salt

I was happy to see Bravo’s kitchen contest “Top Chef” return last week with a new batch of freshly-scrubbed naifs peeking out from beneath crisply starched toques.

On one hand, it gave me a renewed appreciation of how amazingly talented people can perform under pressure. Motivated people can put together one heck of a meal in a really short amount of time and present it beautifully.

On the other hand, it drove home a tendency I’ve noticed in the judging on Bravo shows.

I’ve tuned in regularly enough to the design and modeling shows and to the Top Chef show as well to have observed a pattern, and I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. But it absolutely stands out this early in the competition.

As an example, in the first elimination challenge, the newbie chefs submitted a collection of dishes to the judges. They were going head-to-head with each other to present different versions of classic favorites. Some of the chefs were at a loss, drawing technically complicated dishes like souffles and lasagna that had to be completed in the same amount of time as much easier dishes.

Tasting

And then the judges dug in. They tasted, they evaluated, they compared and then they called the chefs in to talk to them.

The praise was easy. Some chefs were clearly quite talented straight out the gate. And it didn’t hurt that some of the things the chefs were asked to prepare would’ve been hard to mess up too much.

Then came the negative comments. And these were flowing like water. This is the part of the judging that seems unnecessarily harsh.

I get that there’s a wish to highlight distinctions as much as possible when evaluating these situations, but the judges reacted to a shrimp dish like it had a skull-and-crossbones on it, and actually called an avant-garde molecular gastronomist silly and pretentious.

What? In his professional life, a “molecular gastronomist” gets a lot of mileage out of silly and pretentious! Last season, the "silly and pretentious" chef made it to the finals! These people serve nouvelle cuisine (read: elf food) for a living — of course some of it is going to be silly and pretentious.

And the woman who was sent home was eliminated because her shrimp dish was salty. Someone remind me again where shrimp live? Oh right — the ocean?

Distinctions

Obviously if you’re judging a competition like this and you must eliminate a participant, it’s easier to do so if you’ve drawn some clear distinctions between the best and the worst. But I don’t imagine anything thrown together in like 20 minutes in a competitive situation is going to be the pinnacle of haute cuisine any more than any dish from any reasonably capable chef is going to be the poisonous muck they ultimately deride it as being.

All that being said, the judges comments can certainly be taken with a grain of salt. Anyway, it’s just fun to see the new season is under way on Bravo, and to the viewers, bon appetit!

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

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