Top Chef All-Stars, Eps. 1-5

Random thoughts / color commentary, for my faithful readers Karen and Josie. Hope y'all are keeping warm!

Ep. 1 - History Never Repeats - Original Air Date 12/1/10

• Damn, I forgot how much Season 2 sucked. Boo, Marcel. Season 7 was a dog, too. Season 3 had some talent - Dale, Tre, Casey.... they could be a threat. Ditto Season 4. Yay, Blais!
• OK, I take that back. Mustard ice-cream, Blais?
• Great Elimination challenge. I remember those butterscotch scallops (ew, again). Good thing you had immunity, Dale. (Dudes, do you guys remember that salmon dish he and Blais made with white chocolate wasabi sauce and tapioca pearls? That the judges actually liked? I still don't get that.)
• You know your food is bad when it's unfavorably compared to a colonoscopy. Yikes.

Ep. 2 - Night at the Museum - 12/8/10

• I don't think there should have been a winner for this one. Seriously, gnocchi, gazpacho and a salmon steak for breakfast?
• I think maybe Jen is still suffering from PTSD from her season or something. Why was she so spazzy and weird?

Ep. 3 - New York's Finest - 12/15/10

• Mise en place relay! Along with the blind taste test, this is my favorite Quickfire. Good speed technique on the garlic from Fabio (the "Cutting Board Smash") and on the lamb from Marcel (the "French Hammer").
• About time they booted Stephen. He really can't cook at all. Then again, the show has really come light years in terms of the cheftestants' qualifications.

Ep. 4 - Advantage Chef - 12/22/10

• Some really creative substitution for kitchen utsensils in the Quickfire. I would not like to have to butcher poultry using a pepper mill.
• "Undone-te" - HA! I like Carla. Speaking of undone-te, what was Jamie thinking, starting with dried legumes?! They take FOREVER to cook, and even home cooks know that.
• I'm not sure what kind of strategy would have worked best in the head-to-head, but I do think the teams should have had to commit to an order before the start. Almost every single round, Yellow Team picked their person after the Orange Team had already locked in. That's seems like an unfair advantage. (Not that it ultimately hurt them.)

Ep. 5 - Dim Sum Lose Sum - 1/5/11

• Pretty much an epic fail. There were a lot of basic misunderstandings about the raw materials, and everyone made their dishes WAY too complicated for the volume they needed to pump out.
• Susur! What I character. I've missed him.
• How does Jamie keep dodging the bullet? Has she done even one halfway decent dish yet?

Massive Top Chef DC Catch-up

Every remaining episode in this season. Dedicated to faithful readers Karen and Josie.

Ep. 9 - Restaurant Wars

Original Air Date: August 11, 2010

1) "EVOO" makes any Food Network viewer think of Rachael Ray. Maybe not the association you want for your fine dining restaurant? (Off-topic, but it's a real food peeve of mine that Rachael Ray's budget cooking show encourages people to cook with extra-virgin olive oil ALL the time. Heat higher than about 250° - namely, the temperatures at which you cook on a stovetop or in the oven - will damage and deteriorate extra-virgin olive oil. Use canola or lower grade olive as your regular cooking oil and save the expensive extra-virgin for cold dishes and salads, or for drizzling over stuff that's already cooked.)

2) Alex is total crap at butchering proteins. *I* could have done a better job. Why did they leave him at it for so long?
3) Alex is also rubbish at front of the house. I know you wanted him out of the kitchen, Red Team, but you also want to make a good impression on the judges and he is the only one they will see.

4) Classic fake-out ending by the editors. I think Blue Team was lulled into a false sense of security by the chaos on Red Team. Attacking Alex on the winning team was an inexplicable strategy to take at Judges' Table.
5) Shocker elimination. I thought for sure Kenny would make it to the finals. I bet it chaps his ass that Alex and Amanda are still around.

Ep. 10 - Covert Cuisine
Original Air Date: August 18, 2010

1) Loved this Quickfire. Those were some crazy ingredients they threw together. I mean, hominy and squid and passionfruit? Diabolical! I wish they'd taken the time to detail how everything was used in the dishes. I also wish Wylie had taken a minute to tell us what he would have cooked. Inquiring minds want to know!
2) Weird to hear "CIA" on a cooking show and have it mean the spy people, not the Culinary Institute of America.
3) Maybe Ed could have pushed his inside-out idea further and disguised the dish as sushi? You could use spinach to simulate the seaweed and both chicken and Swiss are pale enough to look kind of like rice. Beef Wellington - that's tough, there are only two main ingredients. Maybe a savory Napoleon? French onion soup has a lot of elements to play with. Maybe a kind of French dip sandwich with onion rings?
4) Annoying Amanda escapes to cook another day! Argh! Her dish looked like a stool sample and also failed to meet the basic requirements of the challenge. Though to be fair, Ed and Kevin biffed the disguise as well.

Ep. 11 - Making Concessions
Original Air Date: August 25, 2010

1) Loved this Quickfire too. I can't believe no one picked "Hide the salami." I though it would have been fun for Amanda play off her phrase and use rigatoni, so it looked like mac and cheese for giants. But I'm also okay with continuing to hate her for being boring.
2) Angelo was dumb to volunteer for orders - it's all downside, no upside. Maybe they could have rotated on orders? Or just cooked lots of food and set it out, since it was all free?
3) Annoying Amanda finally gets the axe! Tartare at a baseball concessions stand? Total wack-a-doo decision. Any knowledge of basic food safety would lead you to NOT chop the stuff the night before. The more surface area there is, the faster bacteria multiplies. (That's why hamburger doesn't last as long and is a greater food poisoning risk than steak.) Not knowing how to stave off oxidation was another huge blunder. Good riddance!

Ep. 12 - Gastronauts
Original Air Date: September 1, 2010

1) I saw Buzz Aldrin, and immediately pictured him dating Liz Lemon's mom. Love that show!
2) OK, this challenge made no sense. It should have happened earlier in the season, and the cheftestants should have had to actually freeze-dry and reconstitute their dishes. (Like the Season 3 folks, who actually had to serve their airplane food reheated on a plane.) As is, they just ended up with a bunch of nonsensical
"suggestions" like don't use too much sugar and astronauts like spicy foods.
3) Speaking of which... no sugar? I used to volunteer at Science World, and one of the most popular items in the gift shop was freeze-dried ice-cream.
4) Angelo really needs to stop talking about "making love" to his food. I mean, food and cooking can be sensual but I want to feel it in the dish, not hear it from the chef.
5) Ripert was hard to please this ep. I actually really like it when the judges disagree - food is so subjective, after all.

Ep. 13 - Finale, Part I
Original Air Date: September 8, 2010

1) Singapore? Pretty random.
2) I want a culinary tour of the city led by Seetoh. Incidentally, I think the Singaporean accent is very charming (unlike the majority of Asian accents).
3) Nice obstacle on the Quickfire with the Chinese labels. I'm actually kind of surprised that Angelo can't read a little, especially the food words - he seems to have quite the Asian fetish. (Which makes his Russian mail-order bride all the more inexplicable.)
4) Wow, toxic atmosphere in that kitchen. Doesn't take much success for Ed's Mr. Hyde to come out, does it?
5) Given the hot weather, why so many soups and no salads?
6) Kevin's egg and tapioca dish sounded like a slimy, goopy disaster. And yet the judges loved it. Where did the flavor come from? If he'd never cooked it before, I'm impressed Kevin aced the tapioca. A friend of our family has a bubble tea shop in Vancouver and, according to her, it's a very finicky thing to cook - they have to do a batch every few hours because the centers start to seize up if the tapioca sits too long.

Ep. 14 - Finale, Part II
Original Air Date: September 15, 2010

1) Michael Volt!! His presence reminds me that last season was out-of-the-park with talent, whereas this season was characterized by annoying people and mediocrity.
2) Slipper lobsters look like giant roaches. The first person to try to eat that must have been pretty damn hungry.
3) What exactly was wrong with Angelo? Migraine? Food poisoning? The latter seems most likely, but why would he get food poisoning when it looks like they all ate the same things?
4) Breakdown by course: 1st, veg - Ed's corn velouté was the clear winner; 2nd, rouget - Angelo/Kevin split; 3rd, duck - Kevin's was the favorite (though the skin looked hardly rendered at all in the glamour shot); 4th, dessert - another Angelo/Kevin split.
5) Congrats to Kevin and all - but I think he won through process of elimination. To me, Angelo's fatal flaw was his weird flavor combinations. Watermelon and mushroom and pork? Duck and cinnamon marshmallow? Ed's fatal flaw was clearly to let Ilan do the dessert himself.

Top Chef DC, Ep. 8

Original Air Date: August 4, 2010

1) I've never met a world cuisine I didn't like.... except Ethiopian. Please don't offer to take me to your favorite Ethiopian restaurant. I'm allowed to not like *one* cuisine, OK?

2) Kenny, you don't need to make a duo or a trio or seven freakin' dishes for every challenge. It's not been that successful a tactic to date.
3) Wow, they really pitched some softballs on the countries. France? Italy? What about Sweden for Marcus?
4) Ed, if you're making tea-smoked duck, spring for some quality loose leaf tea. Don't use Lipton tea bags.
5) I thought Kevin would crash and burn with his whole "I don't know anything about Indian food but I'm making my own curry powder" - but he pulled it off!
6) Does Alex have short-term memory problems, or is he a compulsive liar? Between last episode's Case of the Purloined Pea Purée and this episode's veal cheeks (which he told the judges were in his dish, even though he told Tom earlier that he couldn't find any at Whole Foods), he's looking pretty sketchy.

Top Chef DC, Ep. 7

Original Air Date: July 28, 2010

1) Ironic that they chose to offer $20,000 to the winning chef on a challenge that's based on ethics in lobbying.
2) From the looks of their proteins, The Palm strikes me as one of those really outdated restaurants still serving stuff that was cool in the '80s. The humongous steaks, 4lb lobsters? Very passé.
3) Nobody loves lobster more than me. Nobody. But when a lobster gets to 4lbs, I think it's earned its right to live. (Not to mention, they don't even taste as good as the little ones.)
4) As soon as I heard Andrea's plan for a vanilla-mustard sauce, I thought, "That takes more finesse than you've got, girlfriend." And I was right.
5) Did Alex steal Ed's pea purée? I think not. Too many cameras and people around for him to risk it.
6) I see Wardrobe's back on track - nice look on Padma for the Quickfire.

Top Chef DC, Ep. 6

Original Air Date: July 21, 2010

1) Why was foie gras on that Quickfire table? Way too easy! Someone had to cook duck testicles!!
2) When Tamesha, with her dead eyes, interviewed that she wanted to strangle Amanda with her bare hands, I was kinda scared for Amanda.
3) Ah, Tamesha - defeated by the scallop. Second only to dessert as a Top Chef Waterloo. I don't think she was the worst chef standing; unfortunately, she chose to suck on a day when the format really worked against her. I can see why Group B chose Kenny for the block, but there was no way the judges were going to send a strong contender home so early.

[P.S. Bravo, how about not putting a huge picture of the eliminiated cheftestant on your website? Spoiler much? Give people a couple of days to get to their DVR'ed shows!]

Top Chef DC, Ep. 5

Original Air Date: July 14, 2010

1) Some pretty graphic stuff in the Quickfire - crabs being chopped in half, still twitching, Ed is baking them alive, someone's boiling them alive. Though I guess I shouldn't talk, lobster serial killer that I am.
2) Best line of the episode - Angelo: "Well, I had crabs. It just brought back bad memories." HA!
3) Tim's dish was basically my default roasted veg for, like, every dinner party I have. He should have thrown some apples in there, or an interesting spice. Something. You're a chef, dude. Also, the care you take when you cut something that you intend to serve that way is very different than when you intend to purée it. I can't believe he thought he'd sneak that by the judges.
4) Broccoli couscous - I like it. Simple, visually appealing. Will probably be appearing at a dinner party in the near future.
5) More love for Eric Ripert. It's obvious he knows food and has high standards, but he's always so measured and diplomatic with his comments. I want him to talk foodie to me. And he's a snazzy dresser too!

Top Chef DC, Ep. 4

Original Air Date: July 7, 2010

1) Bryan! The producers obviously agreed with me - what this season needs is some Voltaggio.
2) What was up with that fugly shirt on Padma? Get it together, Wardrobe!
3) Interesting format idea for the Elimination. And by interesting, I mean half-baked. If the prize is a feature on the Hilton menu, shouldn't they have eliminated the worst chefs in each successive round as opposed to the best ones? Why didn't they give the chefs feedback between rounds? And shouldn't the winner have been picked from among the best of all three meals, instead of just the dinner (where the team also produced two sucky meals)? Concept clearly needs work.
4) Amanda, people don't want to partner with you, not because they think you can't cook, but because they think you're abrasive and obnoxious. Have some self-awareness, lady.

Top Chef DC, Ep. 3

Original Air Date: June 30, 2010

1) I rarely encounter a pie I don't want to snarf down. But I don't think I'd like a dessert pie with curry. Or celery. Or tapioca and goat cheese. I mean, what the what?!
2) "It's a cop-out to say you're not a pastry chef. My grandmother's not a pastry chef either, and she can make a pie." BURN!
3) I'm still haven't figured out whether "magazine cover dish" is a compliment or insult coming from Jonathan Waxman, the king of sloppy plating.
4) Tracey been a disaster from the get-go. Definitely time for her to leave.
5) I've decided I don't like Amanda either. (Though I wouldn't mind trying her bbq ribs.) Why isn't there anyone to root for this season? There's a third Voltaggio sibling, right? Can she cook?

Top Chef DC, Ep. 2

Original Air Date: June 23, 2010

1) Cafeteria food, sigh. Second only to airplane food for being a complete and utter tragedy. For my high school years, my mom abdicated all nutritional responsibility and just gave me $5 for breakfast and lunch in the school cafeteria. Thank God that was when I had the metabolism of a teenager. (Hey - if you think it's amazing now, you should have seen me then.) My brother got two granola bars every day, in about three rotating flavors purchased in bulk from Costco. My mom CAN cook; she just doesn't like to.
2) Jacqueline: spotty technical skills + spotty food science. If you have a grainy mixture (ep. 1), you can only fix it with heat if the bits will melt, like chocolate. Liver, not so much. (Well, I guess you can cook the bejesus out of it, until everything disintegrates into mush. But that's going to taste terrible.) For her pudding: sugar can be used to mask too much salt, or fix too much acid, but it does not break down starch - enzymes break down starch... into sugar.
3) Angelo and Amanda share the prize for Stupidest Idea. Celery in a tuile? Sherry-braised chicken? To serve to kids? Completely unhinged.
4) Awesome, cutthroat Judges' Table. Maybe the best ever. Sabotage! Two pounds of sugar! Peanut butter is evil!

Top Chef DC, Ep. 1

Original Air Date: June 16, 2010

1) Welcome back, Top Chef! Though from what I've heard from Sylvia on the restaurant scene there, perhaps DC's not the most qualified city to be hosting this season.
2) I think post-baby Padma looks gorgeous and glowing, but the above outfit is just not flattering.
3) Silver fox and chef extraordinaire Eric Ripert is a new judge!!!!!!!! Hubba hubba!!

4) If you name your restaurant "Rat's", you deserve to have it go out of business.
5) Peeling potatoes with paring knives is ridiculous. I am a potato-peeling machine with my horizontal peeler, and I defy Tom Colicchio to tell me why it's any less legitimate.
6) A surprisingly high correlation between the fastest mise en place chefs and best elimination challenge chefs. Except for Tim, poor shmuck.
7) Looks like Angelo's got some skills. Unfortunately, he is a total blowhard and I hate him already. And dude? Monte Carlo is not in France.

Top Chef Masters Season 2 Finale

Original Air Date: June 9, 2010

1) Wow, how can Rick hope to compare to Marcus and Susur's insanely dramatic life stories? (For those of you that don't watch the show, Marcus' birth mother died of tuberculosis in Ethiopia when he was three and he and his sister were adopted by a Swedish family. Susur moved from Hong Kong to Canada to be with his first wife - who was a passenger on Korean Air Flight 007, which was shot down in Soviet airspace in 1983.)
2) That picture of Rick as a child had me laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair. What a cute, goofy-looking kid he was! Marcus was an adorable child, too. Susur looked really different when he was younger - his face filled out into a completely different shape.
3) Marcus only used half his budget?
4) Dishes I most wanted to eat: Rick's first (a glazed oyster, hamachi and scallop crudo); Marcus' second (salt-cured duck and foie gras ganache); Susur and Rick's third courses (Thai lamb with Chiang Mai sausage and venison with a stuffed cippolini onion, respectively). I don't have a lot of familiarity with either Scandinavian or African cuisine, but Marcus' food just seemed weird.
5) For new readers, I thought about my own "cook's journey" meal during last season's finale. My answers are here.

[P.S. Thanks to Summer Brother for his "technical assistance" in getting me this ep after my DVR failed to tape it. Bad Gadget!]

Top Chef Masters Season 2, Ep. 9

Original Air Date: June 2, 2010

1) The Quickfire challenge was very poorly articulated. What were the rules as to how far you could stray from the original recipe? (The lawyer in me immediately interpreted the maximum possible latitude. This is why lawyers only beget more lawyers - we are trained to think around the rules.) Though I guess it was a moot point in the end since they all had to morph their dishes into soup.

2) I liked seeing the camraderie among the chefs this ep. They were more chilled out and complimentary towards each other than I've ever seen before on this series.

3) Susur should stay away from novelty platings. He doesn't have the subtlety to pull them off. I hated his Marge Simpson plate and cringed at the concept for his dessert in this ep. The former was like something off Olive Garden's kids menu and the latter, a Hooter's dessert special.

4) Jonthan can clearly roast a chicken like nobody's business but he was totally checked out of the competition, mentally. He just flat-out refused to play ball on the Elimination challenge. His words were clearly the hardest, but still.

Deadliest Catch

Airs on Discovery Channel on Tuesdays at 9:00

My brother was already an occasional watcher, but I got totally hooked on this show! Narrated by Discovery hunk Mike Rowe, it's just naturally action-packed and dramatic. (Did you know that fatalities for a season of crab-fishing average out to person a week?!) And it gets bonus awesome points for playing Bon Jovi during title credits.

As a family we watched something like 15-20 episodes during the long weekend Deadliest Catch marathon. Yes, we are a family of nerds.

We also love us some crab. Dungeness is great almost year-round in Vancouver, but Alaskan King crab season is truly legendary. The price for these monster crabs - live in tanks in most restaurants - dips below $20/lb, sometimes even below $15/lb, and Chinese restaurants do a particularly tasty preparation with tons of garlic called suan long. YUM!

Top Chef Masters Season 2, Ep. 8

Original Air Date: May 26, 2010

1) Complete failure of common sense in the Quickfire. Jonathan, Asian recipes generally do not use butter. Susan, chasseur is a French sauce. It's got mirepoix, parsley, salt and pepper. That's six ingredients without even thinking. Susur, garlic is not a common ingredient in classic stocks and sauces. Also, why struggle over the kind of oil in the chasseur when you hadn't even named the veal?
2) A soy sauce-glazed egg served with coconut jam on toast seems schizo to me. The inspiration was Aphrodite, Susan, not Janus.
3) The show could have come up with some more interesting gods than Poseidon, Dionysus and Aphrodite. Imagine being asked to cook a dish based on Terpsichore, the muse of dance, or Nike, the spirit of victory.

Top Chef Masters Season 2, Ep. 7

Original Air Date: May 19, 2010

1) A Quickfire/Elimination sweep for Susan! Girl power!
2) I think guest judge Jason Lezak is awesome (more below) and I'd totally make out with him - swimmers are HOT. But what does he know about judging food, exactly?
3) Susur, this whole "I don't know tailgating" routine is crap. Asians have great streetfood traditions. There's no excuse for that weird Austrian dumpling you decided to make.
4) Tony seemed pretty bitter about his loss. I'm sure the pizza was good and all, but other than making the dough, he didn't really cook anything. It was the right call.

Aside: I saw Jason Lezak swim for gold in Beijing. He swam anchor for the 4x100 freestyle relay team and heroically made up almost a body length's deficit on the French. That's them, neck-in-neck in lanes 4 and 5, just before the 0.08-second US win.

Lezak's on the far left. He totally deserves all four of the gold medals for the relay team. Incidentally, Michael Phelps (standing beside him) swam first leg and touched in sixth out of eight teams. Duffer.

Top Chef Masters Season 2, Ep. 6

Original Air Date: May 12, 2010

1) Tony, you had me at "fried bacon honey pizza dough."

2) I didn't know that Paul McCartney is the reason why Lisa's a vegetarian. I do remember the "There's enough gazpacho for everyone!" episode and quote it a lot.

3) What was up with the creepy taxidermied animals on the cart?!

4) This is what I know about the exotic items:

     - Geoduck: Delicious, if tremendously odd-looking. I always thought it

       looked like a clam that tried to eat an elephant, but couldn't quite manage

       the trunk. I would have picked this for sure. You barely need to cook

       geoduck - a quick dunk in boiling water, some microgreens, a little

       dressing and you have a fantastic salad. I'm really surprised Marcus

       bungled it to the degree he did.

     - Sea cucumber: A pain to prepare and tastes like fish-flavored Jell-O. The

       standard Chinese preparation involves literally days of soaking and

       blanching and peeling. I'm impressed with Susan's tempura idea; I've

       never seen it done like that before.

     - Black chicken: Flavorful but pretty scrawny. Mostly used to make chicken

       broth / stock. Interesting that both Rick and Susur decided to go French

       with their ingredients.

5) To answer Jay's question of why someone would try to eat a crazy-looking animal, the answer is obvious - they were very, very hungry. You can see some of this in French cuisine. I mean, escargots? At some point, a guy looked at a snail and thought, "If I cook it with lots of garlic, maybe it won't be so bad."

6) I usually want a big plate of whatever Jonathan cooks but versatility is definitely not his strength. (Nor is plating.)

Top Chef Masters Season 2, Ep. 5

Original Air Date: May 5, 2010

1) I always wonder what kind of couple would choose to have their big fancy wedding catered in a day by reality show contestants.
2) Based on what they said (groom - meat and potatoes; bride - French and Asian), choosing the bride seemed to be a no-brainer. She's giving you a lot more latitude. Plus, there's no way you're going to let Susur cook his strongest cuisine if you can help it. BUT... I think Blue Team failed to account for the fact that the bride is always harder to please than the groom. The teams ended up being pretty evenly restricted, I thought.
3) Ballsy decision on Jody's part to go with lamb when the bride specifically said she didn't like it. But, then again, the judges' marks count for 75% of the total score.
4) Even before seeing the finished product, I could have told you that Jonathan Waxman wasn't the person to task with decorating the cake - his plates are always super sloppy. That cake looked like it had been trampled, or made by a 3-year-old. The couple should have gone with Susur's croquembouche for the cake pictures. (Incidentally, one way Blue Team could have made a gorgeous and easy wedding cake was to just ice it white and decorate it with fresh flowers.)
5) Why was the carrot cake green? Is that something BC hippies do?
6) To answer your bf's suggestion of marriage with a "F*ck you!" - that's pretty badass. Is Susur's gf really as blunt and salty as he makes her out to be? If so, I want to hang out with her. I bet Tony Bourdain would too.

Top Chef Masters Season 2, Ep. 4

Original Air Date: April 28, 2010

1) I liked Maria's approach to the Quickfire. The soup-main-dessert composition was both creative and elegant.
2) Susur's pineapple ravioli idea was really cool but he should have chosen something other than red berries for the filling. Like maybe mango or citrus? The juice bleeding through the pineapple was a little CSI for me. He also threw, like, ten thousand other things on the plate and turned it into a crazy mess. A little restraint, dude.
3) Wow, Rick must have amazing relationships with both his ex and his current wife to make his situation work.
4) Is Sofia Vergara ridiculously good-looking or what? I'm glad she's not MY co-worker.
5) I wish the judges had said a little more about what made Susur's unremarkable-sounding chicken curry, like, the best food ever cooked. I mean, Julie Bowen liked it a lot, but based on the judges' table discussion I never would have guessed that he'd score as high as he did. But way to go, Susur! Go Canada!

Top Chef Masters Season 2, Ep. 3

Original Air Date: April 21, 2010

1) The Real Housewives are some of the worst guest judges I've ever seen. A pork dish is not "bad" just because you don't like pork. A food critic has to have a certain amount of objectivity: was a dish cooked skillfully - regardless of whether or not you personally liked the ingredients?
2) On a related note, Mark must be one hell of a chef to pull off a mussel custards with figs. That just sounds gross.
3) Ludo is not the endearing nutter I remember from last season. Is it just me, or was everything he said really THAT douche-y? He could take a few lessons from Thierry on how to represent his country.
4) Also, his dish with the raw vegetables, miso peanuts and Guinness caramel was just ridiculous. Irish stew isn't that far off from boeuf bourguignon - I say he could have found a way to leverage his classical French training.
5) Based on Jonathan's previous performances, I can totally believe that his dish was delicious. However, it looked like he poured potato soup over a steak dinner. Presentation is definitely not his forte.
6) Wylie's food is not really my thing but I'm still sad he didn't advance. He's really creative, and goofy and lovable. His wanting to pan-fry a chocolate chip cookie to make it cook faster was my favorite moment from last season.

Top Chef Masters Season 2, Ep. 2

Original Air Date: April 14, 2010

1) Not to be a hypocrite but I find it hard to believe that Kelly Choi, who looks gaunt even on TV, eats grilled cheese sandwiches on a regular basis.
2) From Ethiopia to Sweden... I bet Marcus has some stories to tell.
3) I don't understand how grits "mac and cheese" style are not just cheese grits. Also, Oseland, it's not "deconstructed" just because the shrimp is on the side instead of on top of the grits.
4) Why did David choose to serve his custard in an eggshell? That sort of pretentious restaurant trick is the exact opposite of the down-to-earth spirit of soul food.
5) I like a good comeback story as much as the next guy but Carmen's dish sounded boring, quite frankly. Pity vote? Dunno. Monica, David and Thierry did kind of screw her over. Marcus may have been a dick for refusing to help out, but at least he didn't set her back.

[Postscript on 3: I watched a rerun and finally figured out this dish. It looks like Monica made a béchamel cheese sauce to ladle on top of plain grits. It makes James Oseland's comment make slightly more sense. But I still don't understand A) why she didn't just make cheese grits; and B) why this is "mac and cheese" style since mac has the cheese sauce is mixed.]