Top Chef

Well, this season of Top Chef is underway...the drama is beginning and the lesser talented chefs of the group have been weeded out. I absolutely love this show. It has the drama of a reality show where a bunch of chefs are living together and competing against each other, but the competition is really what makes the show great. They pick a group of very talented chefs and give them all of these really unique and challenging tasks, and it's very interesting to see how they respond.

Tonight's elimination challenge, for example, was a great idea. In a random picking of teams of 2, the competitors had to choose one of their favorite movies and base a dish on it, because one of the guests for the show was Richard Roeper (film critic). Considering I've seen quite a lot of movies, when I tried to choose some of my favorites and base a dish on them, I found it to be a lot harder than you'd think. Braveheart...ummm haggis? Dazed & Confused...ummm weed brownies? I decided that if I were on the show, I'd base my dish on Deep Blue Sea, and serve an enormous plate of shark.

I'm a little bummed that Manuel got kicked off tonight's show. I was pumped about him competing because he is a former chef from Mario Batali's Babo, and I just read a book based around that restaurant, Heat. I think it was great that he was eager to learn in the elimination challenge and trusted his teammates' expertise in Vietnamese food. He just kinda got screwed because Spike, it turns out, didn't really have what you would call "expertise" in Vietnamese food. However, Manuel didn't really stand out on the first few episodes, and I think he proved to be more of a team player, rather than a standout solo chef.

By the way, if you have not seen Deep Blue Sea, I added one of the best clips from the movie here. Here's one instance in Samuel L. Jackson's film career in which his yelling does not persevere...