etee's Blog

This week marks the beginning of a new season in Reality TV, culinary style, as Season 5 of Top Chef made its debut. While you won't find recaps here, nor will you find Power Rankings (others are far better at that than I, such as Dom at SkilletDoux), I will toss out some not-quite-random thoughts and observations for your reading pleasure. (warning: spoilers ahead)

Follow up:

To begin with: I liked the fact that the first QuickFire was also an Elimination. On the other hand, cheftestant Lauren didn't - her 15 minutes of fame lasted about that long, as she left the show without ever seeing the kitchen - or the swankienda they were being put up in. Poor Lauren - we hardly knew ye.

I also liked the theme of the first (second?) Elimination Challenge: go out and visit one of the local ethnic neighborhoods (chosen via knife block), then come back and cook something inspired by that neighborhood. Head-to-head, against your 'team-mate'. An improvement on last season, to be sure. In this challenge, we saw the diversity of skill and experience, from winner Stefan (who wants to be the first European Top Chef) to contestant Patrick (notice I didn't call him 'cheftestant', because he is a culinary student - I guess his wish was to be the first non-chef to become Top Chef) who ended up packing his knives and joining best bud Lauren on the "eliminated" list.

While there is a lot to like about this group, there are also some things I like not-so-much. As is the case with the early episodes of any season, there are far too many people, so we learn about them via sound bites - first impressions which tend to establish prejudices ("Stefan has a big ego" - "Europeans are uppity" - "the gays and lesbians are banding together".) Yes - Bravo has once again chosen to feature the mating preferences of the cheftestants of the LGBT persuasion, as they introduced "Team Rainbow". One wonders if they will be the butt of the seemingly obligatory gay jokes, as former guest judge Ted Allen was for the past few seasons. My preference? Focus on the food, not on the mating habits of the cheftestants. After all, it is supposed to be Top Chef New York, not I ♥ NY. Last: a culinary student competing - WT!? Dude, this is supposed to be Top Chef, not Hell's Kitchen! One would presume that, in order to become a Top Chef, one must by necessity be a Chef first!

All in all though, not too bad I guess. We'll just have to wait and see whether they can successfully avoid jumping the shark this season.