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Top Chef Watch: Failure to Launch

By James Poniewozik | @poniewozik | September 3, 2010 | +

Brief spoilers for this week’s Top Chef coming up:

The finals of this season of Top Chef will take place in Singapore, a fantastic choice: a vibrant food city—or, um, so I gather from food TV and magazines—with a colorful culture that melds a numbers of Asian cuisines. And I wish they weren’t doing it. Not this season, that is, because what could potentially be the series’ most exciting choice of locale seems wasted on what has been one of its most uninspiring groups of finalists.

The situation became worse this week with the ejection of fan favorite—and by that I mean “my favorite”—Tiffany just before the finals, in the show’s NASA-based challenge. Actually, I’m guessing from my reading of other blogs that Tiffany was also a favorite of a lot of other viewers in a season without many other personalities to root for. Not only was she, like Kevin and Carla in series past, a chef who prepared accessible but not insipid food that, you know, you’d want to eat, but she was personable and won you over by rising to challenges outside her experience. (As in this episode, where she did well in the wine-pairing challenge, even if she didn’t win it.)

I’m sure the producers must have been aware that she came off well on camera, so I have to give them credit for not interceding and saving her when (and I can only go by the judges’ comments) she really did seem to have done worst in the space-food challenge.

As for the challenge itself: interesting in subject matter, promising in theory, but blah in execution. Forcing the chef to consider the food-science question of what would take well to freeze-drying was intriguing, but since the food wasn’t, or couldn’t be, freeze-dried before the judges could sample it, what were they really judging? (The rack of lamb looked luscious, for instance, but I’ve got to wonder how it would come out on the other end of a rocket flight.) That said, anything involving Anthony Bourdain can’t be all bad, and he seemed to be enjoying his needling of Eric Ripert as much as I was.

With Tiffany out of the picture, I guess I’ll transfer my allegiance to Kelly, though I wouldn’t bet money on her. At this point, though, I’m worried the finale will be a Singabore. Whose side are you on now?

Related Topics: top chef dc, Uncategorized

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  • pbmama

    I’ve had Kelly picked from the beginning, but Tiffany has performed so well lately, my allegiance had begun to swing. Not to mention the likeability factor.

    I, too, was disappointed to see her go, but she did legitimately lose the challenge. It’s a real shame, because at this stage of the game, there are other competitors who got lucky along the way, and shouldn’t have been in the top-5 to begin with.

    At this point, I’ll feel pretty blah no matter who wins. Unless it’s Kelly. :-)

    What I found most compelling in the episode was the look on Padma’s face when she said, “Well, I guess we know what we have to do.” It was obvious the judges were looking for any way possible to keep Tiffany on the show.

  • http://www.simonvinkenoog.nl/beeld/Yogi%20-%20Annelies%20Rigter.jpg yogi

    My hope is that if they do the finals this year in a different country, maybe next year they’ll do a whole season in a different country to spice things up.

    Tiffany was definitely a fan favorite. I guess I’ll root for Kelly or Ed, but really not care that much.

  • http://bankofbrian.wordpress.com Brian Rice

    If by “most uninspiring groups of finalists” you mean that there isn’t anybody to hate, I have to agree. However, I actually like watching people that I, well, like. The producers seemed to push Angelo into the villain role but it didn’t take (at least for me) when he took an advisory role for several other chefs. The producers (if not the other chefs) seemed to try Alex as the villain too, but he came off as clueless rather than heartless (does anyone remember the vote that said 90% thought he would destroy their own kitchen?).

    I’m anticipating a problem with the finale in Singapore, not because I have anyone to root against but because, like the NASA challenge, we are taking a leap in an impractical direction: they were not going to actually freeze-dry food and they are not actually going to cook in a Singaporean market.

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