Top Chef Musings

One of the consistent judges on Top Chef is Gail Simmons. She works mostly for "Food and Wine" and was an interesting judge with a very refined sense of taste.

I was reading her blog and it was interesting on how many people were angry with the final episodes. The issue was that most people felt that the finale should have been between Ilan and Sam and not between Ilan and Marcel.

It was an interesting final episode. Marcel used some of his scientific techniques and they were clever----Ilan cooked food a bit better.

But there was more to it.

They had an opportunity to choose teams and it was in their choices that the real game was played out. Marcel chose Sam who was one of the best, if not the best, chefs on the show. He knew how to cook and manage a kitchen. He also chose Mike who is a line cook. According to Anthony Bourdain, line cooks are good precision people, but are not people who one is looking to have be ambitious or have imagination. It is their job to reproduce what the chef has created. I suspect that Mike does this kind of work just fine. The problem Marcel ran into was that Marcel doesn't know how to be a manager and he failed to manage the details (and Mike) and it did him in. It's amazing because Mia was the first to volunteer to work with him----and he ignored her. His choice of Mike over Mia may have been fatal.

Ilan chose Elia who might have been the best straight out cook of the group. Her cooking of fish may have helped win him the competition. She served as a great sous chef and made him look good. Oddly, he chose Betty over Frank. Frank was, in my mind, a better chef than Betty and his biggest downfall was cooking rubbery eggs over an outdoor fire or he might have gone deeper in the competition. Betty was noted for a lot of dumb mistakes. I thought choosing her might have been deadly to him, but Ilan managed his kitchen well and both Elia and Betty did well.

Ilan obviously won. His food was good and his kitchen management was a lot better than Marcel's and it carried the day. I suspect, down the road, however, that Marcel may become the best chef of all. Marcel is creative and bold and just lacked some technical skills and maturity needed to make him a great chef. Some experience and some growing up will help.

And he needs to improve on this Eddie Munster look. Ugh.

Neat show, however. It reminds me, as a person who likes to cook, that the level of expertise these chefs have in the kitchen and what we do at home, is light years apart. I have to say, I look forward to season III.