Curse you, Hung!

Since you are both a) the newly crowned Season Three winner of Top Chef and b) not from Chicago, you ruined the potential trinity of Chicago reality show winners. You narrowly defeated fellow Chicagoan Dale, who would have joined recent America's Next Top Model winner Jaslene (TM) (that's right, I added the TM because if you check out her MySpace profile you'll see that she trademarked her name) and Bravo sister show Top Design winner Matt Lorenz to become the third Chicago reality competition winner in a row. Now our all-powerful, world-crushing triumvirate will never be. And it's all because of two things: curry and cake.

You see, in last night's Top Chef finale, Dale and Hung were duking it out with Casey for the highly-esteemed title and prize money. Casey unfortunately buckled under all that altitude. (Seriously, Casey, you knew the finale was going to take place in Aspen, you know altitude affects cooking times and temperatures, do your research!) So, with four dishes per contestant to choose from, the judges decided that Hung and Dale each had two of the best dishes.

That's where the debate kicked in. Hung kind of missed with his first dish, which lacked acidity, and then underwhelmed again with his dessert, a clichéd chocolate lava cake that in no way fit in with the rest of his impressive Asian menu. Dale, on the other hand, served up a curried lobster dish with unforgivably heavy gnocchi and way too much curry. While Hung's cake was boring, at least it was edible. So the it came down to, is it better for a chef to make a safe choice that doesn't impress but doesn't repel, or should a Top Chef serve up a bold, risky dish even if it goes down in flames?

Earlier in the season, when Casey was winning multiple challenges in a row, it seemed like the finale would be between her soulful cuisine and Hung's technically-perfect food. We already had the Heart & Soul vs. Scientific Precision debate in Season Two, where Ilan's soulful heartiness (or is it hearty soulfulness?) flambéed Marcel's steely glares and fluffy foams. So I'm glad this season's finale was a little different. Would underdog Dale's rollercoaster dinner of robust highs and inedible lows trump front-runner Hung's smooth, analytical consistency?

Well, we know where the judges stand on this issue. You could frame it as, who's restaurant would you rather eat at? Hung's, where everything is perfect if sometimes safe and unsurprising? Or Dale's, where you might get a flawless, creative dish or one so inedible you have to send it back?

It's a trick question. Hung would probably never serve that chocolate lava cake at a restaurant. He's not a baker, he just memorized one cake recipe to pull out of his hat should the need arise. And Dale would never really serve the lobster dish, as chefs don't whip up dishes on the fly and send them out without tasting and testing, going through draft after draft until they get it right.

I'm sure a lot of people will use this finale as evidence that Casey only got as far as she did because Bravo wanted to keep around a cute woman for ratings (which makes no sense because, hi, Bravo is gayer than Logo and here! making out to Fall Out Boy). I can't believe how many comments I've seen on message boards claiming that the only reason she survived was because she's like Jennifer Aniston with bigger boobs, even though we saw episode after episode with Casey deservedly winning. And I also can't understand people bemoaning Hung's win just because he's arrogant and unlikable. To paraphrase ANTM's ever-brilliant, philosophical Jade, this isn't Top Best Friend. In the end, I could understand the decision going either way. As Dale would say, it was "100% 50/50."

The truly disappointing part isn't that Chicago doesn't get one more cubic zirconium jewel in its plastic reality-show crown. It's that, with Top Chef now over, I won't be able to use my brilliant joke that I have yet been able to work into converations:

Padma Lakshmi?

I like her, too.

Also check out: Deep Thoughts From America's Next Top Model, part 6.
And: Top Chef Check-In.

Top Chef Check-In

OK, so we're day 4,189 into Top Chef's six-year-long Season Three. How's everyone holding up? Stocked with plenty of water and truffle butter? Do we need to pass around the mushroom risotto for sustenance?

Seriously, this season started, what, a couple months ago? And there's still Eight. Chefs. Left. For real? Bravo is milking this show for all they can. Not only was there a useless mini-reunion halfway through the season (hosted by that insufferable Bravo producer Andy Cohen), but this past week the judges (spoiler alert!) didn't even eliminate anyone! The two teams of four chefs had 24 hours to open a mock restaurant. They had to create a full menu, shop for all the interior decorations, train an apparently incompetent waitstaff in thirty minutes and then serve thirty people. When both teams - unsurprisingly - failed, no one was sent home! Since they all sucked, all the losers cancelled each other out and everyone ended up being, in a way, winners, since they could stay another week. Got that? Hugs all around!

It's not that I'm not enjoying the show. I am. I've been a little hesitant about Top Chef in the past, but Salon's Heather Havrilesky changed my mind:

I love the guessing game...Top Chef is sort of one part cooking competition, one part unfolding mystery: You develop your theories about which dish tastes the best, but you don't really know that it's lacking oil or acid or is unevenly salted until the judges have their say.

Okay, I can go along with that. Now I'm fully, unconditionally addicted and it's mostly due to the show itself. The challenges are interesting, most of the chefs seem genuinely talented and it's hard to guess who's getting kicked out of the kitchen each week as past successes don't necessarily guarantee anything.

But TC's charms are starting to wear thin. Instead of decreasing in number, these chefs seem to be multiplying every week. The judges should be eliminating two, three, four chefs at a time by this point. "Hung - you're a big spaz! You're gone! CJ - you're too tall! You're gone! Sara, no, you, the other Sara - you haven't won one challenge yet! You're gone!" See how easy that was, Padma?

Here's how Bravo could punch this show up:

1) Show Tre in sleeveless shirts more. When Tre stripped down to a tank top for the challenge in which they had to feed a late-night club crowd, even he knew that the drunks were lining up to check out his guns, not the raw oysters. With the cute-girl quotient rapidly reducing (only the beautiful Casey remains as a specimen of poreless womanhood), Bravo should take advantage of the cute boys left: the built, soft-spoken Tre, 6'8" former-volleyball-player CJ and mohawked, former-gymnast Dale. Forget the chef jackets as kitchen uniform - bring on the requisite tank tops.

2) Let us actually get to know the contestants. At the beginning of one episode, we see Casey and Lea talking over breakfast. Then, when Lea is eliminated later, Casey has a mini-breakdown because they're apparently best friends. Same thing with Dale and Sara - as soon as we found out they were BFFs, Sara is sent packing. I'm all for a Bravo show focusing more on the creative challenges and less on personal drama ({cough}Project Runway{cough}) but we still need to get to know the chefs if we're going to care about them.

3) The judges should...I don't know...make sense, maybe? The biggest problem with this show - what the hell are they talking about half the time? First Tom Colicchio complains that the chefs aren't being creative enough when they have to update a classic American comfort food. Then they criticize Sara's updated Chicken a la King for not resembling Chicken a la King closely enough. Say wha? Could they complain even more, please? When served pineapple sorbet, two of them literally cried "It's so cooooold!" In fact, these judges complain more than any other judging team from any other reality show. I'm waiting for critiques like "your broth was too brothy." Or "your saffron sauce didn't match my shoes." Or "your left earlobe looked slightly asymmetrical when you brought out your dish."

And please...no more never-ending plugs for overrated, largely disregarded food bloggers, please.

Minor details, overall, however. Bravo has a good thing going and they know it. Which is why I'll still be sitting on my couch at the season finale, eight years older, with a beard as big as Hung's ego, surrounded by discarded fennel bulbs and empty mascarpone tubs, crossing my fingers as the next Top Chef is announced.

Also check out: Top Project Runway Rip-Off.
And: Please Pack Your Breasts and Leave.

Top Project Runway Rip-Off

With Top Chef, Top Design and last night's debut of Shear Genius, it seems that Bravo is committed to landscaping their entire schedule with the creative-arts-reality-contest "brand" they created with Project Runway. Take twelve campy, dramatic creative people, stuff them in a pressure cooker situation with multiple challenges per episode and then offer them up to awkward hosts and bitchy judges. The diminished returns are obvious. As evidence of how much Bravo has diluted their own brand: Heidi Klum begat Padma Lakshmi who begat Todd Oldham who begat...Jaclyn Smith?

The differences become especially obvious during the best part of each show - the judging process. Top Design is as much about a visual art form as PR. Sure, you might not get to walk in the space and really analyze the details, but for the most part you're experiencing what the judges experience. The vital difference from PR's judging process, however, is that rooms don't move. Those ugly, cavernous booths the contestants paint windows on just sit there. Each designer awkwardly stands at the entrance while the judges silently walk around their creation before moving on to the next one. The whole process is strangely quiet and restrained.

At first I was underwhelmed by TD. Even after a couple episodes, not one contestant had produced a room provoking a response beyond "eh, it's fine." Luckily, Bravo snagged at least 6 genuinely talented designers that began to produce much work as the show went on. And I was happy to see the sophisticated Matt walk away with the contest. He was always professional and produced consistently chic rooms.

(As a side note, since the show is called Top Design and not Top Designer, shouldn't that mean Matt's collection of chairs and sofas walk away with the prize money? And when did Todd Oldham get so orange and sing-songy? He's like a flirty carrot. Even with his exhaustive quick fixes for the contestants, he was much more charming on his own HGTV show.)

What frustrates me about Top Chef is that you can't participate in the judging process the way you can with PR. You hear about the ingredients the contestants are throwing together, you watch them sweat over a stove with a blow torch or massive chef's knife, and you can admire, or mock, the presentation. But you can't actually taste the final product. You have to take the judges' word on whether or not they achieve culinary perfection.

As for Shear Genius...well, let's just say that so far, the best part about it is that it's theme song is nowhere nearly as ear-bleedingly bad as Top Design's. It's as if the composer of TD's wants everyone to hate music as much as they do.

It's not the other show's fault. They just don't fit the medium of television contests the way PR does. Dinner plates and 12'x12' rooms aren't revealed by sexy models hopping and spinning and baring ass. I'm not saying they should, but it would be fun to see a starving model hungrily salivating over the hunk of beef she's parading around, and I don't just mean tall, scruffy TC contestant Sam Talbot (pictured above right). And I have a feeling SG's models might regret appearing on the show once they realize they have to stand around with treasure chest "hair art" on their heads.

Whether it's a plate of dehydrated veal cheeks, plywood walls smothered in Tuscan Sunrise paint, or a mannequin head sporting yet another set of asymetrical bangs, not one of these shows produces the same kinetic sexiness of PR's runway shows. And considering PR just started auditions for Season Four, it's going to be a while before the original returns.

(Thanks to Chicagoist and New York for the pics.)

Also check out: Pack Your Breasts and Leave.
And: Project Runway Sashays Into My Heart.
And: Todd Oldham: Everyone's New Best Friend.

Please Pack Your Breasts and Leave

Wow. A Bravo reality show is actually getting rid of its robotic, flat-voiced hostess in favor of someone with actual television experience.

No, it's not Heidi Klum, who has actually gotten more comfortable killing the dreams of amateur fashion designers on the addictive Project Runway (it helps that she's, you know, one of the producers).

Instead, it's little Katie Lee Joel, Billy Joel's 12-I-mean-25-year-old host of the first season of Top Chef, a reality show from PR's producers about chefs battling to be...well, I guess the title is fairly Snakes On a Plane-esque in its self-explanation.

Maybe "robotic" is a tad harsh. Let's just go with "telegenically-challenged." But while Katie Lee apparently does have some background in food (Bravo never really explained what they meant when they described her as a "food writer" - I just assumed she knew how to write a grocery list), she couldn't, um, talk about food very comfortably. In fact, she couldn't do anything comfortably in front of the cameras, always dropping anchor-like duds of non-wisdom while judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons could actually chew and think at the same time.

Instead, Bravo has made a ridiculously great decision in hiring Padma Lakshmi. A drop-dead gorgeous Indian woman (she makes Catherine Zeta-Jones look like butt) who has cooking and television experience (she hosted a much-missed show on the Food Network), Lakshi has been out of the public eye for quite some time. Oh, she also happens to be married to Salman Rushdie.

Top Chef is still seriously flawed. Unlike PR, where all you have to do is look at the final designs to judge them, on TC you can only look at the food the contestants prepare, and while presentation counts, you still have no idea how good the food actually is until the judges tell you. And the prizes aren't all that thrilling. I think they get a stove and, like, a magazine article or something.

But with Padma to guide us with her seductively intellectual presence (who will hopefully have a better signature send-off then "pack your knives and leave"), TC's second season could be approaching PR's crack-like addiction.

Also check out: Hooray for Jay.
And: Obsessing Over Food I Never Eat, with Giada de Laurentiis.