Episode Seven: "Improv" Options

[WhataJoke]

More often than not I think this is the case. They keep someone around who could have just as easily been eliminated on any given episode that they feel may have a chance to the final four and choose to get rid on they one the feel has no hope to last. Seen it in all 4 seasons sadly.

Especially this season when the show is clearly hurting for any one not named Stephanie to be a decent chef.

[WhataJoke]

Ah yes. Which brings to mind the "Stephen" rule, which is what I believe did n Manuel.

LOL the Stephen Rule? Man you should endorse step ladders now because your reaching is out of control.

[Fordmanrod]

Well...my husband goes to the VA hospital..so if it is something new and really good they are probably not going to supply it for free at the VA hospital.

Tater...

[Fordmanrod]

Well...my husband goes to the VA hospital..so if it is something new and really good they are probably not going to supply it for free at the VA hospital.

Tater... this is

[Fordmanrod]

Well...my husband goes to the VA hospital..so if it is something new and really good they are probably not going to supply it for free at the VA hospital.

Tater... this

[Fordmanrod]

Well...my husband goes to the VA hospital..so if it is something new and really good they are probably not going to supply it for free at the VA hospital.

First let me say I'm sorry for this screwed up post...the web site burped and next thing you know I have triple posted...... Tater ... insulin pumps are not new technology....and they can't be that expensive ; so even if your husband relies on military medical help he should be able to get one . He probably just needs to know which questions to ask.

[teleburst]

Ya know Tele I'm a streotypical actor I have worked in the Food Biz since i was 13.. I'm 49 so I've worked in this biz for 36 years...

I started as a dish washer then cooked in a pizza kitchen have the burns to prove it... lol

I think your theory is great if this was Hells Kitchen... but this is TC the only time they deal with front House is during Restaurant Wars.... Wedding Wars... etc.

Basically all they have to deal with is cooking one dish for the most part in each challenge other than Team efforts.... So in this genre they do not have to prepare 200 dishes a night ala Hells Kitchen... So your anology as far as real reastaurant's can't compare because it dose not apply per say.

So in a sense B&B is right it comes down to the food regarding each contest.
I have over 30 years front house experience as well so I'm not a Food Noob.
The difference in this Show is that cooks have to deal with the paramters of any given challenge and do the best they can.... I really don't see how that can compare to a 400 sitting a night at best.... One dish compared to 400 is not a Tense situation.... I would think any chef would love to make only one dish great even if given 90 min. compared to 400 and makeing them correctly everytime. JMHO

I don't know why you chose to focus on FOH, since I didn't. But, I would think that if you weren't a food noob, you would be able to verify most of the things that I talked about in regard to the challenges that chefs and cooks in the kitchen have to deal with. Surely you're aware of what's going on in your kitchens.

In some ways, dealing with a 400 sitting is easier than dealing with creating a single dish off the top of your head in 30 minutes based on a concept that you are just informed on (or when you have to deal with being on a team with someone you just met a week ago and have to create elaborate dishes virtually overnight), especially when success or failure could mean the difference in $100,000. In fact, our kitchen seems to generally run smoother the busier it is.

So, I'll chalk you up as someone who is perplexed and angry by the way that they judge the challenges. It certainly isn't reflected in your general comments though.

This post has been edited by teleburst: April 30, 2008 - 10:34 AM

[teleburst]

I worked in the business almost 20 years and I think the judging on this show is a joke.

OK, then another that disproves my theory.

Looks like the Elves have a winning formula. Piss people off enough to keep watching and posting on their boards. Invest them with a sense of derision about their show and they'll get hooked.

Oh yeah, maybe it's just people in the business who seem to talk about the process of food service during the course of conversation, like BB and myself that don't have as much of a problem with how they judge. Perhaps that's how we relate to the show - sort of compare the whole thing to the jobs within a restaurant - how you get it, how you keep it, how you progress in it.

<shrug>

[SimonBao]

On this I can agree. I remember his name but sha'nt repeat because his voice will get stuck in my mind like a bad song.

I find it impossible to believe that anyone anywhere would be calling Ruhlman a twerp or twit or other bad thing. So I assume the judge people disliked so much was Andrew Knowlton? Cannot have meant Ruhlman. Ruhlman Rules.


'Andrew Knowlton

[WhataJoke]

As for tonight's sacrifice to the Top Chef gods, Mark's too obvious. I'm thinking (OK, OK, I'm HOPING) Spike.

I think Mark goes the next chance they get to boot him. He gets along with everyone which is bad news for production. Plus the fact that he worked with Nikki alone and it wasn't a disaster shows that he's too dangerous to ongoing conflict to survive for Wedding Wars. Anyone who could possibly cause things to go smoothly must be eliminated!!!

[Bed & Breakfast]

LOL the Stephen Rule? Man you should endorse step ladders now because your reaching is out of control.

Oh, not nearly that far up. Actually, I thought you'd appreciate that name for something the judges have been known to do when provoked. We were talking about it a few pages back.

The "Stephen" rule, (more of a corrallary to be accurate), describes what can happen if you are on the losing team in a challenge. A cheftestant can't always avoid elimination by avoiding or limiting their involvement in the food. Sometimes the judges will decide you are the most responsible for a failed dish if you didn't do enough to keep it from being bad.

[teleburst]

If we keep going like this I want my Masters Degree in Top Chefology!

I'm sorry if my tone was combative or provocative but I got the sense that no matter how gently you were explaining your position you were talking down to those of us not in the restaurant industry. Having been in the restaurant industry as most working women of a certain age have in their lives, I had enough experience of being talked down to by chefs, owners, cooks and other assorted non-serving types to recognize the signs.

Well, I tried my best not to come off that way. It's hard when you have to explain things that support your basic premise to people who might not be cognizant of those very things. And I was trying to explain a mindset that tends to set in in the industry. Obviously, from some of the responses, generalizations are always dangerous.

I think it was very interesting the choice of word you used for us and that was civilian. If we're staying in the realm of your restaurant world then I prefer you call me what I currently am and that's a paying customer. You work in a service industry not a military industry (unless of course you work in a mess hall) and again I must point out that unless you attract and keep paying customers then you are failing for what ever reasons.

Having been in the military as I have might explain that. Civilian is not a dismissive term at all. When you're in the military, it's the very people you fight for. Also, I think it's fairly common for people to use that term to describe people outside their industry. At least I've seen it a lot.

And I never call any diner a "paying customer". I always call them a guest. In fact, many restaurants try to draw that distinction in their training. We don't have "customers", we have "guests". It changes your outlook on how to treat diners (hopefully).

As to the last statement, absolutely.

You ignore or assign blame to either the wait staff or the customer themselves (they lied about what they ordered) for the fact the wrong order ends up at the table and the customer sends it back or try and minimize it by saying that you've seen (like Big Foot in the mist) some customers keep the mistake. But you avoided the question I asked which was how often does the mistaken dish get sent back compared to the merely bad one?

How did I ignore the question (which really wasn't a question you posed)? I said that the former happened far less than the latter. I didn't really go that much into it, because it didn't seem all that germane to the discussion. Sure, mistakes happen. Sometimes it's the fault of the server, sometimes it's the fault of the kitchen and rarely is it the fault of a guest, and many times in that situation it's just the guest misremembering what they ordered 30 minutes earlier. "Lying" is probably a small subset of a small subset. I probably should have just stuck with "mistaken". However, I HAVE seen lying on occasion and it's usually someone trying to save face with their fellow diners.

I know in my experience as a customer that if I order something specific on a menu and get something completely different 9 times out of 10 I'm sending it back for what I ordered.

Yes, that sounds about right to me.

If I order something, got what I ordered and didn't like it, more than likely I won't order it again. I rarely send it back unless it's totally hideous.

From my experience, it's about 50/50 whether anyone sends it back. Some will just move food around on a plate. That's why a good server will ask if they enjoyed the food when they go to pick up a barely eaten plate. If they said that they really didn't like it very much, I will have it taken off the bill (yes, I'm implying that I'm a good server - not a perfect one though). I know that some servers don't bother with this, and that's a shame. On the other hand, you'd be surprised how indignant people can get over small flaws in a dish and how quickly the dish can get sent back.

I don't want this show to be some pristine judgment on the glories of food. And you're right, we totally disagree where consistency in judging comes up in the conversation. Ryan got booted. Was he booted for having the worst food or not doing prototypical tailgate food? How could the judges adequately judge whether his was the worst when they they tasted an incomplete dish from another contestant. What happens if they find out Mark has some communicable crud and that subsequently the people eating his food were made sick? I'm thinking Ryan's food is looking a lot better if that happened. So yeah, I'm not down with the judges make consistent choices.

All fair enough.

I'm not saying get rid of all the judges and I'm not saying you shouldn't have professional chefs as judges but I'm saying that adhere to the challenge.<snip>

I snipped the rest of your comments for brevity and will try to respond to certain points.

First of all, I was only talking about the difference of opinion on this board. I wasn't making judgments on the larger viewership, plus, since I don't read the blogs, I have no idea about the consensus there either. I was trying to explain why you seem to have a couple of diehard restaurant people on this board (and one seeming student and maven of food - Simon) who don't seem to have a huge problem with the amorphous judging process. I say diehard, because we seem to be the only people relating the show to our occupation.

As to trying to figure out what a particular judge does or doesn't do during judging is a natural thing to speculate on. Even the people on the other side of this fence do that. Everyone talks about how disgusting eating scaly mushy fish is. Of course, we don't know if the fish was really mushy (that was Tom's statement about the problem with sous-vide'ing salmon and he just might hate the texture of ANY poached salmon). I could be wrong, but I think that everyone who's used that word has taken it from Tom's comment. But it's clear that Ming found scales in his fish. So why does he not disqualify that dish right off the bat? Because, he might have found the other dish worse (and he might not have found the texture "mushy"). That seems to be the most plausable explanation, but people around here can't seem to understand that. Which is weird because it exactly falls under one of the "rules" thing. Worst dish goes. the alternative is that he's corrupt or weak. I just don't buy that.

Which brings us to the problem of "rules", and the problem that they often grapple with. If you have a specific rule for a specific challenge, and it's broken and you DQ the CT, then you run into not applying the genral overriding rule about picking the worst dish to go home. Sometimes, breaking the rules (even accidentally) gives you an overriding advantage, as in the case of Andrew. Sometimes "breaking the rules" still puts you on the chopping block, as in the case of the Sausage Sisters. And yet, it still seems that it should come down to the worst food at that point, especially when it's a matter of interpretation of the rules. And when you have professional foodies and chefs as judges, biases and experiences are simply going to come into play as well, because they are trying to choose Top Chef, not Top Food. They are going to fall back on some of the same criteria that they use in their professional lives. that's the part that I was trying to explain in terms of the result that you're going to get when you employ such people, especially when you design challenges around things that happen in real life. They'll fall back on "how did I handle that sort of thing", "how would I like one of my staff to handle that problem", "how does this guy's imagination stack up to what my imagination would come up with in a similar situation", etc. And, since every challenge is different, you have to weigh how much adhering to the rules conflicts with worst food goes home. If adhering strictly to the rules means that a great dish goes home over a far worse dish, the judges are going to have a problem reconcilling that. And since sometimes there seems to be a little wiggle room in a challenge, it sometimes comes down to interpretation. For instance, it's pretty hard to misinterpret "use only five ingredients from this table", even though it's obvious that Andrew didn't intentionally go out to break the rules. That seems like a rule that would be easy to enforce The loophole in the Improv challenge was the word "Improv". Unless the CTs are required to read a book on the world of theatrical improv or are given a list of exactly how much they can improv, you have to allow for the possibility that they were riffing on sausage and they thought that it was within the parameters of the challenge. That seems like a rule that would be harder to enforce. So, we still come down to how the rules are interpreted and people are always going to disagree with any interpretation of a rule that can be interpreted (the latter type vs the former type).

And there's a "spirit" of the challenge that comes into play as well as the rules. And all of these things have to be hashed out a judges table. I guess I'm afraid that things are too codified and rigid, the show loses a feel for the fluidity that a chef has to have in his or her job.

And I think I'll stop there, as I also have to apologize for my long-windedness.

[Bed & Breakfast]

OK, then another that disproves my theory.

Looks like the Elves have a winning formula. Piss people off enough to keep watching and posting on their boards. Invest them with a sense of derision about their show and they'll get hooked.

Oh yeah, maybe it's just people in the business who seem to talk about the process of food service during the course of conversation, like BB and myself that don't have as much of a problem with how they judge. Perhaps that's how we relate to the show - sort of compare the whole thing to the jobs within a restaurant - how you get it, how you keep it, how you progress in it.

<shrug>

Like I said, it may just be more right-brained/left-brained.

This post has been edited by Bed & Breakfast: April 30, 2008 - 09:34 AM

[TaterTot]

AAAAAAAAAAAAA.............HA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU WATCH AI PG??????????

DANG....................

THE FEATURED ARTIST...........................

NEIL THE RASP DIAMOND

DID SERENDIPIDY STRIKE OR WHAT???????

SUFFICE TO SAY

THE CONTESTANTS HAD A ROUGH TIME WITH

HIS MUSIC

IN MY OPINION.........................

ONLY TWO NAILED IT

NOW PG

PERHAPS YOU MIGHT WANNA UPGRADE YOUR

MUSIC COLLECTION

WITH SOME NEIL

TAKE CARE OVER THERE

ALOHA

HAVE FUN

Hey,JME. Which 2 would that be? I really like all the contestants. I think David (the rocker) and Sayesha did the best. David A. was not that great IMO. I really like Brooke, but she should be the 1 to go. I loved Jason's first song...but his beautiful eyes could have influenced my opinion. Paula sure made an ass out of herself...makes you wonder if the judges even listen!

[teleburst]

I think Mark goes the next chance they get to boot him. He gets along with everyone which is bad news for production. Plus the fact that he worked with Nikki alone and it wasn't a disaster shows that he's too dangerous to ongoing conflict to survive for Wedding Wars. Anyone who could possibly cause things to go smoothly must be eliminated!!!

That's pretty clever. If he gets booted, you get to say it proves your theory. If he doesn't, then you say, "I didn't say it would be THIS week - I said the next chance that they get". Of course, using the latter argument nullifies your theory since, under it, they remove anyone anytime soley based on their drama needs at any given moment.

If Mark goes this week, it's more likely that it's another in a string of bad cooking, which is a shame since in the beginning he seemed to be one of the ones strongest in combining flavors.

[TaterTot]

OH hey JM, aren't you a sight for sore eyes.

From what I understand, the cast stays on for 6 weeks & I am strictly forbidden from bearing any weight on this leg until that time.

That is where Physical therapy begins. I'm thinking I will breeze right through that phase. But who really knows. I am taking tums with calcium by the handful right now. LMAO!!!

The screws shall be left in for my lifetime. When my son cremates me He has my permission to LOL at the screws left behind in my remains as he covers the Sierras with them.

Did you know that antacids can affect the way other medications work?

[TaterTot]

First let me say I'm sorry for this screwed up post...the web site burped and next thing you know I have triple posted...... Tater ... insulin pumps are not new technology....and they can't be that expensive ; so even if your husband relies on military medical help he should be able to get one . He probably just needs to know which questions to ask.

Thank you Ford and B&B...We are going to check into this. KK...thanks for mentioning the pump in the first place.

[TaterTot]

As for tonight's sacrifice to the Top Chef gods, Mark's too obvious. I'm thinking (OK, OK, I'm HOPING) Spike.

I would like to see either Spike or Lisa go.

[Bed & Breakfast]

I find it impossible to believe that anyone anywhere would be calling Ruhlman a twerp or twit or other bad thing. So I assume the judge people disliked so much was Andrew Knowlton? Cannot have meant Ruhlman. Ruhlman Rules.


'Andrew Knowlton

Yeah! That's him. His 'snippy' attitude just annoys me. He can focus on one word, (usually in a description), and just harp on it.

Last week on IC he did it with something that didn't meet his personal definition of 'fritter'. Every time one of the other judges called the dish a fritter he had to comment.

It was more pedantic than when someone says it can't be 'coq au vin' unless you use an old rooster.

[dogabone]

Dont forget,Marcel himself said Mikey was a workhorse and he had no complaints.

Marcel's mistake was in choosing Sam, who may have been a superior cook but was pretty bitter about being eliminated in the finale prelim—and had no love for Marcel—and was a likely saboteur. Mikey was indeed a workhorse, and Mia would have been the best second (or first) sous-chef. But then, Marcel doesn't seem to be a good reader of people.