BTW--came back from vacation (no wifi on the beach) and y'all have posted 68 pages!!! Slow down, you move too fast. And BBB: uh, epi3 thread anytime this week? Haven't read all younns have said, so I may be repeating, but . . .

If "Mexican" and "Fine Dining" don't go together, why'd you put nachos on a souffle?

The trouble with 'speedos' was(and is)that most of the guys who wear them "shouldn't"... ...

I think they should dress as their favorite protein

I have avoided posting on this thread until now. Violence in any form is always bad and should not be tolerated. Litigiousness is a wreck from which our country won't soon recover.

Speaking of tasting, vis-a-vis the pasta, this is one of those times that being a couple may have been a disadvantage. Either Jennifer, being familiar with Zoi's cooking, didn't bother to taste the pasta during prep, or she did taste it and didn't want to hurt Zoi's feelings.

This has actually been bothering me since Wednesday.



Padma: "Chicago is a city of neighborhoods!"

Me: "Unlike, of course, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and virtually every other city in the United States......."

No...serious...lobsters...scallops...cows...pigs...salmon...talk about a challenge!!

Now KK...if you have some other form of protiens you would like em to dress as...remember...this ain't cinemax!!!

Replying to anyone....not necessarily relavent to your topic. Sorry.


Since there is no thread for Epidsode Three...here are my quotes from the show:



Episode Three – Block Party
Guest Judge – Rick Bayless
QF Winner - Top Taco – Richard
Elimination Winner – Stephanie
Loser – Red Team – Erik – corn dog

ERIK
"I don't think fine dining and Mexican go together so he can go screw himself."
"Padma threw one hell of a curve ball."
"There is no team leader."
"One of my main concerns is that the corn dogs will get soggy in the hot box. It is not the best way to move crispy products."

ANDREW
" I think I will win Top Chef."
"Part of being a chef is being an entertainer."
"You guys smell that? Success!!!"
"As far as going home right now, you would have to drag me out with security guards, more or less, cause I ain't going nowhere. This is my house!"

STEPHANIE
"Oh, crap! Mexican food!"
"Yiippee! Win number two."

JENNIFER
" We were cooking for the neighborhood."

SPIKE
"I won't go to a fine dining restaurant and order a taco."
"I just told them not to go to that house. I 'm here to win for god's sake."
"Our group is a lot more charismatic."
"I thought we kicked their ass."

RICHARD
"The buzz word for me is reinvent."
"I like being unique. I like being different."
"We decided to go with upscale."
"If food is good enough for those four (judges) then 150 people should enjoy it as well."

MARK
"I'm pretty sure the challenge said fine dining."
"Don't know where street food came into it."

ZOI
"We decided to stick with Americana."
"Pasta salad is not a Top Chef winner."
"I'm feeling like I should have said something."

NIKKI
"At home I make a lot of mac and cheese."
"I have belveeta…so that's the challenge."
The problem with my mac and cheese is that it is going to sit…and sit again."
"This mac and cheese just totally dried out."


JUDGES
RICK BAYLESS
""It tasted like Mexican street food but the package was pure fine dining."
"The flavor was wuper soul satisfying. The flavor made you just want to come back for another bite and another bite."
"It certainly did. It formed a brick."
"Good food sells to everybody."

PADMA
"I'm guessing this isn't the first time you have made a taco."
"You won't be shopping for this challenge."
"Your corn dog was just really soggy."
"The wonton was genius."

TOM COLLICHIO
"Does that mean that you should dumb down what you are doing?"
"Then you guys collectively have very poor palates."
The mayonnaise is what keeps everything fresh."
"It wasn't a paella."
" It was bland, it was oily, and had no flavor at all."
"It shouldn't have been done."

Ryan's gay? In his "Get to know the chefs" video he talks about cooking for his girlfriend. Are people watching extra footage somewhere, or am I just being totally ADD and missing things all the time?

If folks haven't seen those "Get to know the chefs" interviews, they're worth a view. A bit more detail and insight into Our Heroes.

You making me speeeeeeet!

Hello love!! I missed you!

Sogginess is part of "taste". You can't know they are soggy without tasting them. Ted says the "flavors" were ok. Sogginess in my mind spoils the rest of the flavor profile. He chose to do corn dogs, suspected that it might be a problem with sitting in a heat box but did them anyway. Did he care that he was serving flaccid corn dogs to kids, thinking kids won't care if they were soggy? Guess so because he made the decision after confirming that they were soggy on site and served them anyway. He knew the limitations up front. No cooking just setting up and serving. He took a chance and lost.
Since when is it Lee Anne's job to help these chefs in getting ahead on Top Chef? If he knew it was going to turn out soggy why should she help him? Isn't this the point of the whole competition? That you're smarter, quicker on your feet, more creative than the pasta salad maker?

Please say you'll be my lover!

Simon I completely agree with you. It is about tasting at service. And according to Ted Allen the flavor of the Corn Dogs was fine. We heard no such qualifying statements for the Pasta Salad. Based on that how can anyone assume the flavor of the salad was better?Just because we didn't hear it doesn't mean it wasn't said. For all we know, Ted was outvoted 3 to 1. Remember: editing is done for drama and to keep us guessing and to keep us discussing.

Again I agree and I thought that Valiere was unwise to not use the portable burners that Production provided for each team.
I say again if they were given the means to cook on site in the last challenge why not offer the same options during a challenge where onsight cooking goes part and parcel with a block party?

I think the King of Corn Dogs got shafted with an ingredient that could have been great with onsight cooking and was hamstrung buy the limitations. Lee Anne said she knew a way to keep fried items less damp, why not pass on that tip to the contestants? That little tip could have made a hell of a difference. I have yet to hear one plausible alternative Hot Dog dish that would not have suffered from the steam. I actually looked up steamed Hot Dog rolls and found that there are rolls that you can steam but they are only par baked. I doubt those are in the house or in the TC pantry. Most regular rolls wont last much more than a couple of minutes in steam un protected. Pigs in a blanket would suffer a similar fate. I totally disagree! I have used fully cooked buns, I have kept pigs in a blanket warm and I'm not the one who is supposed to be competing for $100,000.00 Plus, given a few minutes to think about it, a chef should be able to come up with some way to use hot dogs that doesn't involve a bun at all. He didn't even try!

There were no issues or reasons why a pasta salad should have been worse than you buy at a supermarket. With all the items in the TC pantry, to me, its inexcusable.

And while I agree that corn dogs itself is a bad choice for a dish on top chef there are reasons why they were done.
1. Hot dogs were the found item. There was no choice invovled in decideing what to use. Someone had to use them
2. A block party is bound to be filled with people, especially chidren, that would enjoy that item and would shy away from a stranger preperation of hot dogs.
3. Given that colored yogurt, monk fish mcnuggets, and other kid friendly items were used for the kids challenge in season 1. I believe Shrek was Shrek was called out because she didn't sweeten her applesauce. She said something to the effect of "she wasn't going to cook down to children" and Tom savaged her for not respecting her clients. Why would that axiom change for a Top Chef Block party in which the chefs had little choice about what food they were going to be preparing? Tom is consistent: these chefs didn't respect their clients either. They took some ingredients, threw them together, and served them, without caring enough to make right, let alone make them special.

The Bottomline for me is that the pasta salad had far more opportinites to be a successful dish than Hot Dogs, with out any hurdles in it's path. I disagree with this statement as well. Given a meat, (even the lowly hot dog), versus a piece of pasta, I can come up with a lot more ideas for a successful dish with the meat.

But goodness help us all, dearest Bear! Do you remember season one??? I was hooked when I laid eyes on it. I had never viewed Bravo. Never seen a reality show. What a sale that was! WOW! Dave was my special guy, Harold was everyone's hero, and Tiff was our villain...who could cook!!! Did we not love them all???? I certainly did.

I never said sogginess wasn't a part of taste. But texture and flavor are two completely septerate elements of food. Erik atleast got the flavor part right and had a excuse as to why his testure was off. Zoi screwed the whole pooch from the get go.
And Yes Erik took a chance and lost. And you make it sound liek he went to the store and purchased Hot Dogs. It was a found item and he made them into the most appealing thing possible IMO. I still havent seen any incarnation of HotDogs that you could cook off site that would have been better.
But at least he took a chance. Zoi got the safest dish you could possibly have for an off site picnic/block party and still riuned it.

Where did I say Lee Anne should be telling them how to get ahead? Please. I said that in these catering challenges she should brief the chefs on the ways to use the equiment they are given. But that would take away from Drama so they just throw chafing dishes and glad cling wrap at them and film away. To me it's just more cheap, transparent, fabricated conflict.

I would like to ask Lee Anne why portable cooking devices were provided last week at the Zoo but not at a block party were "A la Minute" preperation reigns supreme.

The pantry lady may belong to Church of Latter Day Saints: Many members keep one year's worth of food on hand at all times. Maybe other belief groups do so as well.

I think it is just some sort of Depression Era upbringing...my mom didn't belong to any church and kept a pantry much like that...that influence has rubbed off on me. Nothing quite like that...but I could survive a few weeks if I absolutly had to.

Ryan's gay? In his "Get to know the chefs" video he talks about cooking for his girlfriend. Are people watching extra footage somewhere, or am I just being totally ADD and missing things all the time?

If folks haven't seen those "Get to know the chefs" interviews, they're worth a view. A bit more detail and insight into Our Heroes.

Ya know... for all the complaints I made about the chefs, the design of the challenge, the dismal dishes... This episode would still have sucked, due to the production and editing. Whether BRAVO is to blame, or Magical Elves, I don't know, don't care.

There were several Haute Tacos we never got to see or to even hear about, which is an odd thing for a COOKING SHOW! And right now, if one goes to Rate the Plate, one will see there Block Party dishes that were never described to us, shown to us, or even mentioned by anyone. Again, an odd thing for a COOKING SHOW!

Over on Project Runway, would they actually choose to NOT show what several contestants create? On Top Design, they never chose to not show some of the designer's work, to just leave that out of the show.

What Antonia made was not a "Bean Salad," though one would never know that from the show.



Jennifer's "slyder" is not a Top Chef dish, no matter what.


Manuel has a decent *looking* pulled pork sandwich, plus ribs, plus something else significant on the plate but no one told us about them and you'll never find out what that is sitting on the plate.




Mark was shown making an inside-out cookie, but he's listed there for having submitted a "B'ness Time Salad." (B'ness Time? Anyone know what is?)


Did anyone know that Spike's Block Party dish was a Taco Salad? A second go-round with Tacos for Rick Bayless?

Product placements? I thought Top Chef was just a 60 minute informercial for Glad, Kingsford Charcoal, Sears Kenmore, Toyota...

Perhaps in Season 5 they can look into having all the contestants dressed up like the sponsors mascots.

And yet i keep watching....

Damn catchy addictive reality TV!!!!!

I have avoided posting on this thread until now. Violence in any form is always bad and should not be tolerated. Litigiousness is a wreck from which our country won't soon recover.

Personally,I think Ryan is in deep denial.

I agree that violence isnt a good thing, I also agree with what you say about litigiousness.

Did anyone know that Spike's Block Party dish was a Taco Salad? A second go-round with Tacos for Rick Bayless?

Legal reasons???? We don't know because of legal reasons? Lord, what mayonaisse does to them, huh?

Thank you for the quotes and reminding of Tom's foolish mayonaise remark. Of course, he's assuming that they'll keep the Waldorf Salad on ice, isn't he? Left out in warm weather, and mayo will definitely not keep anything fresh!

Product placements? I thought Top Chef was just a 60 minute informercial for Glad, Kingsford Charcoal, Sears Kenmore, Toyota...

Perhaps in Season 5 they can look into having all the contestants dressed up like the sponsors mascots.

And yet i keep watching....

Damn catchy addictive reality TV!!!!!

I will have to look this word up.....no wonder you guys kick a$ at trivia, if this kind of word is commonplace.

"Lee Anne said she knew a way to keep fried items less damp, why not pass on that tip to the contestants? That little tip could have made a hell of a difference. "
This is the quote. It's not her job to tell them how to keep things crispy. If she knew it why didn't he?

The only thing we heard about the Corn Dog was that it was soggy. Ted confirmed that the flavors were fine. The even the editing can't confuse the fact that the judges thought you could get a much better pasta salad at a Safeway.

There is now way that you can keep Buns in the same steaming compartment with the Dogs and have them stay in idea shape.

No Tom is completely inconsistant. How can you respect your clients and make something right, let alone special when you have not control over what ingredince you get in the first place, you have to use what you find, and you have to cook them in a fashion that is less than Idea for what you have.

Of course you can, if your looking at meat vs. pasta with no restrictions.
I'm speaking specifically in terms of this challenge with all the limitations included. Pasta Salad was much easier dish to execute. By far.

"Lee Anne said she knew a way to keep fried items less damp, why not pass on that tip to the contestants? That little tip could have made a hell of a difference. "
This is the quote. It's not her job to tell them how to keep things crispy. If she knew it why didn't he?