Top Chef in Las Vegas: Any recipes for Strip steak?
Photo credit: Bravo | Bravo "Top Chef" host Padma Lakshmi will judge a cook-off with designers Cynthia Rowley, Edward Bess, Gilles Mendel, Lela Rose, Naeem Kahn and Peter Som at Bergdorf Goodman.
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Top Chef Season 6
THE SHOW "Top Chef: Las Vegas" (Season 6)
WHEN | WHERE Tonight at 9 on Bravo
REASON TO WATCH It's TV's best cooking competition.
For veteran viewers, "Top Chef's" rituals are as familiar as those of Kabuki theater: mad dashing about the GE kitchen, mad packing of food into Glad-brand containers, much drizzling of infused oils and trash-talking about perceived sabotage, Padma Lakshmi's serene pronouncements and Tom Colicchio's stern admonitions.
Here are four new things I learned from the first episode of Season 6:
1. Bodily mutilation continues unabated
A majority of the 17 "chef- testants" appear to be tattooed, with top honors going to Jesse Sandlin, executive chef at Abacrombie Fine Foods in Baltimore, whose colorful forearms are outshone by unappealing little rings piercing her lower lip. Jennifer Zavala not only has a big, fat "sacred" etched into her chest, but her earlobes are distended by the implantation of large rings. Both women scored in the bottom four in the first elimination challenge.
2. Sexism is alive and well in the kitchen
This, largely through the good offices of one Michael Isabella, executive chef at Zaytinya in Washington, D.C. When Seattle-based chef-artist-teacher Robin Leventhal, 43, avails herself of the option to sit out a challenge, Isabella remarks, "That's one less old lady I have to worry about." He assumes that Jennifer Carroll, chef de cuisine at the extremely well regarded 10 Arts by Eric Ripert in Philadelphia, is a mere pastry chef, and is frankly appalled when she keeps up with him in a clam-shucking race. "A girl shouldn't be at the same level as me," he opines.
3. The Whole Foods in Las Vegas looks almost exactly like the one in Jericho
The Top Chef kitchen looks the same as always, too, although in the first episode, a bevy of showgirls sashays in, and a poker chip worth $15,000 makes the quick-fire challenge somewhat more interesting.
4. Google has such a good corporate cafeteria, its executive chef is one of the chef-testants
Preeti Mistry runs Google's "Charlie's Café" in Mountain View, Calif., for Bon Appétit Management Co., a corporate food-service provider that emphasizes sustainability. Mistry struck me as both charming and free of tattoos, but she also turns out to be a miserable clam shucker.
For the record, my two top picks for winner are the aforementioned Jennifer Carroll and Kevin Gillespie, executive chef-partner at Woodfire Grill in Atlanta, who gave up a scholarship to MIT to study cooking. (Gillespie is one of three Atlanta chefs; whereas, the Big Apple fields just one: Ash Fulk, sous chef at Trestle on Tenth in Chelsea.)
BOTTOM LINE This season promises to be pretty much like the previous five, which is a good thing.
GRADE A-
