BRAVO, BRAVO NETWORK 2 -- REVENGE OF BRAVO, BRAVO NETWORK: That post title may get us flagged as a spam blog again, but this week’s Top Chef sent me back to my favorite episode from fall 2007 when the cast was mercifully permitted to put aside the gimmicks and the products and do what chefs do. This week was the same formula, and I’ve got the same warm fuzzy feeling on many, many levels.
Fish Butchery Quickfire: We start with a basic test of chef fu on a challengingly small scale (no pun intended) with the sardines, move on to full size fish wrangling with the char filets, and finish with a fresh eel challenge that was absurd and off-putting at its initial presentation and fully sublime in the contestants subsequent execution. I loved nearly every single thing about this Quickfire, even if the producers obviously knew that Stefan had done the eel thing a thousand times before. …or is a hammer and ten-penny nail standard equipment under the counter in every big kitchen? Maybe it is. I honestly wouldn’t know. The only thing not to love was that I still don’t know how to bone a fish. General principles could have been conveyed in thirty seconds, and the next poor halibut I foolishly purchased whole would not wind up as soup! This isn’t PBS, but come on, Bravo, help a brother out.
Le Bernardin: Six course lunch; six chefs left. Coincidence? Of course not. Feign surprise all you want Stefan, you knew exactly what was in that lobster and half the other dishes before the Knife Block of Arbitrarily Assigned Destiny appeared through the doorway to Eric Ripert’s private dining room. I loved loved loved this challenge. Generally good work. A benevolent Ripert looking on and offering suggestions (and sporting a seemingly superior hair treatment to that featured in his last appearance, when in defense of my beloved cayenne pepper I was probably too hard on him). If only buttered miso were a more serious sin than a brackish swamp of over-braised celery, it would have been perfect on all points. And the prize for the winner was maybe the most impressive ever – certainly the most impressive in my dim recollection. Weeks shadowing Ripert? Through three restaurants? Pebble Beach? Yowza.
Obviously I would have liked a different elimination. Weeks ago, I would have liked it. Nonetheless, this season is shaping up for a good final once the canoodlers are good and gone. Sure, four, I know; but they’re already dead to me.
If next week is the reunion episode, and I think it is, we’ll just do an open thread with no editorializing from yours truly.
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