Top Chef 8/1 Thread

[Aloysius]

Dids - agreed. The product just sets the template for a challenge. If the product commentary itself bothers you I sort of understand but, you know, there is actually a lot of product placement in many TV shows, both scripted and reality.

Blarg - not defending Hung, and don't really care that much but... are you really using some random person's comment on a blog, about something Hung did to his brother when he was in highschool, as evidence of him being an [censored]? Not trying to be a dick, I am genuinely curious and sort of confused maybe I missed something?

-Al

[Blarg]

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Al,

He's still on my d-bag list for his silly NYC centric rant a few eps ago.

For some reason Hung's bravado just endears him to me. He's like a wonderfuly flawed person, just fun for me to watch.

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For some reason New Yorkers love themselves like no one else does besides the French. That correspondence should give them pause.

[bernie]

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Al,

He's still on my d-bag list for his silly NYC centric rant a few eps ago.

For some reason Hung's bravado just endears him to me. He's like a wonderfuly flawed person, just fun for me to watch.

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For some reason New Yorkers love themselves like no one else does besides the French. That correspondence should give them pause.

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That's a good one!

b

[bernie]

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The way Rocco was going on about the product, I thought he was gonna stick his dick in the bag and make sweet sweet frozen love to it.

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LOL

b

[bernie]

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I don't think there's any attempts for the product placement to not be obvious. Just pretend each ep has a different sponsor, I don't think it takes away from the quality of the show at all. I thought especially this ep was a nice way of pimping the sponsor and challenging the chefs.

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I agree.

I don't think it takes away from the show at all.

b

[bernie]

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"its great, because you actually have to put it in the pan and cook it for ten minutes, so you too can feel like a real chef!" is just plain stupid and should be insulting to the audience.

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Great chefs don't make or endorse quickly cooked meals? I can think of a few.

b

[XXXNoahXXX]

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"its great, because you actually have to put it in the pan and cook it for ten minutes, so you too can feel like a real chef!" is just plain stupid and should be insulting to the audience.

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Great chefs don't make or endorse quickly cooked meals? I can think of a few.

b

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they do and i don't begrudge them for doing it.


my thoughts on product placement

guy in a bar ordering a budweiser instead of a beer or drinking a coke instead of a cola is fine, whatever.

zooming in on a product, doing basically a commercial during the show, and forcing the contestants to rant and rave about it is just dumb.

I'd be fine if the producers told them to mention the brands or something, but they go so far its annoying. of course you could squeeze out every drop and say we're having the Pitmaster Charcoal Quickfire in the Kenmore Elite Kitchen, which is part of the Glad Bag Stadium, then they will compete in the Hungry Man Full Meal Competition to determine who will get Pampered Chef cut in the Hunt's Ketchup Elimination. Then you could make everyone wear aprons that have logos on them and digitally insert logos on the cabinets, etc.

Obviously there is a spectrum and I think they are currently going too far.

If they said, "so i grabbed the barilla pasta and threw it in the pot..." that is fine.

When they have to say "Then i covered it in some KC Masterpiece Honey Barbecue sauce now with reduced sodium because it really gives it that extra zing that you crave!" then it is retarded.

[El Diablo]

All,

I thought this episode was sorta lame (in Tre's partner's words - I didn't think this challenge was that hard) and not terribly interesting. Overall, I'm very disappointed in this season, this had previously been one of my favorite shows. I think it's just the standard reality show progression of people playing "the game" more and the producers recycling old formulas.

Also, tons has been written about Rocco on food blogs. Apparently a lot of chefs don't think much of him. Here's a newspaper article talking about it a bit:

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/27/Ta..._foodies.shtml

"And poor Rocco DiSpirito.

Someone should have warned the embattled chef that Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential and executive chef at Les Halles, and Batali, of Food Network and multiple restaurant fame, were going to trash him during their aptly named talk, "Bad Boys in the Kitchen."

Bad boys, indeed. Word spread quickly that Bourdain and Batali didn't have kind words for DiSpirito, who is now without a restaurant since Rocco's 22nd Street, the infamous setting of his failed reality TV show, was shuttered and he was tossed earlier this month as executive chef at Union Pacific. The kid's made a lot of bad decisions, they said. But they didn't say it that nicely."

[Avalanche333]

Even though I'm sure most of you guys have seen it, more awesome Rocco bashing is on Bourdain's blog here.

[RunDownHouse]

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And if you are telling people "identify this by taste alone, PUT A [censored] BLINDFOLD ON THEM, cause hint to producers THEY ARE LOOKING AT IT, THEREBY MAGICALLY COMBINING INFORMATION FROM TWO SENSES!


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Hung?

b

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Right, I guess you missed it. Hung used just one of his senses - sight - and got it wrong. Were he to use both, as Noah pointed out, he would have been right, as evinced by his correct answer after the taste.

All,

It was kind of funny that maybe a week or so before this ep, the gf and I tried out one of those Bertolli meals. Kroger's been having a bunch of that type of stuff on sale lately, so we've been trying them every couple weeks. We both thought that the Bertolli was bland and something we could have done in about the same time by boiling some pasta, heating some jarred sauce, and cooking some chicken. It was right there with the Kroger brand frozen bag we tried. I'm pretty sure the "Mediterranean" Bertolli featured on the show was the same one we tried, too.

Also, I literally had to FF through Joey's snivelling exit interview.