TV cooking contest shows - Page 9

Blarg · #81 08-02-2007, 04:34 PM

Yeah. I don't blame him for letting loose at the end, but I do blame him for playing a bigger part in the problems of the team than he was letting on.

When I saw him after the talk speaking with the other contestants in the room, snapping around, out came the usual Howie at a remark of CJ's: "I don't want to hear it." Howie doesn't realize that not wanting to hear it is a huge fault he has, and that it is hobbling him. It turns his partners into his enemies by default, rather than his allies, which they perhaps could be, or who knows.

But central to Howie is that he doesn't want to find out. It's fear. He needs to control so much because he is afraid things will get out of control if he works with people. He doesn't trust them or himself around them, so he short-circuits chances for both failure and success at the same time by locking them out. It's a coward's solution.

If Sara didn't contribute much, Howie can look at himself for the reason why. Did he even give her a chance? I saw one -- when she wanted a kind of pasta he didn't. His response was to immediately cave in, but with plenty of resentment. That's not a fair chance. He didn't make his case to her, but he sure went on about it to the camera. Great going, hero. And then he completely stopped communicating from there on out. This is how Howie handles conflict. It's not a productive way to work with people.

Blarg · #82 08-02-2007, 04:46 PM

Here's Tony Bourdain's guest-blog entry on the show this week:

http://www.bravotv.com/blog/tomcolic...ket.php?page=1

Quicksilvre · #83 08-02-2007, 08:51 PM

The only coking contest shows that I watch are the original Iron Chef (Apparently off the air...boo!) and the Food Network Challenge ones. Even then, I only watch the latter near the end when they move their wares off to the judging area, and I'm always hoping for a collapse.

RunDownHouse · #84 08-02-2007, 09:51 PM

Quick,

Original Iron Chef is sometimes on Food Network at around 3-4AM weekdays. Someone mentioned it being off the US air a couple weeks ago, and then a week later I caught it on. So its still around, you just have to make TiVO look for it.

Katy,

One of my biggest gripes was with the freezing part. Maybe the IQF thing is a really basic concept that every chef should know. But one of my best friends graduated near top of his class from the best culinary school in the US and is now doing food science at Cornell. From what he says, there's a big gap between being a restaurant chef - ie, Top Chef - and doing food science. He's more interested in the latter, so he's doing things like interning at firms that make artificial flavor additives, contests for major restaurant chains to make recipes that can be produced at a central location, frozen, then shipped to individual locations, etc.

So it seemed to me the meat of this challenge wasn't so much the being a chef, but more the food science, and I don't think any of the contestants signed up for that. I mean, would the results have been close to the same if the judges had said, "Oh, you must IQF all your product?" As I said, maybe that's such a basic concept they should have done it anyway, but only two or three of the ten seemed even to consider it.

Ron Burgundy · #85 08-02-2007, 10:17 PM

Tony Bourdain summed up my feelings of this TC episode in his blog: "This is challenge I would be proud to have lost."

And ROFL at Joey balling his eyes out. I mean [censored] dude, it's just a reality TV show, get a grip.

steamraise · #86 08-02-2007, 10:17 PM

[ QUOTE ]
OOT thread on Top Chef and it would appear that most people thought last night's episode sucked.

[/ QUOTE ]
Maybe it was the guest judge that gave a bad feeling to the episode for me.

Howie was growing on me but this show he had a bad attitude the whole time.

I liked Hung at first but he's coming off like a jerk more and more.

Ron Burgundy · #87 08-02-2007, 10:26 PM

Anyone see Ramsay's show tonight? Those women were painfully annoying and had no [censored] clue how to do anything. That lady didn't even know how to buy fresh meat for Christ's sake. I can never understand why people open restaurants when they have no idea what they're doing. It's one of the toughest businesses to succeed in, and so many people treat restaurant management like it's just something they do in their spare time.

Quicksilvre · #88 08-02-2007, 10:30 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Original Iron Chef is sometimes on Food Network at around 3-4AM weekdays. Someone mentioned it being off the US air a couple weeks ago, and then a week later I caught it on. So its still around, you just have to make TiVO look for it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks! No TiVo in Casa Quicksilvre, but I'm out of school during the summer; I can just stay up.

katyseagull · #89 08-02-2007, 10:37 PM

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So it seemed to me the meat of this challenge wasn't so much the being a chef, but more the food science, and I don't think any of the contestants signed up for that. I mean, would the results have been close to the same if the judges had said, "Oh, you must IQF all your product?" As I said, maybe that's such a basic concept they should have done it anyway, but only two or three of the ten seemed even to consider it.

[/ QUOTE ]

You make an excellent point. I can see how this was more a food science project rather than gourmet cooking. I can understand how people might be disappointed in that episode.

katyseagull · #90 08-02-2007, 10:40 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone see Ramsay's show tonight? Those women were painfully annoying and had no [censored] clue how to do anything. That lady didn't even know how to buy fresh meat for Christ's sake. I can never understand why people open restaurants when they have no idea what they're doing. It's one of the toughest businesses to succeed in, and so many people treat restaurant management like it's just something they do in their spare time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh crap. I was busy baking my blueberry pie and didn't even know this show was on. In fact I only discovered just this morning that I get the BBC channel now. When I bought the Bravo package it seems I purchased BBC with it. Cool huh. I am going to try to watch Ramsay's show at 11:00 EST. It is called Morgan's, Liverpool episode. I think it's not the same one that you watched earlier. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]