‘Top Chef’ premiere: Quickfire benefits losers more than winners
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- March
- 13
You’re a “Top Chef” contestant and you’re one of the 16 to arrive in Chicago. You’ve seen your competitors present all of one item—a deep-dish pizza—during the Quickfire Challenge and the good news is your pizza is considered to be one of the eight best. As a winner of this challenge, would you rather get to choose the dish you will make for your Elimination Challenge against a competitor picked for you, or the unknown competitor you’ll compete against?
If you’re a chef worth anything, you’d pick the dish of your choice.
So why did “Top Chef” producers essentially punish the Quickfire winners, who were asked to pick strangers as their competitors, allowing the supposed losers to pick something far more familiar—the dish from a predetermined list?
Five out of the eight Quickfire losers—Lisa, Zoi, Valerie, Nikki and Stephanie—won their head-to-head competitions in the Elimination Challenge, with Stephanie taking the win for the week. (But not immunity? This is “Top Chef” I’m watching, isn’t it?) UPDATE: In addition, Quickfire winner Erik got absolutely zero advantage when he drew last for the selection process, so he didn’t even win the right to choose his competitor, Zoi, who was the only competitor remaining after everyone else picked/was picked.
I’ve never seen Quickfire winners penalized for creating a superior product. But that’s exactly what happened last night. I didn’t write down too many notes while watching last night’s premiere, but one of the few was an expletive that started with “bull.”
Still, it was an entertaining start to Season 4. I can’t complain too much when Anthony Bourdain is prominently involved. But why Ted Allen isn’t judging every plate is beyond me. He’s still my favorite judge.
I share my first impressions of some of this season’s contestants after the break.
For obvious reasons, it’s harder for me to be accurate in my assessment of “Top Chef” contestants than those on “American Idol.”
For one, I’m a much better singer than I am a cook, by default. I’m a terrible cook. Three-quarters of the time the chefs are discussing technique, I have no idea what they’re talking about.
And, of course, a song travels through the medium of television much better than food, which cannot be tasted by the viewing audience while watching an episode. Perhaps with some “Jetsons” technological advancements, this can change in the near future. In the meantime, though, we’ll have to rely on Colicchio and Co.—the only people who have any right to judge the food.
Because of this, I’ll just limit my judgments of “TC” contestants to first impressions, personalities and food presentation. Any other judgment on my part would be downright naive.
Early favorites: Stephanie “Worst to First” Izard, Erik “Nacho Soufflé” Hopfinger, Manuel “Hey, Chris Serico has actually eaten at my restaurant!” Trevino, Mark “Marmite” Simmons and Nikki “Grandma’s lasagna” Cascone.
Could be cool, could annoy me in the near future: Zoi “We’re a couple” Antonitsas and Jennifer “That’s right, we’re a couple” Biesty, Andrew “Expletive” D’Ambrosi (pictured right) and Evangelos “I already have a nickname (Spike) and a backward hat” Mendelsohn.
No real first impression either way: Antonia Lofaso, Lisa Fernandes, Ryan Scott and Valerie Bolon.
Early least-favorites: Nimma “I’m not here to have fun” Osman (already out), Dale “I play pool alone and think I’m the best” Talde, Richard “No, you can’t use my mayo but I’ll take your deep-dish pan without asking” Blais.
(Photo courtesy of NBC/Universal.)
This entry was posted
on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 1:50 pm by Chris Serico.
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