Top Chef Masters - S2E4 Postmortem

Hot damn! Susur Lee! Guess I know where I'm eating next time I'm in NYC. I actually expected him to do a lot better with the quickfire. He's from Hong Kong, and you get so much fruit for dessert in southern China, and often it's huge spreads of all kinds done up in a very ornate manner. Culturally speaking, he was coming from the right place to rock that up and down. And maybe there's merit to his suggestion that there was a bit of cultural disconnect with the judges. Or maybe it just didn't taste all that great. Talk about making up for it, though. Damn, I want that dish.

I really dug the look and theory behind Maria Hines' dish. But doing fish out of a chafing dish -- even one as oily and stable as salmon -- is just begging for trouble. Her scores seemed a little anemic given the judges' comments. I wonder if that's the elves at work to make us think we had another big winner and create more tension, or if a fish dish, no matter how beautifully conceived, just didn't travel so well.

I'm actually not a huge fan of Tramonto. Overall, Tru left me wanting both times I was there. But the guy can turn out some great dishes, and I suspect he just dialed it too far back for the elimination. There's minimal and there's plain. We can't all be Waxman. 'Course, Gail seemed to enjoy it a whole lot more than everybody else.

I'm torn on the episode overall. On one hand, the chefs were working it and I felt like we got a very good sense of what they were doing. On the other hand, the elves were pissing me off. Sending somebody through to the Champions Round on the quickfire just seems like needlessly grasping for drama. On the other hand, since they're not lumping in the QF scores this season, I suppose this is the only one that's actually had any bearing on the competition, so maybe I shouldn't complain.

Two groaners in the promos for those who were paying attention, however. First, a classic editor's misdirection, when we see Jay Rayner asking if the chef thought the dish was too salty and Tramonto replies "No." In case you needed a reminder, when it comes to the promos, unless you see both people standing together in frame, you can never assume that the two people cut together are actually talking to each other. And then, the commercial break before the results had a promo that gave away the winner, clear as day. That's probably a Bravo gaffe rather than an elves gaffe, but either way, well done, guys.

So there's the field for the Champions Round! No complaints whatsoever. Looks like a fun and diverse crowd, both from a food and personality standpoint.

Discuss!

Comments

[garik16]

19.5 Stars Wow!

Not sure i liked a Quickfire being the high stakes one....that really changes the rules somewhat (Then again, so did the team competition).

And Wedding Wars next week....I suspect that this is the closest to restaurant wars we could get to with top chef masters...as such chefs would probably not want to be seen opening a possibly poor restaurant.

[Lou_NJ]

Sloppy editing for the commercial just before the final judging gave away the winner. Just one more disappointment in the second season. I'm still with it to watch Chef Waxman.

[bryanD]

Who woulda thunk that such a self-consciously Asian chef who misapplied his own Asian heritage of restraint and balance for a quick-fire puddle of food resembling a Jackson Pollack discard could come back and convince the viewers that he actually deserved to win, judge or no judge?

Episode grade: A.

Also, the Bonus=Finals QF is a good thing.
Any self-respecting TC/TCM viewer should be well-greased before the show comes on. There is no need for greasing inside the show itself, such as an obligatory QF "warm-up".

Let Yea be Yea and Nay be Nay.

Hopefully next year, each TCM episode will be a single $500 5-hr No Limit slap-down. Expand the judges' table to include Jeffrey Steinberg + 1 to allow for closer tolerances.

[Adam]

Other QFs have given that chef some sort of advantage (e.g. first protein pick), and I think place in the QF is the tiebreaker if elimination scores are the same, so the other QFs have had some impact. I thought moving a chef on based on the QF was overkill, personally.

The judges table editing misdirection didn't bother me because I knew from long experience that it probably didn't go down that way. The plain-as-day reveal of the winner, on the other hand, was really bush league on Bravo's part.

Kudos to Susur Lee, and of course, Susur Lee's wife.

[gilmore]

That commercial really pissed me off. The editing is a non-factor after all of these years.

The QF was not the kind that deserves to send a chef to the Champion's Round. To me, there was a lot of skill involved, but not the cooking/creativity element that to me makes a Top Chef.

Never heard of Susur Lee (or most of that crew), but wow!! And in his socks.

[Dan V.]

I for one welcome the champion's round as it'll be nice to really get into chefs we already know instead of spending time on introductions in episodes. More time for foods.

Also, Susur REALLY hit it out of the park. I was quite surprised. I really liked the look of that dish and I wish I could have tasted it.

[Dave_P]

Well, Dom nails both glaring miscues by Bravo (one intentional, one... rank incompetence?) that killed that episode for me. I only caught Susur out of the corner of my eye in that commercial break, esp since I try to avoid any & all Bravo commercials, so I wasn't 100% sure that he'd win, but... well, it still sucked.

Gael's blog was less than kind for Susur's interviews about his QF's receptions. She should know better than to trust the edits (and really, she should just bug a producer about getting some raw footage).

Overall, it was a good episode, esp w/a killer performance from a "master". Can't wait to see him and Waxman in action again. These types of performances are the only things keeping me watching the TC franchise.

--
Dave

[nomnomnom]

Yes, that preview was horrific. Unmistakable. WEDDING WARS, and what? who's that cutting a wedding cake? Sheesh. They usually tip some very big events in the regular TC too if you pay enough attention, however. I didn't stick around to watch what they had to say about the others.

Susur just didn't understand the QF. If one judge is a food photographer you don't put that much food on a plate. And a huge component of the dish was stuffed inside a lemon with a lid. At that point the taste was meaningless.

It did seem the EC portion was well received, but I didn't stick around for judges table after the promo gaffe. Based on comments at the table I'd have guessed the QF winner was at no worst 3rd place in the EC. Likely 2nd so perhaps the high stakes QF didn't really play out poorly.

Lots of catering challenges so far and another next week. I guess that's the nature of this thing.

[Megan H.]

Apparently I was either suffering the effects of staying up past my bedtime to watch, or very unobservant, because I did not notice the damning commercial at all. Glad I didn't!

I liked the QF move - seemed to create a competitive point to the QF that has been missing this season. Also, the same two people would have gone regardless, which makes it even less of an issue for me.

[Babs]

I tend to multitask when watching the show so I might have overlooked this, but is there a reason that Kelly is not partaking of the quick fire eats? If I recall, she didn't eat any of them last week with the Housewives as well as last night. Just wondering.

I really enjoyed last night's ep. Thought they were all pretty solid dishes.

[Skillet Doux]

I'm working off memory here, Babs, but I believe last week when she tasted (and judged) the Quickfire, that was the exception rather than the rule. Unless I'm mistaken, she usually doesn't eat. Her role isn't analogous to Padma's. Padma is both host *and* judge, while Kelly is only a host.

[Independent George]

I haven't had a chance to eat at Tru yet, so I really can't comment on Tramonto's food, but I agree with Gail about dialing back on the truffle oil. On the other hand, a big part of the reason I don't like truffle oil is that so many chefs do exactly what he seemed to do - throw some truffle oil onto a random dish and call it upscale. Because, you know... Truffles!

And holy crap Susur Lee rocked the house.

[aaalex]

both the qf and the elimination showed aspects of susur lee's cooking. when he's at his best, which is often, the combinations (of ingredients as well as spices) feel startling and kind of inevitable at the same time. his old restaurant in toronto,"susur", offered a tasting menu that featured really tasty collisions of ingredients in season and techniques from a number of cultures (not just hong kong-north america). my first visit to the restaurant was just sensational. it was years ago, so i don't remember what i had, just the impression of having eaten something beyond my imagination and really good. i remember a subsequent visit more clearly, though. i had elk instead of the tasting menu. my partner and my daughter had the tasting menu and this time it was a "collision" in the worst sense. it felt as if things were forced together - proteins, spices, seasonal vegetables - because the chef thought it might be cool to see what would happen. it felt like an experiment at which we were the guinea pigs. (the girls ended up raiding my plate.)

i'm betting susur's qf fruit dish was lacking, taste-wise: a "ravioli" with black berries, thai basil? tricky and not necessarily in a good way, though an interesting IDEA. not pretty, but i bet gail would have pushed for it, if the fruit had tasted good.

but his elimination dish was what happens when he gets it right: a chili mint chutney with a chicken curry "sausage"? yes, please. even the diners, some of whom might have been put off by the "exotic" combinations, gave it 4.5, not far behind the judges' 5s. (how often do regular diners and inevitably jaded, tasted-it-all-before judges agree that a dish is near perfection?)

so, he's kind of a wild card in the finals. he might flame out early, if one of his experiments with "east meets west" doesn't add up, taste-wise. but if he's firing on all pistons, he'll give them something they haven't had before and make them wonder WHY they haven't. should be really interesting.

as to the show itself: i'm just getting tired of the fast pace, the aggressive music, the lack of differentiation, this year, between TC and TCM. maybe i'm misremembering last year's TCM, but i remember it as more "stately", more refined, despite the chiarello drama. anita lo was just so interesting in her approach, bayless and keller so expert. nothing this year, waxman and lee excepted, has been as inspiring. i'll certainly watch TCM3, whatever happens, but at this point i can't imagine myself wanting it as much as, last year after 4 episodes, i wanted a TCM2.

[Skoolie]

I missed the bravo gaffe due to having a dvr and fast forwarding, or it may have been the one time I took a bathroom break.

I was okay with the QF winner going forward, but mainly because at the end she was second and would have gone anyway. We could speculate and say she had less stress going in, but I think she would have made the same dish regardless.

I was hoping a Seattle Chef would make it. After visiting recently Seattle has a huge food scene that is often overlooked except for Tom Douglas.

[elaine]

time did a nice profile of ludo and his business model:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1986775,00.html