Rayner vs. Moonen

I usually try to avoid wading into discussion of the judging travesty du jour. There's so much we don't see, so much we don't know (including, most importantly, how everything tasted) that any discussion thereof is highly speculative. Which is fine and good. It's when speculative discussion takes on a strident and/or absolutist tone that I try to steer clear. But this particular controversy only seems to be heating up, so what the hell, let's open the floor.

For those who might have missed it, the aftermath of the Top Chef Masters finale has been a little bloody. And not just in the typical "some fans are pissed" manner. It actually started at critics table, where Rayner questioned Moonen's use of New Zealand venison given his opinions regarding sustainability. The discussion... escalated... before ending up on the editing room floor. We know about it because Rayner told us about it on his Bravo TV blog, embarrassed that he'd lost his cool, but unashamed of the fact that he docked Moonen half a point for not following his own philosophy in a final challenge that was supposed to do exactly that. It didn't quite end there. An eater.com writer stirred the pot a bit, and now Rayner and Moonen are going directly at each other (though Rayner, at last check, insists he's done).

A popular take on the situation seems to be that Moonen was robbed and that Rayner destroyed the integrity of the judging process, but I think two questions are being conflated, here:

1) Did Rayner make the right judgment call?
2) Was it appropriate for him TO make that judgment call?

The first is a tough one. Is New Zealand venison sustainable? Was using it in conflict with Moonen's stated philosophy? Did he even know at the time? Does it matter in the context of Top Chef Masters? Did it matter enough to merit a half a star deduction? They're all good questions that have launched good discussions... none of which I intend to tackle here and now (though you're more than welcome to do so... keep it constructive, please!)

The second is the one that's frustrating me. It's being suggested that Rayner was out of line, that it was inappropriate for him to dock Moonen, that talking about it on his blog constitutes an "admission," and that the final result is illegitimate.

While I understand the frustration of those who feel this cost Moonen a victory (though I think there's a certain amount of speculation involved even in that claim), I find this maddening. Over eight seasons of Top Chef and Top Chef Masters, thematic challenges have been a mainstay. Of course, it's generally acknowledged that food comes before theme. As long as you keep a tenuous hold on the theme, cook great food and you're probably going to do fine. But if you drift too far from the theme, it's understood that you might get dinged for it. And contestants have been dinged for it. In fact, unscientific personal observation leads me to believe that people are more often frustrated when the judges are too lenient about a theme rather than too strict. But the point is that it's been firmly established that it's perfectly within the scope of their duties to take adherence to the challenge's theme into account when judging.

So let's look at this finale. It was not, as some seem to be unaware or are conveniently ignoring in the rush to savage Rayner, to simply cook the tastiest meal. Like any other thematic challenge on Top Chef, it was to cook the tastiest meal within a certain context, and that context was for the chefs to express themselves, their careers, their styles, their lives on the plate (I'm paraphrasing, here). Sustainability is a very, very big part of Rick Moonen's work as a chef. And that's Rick Moonen talking, not me. What we don't know is how frequently or how strongly Moonen touted that philosophy in six episodes leading up to the finale (he wasn't in three of the preliminary rounds). But let's say, for the sake of argument, that he made it a central theme of his experience as a chef.

Now take this hypothetical. Let's say one of those finalists was a vegan. And let's say that this chef had spent those six episodes cooking vegan meals and taking time at critics table to talk about how he felt it was wrong to exploit animals, and that cooking vegan food was incredibly important to him. And let's say that after being told the final challenge was to cook a meal that expressed who he was as a chef, made one of his courses a big honking T-bone. And let's say that after being asked about that choice, he said, "Hey, it's a cooking competition." How could one not conclude that he had simply flaunted the theme of the challenge?

I put this forth not to suggest that Moonen's transgression (if, indeed, there was one at all) was as serious, but simply to illustrate that there is a point at which a chef is brazenly flaunting the theme of the challenge and should probably be called on it and/or scored accordingly. You may not like that as a final challenge. You may want it to be a straight-up cook the tastiest meal possible challenge without any theme at all. But that's not what it was. Rayner didn't judge the challenge all of us would have liked him to judge. He judged the challenge the chefs were given.

Jay Rayner may or may not have made the right call. But he did the right thing in making it.

Comments

[rab01]

Dom, you are right that those two questions are separate and I agree that Jay was entitled to make the call. I would say that I think he was, on the merits, wrong when he made the call. Sustainability is obviously a huge deal for seafood restaurants where food-fashion is helping to destroy particular species but believing in sustainability does not automatically require espousing a generic Earth Day, green-friendly, carbon-footprint ideology.

Admittedly, without seeing the hours of unaired footage, we can't tell what version Moonen was repping at prior Critics' Tables or just how repeated his discussion of the issue was. It is possible that Jay did correctly perceive Moonen's slant. Everything Jay's written so far, however, leads me to think that he misheard and oversimplified in his own head Moonen's position.

But that takes us to a third question and one where we maybe able to come to agreement about Jay blowing it. (3) Should Jay have commented on an aspect of his judging that was unaired? Normally, yes. But in this case, Jay's comments cheapen Samuelsson's win, besmirch Moonen's reputation for consistency and depend on footage no one will ever see -- that is, just how much did Moonen talk about sustainability and did he ever discuss general environmentalism as a basis for his food on TCM? I say that the editors were right to excise most of Jay's rant because they hadn't had enough time to give us sufficient backstory form prior Critics' Tables; Jay should have left it out as well.

[Skillet Doux]

"I say that the editors were right to excise most of Jay's rant because they hadn't had enough time to give us sufficient backstory form prior Critics' Tables; Jay should have left it out as well."

I'm honestly torn on this, rab01. I agree that it cheapens Samuelsson's win, and that isn't fair to him. But on the other hand, for a show where the integrity of the judging is routinely called into question, I find it remarkably refreshing that Rayner was willing to put it out there and subject himself to that heat when he didn't have to. We all (well, most of us around these parts) talk about how we'd love to see more of the judging process, we'd love to see some of those things that don't make the final reel. Well, we just saw one. Now we don't want to see it?

I see where you're coming from, and I really do dislike anything that detracts from Samuelsson's win. But in this case, I like that Rayner was so open about something so critical, and ultimately I think the value in that outweighs the other considerations.

[Daniel Mantell]

When I think of 'sustainability', I normally associate it with the short and mid-term effect that cooking with an animal will have on that animal's population. So, for example, when I see the word 'sustainability' associated with swordfish, I think in terms of at-risk populations of swordfish that are not currently in a good place to recover from harvesting.

While there is definitely a relationship between carbon-footprint and sustainability, that relationship is much longer term and much more esoteric. The two terms are separate, refer to different things, have very different scopes, and should never be blanketly conflated.

That being said, while they *shouldn't* be conflated, they often are...so before I completely let Moonen off the hook, I'd want to know how carefully he was selling a specific notion of 'sustainability' vs. a general concept of 'green.' Again though, he's a chef in Las Vegas. Las Vegas has a huge carbon footprint...I'd tend to think that in general this couldn't possibly be part of his sales pitch.

Where I had a problem was that the 'theme' of that course was supposed to be 'who you are as a chef'. Moonen may not be 'just' a fish guy, and might bristle at being unfairly assigned that limiting label. But...fish is what he's known for - so he essentially delivered a course that while great didn't seem to really say anything about who he is as a chef. And while 'sustainability' might be separate from 'green', delivering a course that wasn't green only further illustrated the

I definitely agree with you on the points you made. And folks who are denying Raynor the right to make judgment calls on theme (whether he does so correctly or not) are missing the point of the judging.

One thing you mentioned also occurred to me - the scores were so tight...how much of that was just out of respect to the chefs? Was it really as close as the scores seemed to indicate?

[rab01]

@Dom - thank you for the well-reasoned response. I agree that generally I prefer it when the judges give more insight into their process and I don't want Rayner to filter his words more. I do think, however, that on this issue, it is somewhat unfair for him to make claims regarding footage we will never see and I think he's been a little arrogant in his subsequent responses to Moonen. Rayner can certainly judge whether Moonen represented himself as a chef in his final plate but he is not well-situated to judge Moonen's version of environmentalism, which is what Rayner's defense has devolved into.

@Daniel - In the Eater interview Dom linked, Moonen sounded aware of the carbon footprint of his restaurant and satisfied with its record on that front but was also very clear that carbon footprint and sustainability are not the same thing. Before Moonen found out that Rayner had criticsed his choice of venison in the blog post, Moonen said:

"Sustainability, carbon footprint; they're different, you know. And I'm an hour out of LA, where there are great restaurants and great seafood product. It takes you two hours to get a piece of tuna from Long Island to New York City, but no one ever questions that, just because there's no water in the desert. Fact number two: Las Vegas is closer to more organic farms than LA. True. It's proximity. It's perception.

And I'm not sure if this is timing or if it's just a different mentality, but there's more chef support—people actually making menu changes and making a movement towards being more sustainable on their menu—in Vegas than when I was in New York for twenty five years. True. The chefs sort of listened, but they weren't motivated to take any action. You know, they'd sit there and listen to me and nod their heads but you look at their menu and: Chilean sea bass, red snapper, grouper, skate. I mean, what the? You don't know why."

I love Jay as a judge but I think that he is on-balance getting the worst of this argument and deservedly so. Moonen sounds like he has thought longer and harder about these issues than has Rayner and that Rayner refuses to accept that Moonen's approach is valid and internally consistent even if Rayner may disagree with it.

As a sidenote, his one blog entry has managed to demean all three Chefs -- detracted from Samuelsson's win, attacked Moonen's integrity, and implied that Sussur had the worst meal of the night. I really don't think that was his intent behind what probably started as an attempt at a mea culpa for prior bad behavior.

[Daniel Mantell]

Yeah, I see what you are saying rab01, though I also see where Raynor is coming from - while 'sustainability' and 'green' are two different things, they aren't wholly unrelated, and talking yourself up as 'sustainable' while building up an overly massive carbon footprint does make Moonen look a bit pompous and overblown.

Thinking about it more though, I remember also having a problem with Moonen's adherence to theme in his second course too - he talks up this huge memory of mushrooms, then serves a dish with no mushrooms...

So while it just doesn't seem to me (based on my limited information) that Raynor selected the right things to pick on, I came to the same conclusions he did: that Moonen's stories just didn't match up with his dishes. On that basis, I would have dinged him too.

I'm assuming that your assessment of the Sussur implication is because Raynor mentioned only Sammuelsson and Moonen, but not Sussur in his entry?

Finally, the way it was edited, it came across to me that Sammuelsson won because a) his foi was amazing and b) his theme was compelling. For me, at least, this controversy does not diminish his win on either count.

What does diminish his win for me is editing that suggested that his third dish wasn't good, and that he was able to sell it by convincing the judges that the fault was in their palate's rather than in the dish...and in my ignorance of how true or not true that might be.

[Skillet Doux]

Daniel... I agree when you talk about sustainability vs. carbon footprint or other terms. I, too, think of it purely in terms of whether the level of consumption of certain animals is such that they can't replenish themselves. Though I'm on record as not being somebody for whom that's a primary consideration (except in the most extreme cases), so my understanding of the term may very well be off.

I don't so much have a problem with Moonen's course selection. I actually kind of like the idea of, hey, I'm not just the fish guy. Though he does seem to take that mantle himself or eschew it as convenience dictates. And the mushroom/truffle was perhaps something of a stretch, but I can't say it bugs me that much. Just an "if I were a judge" moment here.

I think the real problem, and it's hard because we didn't see the exchange, is that it sounds as though Moonen had the chance to defend himself, and it sounds like he might've done a poor job of it. If Rayner has a poor understanding of what sustainability means, Moonen should have set him straight. And if Moonen didn't know enough to set him straight under fire, he probably shouldn't have been touting his sustainability in the first place. I think there's a good chance Moonen kind of made his own bed, or at least failed to deflect a criticism that should have been easy for him to deflect. Whether or not Moonen is inconsistent, I suspect we can all agree that when asked about the venison, "I'm no tree-hugger" probably wasn't the wisest response.

It's tangential, but I too really wonder about Samuelsson's third dish. I'd love to see the full comments on it, because I suspect the criticisms were amplified by the editing. Just a hunch. While I could see a critic making a small allowance for trying something that's new and challenging, I can't believe they'd award such high scores if they all really disliked the dish in general. But unless one of the critics talks, we'll never know.

In the end, given that there's so much we'll never know, I think it comes down to whether you have a certain level of faith in the judging process or not. But this is an old, old theme.

[rab01]

@Daniel -- you made the sustainability/green distinction yourself. I just quoted a bit of Rick's interview that semed to make it clear that he considered the distinction important. When I read the interview, I could understand why Moonen would be pissed at hearing Rayner's take in Moonen's signature issues. It sounded like he deals with crap about the location of his restaurant and how far the ingredients have to travel a lot and that he has sincerely held opinions as to why that criticism is usually bull.

My assesment of the Sussur implication was from the math -- If Sussur and Rick were tied but Rick had been docked half a point, that would mean that Sussur's meal itself earned half-a-star less. That said, I don't think they really judge that way. Otherwise, there's too much risk of a tie.

I thought Rick's second dish had truffles. Aren't they a type of mushroom? (actual question; not rhetorical).

[bryanD]

Borrowed from somewhere on the intertubes:

"When the chefs disagree with the judges on “Top Chef,” you believe the judges. When they do so on “Masters,” you’re more likely to believe the chefs."

Amen.

[gilmore]

Said my piece on the postmortem, however I will add this...

Carbon footprint (and its sister locally sourced) is such a load of garbage. How local is local? 1 mile, 5 miles, 50 miles? Within the city, the county, the congressional district, the state?

If it is so important, should you only serve patrons within that area (1 mile, 5 miles, etc.). Do you check IDs at the door? Do you refuse to serve food to anyone from New Zealand?

If locally produced food is more expensive than non, and is of worse quality, do you serve it? Do you charge more for worse quality?

A restaurant should serve great food with great ingredients at a fair price. If you can get Nevada farm raised venison and it is of horrible quality and costs 50% more than New Zealand venison, what would you, as a chef serve? What would you, as a consumer want?

[Bart]

gilmore wrote: A restaurant should serve great food with great ingredients at a fair price. If you can get Nevada farm raised venison and it is of horrible quality and costs 50% more than New Zealand venison, what would you, as a chef serve? What would you, as a consumer want?

That's something that Gordon Ramsay touched on in his show, 'The F Word' - he's argued with Janet Street-Porter over this. I remember one particular episode where Street-Porter lamented the cruelty of French pate (how the birds were force-fed) versus Spanish pate (where birds ate on their own volition).

In the end, during a blind taste test, Ramsay preferred the French version, and continues to use that. In other instances, he has found that the more humane or environmentally friendly food tastes better than whatever equivalent ingredient he had been using, and swaps it out. For him - and for many chefs, I suspect - the issue rests largely on taste alone.

[Bart]

I should clarify - I meant foie gras, not pate. My bad.

[Daniel Mantell]

@rab01 - yeah, I read that interview too, and it's definitely on point. Your logic with Sussur makes sense, in terms of how they scored exactly, I just tried to ignore the specific magnitudes of the numbers. I wouldn't be hugely surprised in the finale if the arguments go more towards 'first' 'second' and 'third' more than '4' '4.5' and '5'.

@skillet - I do have faith in the judges, though its more that I have faith that their decisions are made in good faith and that their backgrounds allow those judgments to carry more weight (in general) than would be possible for a dilettante such as myself. The editing doesn't shake my faith in the judges, it just makes me resentful as hel towards the editors. I would like to think that for most of us, the food is enough - that we don't need to be misled or have controversies invented by the editors for us to enjoy the show. And that's a general criticism of the series in general, not just this one instance.

I am kinda surprised that they don't make 'fuller' or even uncut versions of the judging available on the web though - it is existing content, and content I'm sure there'd be a ton of demand for.

@Gilmore - I see your points, and they are totally valid. Part of the problem with terms like 'green' and 'sustainable' and 'carbon footprint' is that they are often just thrown around willy nilly and end up being almost meaningless. If I have to see one more of these privileged bimbos on HGTV talking about how 'green' her 10,000 square foot house is, I'm going to rip my own arm off just so I can have something to club myself to death with. The terms are definitely overused. That being said, Moonen is one of the guys using them - and while he totally didn't violate the letter of sustainability, I can sympathize with someone (in this case, Raynor)arguing that he violated the spirit of his sales pitch.

Me personally? For the reasons of generally piss-poor accounting when it comes to people labeling things as 'green', I don't usually pay a ton of attention to it. I also hate geese and am more than happy to enjoy their deliciously exploded livers. For me personally, Moonen's lack of green-ness didn't affect my buy in on his 'sustainability' branding.

Where I quibble with you is on your use of 'should'. I don't think there is just one 'should' when it comes to restaurants, other than perhaps, a restaurant 'should' live up to its brand statement - whether that brand statement is 'great food at fair prices' or 'locally sourced crap at obscene prices'.

[Mann of Sandd]

While I'll try to stay away from the primary argument here, I will say Rick's constant comments and retorts on the Eater.com article made him appear to be petulant and unable to withstand criticism of any sort.

[Independent George]

Sustainability is obviously a huge deal for seafood restaurants where food-fashion is helping to destroy particular species but believing in sustainability does not automatically require espousing a generic Earth Day, green-friendly, carbon-footprint ideology.

I was hoping to avoid this debate, but it touches upon one of my pet issues - namely, the reason I call myself a conservationist rather than an environmentalist. I'm a big believer in sustainability, particularly of fisheries & reefs (which are very deeply endangered throughout the world), but am deeply skeptical if not outright cynical with regard to the more generic 'green' label. For example, everyone touts organic farming despite the surfeit of tangible evidence that it's a net positive on the environment, but harldy anyone has even heard of no-till despite decades of clear and unambiguous evidence of its effectiveness. In another thread, I mentioned Ducks Unlimited, whose mere existed has caused many a student activist's head to explode (Ignorant redneck hunters... restoring thousands of acres of native marshlands? So they can shoot those poor animals!).

On the merits of the argument, I'm with Moonen - sustainable fishery is a clearly-defined, well-understood issue with an immediate, measurable impact that is entirely separate from questions of carbon footprints.

On the merits of the judging, I'm with Rayner. In a thematic challenge, it's up to the chef to explain how it relates to the theme, and docking points for doing it poorly is a legitimate result.

[alamoswoman]

I think we need a distinction in the discussion of Local/sustainable between farmed food and wild food. Our taste for foods whose natural origin is far from our plates (seafood in Colorado, oranges in Minnesota) puts pressure on production capacity. Local consumers (defining local liberally but not audaciously) could not exhaust fisheries. Demand in Chicago and Las Vegas for fresh cod can and has. Quantities of farmed food respond to demand and transport distance as well as increased production costs. I am sure that both those factors are part of the price of New Zealand venison purchased in California, much like California strawberries purchased in the snowy Midwest. The scale is perhaps different, but the principle the same.
There was at least one Top Chef challenge in which the contestants were required to purchase all their ingredients from the Farmer’s Market. This sourcing is probably both more local and sustainable, but again not necessarily. Here in St Paul/Minneapolis the St Paul market has strict restrictions about local production. Minneapolis is more of “if you can get it here, you may sell it.”
Of course all of this is a discussion of single ingredient, non processed foods. Staples such as rice, flours, oils, spices seem to call for even more fine distinctions.

[rab01]

@IG -- I totally agree with everything you said. On the merits, Moonen is right and Rayner is wrong. At the Critics' Table, however, it was Moonen's job to explain himself, not Rayner's job to divine the real meaning.

But Rayner has made clear since then that he isn't anywhere near as smart as you are on this subject. Leaving aside Rayner's subsequent responses, this is from his blog:

"What there wasn’t was the moment, when I lost my temper in a red-faced, eye-bulging, vein-swelling rage, during the critics’ last discussions. ... I will admit that as the competition went on, I became more than a little tired of Moonen’s posturing as both "the fish guy" and "the sustainability guy." The latter struck me as a little odd given that his restaurant is located in Las Vegas, possibly the least sustainable city on the face of the planet. ... Bloody hell, but I was furious. For weeks he had worn his green credentials on his sleeve, bigged himself up as the saviour of the planet."

If you're facing a judge who has lost his temper in a "vein-swelling-rage", it might get a little hard to explain yourself. (An aside, I was rooting throughout the season for Sussur and rooting against Rick for his apparent self-limitations and was quite happy with Samuelsson's win.) This incident wouldn't have happened if Rayner wasn't as smugly oblivious to the possible subtleties as he appears to be.

This incident reminds of two past TC judging missteps: (1) When Brian was criticized for using lobster because of its (mythical) high-cholesterol content; (2) when Toby Young complained that a chef was pretentious for using the proper pronunciation for an ingredient.

To sum up my take -- Samuelsson won fair-and-square; Moonen (and Sussur) lost fair and square; Rayner was totally correct when judging to consider whether the final meal properly represented the chef; Moonen clearly did not satisfy the Judge with his answer to a valid question; Rayner was being an idiot at the time and since.

[Skillet Doux]

"If you're facing a judge who has lost his temper in a "vein-swelling-rage", it might get a little hard to explain yourself."

Well, we know the exchange started calmly. We saw the initial question and at least some of Moonen's response that certainly didn't seem to be under heavy fire. We just don't know how or how quickly it devolved.

[Megan H.]

A few points:

This makes me think of the last season of TCM where Rayner asked Chiarello (spelling?) about using pre-made pasta. He received a reasonable answer, and moved on. He then asked Art Smith about pre-made ice cream, did not like the answer he received, and Smith got dinged heavily for it. That, at least, gives me some sense that if Moonen had a reasonable answer to give at the time, that Rayner may have been mollified by it. However, "sustainability" aside (for the moment), I'm at a loss as to how Moonen defends that plate as a representation of himself as a chef now. If it had a been a "where do you see yourself going" plate, then maybe...but it seemed more like Moonen's effort to prove he could do something else, not a representation of what he *was* doing. So Rayner may or may not have any idea about what sustainability means, but it does seem to be that he judged appropriately.

A brief aside @ gilmore: As others have said, I think using the term "should" in relation to the restaurant business is a little out of line. A restaurant "should" do whatever they want, and then let consumers decide if that's what they want. I do, myself, choose to frequent restaurants who make an effort to source local ingredients. There are many, many reasons why I do (many environmental, plus some animal rights/ethics issues, as well as supporting local businesses, etc). Point is, it's my choice how I spend my money and which businesses I choose to support, much as you can make the same choice with your money.

[Jay Rayner]

I know I should shut up but...

Just to get it all in order, the vein-swelling rage happened after I calmly put the question about the sustainability of the ingredient to him. It was during our deliberation.

And just to remind you (if you look at the clip) he does not correct me when I ask about the venison being flown in. He just responds with the line 'I'm a chef, not a tree hugger, I'm in a cooking competition'. It has struck me since that if he really was all over the credentials of that venison that would have been the moment to say something, but he didn't.

The one retort of his that drives me nuts - and you'll see it on his facebook fan page - is his allegation that I robbed a good charity of $100,000. I didn't. A good charity got $100,000. It just wasn't his.

A final point: many people have argued that as a critic and journalist I really have no right to stand in judgement. Personally I would argue otherwise. 11 years of restaurant reviewing and food writing, more than 20 years as a journalist and enough big credits to show for it, qualifies me plenty. But if you really didn't reckon my credentials or those of my colleagues then DON'T ENTER THE COMPETITION. Nobody was forcing you.

To enter a competition and then complain about the result because, after the fact, you don't reckon the credentials of the judges is the kind of behaviour I admonish my kids for.

Jay

[Wayman]

I have lost all faith in the judging of TCM

[Krazikarl]

I think that no matter which side people were on initially, it can be generally agreed that Moonen's response has been generally immature and unprofessional, while Rayner's has been fine.

The comments from Moonen in the link to the interview and some of his stuff from other sources (like Facebook) are really just sad. He certainly has the right to defend himself and make his case, but the way he is going about it is quite distasteful to me.

[Skillet Doux]

FYI, comment above authenticated. That's Jay Rayner. Thanks for stopping by to participate, Jay!

[gilmore]

Right all. My fingers move faster than my brain and the word "should" was misapplied. I should think before hitting the post button.

IG - I agree - ethical hunters are great conservationists. There are always going to be some rotten apples and poachers that give hunters a bad name.

I still wish Susur Lee had won.

I would love to try Marcus Samuelsson's food.

Marcus has many restaurants. None are Aftican/Ethiopian as far as I can tell. A street food restaurant may have some. His sous chef on the final episode came from Aquavit. That is scandinavian food. Aquavit's menu does not have any African food (aquavit.org). I am sure that Moonen's restaurant serves beef/chicken/vension/vegetarian (menu's not available).

Did Marcus show off who he is as a chef any differently than Moonen? He is Ethiopian and wants to cook African/Ethiopian, but is not doing it now at his restaurants. Moonen serves more than fish (If I am wrong, let me know).

BTW, Marcus is guest cheffing at RM Seafood on June 23. http://www.rmseafood.com/

[rab01]

Wow, Jay thanks for commenting. (Now furiously re-reading my prior comments and regret using the phrase "idiot"; just to be clear, I was using it in the loosest colloquial way.) I still don't understand how the credentials of the venison are relevant. Deer is not endangered and therefore there is no sustainability issue. One could say that eating corn-fed beef is not environmentally sound but in what way would it be unsustainable?

I agree, and I think everyone on this board agrees, that you are perfectly positioned to judge the food, the chefs and the competition. (I suspect you have read scores of calls on this board for you to be hired as a judge for other cooking shows - even over Eric Rippert.)

My original point was that Bravo made the correct choice in excising an event for which they didn't have time to give a full enough context and secondarily to say that Moonen's position does not seem hypocritical to me - as an outsider who was not there to witness the Critics Table discussions. Thank you again for giving further context. I am, however, still a bit mystified.

@Gilmore -- According to the Times, one of Marcus' prior restaurants, Merkato 55, was pan-African.

[Bart]

Always fun to see Top Chef contestants and judges pop on this blog!

Thanks, Jay, for stopping by. I know this probably won't make any difference, but for what it's worth, I can see both sides of the issue here, and I hope to see you continue to judge for Top Chef Masters (and I still want to eat at Rick Moonen's).

Clearly, both of you are passionate about food. And given the sort of work you're both involved in, I'd say that isn't such a bad thing. I just hope that when the passion subsides, there'll be no hard feelings lingering.

[Lou]

Jay Raynor was right to bring up the sustainability question and rightly all things are in play for judging (wedding wars, restaurant wars...) which includes more than the taste of the food. Moonen tried to show things that diverged from he usual reputation and I would believe he did them well but all of them do what they do well. Stated philosophies count if/when they are put out there as a standard and historical record of performance. The critic is also held to standards and philosophy for their perceptions of food. Raynor has that record of continuity of judging standards with reasoned objectivity from last season through the current. Arguably he has been more consistent than Oseland whose scores seemed somewhat capricious at times.

Moonen behaved poorly, like a petulant child, during the run of the show (but that may have been editing) - admittedly I'm no fan. Personally I would rather have had Waxman in the finals and I think his history would have been much more interesting (especially had the competition been with Feniger and Lee).

[Megan H.]

@ gilmore - I hope no offense taken on the "should" thing. That just pushed a particular button of mine.

As to your other point (was Moonen's dish any less representative of his cooking than Samuelson's was) - let me ask a different question. If you watched all the TCM episodes featuring Samuelson except the finale, would you be surprised to hear that he was cooking food with an African flair? I would not have, particularly. However, if I ask the same question about Moonen and his final dish....I would *never* have picked venison as his protein to represent himself. Could be quirky editing by the elves, I suppose, but it seems less in character to me.

[nomnomnom]

I thought JR's comment was strange considering in the USA deer population is growing so fast that they might be reaching a starvation phase in many portions of the country.

Deer continue to be the leading animal killer of humans, and behind only mosquitoes and humans as our predators.

If something is not done to bring in a volunteer deer killing army (hunters) in the next 20 years we could be looking at deer kills outnumbering drunk driver kills. Non-sustainable my ass.

I don't understand the fascination with NZ venison except insofar as they seem to have a factory farm infrastructure set up there. And setting up a similar factory farm structure here does not serve the USA purposes.

[Daniel Mantell]

@Jay, specifically "I know I should shut up but..."

No. You shouldn't shut up, and thank you for choosing not to. Giving the public insight into your decisions definitely opens you up to criticism, and I hope you are able to engage with the fair criticism and shrug off the rest. Regardless, I appreciate the opportunity to get further insight into the dishes, and your willingness to engage. I hope this experience won't turn you off to doing so in the future, and hey, why not encourage your fellow judges to do the same :).

[Mann of Sandd]

This is the best blog ever (well, this and Joe Posnanski's)

[Krazikarl]

@nomnomnom

I dont think that the objection is to venison, but to NZ venison. I dont think that we would have heard anything about this if it was regular old venison from the US.

But I can see why somebody might ask a question about sustainability and the environment when somebody specifically uses venison from pretty much the most distant place there is when, as you have pointed out, it would be much more easily gotten from someplace much closer to home. Its a valid question.

And the bottom line is that it appears by all accounts that Moonen had a horrid response to this valid question. If he had explained that "sustainability" and "green" were being conflated, I think that he would have been home free. Especially if he had stated that there was some taste reason to justify the selection (which he might very well have). He also could have saved himself if he had pointed out that the meat was shipped in a fuel saving way, which he only did long after the fact for some reason.

But the "I'm no tree-hugger" response was just bad given that his whole spiel is sustainability, so at that point he deserved a small loss for poor defense if nothing else. People in the past have lost due to an inability to defend their decisions, so Rayner is hardly out of line given the competition's history.

[nomnomnom]

Yes, there were lots of better responses that RM could have given, but he shouldn't have been put in that situation to begin with.

Also NZ is in a different hemisphere I am not sure the breeding cycle versus USA. This could explain why NZ venison shows up more in the US, but it seems NZ venison is omnipresent on menus so I don't know. Axis deer seem to be the second most common and those are as easy to raise as your common housecat.

And before someone points it out I am aware you can't sell game meat you shot yourself or hire someone to do it for profit. That's not what I am suggesting in the slightest.

So, yes I guess I am getting caught up in the nomenclature here just like Rick did.

[Danny]

Krazikarl, here's the problem I have. I don't write about food for a living, I don't review restaurants and I don't spend the majority of my working life dealing with food. Given that, even I know that sustainable food has absolutely nothing to do with carbon footprints and flying proteins in airplanes. Moonen shouldn't have had to answer the question because it didn't need to be asked in the first place. If we were reading about New Zealand deer being on endangered species lists than Moonen should have been dinged and criticized for his choice. But it's not and I don't see anything hypocritical about him using that particular protein. Whether it accurately portrays who he is - that's very much something that should be up for discussion.

It would be nice if both men would have the maturity to back off, agree to disagree, and for Jay, in particular, to admit that his comments about Moonen and Las Vegas being counter to the notion of sustainable food were just flat out wrong.

[Krazikarl]

But it's not and I don't see anything hypocritical about him using that particular protein.

I agree, BUT the issue is really that he was unable to defend himself coherently.

I've found in life, and especially when being judged, that its often not about whether you are actually right or wrong, but about whether or not you can convince other people that you are right (or at least defend yourself if criticized). If somebody criticizes you for something and you can't coherently defend yourself, it often doesnt actually matter if you are actually right or not.

This is especially true in competitions. If you are being judged and you can't defend yourself, you are going to get dinged whether or not you were actually right. Being able to defend your position is also a key skill in pretty much all professions. Its also clearly been a judging criteria throughout the history of Top Chef.

I dont buy the "it shouldnt have even been asked since it was so obvious". If it was so straight forward, Moonen should have been able to smash the objection immediately and move on. Plus, sustainability is often (but not always) associated with environmentalism in general, so I think that it was completely reasonable question to ask. If Moonen really does only care about sustainability and not carbon footprints so much, then he should have said so. If he had gone that route it would have been unreasonable to get dinged.

[Danny]

Sorry to belabor the point and to even be absurd - should he be asked to defend his use of venison as it relates to nuclear proliferation or recycling or riding bikes to work? It's serving someone venison and being asked to explain how it relates to a coffee table. It's a dumb question and what has confounded me since this all first came up is that somehow a writer who calls himself a food expert doesn't understand what sustainable food means (he hasn't heard of Chilean Sea Bass and the overfishing?). And saying that Vegas violates that - I've got news for Jay, Vegas is no more or less "sustainable" than Manhattan or London proper. All three depend on food being brought in from somewhere else and none of them would last a week without it.

[Daniel Mantell]

@Danny

You are belaboring the point and being absurd. If you have to resort to hyperbole in order to make your point, that's a good indication that your point isn't strong ;).

'Sustainable' and 'Green' are certainly different, but it is pretty silly to pretend that the relationship between the two is as tenuous as that between venison and nuclear proliferation. It was perfectly reasonable for Raynor to bring it up as a ding, and it would have been very easy for Moonen ameliorate it by drawing the distinction. He didn't. He instead chose to say 'I'm a chef, not a tree-hugger.' This had the net effect of not only losing the argument, but also of further degrading his brand.

I don't know much about London, but in terms of New York, your understanding of 'sustainability' in terms of a city context is flawed. When one talks about 'sustainability' in terms of a city, you are generally talking about water, since things like 'food' and 'energy' are usually a wash. New York gets its water from upstate NY, which has a more or less stable water table. Vegas gets most of its water from the colorado river, a source already strained by 'unsustainable' agriculture and cities such as LA. If you want to argue the 'sustainability' of LA vs Vegas, there is definitely ample grist for the mill. If you want to argue Manhattan vs. Vegas, there is not.

Part of the problem here is that you are blowing off steam. Another part is that I don't think you have a solid understanding of these terms. And an even huger part of the problem is that these terms are used in ambiguous, blanket, and impractical ways.

Raynor had a question about Moonen's branding, and whether it was stupid or not is utterly irrelevant. Regardless of whether his question was stupid or not, Moonen gave a stupid answer.

[Skillet Doux]

*TWEEEEEEEET*

Hokay, all... please, continue. But I'd consider it a personal favor if we can ratchet it down just a notch.

Thanks :-)

[Jules702]

Chef Rick Moonen was sustainable in his choice of Venison from New Zealand. If you care about the message he has and continues to convey in his cooking you should read his response to Jay Raynor’s attack on his integrity on his blog @ http://www.chefrickmoonen.blogspot.com

[DF]

What bothers me most about Rayner's position is that Moonen has had a [wonderful] career that predates Rayner's work as a food writer. Does his record count for nothing? Does his decades of attempts to quell overfishing count for nothing? It's not just a matter of what he practiced in his restaurants, but the amount of time he spent fighting for and publicizing this cause.

In the footage we saw, Moonen was inarticulate in "defending" himself; my impression was that he was offended and reacted impetuously. But this wasn't a dissertation defense. Rayner's contention that Moonen was somehow branding himself as "fish guy" is truly insulting to someone with Moonen's credentials, who proved at Molyvos, and many other places, that although fish may be his favorite protein, he is interested and adept in cooking a wide range of food.

[Sam]

Interesting to me that RM gets some heat for making mutiple comments in a single blog, yet Rayner is out trolliing and responding to multiple blogs-- and repeating his same, flawed nonsense.

It's food not politics and not a form for political-correctness!

Get over it Jay. You were wrong and have seriously damaged the intergity of the TCM frachise.

[Laurie Constantino]

Just finished reading Jay Rayner's book on food sustainability called A Greedy Man in a Hungry World. Based on his research he says about the incident on Top Chef Masters, "it requires me to apologize to Rick Moonen. Having read [the research], I can now say that while it's in no way certain it's possible venison raised in New Zealand and shipped to California could well be more sustainable than the alternatives in California. At least he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Sorry Mr. Moonen."

While the book is interesting, Rayner is such an egoist, it's hard to get through.