Top Cheffing It Up

So, is after the last episode of the season the wrong time to start blogging about a TV show? Probably, but as the second season of Top Chef drew to a close last night I realized that even with the extreme soapiness of the season, what with the assaults and the accusations of cheating and whatnot, there were some things worth talking about.


Photo by Carin Baer/Bravo, from the New York Times

Surprisingly, I found myself totally uninterested in who won. Sure, Ilan probably made a better menu, and it's probably true that he's more ready to be a chef right now, but so what?

I think we (the viewers of Top Chef) got spoiled last season when the producers lucked into Harold Dieterle, who really seemed to be a Platonic Ideal of what a chef should be -- a good leader, smart food mind, and a nice guy on top of it. I imagine there are a lot more Ilans and Marcels in the food world than there are Harolds. And of course we're not just talking about the food world with this show, we're talking about the reality TV world, too, and in the intersection of the two I think it was a small miracle that Harold got on the show, let alone managed to win.

That said, there were a couple of interesting things last night. First, did Sam totally lie when asked about the dish that replaced the fish? He said that he put the dish together for Marcel, and when the chefs complimented him and then asked if the sea beans were his idea, he said "yes." But the original idea for the dish included sea beans, as we saw when Marcel talked about the dish. Kudos to Sam for thinking on his feet and helping Marcel overcome the potentially fatal flaw of forgetting one of his proteins, but flat-out lying in response to a direct question is bush-league.

The final challenge made it pretty obvious that Marcel has absolutely no management skills. I mean, if you've watched the whole season, that's a big "duh," but wow, putting Mikey in charge of anything and then being surprised when it didn't get done well is just stupid. The guy measured out the wrong amount of milk, for God's sake! Sam's comment that "a line cook is only as good as his chef" is BS, I think -- yes, maybe Marcel should have made it more clear to Sam & Mikey what the big picture was, but if their job was to make sure everything got onto the speed cart, that has nothing to do with the big picture and everything to do with following instructions. If you can't keep your quarts and your cups straight, you shouldn't be counted on to do anything more important than, I don't know, wash vegetables.

Marcel's not blameless -- when he went into the fridge and saw the sauces or whatever which had been left off, he should have taken a minute to make sure nothing else was left behind -- but come on. Forgetting the main part of a dish? Ridiculous.

I haven't talked about Ilan much because Ilan was Ilan. He made good food, his kitchen worked well, he survived Betty's plating incompetence, and he deserved the win. As a chef, I like him. As a person, he's pretty much a dick. But like I said earlier, that's almost to be expected in this field.

One other thing I noticed is that in both the semifinal and the final, Marcel used his molecular gastronomy techniques just right. Lots of people seem to have lots of problems with molecular gastronomy, but I'm not one of them. I like the whole concept (in theory -- I have yet to make my way to Moto, or WD-50, or Fat Duck), and am excited to see how chefs integrate these new techniques with more traditional ones.

One argument I hear a lot is that molecular gastronomy lacks "soul," Another is that chefs sometimes end up using these techniques for the sake of the technique, with no regard for their appropriateness. Marcel definitely strikes me as the kind of chef who might be inspired to cook something a certain way because it looks cool, regardless of how it tastes. He might be inclined to gelatinize something just because he can. Certainly throughout this season we saw plenty of pointless foams, and he did seem inordinately proud of his toolbox.

In the semi-final, though, his pineapple "poi" drew raves for achieving something that couldn't be achieved any other way, and this time he only used (or tried to use) two sciency techniques: the isomalt teardrop and the sodium alginate. The teardrop didn't work, and he was very smart to scrap it (although even if it had worked the course still would have been nothing but a salad with a fancy dressing device). All season Tom Colicchio has been on chefs to never put out an item that isn't as good as it could be, and this was a situation where Marcel could have ignored that advice. Maybe the prospect of failing in front of Wiley Dufresne was what gave him pause, but whatever the reason, he did the right thing. The coffee caviar, made with sodium alginate (the same technique Morimoto just used against Homeru Cantu on Iron Chef America last week) was a big hit. There didn't appear to be any foams on any of his plates, and I have to assume that during the break between the season and the finals, Marcel grew up a bit and realized that there is a time and place for those techniques, and using them wisely can add quite a bit to a meal.

So that's it, season two is over. Once you get past the ridiculous product placements, the petty squabbles, the absurd constraints, and Padme's stoner-hottie drawl, there's some pretty good food there, and it makes for pretty good TV. Bring on season three -- just give me more Harold and less Ilan.

(Also worth reading on the Top Chef tip: Grub Street, and, of course, Tom Colicchio's blog.