My First, and Last, Posting About Top Chef

After hearing several positive reviews from several friends - Amy in particular - Lou and and I succumbed to watching a few episodes of Top Chef last night.

The show has gotten a lot of news in San Francisco because four of the contestants are from here: Zoi Antonitsas (chef and restaurant consultant) and Jennifer Biesty (executive chef at Coco500) (they're a couple), Erik Hopfinger (executive chef at Circa), and Ryan Scott (the former chef of Myth Cafe).

Amy told us that she enjoys seeing what kinds of dishes the chefs create, and after watching last night, I can see her point. It was fun to see what the chefs could come up with for their dishes, especially given the limited parameters for the various challenges (usually time or strict ingredient or menu guidelines).

And yet, I found the reality television trappings of the show tiresome. I groaned every time the producers took a dramatic pause and cued the suspenseful music. The show should be called survivor chef, not top chef. It's really just a contest about who can best perform under the artificial conditions set by the producers. It is probably not the best medium for showcasing the talent and skill of most of the contestants. I'm also not sure that the show truly reflects how chefs really cook. How many chefs cook almost entirely by improvisation? Perhaps a few, but I suspect most of them take time to craft and refine the dishes they serve.

I was also put off that the show focused so heavily on the personalities of the chefs and that, as a consequence, the food was practically overlooked. No shot of any one dish lasted for more than a few seconds, and the producers barely allowed the chefs more than a clipped sentence to explain their dishes. With a few exceptions, we heard almost nothing about the passions of any of the chefs for particular ingredients or foods. Perhaps we will hear more about the food itself as the number of contestants narrow, but I was disappointed that food got so little play in these first few episodes.