26 July 2007

Bourdain in for Colicchio

    The ability to make a brilliant, creatively-dazzling and delicious plate of food is near worthless if you can’t do it again and again--exactly the same way--at high speed, under the gun, hung over, after a night of fierce Negroni drinking...while listening to Mexican thrash metal.
      Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain is guest blogging for on Tom Colicchio's "Top Chef" blog. There are two posts so far. Classic Bourdain, but you'll probably need to have seen the show for context.

P.S. I have to admit, I didn't know what a Negroni was before I looked it up.

4 comments:

Rob said...

We started watching Top Chef this season. I thought it was a Hell's kitchen rip off (or the other way around) and since we watched Hell's Kitchen didn't want to get sucked into another chef reality show.

Turns out - Top Chef is by far the better show. Where Hell's kitchen is about chefs learning a restaurant's menu and serving it up every week on a consistent basis, Top Chef is completely and utterly about the creative process. The challenges on Hell's kitchen can sometimes be creative, but since the chefs on the show aren't always true chefs (one's a nanny who cooks for a family, another a line chef in a waffle house) they lack the training the chefs on top chef have.

Also - Top Chef is that much more civilized - Gordon Ramsay yells and curses at his chefs, but the judges on Top Chef are honest and decent to their chefs.

Top Chef is by far a winner in my book.

--*Rob

Sharon GR said...

I've never watched Hell's Kitchen. I've heard too much about the abusive chef to have any interest in it (if I wanted to see a crazy chef I'd still be working for her.)

We really like Top Chef. They drive up the drama, of course, but it seems to be a somewhat accurate test of the cooks' skills. And it's always entertaining.

DBK said...

The chefs on Top Chef have some serious chops, from what I can see.

The Hell's Kitchen people are ambitious nobodies who are willing to put up with abuse in order to be on television and win a prize. The quality of HK cheftestants has gone downhill rapidly and I think that's because anyone with real mad skillz wouldn't put up with that crap.

Andrew said...

Agreed. And Season 3 has really good crop of chefs. Season 2's chefs seemed kind of weak, especially the finalists. This group seems a lot stronger - more like Season 1. You also like them a lot more.