Live Blogging Top Chef, Week 3
Welcome to the weekly web party that's as frivolous, sweet and pointless as a watermelon carpaccio. And also as tasty…yet tasteless too! Why not pull up a chair and imbibe?
It's also pit-free (that is, it's not the pits). And juicy, and—ok, that's enough of that. The show starts at 10 Eastern on Bravo, and the live blog takes place in the comments section below — where you make it happen! Just like y'all made it happen last week. Here are few highlights:
- Jennifer C. annoyed commenters by continuing to mispronounce the word "ceviche." Hey Jennifer, if you're out there, click here to listen to the correct pronunciation! I posted it just for you. (You're welcome!)
- Mattin (aka Tintin) took pains to tell us how much he really likes girls. Why do I suspect that this guy is more closeted than a mink coat in August?
- We played "How Stoned Is Padma?" By my highly unscientific calculations, the final scores — on a scale of 1 (slightly buzzed) to 5 (totally wasted) — averaged out as follows: Quickfire: 2.6; Elimination challenge 4.3. Conclusion: Padma, like a sous vide dish, gets baked slowly, over a prolonged period of time.
- Heneage reported seeing a "Chia Obama" commercial, which none of the rest of us saw and I thought he made up. But I've since discovered it's actually real. How did I not know this?
Speaking of Heneage, he also did this awesome thing: He sought and dined in three of the cheftestants' restaurants (all in Atlanta), and then reported his findings during the live-blog. You can read them here, but the upshot was that Eli's and Hector's restaurants were both merely good, but that Kevin's restaurant kicks ass — leading Heneage to predict that the bearded one will win it all. So this leads me to wonder: Can we get similar "field reports" from other live bloggers? I'll post the names and locations of the remaining cheftestants' restaurants in the comments section tonight, just in case anyone else wants to give it a try.
Meanwhile, I recently gave watching preview clips a try, and have this to report about tonight's episode:
- Ashley will attempt to make a dish called (if I heard her correctly) "potato 'n' yucky." If I were her, I'd focus on the "potato" and leave out the "yucky."
- The elimination meal will be cooked for the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds who, disappointingly, do not have wooden puppet heads like the Thunderbirds I used to watch as a kid.
- Mark Peel will be guest judge, looking much as he did when we last saw him on Top Chef Masters — except I think his ears may have grown even bigger since then, if that's possible.
- Fights will erupt over pots of boiling water and such, and anger and bleep-swearing will make a welcome return to the Top Chef kitchen. Now, if at least one chef accidentally sets fire to something, we'll really have our old show back!
Speaking of fire, it's almost time to set fire to our keyboards. (Figuratively, I mean. Don't actually do that.) So let's flex those phalanges and get ready to rumble!