“Who Knows What Tomorrow Will Bring” or Top Sushi Chef

The rumor mill has it that Eric Ripert (gush, gush) has said that the current contestants on Top Chef are not so “top”; "this is the best you could find", said he. Ouch! That's gotta hurt. Eric Ripert calling Tom out on his responsibility to this lousy season—because those of you not in the “know” Chef Ripert could out cook Tom Colicchio in any competition. But that being said Tom Colicchio could wipe the floor with me--so I will try to abstain from judgment (Tom's in it for the money).

Okay I’ve rethought that statement above; this would be a rather boring post if I left the deeply intrusive judgment out of it. So for the sake of the readers, for the sake of you, I will go outside my limit of comfort and judge away. But I do this only for you, the readers.

First things first. Who presses their jackets? I mean really! How am I to believe that these folks are "Top Chefs" if they don't even sniff their socks to see if their clean? A chef doesn't have time for laundry! These people have cake lives. They get paid $10, 000 for a month of work, they live in a loft in downtown LA, they get to rub elbows with some of the most infamous chefs in the world, and they get to wake up to Ilan every morning (swoon). Those jackets are a little to clean for my taste. My jackets are all blood stained. Hold that thought—finger cramp—I better go do some yoga…

Next I thought about starting the rumor that Mia is pregnant, but I thought that would be poor taste. She's just sick with the “stomach flu" in the middle of summer in LA. Sure.

The first competition was all about sushi. I was excited because the public had an opportunity to see the intricacies of the work of a chef with something as special as sushi. Bravo really disappointed me. They've made this competition more about the personalities and less about the food. Maybe that's because of the aforementioned comment that Chef Ripert has made--maybe the food isn't that good this time around. They could have had a nice lesson about how to choose fresh fish, how to use a maki mat, how to make sushi rice, etc. But no—this competition was about Mia throwing up.

I’ve eaten a lot of sushi in my day. Sushi Roku is one of my least favorite sushi places I’ve ever visited. So why are these competitors so excited to meet Chef Hiroshi Shima? Is it because he is so authentic he has an interpreter that follows him around making nice with the competitors? I mean the man owns several restaurants in the US, are you really serious that he’s never bothered to learn English? Woah, he must be the real deal.

I voted against Cliff. Not that I have anything against black people, but I have something against fruit and fish. I’m sooooooooooooooooooo over it. I thought Elia would win. She’s very sophisticated and clean. I really liked her presentation. But as this is not taste-o-vision, I can’t know for sure. Apparently the “so authentic he doesn’t speak English” sushi Chef thought that olives and sushi was a good combo, but that mango and oysters were better. Sheesh.

Apparently Bravo is doing their part in international relations and they decided to use a bunch of Americans to stage a cook off between the Koreans and the Vietnamese. FYI Bravo—Kim Jong-Il is using this episode as propaganda, and he is really unhappy about the use of paprika and calling it “Korean food”.

What bothered me the most about this competition (well besides the fact that the people who attended the function were apparently really wealthy and fed really well despite the fact that this was an event to raise awareness about starving Asian-Americans) was that all of the competitors know so little about the countries cuisines that they faux-fusion-ed it. I mean, “Jasmine Panna Cotta”? Do they know that most people of Asian decent do not have the enzyme to digest lactose? How did the competitors even know what country flag they were looking at on their knives? There must have been a prompter off camera that looked a little something like this:



I’m being insensitive. Of course they don’t know anything about “that part of the world”; it has, after all, been wiped out of our history books.

I think my favorite part of the show was when the Korean team drank sangria while creating the menu. BTW Ilan + sangria + pink shirt = good. Have I mentioned how much I love Elia? I think we would be friends if I didn’t have so many already.

So the real controversy was of course all about the lychees. Leave it up to Marisa to get all “rulesy” on us. Of course as we all know it was actually a pretty good maneuver on her part; distract from the cooking and go for the integrity card. Never mind that Otto was the better cook than her in this competition—but he took the lychees without paying for them—now that’s grounds for losing at a competition called, “Top Chef”. Actually I would like to bring up the point that Marisa knew about the stolen lychees about 2 minutes after Otto did and she let everyone leave the store anyway. But Tom and the rest of the crew, even Otto himself, were manipulated into believing that Marisa is oh-so trustworthy and Otto is a lying, thieving bastard that took a box of Lychees from the poor, chain-grocery store owning Koreans. Whatever. If they really had thought this through, they could have asked to see the manager and finagled a free box of lychees for the starving Asian-Americans.

This whole episode bummed me out. The only part that made me feel all warm and fuzzy was when Padma misquoted Ming as saying, “I agree with Ming, ‘if you can’t make good rice you shouldn’t be in the kitchen” when he actually said, “Tom and I both know if you make bad rice, make it again” but he was so busy looking at Padma’s breasts that he didn’t object. Then Padma gets up to go bring “team Vietnam” in and Ming checks out the goods from behind. Awww that’s sweet, Ming has a little crush on Padma. Ming and Padma sitting in a tree…

Overall this episode made me so angry I can’t wait to tune in next week and watch this train wreck again. Until then I’ll be questioning Ilan’s sexuality.

tt