Too Much Salt for a Top Chef
Too Much Salt for a Top Chef by Roxanne McDonald
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Either I am too far behind (which is quite possible) in doing write-ups, or “Top Chef” is so mellow this season that I forget to do recaps when episodes air. |
I suspect it is a little of both. So my ADD-burdened failure to keep up aside, where’s the intransigence? Where’s the egocentrism? The season three first two/three episodes are really short on in-fighting, back-biting, and all that
sociodynamic good stuff we sickly rely upon in reality TV programming.
Nevertheless, some good meals are provided the judges, some really weak performances reveal who will likely not be the next Top Chef, and some interesting race moments inevitably occur. So, I’ll just ramble instead of re-capping for episode two.
For instance, how is it that a Top Chef contender—who has, I presume, gone through several stages of auditioning, can serve up a gourmet dish that is too salty? I can understand how a meal might be too high-end or not high-end enough, given how the criteria can be so subjective.
But I can’t wrap my brain around a skilled and talented chef who over-salts. From what I learned back when I was a kid and learning to bake and cook the hard way (by way of several horrid mistakes), one waits for the dish to set, or cook up, until tasting for the salt quotient…as salt takes awhile to appear, or comes on stronger the more time it steeps/sets.
Either the haste is making for fast-food level saltiness, or the chef has a lazy palate? (You know, how as we get older, for instance, we taste differently, or depending upon what gender we are, we have a keener or duller sense of smell.
Okay, enough of that. Geesh, this is what I use my spare time driving to the post office for…thinking about the nuances and possibilities of something as simple as NAcL.
Another phenom I have noticed (though can’t really call it a pattern happening as only three episodes have played) is what happened on “Shear Genius”: how when one of the contestants would win the challenge one week, the next would be in the bottom three. Is this cockiness sabotaging success…or is this some kind of cosmic balancing of the fates of all involved? Anyway, already Tre has made it to the top two (rivaling Hung) and the next week has fallen to the bottom five.
Scareee.
As for ego-clashing and subtle undermining (or overt sabotaging), not much has played out yet. No one is confronting anyone else and threatening stree thug
treatment; no one is shaving (or attempting to shave) anyone else’s head.
The only theme barely running through the show Top Chef is the theme of self-aggrandizement getting the one doing the crowing thrown out of the competition. Read: Micah and her ‘conk’ haughtiness…gets her nowhere but to the exit door.
I miss Marcel. Gawd, did I just say that?
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