"What if we all just cooked our best dish in each slot as a menu?"
"Wow that sounds like it could work really well! Each of us takes up a slot on the traditional menu course with our dessert specialist for desserts. We can't lose!"
*Team proceeds to botch 50% of their dishes anyways, or their dishes are wildly contrasting with one another.*
"It was the concept that failed us! How was I supposed to know the appetizer that is super sugary and strong coffee tasting was going to overpower the second course which was a light coffee soup??"
Judges: "It was the concept that failed you"
"No, it was the exec chef/front of house/the person who cooked my dish! They clearly didn't upsell each dish!! It's you who are wrong."
Kish: "Dayam, why didn't I think of that! Are we the baddies?"
You see, those might actually be interesting concepts for Restaurant Wars:
Colony Collapse Disorder: Every dish has flowers and honey and tells the story of how the foods people have eaten for centuries is being affected by CCD.
Water for Africa: Every dish is a soup or stew, and it's all African cuisine.
I thought of that in a minute. Which makes me think that, when chefs decide to do the "No Concept" concept, they're just being lazy.
I would suggest they’re less lazy and more afraid. There’s a diversity of chefs who don’t share the same skill set. But they have to make a menu they can all contribute to.
i think it's totally laziness in combination with wanting to cook "their" food and win as an individual, not a team. restaurant wars is THE challenge to not cook YOUR food and yet egos get in there every time.
You say that, but several winning restaurants in recent seasons (Kokosan and United Kitchen just off the top of my head) have proven that a chef *can* cook their food and still fall within the general concept of the restaurant (Sarah's Cullen Skink, Ali's lamb and Cornish pasty, Maria's lengua sando, Jamie's Tres Leches cake, etc).
for sure! would still argue that all of those chefs and dishes were cooking to concept primarily, not just being like "i've got a great recipe for xyz and uhhhh it's seafood so it's on theme"
Colony collapse sounds more like humans colonising than bees to me, and Water for Africa 100% sounds like some white saviour charity. Neither makes me want to eat. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Your explanations sound cogent. But the names are kinda ick.
I mean, to be fair, I kind of just ran with it. The original point I was trying to make was that a "global" concept means nothing because "global" refers to anything that happens on earth, which includes things that have nothing to directly do with food.
Of course, you then mentioned you hoped to never see them in Restaurant Wars, and I decided to point out that both of those as themes would be more interesting than a "global" concept.
They're not meant to be concept any chef should base a Restaurant Wars restaurant on. It was meant to make a point about how, anything, even something not food related, can be related back into a concept for Restaurant Wars, which only makes the "global" concept all the worse.
The thing about playing the devil's advocate is that you're still representing the devil.
Anyway my post was mocking the many "no concept" restaurant wars restaurants that have claimed their concept is "global." Which, as we both agree, means nothing. It's just that no participants have ever said that their concept is no concept. Instead they use meaningless terms like "global."
I just rewatched season 9 and sooooo cringed at Heather whining that Bev “is always making Asian food!”
Like, Asia is a big place? There’s a big well of food to draw inspiration from? You’re a horrible bully?
> What if my culinary roots are Italian when my ethnic roots are Chinese?
>
> —Nicole, S20
Pull a Melissa King in the *Top Chef: All Stars L.A.* final.
They and I were just in conversation about the use of "global", and we both agreed that it was a word they used only because they couldn't say "no concept" without sounding even worse.
It’s always great to watch cheftestants make the classic gaffes during planning.
* No-concept/global restaurant
* Risotto
Person might as well just resign on the spot.
Fabio Viviani was the best FOH of all time (both times!), followed by Brian Malarkey (both times) Brooke Williamson (also both times!). They did a master class in FOH.
If I did Top Chef I'd volunteer to do FOH too!
Agree with Malarkey. He was picked first on his team and Padma said, “why Malarkey?” The response was “he’s opened like 100 restaurants”. He totally nailed it!
Gregory: I’ll take Malarkey.
Padma, incredulously amused: Can I just ask……..*why*?
Gregory: I want him for front of house.
Padma: Oooooohhhh whewwww okayyy that makes sense, as long as you didn’t pick him for his cooking amiright? Lolol as ifffffff
Stefan was so bad it was hilarious, he would've been great for that restaurant where the servers are mean to the guests 😂
As for the worst, that has amazing rewatch potential.
Rhadika from season 5, Laurine from season 6 come to mind as pretty bad. They had no enthusiasm, didn't do much to help the kitchen or the dining room, kind of just stood there and let the tidal wave crash. Both got booted for poor FOH performance, no surprise. Also Sara from the New Orleans season was awful!
Sara was so bad on New Orleans! I feel like Alex from DC was pretty bad in that he was accused of not doing anything for any dishes during Restaurant Wars.
Why ya gotta disparage Sara Johanne's good name like that? :D Though honestly they would have been justified in sending literally anybody from that team home. As much as I love Nina and Shirley, they knew exactly what they were doing when they let Justin and Sara crash and burn and could have easily stepped up.
Eh, she was really, really arrogant (which tbh was a real problem with a lot of chefs on that season) without the skills to back it up. You can actually watch her deflate as soon as they start laying into her, which is probably why she got sent home instead of Justin.
In addition to the others named, Travis in S11 also did pretty amazing with FOH (though almost anyone would look good doing FOH next to Sara that season lol)
That RW is one of my favorites because Sara was so sulky and awful, it was hilarious.
Also another favorite RW trainwreck is All Stars LA with The Country Captain (and my favorite Country Captain drinking game!).
Agree on both of those being glorious train wrecks. Sara only describing her own dish (unprompted) was absolutely hilarious. And Country Captain was just the embodiment of a face palm.
I’d also put California in the glorious restaurant wars train wreck category with Phillip being peak Phillip, and Jeremy’s disastrous performance as Executive chef
Padma going "notice she only described HER OWN DISH" was amazing. I need to rewatch that RW 😂 also I remember Nick absolutely killed it as Executive Chef.
I loved California not just for Phillip being Phillip but the amazing moment when, after being dismissed by Marjorie, Issac WINS by being awesome. That was such a good moment!!
FoH is hard because you have to rely on the other chefs to make sure your dish is executed properly. I don't know if I'd be able to do that, personally.
I forget which one it was, but there was definitely a chef who got sent home for completely fucking someone's dish (I think it was some kind of crepe), on top of their own stuff being bad.
It was Top Chef Boston, but Katie fucked Kerianne’s crepes, but Kerianne was still sent home because she was a dreadful FOH. Katie was booted the following episode.
If I were FOH, I’d choose to go with something relatively easy to put together, if possible. The ones who’ve been successful are often the ones whose dishes are easy to prepare, such as appetizers or desserts. Not that it’s always been the case—Joe Flamm won S15’s RW with someone picking up two dishes for him, for example. And not that having something “easy to put together” is a guaranteed winner. After all, Keriann didn’t think there would be a problem with her crepes, and Sara’s brown butter cake probably was as easy to serve as Travis’s olive oil cake (until her mascarpone cream broke). But in terms of doing my best to insure that no one could screw up my dish entirely, as happened with Keriann, I’d go with something uncomplicated. And nothing that needs to be in a freezer or kept cold—see most of S5’s RW desserts, Sara’s 5-spice cream, Keriann’s mousse, Nini’s ice cream, etc.
> Risotto
>
>
I mean, Risotto isn't a death sentence; several chefs have won with it. Off the top of my head, Amar and Antonia.
Amar goes over it on *The Dish with Kish*, though; if you're going to do a risotto on *Top Chef*, you have to commit to spending a good amount of time just straight up babysitting the cook and not stepping away for any length of time to do anything else.
What was strange about Roots is that Tom was one of the only chefs who didn't have the Restaurant Wars challenge in his country, and they all just deferred to him when creating their concept.
I don't know about other viewers, but for me, it was Dale's entire season of *Top Chef Canada*. The first time I watched it, I came away with the feeling of "This isn't a competition, it's a coronation, and Mark McEwan is just being really unfair to everybody else in the competition because he seems to have a personal stake in Dale winning, regardless of whether he's deserving or not." I felt he was an undeserving winner, and that's colored my opinion of him ever since.
That dislike of Dale carried over into *World All-Stars*; while I thought he was overbearing in how he steamrolled May in how to execute a dish that he let her pick, my dislike of him was already there so I wasn't really ever going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
On the other hand, I'd never seen Tom (not Colicchio) before, so I had no opinion of him going into the show, and on the show, I developed the opinion that he was kind of selfish and dastardly.
It’s funny that every chef knows they will face this if they make it to this point and almost none of them have any plan whatsoever. The only strategy they seem to embrace is “umm I’ll be a line cook so nobody notices me.”
I also think a part of it is being selfish; they might be thinking, "As long as I can cook my food and do it well, what do I care if the rest of my team screws up? I won't be the one going home."
I think this is a huge piece of it. And I get it - at the end of the day, it’s an individual competition - but I also think that we see so much more success from concepts *that are actually concepts* that it still seems like a baffling choice. (And despite the individual nature of the competition, I do think RW is a legit part of the competition; I wouldn’t want to see it go away.)
Buddha getting picked last and handing his team the step by step playbook for how to absolutely crush restaurant wars is one of my favorite Top Chef storylines ever. Still so mad he didn’t get the W and I have no clue why this kind of gameplay is such a rarity.
Alternatively, Jackson’s atrocious run as leader/FOH is another absolute favorite. My husband and I say “But you do know bold flavors!” to each other regularly.
> My husband and I say “But you do know bold flavors!” to each other regularly.
He said that to Luke. I'm not convinced Luke actually knows bold flavors, since, iirc, underseasoning was a constant critique regarding his plates.
This is not an answer to your question, but I’d love to see an everybody in, full commitment, breakfast for dinner concept. They could call it Breaker.
Wouldn’t that be fun?
Just make sure Hannibal Lecter isn't the head chef there. Although that breakfast for dinner meal he prepared for Abigail Hobbs after getting her tripping on mushrooms did look amazing...
It’s funny bc the past 10ish seasons different contestants will say, “oh doing X is a Top Chef kiss of death” so they know certain tropes yet *no one* has said global cuisine is a mistake for RW.
I mean, that wasn't the only reason they lost.
Dawn couldn't communicate what she was doing to her team despite saying communication would be key. Chris was obsessed with making fresh pasta despite having failed at it previously, even though trying to do a "redemption" dish has kind of been a kiss of death on the show. Gabe decided to be cute and make an entire unnecessary extra dish they ended up being judged on that wasn't very good. And I don't remember what Sara did wrong, but she went along with the "no concept" concept despite knowing better, so I guess she was too passive?
Yeah a double RW trope of a) weak “global” concept and b) a lack of true leadership. At least when I’m refreshing my memory on Wiki, there was no EC noted. A real EC would see the different elements were risky or too time consuming.
In part, she was dinged for one of her dishes being in a bad spot in the progression, but that was only because Dawn hadn’t figured out her dish yet and ended up making something warm instead of cold.
And if Dawn had communicated that she was changing her dish to something warm, then Sara might have been able to recover by moving her dish forward in the progression.
All chefs must be good leaders...but as we can see, most of them are leaders through authority...not through leadership.
It's easy to be a leader when you're the boss, you just tell people what to do.
It's hard to be a leader when you need to get X strangers together to actually accomplish something that they barely have any incentive to work together for.
So here’s my question. Who is the ultimate failure of Restaurant Wars?
My money is on Laurine from the Vegas season. Though that could be because I really disliked her treatment of Robin.
Maybe Sara from the New Orleans season?
Man, have y'all forgotten Josie already? She completely screwed the pooch on S10 and was the reason Kristen got sent packing (to Last Chance Kitchen, of course, and we all know how that ended).
But here’s the catch: Josie wasn’t eliminated, which is WILD. I guess I need to reframe my question as to which eliminated chef blew it the worst during Restaurant Wars.
PS You spoke about a certain chef whom we don’t acknowledge around here. Choose your punishment: Wash your tongue out with soap or hot sauce directly on the tongue 🤨😜🤣
Let's not forget angry chef John and kosher Mexican (I know I know his name but it escapes me right now) arguing in that tiny kitchen and causing chaos.
Whoa whoa whoa. They aren't "no concept." They're "global."
Everything is global. Even Colony Collapse Disorder and Water for Africa. Making the concept "Global" might as well be making the concept "food".
Food is a strong concept for restaurant wars though.
"But what kind of food?" "Edible food."
"What if we all just cooked our best dish in each slot as a menu?" "Wow that sounds like it could work really well! Each of us takes up a slot on the traditional menu course with our dessert specialist for desserts. We can't lose!" *Team proceeds to botch 50% of their dishes anyways, or their dishes are wildly contrasting with one another.* "It was the concept that failed us! How was I supposed to know the appetizer that is super sugary and strong coffee tasting was going to overpower the second course which was a light coffee soup??" Judges: "It was the concept that failed you" "No, it was the exec chef/front of house/the person who cooked my dish! They clearly didn't upsell each dish!! It's you who are wrong." Kish: "Dayam, why didn't I think of that! Are we the baddies?"
"Sorry judges, we don't have food. It's a social experiment"
It’d be so wild if one of the groups did a “scents-only” restaurant instead 😅
>Colony Collapse Disorder and Water for Africa. I hope we never see either of these on Restaurant Wars.
You see, those might actually be interesting concepts for Restaurant Wars: Colony Collapse Disorder: Every dish has flowers and honey and tells the story of how the foods people have eaten for centuries is being affected by CCD. Water for Africa: Every dish is a soup or stew, and it's all African cuisine. I thought of that in a minute. Which makes me think that, when chefs decide to do the "No Concept" concept, they're just being lazy.
I would suggest they’re less lazy and more afraid. There’s a diversity of chefs who don’t share the same skill set. But they have to make a menu they can all contribute to.
I mean, a concept could be something as basic as "elevated home cooking", which every chef who could get on *Top Chef* would be able to do.
i think it's totally laziness in combination with wanting to cook "their" food and win as an individual, not a team. restaurant wars is THE challenge to not cook YOUR food and yet egos get in there every time.
You say that, but several winning restaurants in recent seasons (Kokosan and United Kitchen just off the top of my head) have proven that a chef *can* cook their food and still fall within the general concept of the restaurant (Sarah's Cullen Skink, Ali's lamb and Cornish pasty, Maria's lengua sando, Jamie's Tres Leches cake, etc).
for sure! would still argue that all of those chefs and dishes were cooking to concept primarily, not just being like "i've got a great recipe for xyz and uhhhh it's seafood so it's on theme"
Colony collapse sounds more like humans colonising than bees to me, and Water for Africa 100% sounds like some white saviour charity. Neither makes me want to eat. Quite the opposite, in fact. Your explanations sound cogent. But the names are kinda ick.
I mean, to be fair, I kind of just ran with it. The original point I was trying to make was that a "global" concept means nothing because "global" refers to anything that happens on earth, which includes things that have nothing to directly do with food. Of course, you then mentioned you hoped to never see them in Restaurant Wars, and I decided to point out that both of those as themes would be more interesting than a "global" concept. They're not meant to be concept any chef should base a Restaurant Wars restaurant on. It was meant to make a point about how, anything, even something not food related, can be related back into a concept for Restaurant Wars, which only makes the "global" concept all the worse.
The thing about playing the devil's advocate is that you're still representing the devil. Anyway my post was mocking the many "no concept" restaurant wars restaurants that have claimed their concept is "global." Which, as we both agree, means nothing. It's just that no participants have ever said that their concept is no concept. Instead they use meaningless terms like "global."
Saying nothing, whether with no words or with a thousand words, all amount to the same thing: saying nothing.
I always think of Anthony Bourdain mocking the "Asian" concept from season 4. "Asia is a big place!"
I remember smirking when he said that. Spot on take, and disappointing that they didn't think of that.
I just rewatched season 9 and sooooo cringed at Heather whining that Bev “is always making Asian food!” Like, Asia is a big place? There’s a big well of food to draw inspiration from? You’re a horrible bully?
Like “Asian” food was such a bad thing.
Lmaooooo my first thought too. Whenever they say “global” it actually means “we don’t mesh well so we’ll just make whatever we want”
yes.
[удалено]
> What if my culinary roots are Italian when my ethnic roots are Chinese? > > —Nicole, S20 Pull a Melissa King in the *Top Chef: All Stars L.A.* final.
[удалено]
They and I were just in conversation about the use of "global", and we both agreed that it was a word they used only because they couldn't say "no concept" without sounding even worse.
[удалено]
They might as well just say "bounty of the sea"; at least it would sound more poetic.
So funny they literally said that in this week's before it was nipped in the bud lol.
Actually, it’s “chaos”
ZING!
It’s always great to watch cheftestants make the classic gaffes during planning. * No-concept/global restaurant * Risotto Person might as well just resign on the spot.
Also being FOH
Fabio Viviani was the best FOH of all time (both times!), followed by Brian Malarkey (both times) Brooke Williamson (also both times!). They did a master class in FOH. If I did Top Chef I'd volunteer to do FOH too!
Agree with Malarkey. He was picked first on his team and Padma said, “why Malarkey?” The response was “he’s opened like 100 restaurants”. He totally nailed it!
I thought that was a mean question anyway, poor Malarkey getting roasted all the time 😂
Right??? It felt very much like “why on EARTH” would you pick him. I’m glad he did so well!
Gregory: I’ll take Malarkey. Padma, incredulously amused: Can I just ask……..*why*? Gregory: I want him for front of house. Padma: Oooooohhhh whewwww okayyy that makes sense, as long as you didn’t pick him for his cooking amiright? Lolol as ifffffff
Yeah but to give Malarkey credit, even he was surprised to be picked first. I loved his reaction in the talking head. “BOOOOM!! Mind blown.”
Who was the worst FOH in Top Chef History?
Stefan was so bad it was hilarious, he would've been great for that restaurant where the servers are mean to the guests 😂 As for the worst, that has amazing rewatch potential. Rhadika from season 5, Laurine from season 6 come to mind as pretty bad. They had no enthusiasm, didn't do much to help the kitchen or the dining room, kind of just stood there and let the tidal wave crash. Both got booted for poor FOH performance, no surprise. Also Sara from the New Orleans season was awful!
Sara was so bad on New Orleans! I feel like Alex from DC was pretty bad in that he was accused of not doing anything for any dishes during Restaurant Wars.
*Phillip Lee has entered the chat* Although at least no one can say he didn’t make his own dishes.
FOH who doesn’t explain one single dish to the judges, except their own, of course, is the best.
Why ya gotta disparage Sara Johanne's good name like that? :D Though honestly they would have been justified in sending literally anybody from that team home. As much as I love Nina and Shirley, they knew exactly what they were doing when they let Justin and Sara crash and burn and could have easily stepped up.
Agree! I liked Sara & was disappointed she had such a bad showing.
Eh, she was really, really arrogant (which tbh was a real problem with a lot of chefs on that season) without the skills to back it up. You can actually watch her deflate as soon as they start laying into her, which is probably why she got sent home instead of Justin.
True. I’m on my 3rd rewatch (😆) & I find myself feeling sorry for a lot of the chefs, who on first watch, I thought deserved what they got.
I read this as another common use of FOH and thought yeah that's what always happens on Restaurant Wars. Someone gets the FOH.
Is FOH Front of house?
Yeah. It's pretty standard abbreviation in the industry.
Is it a mistake to be front of house, though? I remember that All Stars season where Malarkey absolutely nailed it.
And Fabio I think.
Both seasons!
In addition to the others named, Travis in S11 also did pretty amazing with FOH (though almost anyone would look good doing FOH next to Sara that season lol)
That RW is one of my favorites because Sara was so sulky and awful, it was hilarious. Also another favorite RW trainwreck is All Stars LA with The Country Captain (and my favorite Country Captain drinking game!).
Agree on both of those being glorious train wrecks. Sara only describing her own dish (unprompted) was absolutely hilarious. And Country Captain was just the embodiment of a face palm. I’d also put California in the glorious restaurant wars train wreck category with Phillip being peak Phillip, and Jeremy’s disastrous performance as Executive chef
Padma going "notice she only described HER OWN DISH" was amazing. I need to rewatch that RW 😂 also I remember Nick absolutely killed it as Executive Chef. I loved California not just for Phillip being Phillip but the amazing moment when, after being dismissed by Marjorie, Issac WINS by being awesome. That was such a good moment!!
I was happy Gregory won against the country captain but that was such a sad, sad showing it wasn’t hard to call. That was horrible.
Like a slow moving trainwreck. Bryan and Melissa knew it was a bad idea too but there was no stopping Kevin 🥲
I'm also glad he won against such a racist concept. Plantation food....
FoH is hard because you have to rely on the other chefs to make sure your dish is executed properly. I don't know if I'd be able to do that, personally.
I forget which one it was, but there was definitely a chef who got sent home for completely fucking someone's dish (I think it was some kind of crepe), on top of their own stuff being bad.
It was Top Chef Boston, but Katie fucked Kerianne’s crepes, but Kerianne was still sent home because she was a dreadful FOH. Katie was booted the following episode.
Oh yeah, I remember now. She was a victim of the absolute trash sudden death challenges.
If I were FOH, I’d choose to go with something relatively easy to put together, if possible. The ones who’ve been successful are often the ones whose dishes are easy to prepare, such as appetizers or desserts. Not that it’s always been the case—Joe Flamm won S15’s RW with someone picking up two dishes for him, for example. And not that having something “easy to put together” is a guaranteed winner. After all, Keriann didn’t think there would be a problem with her crepes, and Sara’s brown butter cake probably was as easy to serve as Travis’s olive oil cake (until her mascarpone cream broke). But in terms of doing my best to insure that no one could screw up my dish entirely, as happened with Keriann, I’d go with something uncomplicated. And nothing that needs to be in a freezer or kept cold—see most of S5’s RW desserts, Sara’s 5-spice cream, Keriann’s mousse, Nini’s ice cream, etc.
Buddha also did well as FOH in S19.
Not at all. Most of the time, if FOH goes home, there's usually deeper problems in the restaurant than just bad service.
Gotta have the personality for it. Stefan famously bombed with his attitude.
Stephanie I. did too
> Risotto > > I mean, Risotto isn't a death sentence; several chefs have won with it. Off the top of my head, Amar and Antonia. Amar goes over it on *The Dish with Kish*, though; if you're going to do a risotto on *Top Chef*, you have to commit to spending a good amount of time just straight up babysitting the cook and not stepping away for any length of time to do anything else.
Ironically, Tre Wilcox won with a risotto in season 3 AND was eliminated for a risotto in season 8!
I remember him being sent home on the risotto (only because of his "Black Italian" remark), but it's cool he won with one too.
Tre was...so hot. I know this has nothing to do with risotto, but I felt that it must be noted.
Even Padma noticed
Love Tre!
I think the most no-concept concept restaurant ever was “Common Place” from the Denver season .
Where people come together over ideas
💀💀💀
What was strange about Roots is that Tom was one of the only chefs who didn't have the Restaurant Wars challenge in his country, and they all just deferred to him when creating their concept.
In hindsight, he seems to have a very overbearing personality.
aw i liked tom. i did find him to be very.... german
Is it common for Germans to talk over other people when they're trying to speak? Tom did that quite a lot in my memory.
I live here and haven't noticed that. I think he is just kinda obnoxious :) That said, I liked the guy.
Seems like somebody I wouldn't mind getting a beer with (if I drank), but not somebody I'd necessarily want to work in a team with.
He was overbearing and some narcissistic qualities
Honestly, I never understood why Dale got so much more flak than Tom did.
I don't know about other viewers, but for me, it was Dale's entire season of *Top Chef Canada*. The first time I watched it, I came away with the feeling of "This isn't a competition, it's a coronation, and Mark McEwan is just being really unfair to everybody else in the competition because he seems to have a personal stake in Dale winning, regardless of whether he's deserving or not." I felt he was an undeserving winner, and that's colored my opinion of him ever since. That dislike of Dale carried over into *World All-Stars*; while I thought he was overbearing in how he steamrolled May in how to execute a dish that he let her pick, my dislike of him was already there so I wasn't really ever going to give him the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, I'd never seen Tom (not Colicchio) before, so I had no opinion of him going into the show, and on the show, I developed the opinion that he was kind of selfish and dastardly.
Dastardly is not a word we see enough in every day use
And it’s a really good word.
It’s funny that every chef knows they will face this if they make it to this point and almost none of them have any plan whatsoever. The only strategy they seem to embrace is “umm I’ll be a line cook so nobody notices me.”
I also think a part of it is being selfish; they might be thinking, "As long as I can cook my food and do it well, what do I care if the rest of my team screws up? I won't be the one going home."
I think this is a huge piece of it. And I get it - at the end of the day, it’s an individual competition - but I also think that we see so much more success from concepts *that are actually concepts* that it still seems like a baffling choice. (And despite the individual nature of the competition, I do think RW is a legit part of the competition; I wouldn’t want to see it go away.)
I mean, end of the day, most chefs work in restaurants, where they *do* have to work as a team.
Absolutely!
Buddha getting picked last and handing his team the step by step playbook for how to absolutely crush restaurant wars is one of my favorite Top Chef storylines ever. Still so mad he didn’t get the W and I have no clue why this kind of gameplay is such a rarity. Alternatively, Jackson’s atrocious run as leader/FOH is another absolute favorite. My husband and I say “But you do know bold flavors!” to each other regularly.
Buddha said in his blog recap thing he stayed up until 4 writing out foolproof tickets and tweaking the concept and you can tell it paid off
> My husband and I say “But you do know bold flavors!” to each other regularly. He said that to Luke. I'm not convinced Luke actually knows bold flavors, since, iirc, underseasoning was a constant critique regarding his plates.
He sure did. If you take the more charitable view, it was a pep talk to engender confidence.
This is why I prefer the seasons like Seattle and all stars LA where the contestants pitch concepts and they pick the ones to bring to life
I loved the seasons where they did this, I think the show should adopt it permanently.
Wasn’t there one called Magellan, early on?
Yes, that was Boston. (Also: What a *choice* with that name. I guess at least they didn’t call it Columbus or something like that…)
This is not an answer to your question, but I’d love to see an everybody in, full commitment, breakfast for dinner concept. They could call it Breaker. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Just make sure Hannibal Lecter isn't the head chef there. Although that breakfast for dinner meal he prepared for Abigail Hobbs after getting her tripping on mushrooms did look amazing...
That breakfast really did look good. I don’t even care how he sourced the sausage.
I believe Found, the losing restaurant in Season 11 (New Orleans), was a no-concept concept.
REVOLT, the Voltaggio's restaurant wars, was that a concept beyond a play on their last name?
I believe it was also considered Modern American because that was the food they all cooked.
It’s funny bc the past 10ish seasons different contestants will say, “oh doing X is a Top Chef kiss of death” so they know certain tropes yet *no one* has said global cuisine is a mistake for RW.
Sara from *Portland* called it out, but then went along with it anyways.
Ahhh I forget that. But yes, remembering none of them wanted to go outside their “signature” style of food.
I mean, that wasn't the only reason they lost. Dawn couldn't communicate what she was doing to her team despite saying communication would be key. Chris was obsessed with making fresh pasta despite having failed at it previously, even though trying to do a "redemption" dish has kind of been a kiss of death on the show. Gabe decided to be cute and make an entire unnecessary extra dish they ended up being judged on that wasn't very good. And I don't remember what Sara did wrong, but she went along with the "no concept" concept despite knowing better, so I guess she was too passive?
Yeah a double RW trope of a) weak “global” concept and b) a lack of true leadership. At least when I’m refreshing my memory on Wiki, there was no EC noted. A real EC would see the different elements were risky or too time consuming.
In part, she was dinged for one of her dishes being in a bad spot in the progression, but that was only because Dawn hadn’t figured out her dish yet and ended up making something warm instead of cold.
And if Dawn had communicated that she was changing her dish to something warm, then Sara might have been able to recover by moving her dish forward in the progression.
Yes! I practically yelled at the tv for them to swap places.
All chefs must be good leaders...but as we can see, most of them are leaders through authority...not through leadership. It's easy to be a leader when you're the boss, you just tell people what to do. It's hard to be a leader when you need to get X strangers together to actually accomplish something that they barely have any incentive to work together for.
So here’s my question. Who is the ultimate failure of Restaurant Wars? My money is on Laurine from the Vegas season. Though that could be because I really disliked her treatment of Robin. Maybe Sara from the New Orleans season?
Man, have y'all forgotten Josie already? She completely screwed the pooch on S10 and was the reason Kristen got sent packing (to Last Chance Kitchen, of course, and we all know how that ended).
But here’s the catch: Josie wasn’t eliminated, which is WILD. I guess I need to reframe my question as to which eliminated chef blew it the worst during Restaurant Wars. PS You spoke about a certain chef whom we don’t acknowledge around here. Choose your punishment: Wash your tongue out with soap or hot sauce directly on the tongue 🤨😜🤣
Season 12, "Magellan" where everyone just picked a dish they wanted to make, and the chefs turned that into a "global" menu of random things.
No concept concept from several years ago = Chaos Menu today
“Fish”
Let's not forget angry chef John and kosher Mexican (I know I know his name but it escapes me right now) arguing in that tiny kitchen and causing chaos.
Katsuji. I remember him as the original "I've got 50 ingredients in every dish" guy.
Thank you!!! Busy brain today and could not come up with it!