My Interpretive Dance about Last Night’s Top Chef Results

No, I’m just playing.

However, I do think the video below pretty much captures how I feel about Hosea Rosenberg taking the title last night.

With my well-documented Universal Crush on alpha male chefs, I am sure it’s no surprise that I would have been rooting for Stefan Richter (and here’s my article on our conversation with him; he was exactly as myopically and humorously self-aggrandizing as you would expect/hope).

Or Carla Hall, actually, as I liked her style and approach to the competition. She was just cute as a button and whipped out her skillz when you least expected it.

But no, it was Hosea.

West Coasters: Want to spoil your Top Chef appetite?

On Pacific Time?  Can't stay up late to catch the finale? Click here to read my recap on Buddy. 

I'll also be talking with all three of them for Buddy over the next few days, so head on back there to read their take on Top Chef 5.

Top Chef 5 Episode 2 "Show Your Craft"

Published last week on Buddy...

Episode 2 Recap, in case you missed the show

Conference call notes with eliminated chef

Episode 2 "Gourmet or No Way?"

Predictions for the next episode, in which the chefs cook for the Foo Fighters, will be up on Tuesday.

Fabio is emerging as an early favorite ("I'm glad you like it, thassa why I made it!"), although his accent is so "Spicy meatball!" that I kind of can't help but wonder if he's a real deal Italiano or a very entertaining fake. 

Oh yeah, so Top Chef 5...

...is back and I will once again be recapping and talking to the eliminated chefs for BuddyTV.

This season the publicists are only doing conference calls instead of single interviews. 

Sadly this means less one-on-one interactions for me, ergo less chances for me to ask my weirdo chef-obsessed fan girl questions. 

Happily, though, it also means no audio, ergo, no gritting my teeth through sound editing my own giggly doofusness and wondering why I ask such weirdo chef-obsessed fan girl questions and why can't I just be normal for once?

So here's last week's Top Chef Premiere Live Thoughts (unedited, meandering), Recap (less meandering), conference call notes with eliminated chefs and my weekly Gourmet/No Way column.

The schedule will be Prediction columns on Tuesday, recaps on Wednesdays, eliminated chef conference calls Thursdays, and Gourmet/No Way Fridays.  We always have polls where you can pick favorites and you can leave comments here or there if you have questions you want me to ask.

As yet I have no official chef crushes, but I will keep you apprised of any developments.

Pad Kee Mao with a Side of Independent Confirmation

At the local Thai spot yesterday, picking up my lunch/dinner of Pad Kee Mao.  I'm not quite a regular there yet, but on the verge of being a known quantity to the always delightfully fashion-forward and thoughtfully-accessorized young woman who takes the orders there.  She asked me for my name for the order, and after I tell her it's Leslie, she said, "For some reason I think it's Stephanie."

Of course I responded: "You must watch Top Chef."

(She does.)

Calories Out

My reality television watching responsibilities for BuddyTV are oddly mirroring my own life right now.  While I’m still just as interested in cooking, I have been strangely lacking in appetite lately.  Since I rarely have the chance to cook for others, there’s not much reason to cook for myself if I’m just not that hungry. Simultaneous to this, I have also been feeling the need to be much more physically active; it’s summertime and I just kind of feel a bouncy need to be out and about.

So it’s appropriate that with the end of Top Chef viewing duties comes now the newest season of the most happiest tv show ever, America’s Best Dance Crew.  All those kids!  With their dancing!  And sincerity!  It is simply physically impossible to be unhappy watching this show.

I will be posting weekly Prediction columns on Wednesdays and Best/Worst on Saturdays, but won’t be posting links here since it’s not really related.  If you enjoy that show though, as well, check out the columns and let me know if you agree with my picks. 

Top Chef 4 Finale Awkward Interview #3: Winner Stephanie Izard

After several delays, here is my interview with my long-lost twin Stephanie Izard, winner of season 4 of Top Chef.  She explains how to braise a pistachio; I believe I will actually try this at some point.

I have decided to take it as a positive sign that my doppelganger just won $100K and a nationally-televised cooking show.  Surely things must continue to look up for me as well: foul-mouthed curly-haired brunettes, 2008 is our year!

With that one, the interviews are over for a while.  It’s hard to convey the level of relief I feel at the idea of at least a few months during which I do not have to face listening to myself on tape. 

My friends know better than to attempt to take any pictures of me.  However, if they do manage to capture me on film despite my tantrum-throwing, they quickly learn there’s no point in trying to make me look at any pictures of myself. 

Well, apparently I have as much of a phobic response to hear my voice as I do to seeing my own image.  Always so painful, the giggly doofusness.  If science does ever give us the ability to download our brains into a computer, I call dibs on the first spot in line.  I would feel much much more comfortable if I only existed as the text I produce. 

Nevertheless, I will certainly be raising my hand to do the interviews again for season five.  Any excuse to talk to chefs.

And here, too, is the recap of the Reunion show.  While Richard Blais is my sentimental favorite, Andrew D’Ambrosi’s ADHD antics won me over (of course), Spike Mendelsohn turned out to be pretty cool and sweet when I interviewed him, and Tom Colicchio could give me stern lecture any day, I believe grumpy Dale Talde surprisingly emerged from this final episode as the winner of the Top Chef Crush for this season.  I liked his sneakers.