cooking @ home

I love and I hate this show sometimes. I’m talking about the current season of “Top Chef” shown on Bravo. Make that shown and shown and reshown and shown again so much on Bravo that it’s beginning to appear the have only one show in their lineup. Enough with reruns of the reruns all week

From what I’m seeing, the judging is all over the place lately. This week, with Tre, I hate to admit it, but they were 100% correct. Did Tre have a bad night, yes. How bad? Three items bad. What about last week? I recall the over-smoked potatoes and something else wrong. That’s two weeks in a row, not one.

What really steamed me was the episode on two or three weeks ago — yes, so steamed that this far afterwards I’m still mad enough to decide to write about it. That was the one where they tricked the contestants into thinking they were having a night out on the town but ended up making late night snacks and serving them out of a truck until dawn.

This time, the judging was simply dreadful. First the judges put the crew altogether in an uncomfortable, psychologically demoralizing stunt with the “night out” turned into “cooking with your best clothes on.” Second and worse, the judges created an environment where the women in high heels had to cook, and unlike the guys couldn’t quite take their shirts off. So you slanted an even contest purposely in a manner that put a greater onus on some contestants than others. Major mistake!

And then because cooks need salt and pepper, here comes the throwing of the salt in the wounds, the judges asked the women what they thought, and both women — rather holding back instead of giving it to them as they deserved — politely told them that working in heels and dresses and deep cut blouses was not very comfortable … then got their words spit back them, mostly by Tom by the way, and if not enough, the judges then used those same words to get rid of one of the women — in other words, the producers and judges behind the show set up a scenario that gave certain contestants had greater strain then others, and of course then offed one of those very constestants that had this unfair bias slanted against them. This was truely the show’s greatest low point so far this season.

Would be nice if the producers and judges would fess up and admit that is what they did, instead of attempt to sweep that one under the rug. Better yet, I’d like to see Ted and Tom dressed in drag with four-inch heels running around the supermaket and then standing in the heels for eight hours serving burgers. Then let’s see if they have the same opinions. Chances are they’d have done full 180s.

Definitely the low point of the season so far.