Top Chef Masters Review: Back With A Vengence

Top Chef Masters is back for all of us foodies out there.  This means you can expect amazing dishes created by the best chefs. What it doesn’t mean is crazy personalities to entertain and frustrate. I personally watch for the food anyway, I could always do without the villains or the drama.   There are 12 new chefs to get to know, and one we won’t know for very long. They are:

John Currence, City Grocery Restaurant Group

Suvir Saran, Dévi

John Rivera Sedlar, Playa

Alex Stratta, Stratta

Mary Sue Milliken, Border Grill

Traci des Jardins, Jardinière

Naomi Pomeroy, Beast

Hugh Acheson, Five and Ten

George Mendes, Aldea

Floyd Cardoz, North End Grill

Sue Zemanick, Gautreau’s

Can’t quite get a read on these contestants yet, but it’s still early and there are a lot of episodes to go. I hope I start using the words “personality” and “character” in later reviews because this seems like a group of talented but boring professionals.

Curtis Stone is hosting this season, so there is a little something for the ladies out there, and he introduces the Quickfire Challenge! Each chef goes head-to-head with the person next to them after choosing one box containing a mystery ingredient. They then have to incorporate the ingredient from not only their box but also from their competitor’s box. The best dish overall wins $5,000 and immunity. Oh, I forgot to mention they only have 20 minutes. I can’t boil water in 20 minutes. Oh, I also forgot the ingredient combinations are disgusting.  They have to combine things like sardines, marshmallows, frog legs, dragon fruit, cockles, cottage cheese and corned beef. The chefs don’t seem happy, but that could just be me.

Judging all of this (lucky them) are the Editor in Chief of Saveur magazine James Oseland and food critic Ruth Reichl. It went down like this:

Cottage Cheese & Frog Legs

Mary Sue made a chili cottage cheese cake meunière and John Currence prepared  buffalo frog legs, which I thought was a good idea. Too bad he forgot his cottage cheese ranch, win number one for Mary Sue.

Marshmallows & Canned Corned Beef

Suvir whipped up a disgusting corned beef and marshmallow chaat while Celina dished… nothing. I guess Suvir wins?

Sardines & Dragonfruit

For the pairing that sounds like a sequel to Tango and Cash or a local morning radio show hosts’ nicknames, Hugh dishes something I might eat, a pan-seared sardines and dragon fruit salad. Naomi made…nothing. I don’t think I have to tell you who won.

Cockles &  Marmite

Cockles &  Marmite sounds like the name to an experimental indie bad.  Alex makes cockles and leek soup with Marmite and Floyd dishes Marmite soup with cockles. I have no idea what the difference is between these two dishes.

James and Ruth both like Floyd’s better for some reason.

Licorice & Peanut Butter

I love these ingredients, separately.

Traci creates a celery salad with peanut butter vinaigrette and a licorice and orange salad. John Rivera Sedlar dishes up a bacon licorice peanut butter hors d’oeuvres, because. You know, you can’t lose with bacon. Traci easily wins.

Traci wins best dish overall and the money is going to charity, which is nice. Seriously, can we move on now? I’m totally gagging.

The Elimination Challenge!

The elimination challenge is revealed to be restaurant wars. Restaurant wars is one of my favorite challenges but now the season will be all downhill from now on. I will have nothing to look forward to. Also, don’t these people own and run restaurants? How is this a challenge?

The teams are divided into the winners and losers from the Quickfire. Please don’t make me go over that again. Curtis explains the winners are the Red Team, while the losers are Team Blue. Each chef is responsible for a dish and the diners will decide the winning team. The guest judge this evening is Danyelle Freeman the author of “Try This: Traveling the Globe without Leaving the Table.”  Hey, Try This: Horrible Ways to Title a Book.

The red team call themselves Mosaic because they are all different or some such made up explanation. Here’s a rundown of their dishes:

Traci: warm bread salad with artichokes & burrata

Hugh: scallops with grits, leeks, scallions, peppers & pancetta

George: salmon confit with saffron-fennel puree & smoked potato puree

Floyd: spice braised short ribs with oat risotto

Mary Sue: signature chocolate cake with lemon puree

Suvir: pear & berry cobbler with a buttermilk biscuit

The blue team calls themselves Leela. Here’s what they created:

Alex: celery root, potato & spinach fricassee

John C.: sweet potato & peanut soup with spicy chicken liver mousse

Sue: halibut & scallop with glazed pearl onions, artichokes & pesto

John S.: lamb rack with jicama, apple & lime salad

Naomi: chocolate torte with Grand Marnier & meringue

Celina: pistachio cake & honey semifreddo

The challenge is a little more challenging than they (or I) thought it would be.  After the dinners vote and the judges decide, it is now time for my least favorite part, the Judges’ Table! First up is team Leela. It turns out the judges liked Mosaic more, but the diners picked Leela. There is no accounting for taste.  Alex’s dish is picked as the best and his charity, Faster Cures, receives $10,000. Yay Bravo!

Mary Sue and Hugh are called back to face the judges. Dum-dum-dum! It’s cupcakes versus scallops, and the first chef to be eliminated from Top Chef Masters is Hugh. Oh, and his unibrow was booted too. Did I mention his unibrow?

My guess is that this season Bravo has to up the ante with the weird and unusual ingredients and challenges to make up for a lack of crazy chefs. Which is ok for a while, but hopefully it will eventually come back to the food. Mmmmmm food.

My early front runner is Alex. I really have no idea though, it’s the first episode, I just picked him because he won the challenge. I’ll get better later in the season, I promise.

Season 3, Episode 1 (original air date April 6, 2011)

Top Chef Masters airs Wednesday nights at 9/8c on Bravo.

Images courtesy of Nicole Wilder and Bravo.