Staffers April Powell and Teresa Gubbins play "Ebert and Roper" on Episode 5 of Wednesday night's Top Chef series, starring Dallas chefs Tre Wilcox of Abacus and Casey Thompson of Shinsei.
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TG: And one more of the anonymous girls goes away. Who knew she & Casey were such bestest friends?
AP: Casey, Joey, and Howie were a regular love-fest this week, too.
TG: The judges obviously "see something" in Casey. If they went by her dishes alone, she would be out of there. As Tom Colicchio said, there was nothing Latin about her chicken-and-rice dish.
AP: I think she just manages to not be the "most bad." I loved her talking about how she's from Texas and has some sort of special knowledge of Latin flavor.
TG: Also not on my hot list was Tre. He said the tarte tatin was on HIS menu at HIS restaurant. Well, Abacus has a very good pastry chef, Rick Griggs. I thought it in pretty bad taste for Tre to take credit for that pastry. At least Joey gave credit for his bean stew to the Mexican guys he works with.
AP: That was nice. Even if he did sandbag on his pastry experience in the quick fire challenge.
TG: OH I forgot about that! He totally sleazed.
AP: But hey, if he delivers the goods, a little false modesty is OK, I say.
TG: Didn't all of the dishes sound really good tonight? Aside from the losing one. Smoked trout with polenta, bleh.
AP: I'm not a big polenta fan. Seems like the kind of thing you have to have a knack for -- you know, it needs flavor added to make it special.
TG: Goat cheese. It's good with goat cheese. The pastry crust challenge was the first one where I thought I could do better than what the chefs did. Score one for the home viewer!
AP: I probably would have just baked a quiche. Goat cheese would be good in a quiche... Hmmmm. I'm getting Sunday brunch ideas.
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I spend most of the show just blasting padme with the mrs.