Season 1 chefs win the Top Chef “4 Star All Star Challenge”
Tonight was a very special episode of Top Chef. Do you remember the very special episodes of television shows in the 70’s and 80’s? Well, I think that’s a pretty good description of the Top Chef 4 Star All Star Challenge, AKA the Top Chef Smackdown. Once and for all Bravo TV wanted to establish which season of Top Chef had the best chefs – Season 1 or Season 2. I don’t think they accomplished that this evening. The chefs from Season 1 were the winners tonight, but are they really the better chefs? Who knows?
The four chefs competing for Season 1 were Harold, Tiffani, Dave and Stephen. Lee Anne is now an employee of Top Chef, serving as the culinary producer for the show. The chefs from Season 2 were Ilan, Marcel, Sam and Elia. Chef Tom Colicchio asks at the beginning of the show if Ilan and Marcel had buried the hatchet. They said they were cool with each other. Bull. They did bury the hatchet – just in each other’s backs. The two seasons were going to compete for $20,000 for the charity of their choice and the right to say they were the better chefs.
The competition started, as always, with a quickfire challenge. The chefs had 10 minutes to prepare an egg dish using only one hand. The winner of the challenge for each team would be team captain, and the overall winner would have an advantage in the long challenge (which turned out to be an extra $100 for shopping). Stephen won the challenge for Season 1, while Marcel won for Season 2. As team captains they got to choose the charities they’d be competing for. Stephen chose the Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer Research while Marcel chose Share our Strength (a charity to help end childhood hunger)
The long challenge would pit the seasons head to head with a specific protein in a four course meal. Here’s how it was laid out:
Course 1 – Scallops – Dave vs. Elia
Course 2 – Lobster – Stephen vs. Marcel
Course 3 – Duck – Harold vs. Ilan
Course 4 – Kobe Beef – Tiffani vs. Sam
The dishes would be served head to head to the judges and to some “mystery diners” that turned out to be the contestants for season 3 of the show. I’ll say that the chefs for Season 3 have just a little too much arrogance going into the competition, and that it’s so much easier to sit back in judgment of a dish rather than having to create it with the time constraints given.
Head to head the chefs for Season 1 won every course but the scallops course. The judges were actually disappointed with the performance of the two winners, Harold and Ilan.
The chefs for Season 1 seemed to have made up with Tiffani and worked well together in creating the meal. There was still a lot of bitterness on Marcel’s part and the chefs really didn’t work all that well together. I think the professionalism of Stephen, Harold, Dave and Tiffani came out in this show and they won the competition. However, I don’t think you can base which season had the best chefs on one challenge alone. You’d need an entire season to compare their strengths and weaknesses. I think that this Smackdown made for good television, but really didn’t resolve any issues over which season was better.
[tags]top chef, television, bravo, tv, reality, food, topchef, reality tv, top-chef, cooking, chef[/tags]
Read these other great entries