Top Chef Masters: Hubert Keller Wins the First Round
It’s a new season of “Top Chef,” but this year, it is 24 celebrated chefs rather than unknowns. The critics table consists of Gael Greene (restaurant critic), James Oseland (editor and chief of Saveur Magazine), Gail Simmons (Food and Wine Magazine), and Jay Rayner (restaurant critic of the London Observer).
There will be four different chefs each week competing for the first six episodes. Tonight, it was Christopher Lee (Aureole, New York, NY), Tim Love (The Lonesome Dove Western Bistro, Fort Worth, TX), Michael Schlow (Radius Restaurant, Boston, MA), and Hubert Keller (Fleur de Lys, San Francisco, CA). Only the winner moves on to a later round.
The show was going to bring back a favorite quickfire from “Top Chef.” Tonight, they decided to bring back dessert, which made most of the chefs groan. The judges were Girl Scouts. They had only 60 minutes – hey, they are professionals! The chefs saw the girls sample their desserts on hidden camera and man, they were harsh! Hubert was the winner with 5 stars, but honestly, I think they just liked the little mouse with the tail.
The scores from the quickfire round apply to the elimination challenge. The winner gets $10,000 for their charity. They challenge was going back to college. The only things they could use were a microwave, a toaster oven, and a hot plate. They had $150 with which to shop. Tim’s food was frozen – he accidentally put it in the freezer. They had to cook in cramped dorm rooms, which was pretty funny.
The judges had good and bad to say for all the chef dishes, but felt in the end, they all pulled it off. The judges respected how Tim improvised and ended up saving his dishes, despite freezing his produce. Michael got a total of 13 ½ stars. Tim got a total of 14 ½ stars. Christopher got a total of 19 stars. Hubert won, with a total of 20 ½. The Make a Wish Foundation was his charity, so they got $10,000.
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June 14th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I liked how Hubert didn’t dummy down his food for the girl scouts. The other chefs were talking about how their palates weren’t sophisticated but he just did his thing and won.