A Top Chef BBQ

Sorry for the dearth of posts last week. I was at a conference for work and didn't get to watch any TV (it didn't help that the conference center had all of, like, 5 channels). Anyway, contrary to the traditional belief that there's no good TV on during the summer, I've really had a lot to catch up on. First off is of course, Top Chef!

The first episode is always kind of a whirlwind, with so many chefs and only selected dishes really being shown, so Week 2 was a bit of a relief. The pace seemed more relaxed and I felt we saw more food. There are a few chefs that I still feel like I have not seen at all but we're getting there.

The Quickfire was a good one. I like the ones that force the chefs to use their creativity without limiting them. There was a heck of a lot of beautiful-looking citrus there, and some of the chefs came up with some really tasty looking dishes. There was also some not so tasty looking stuff. Micah follows up last week's win with a bottom 3 appearance, which was kind of not that surprising considering her generally negative attitude during the first half of the episode. Hung and Tre still sitting pretty. I think that Hung is supposed to be the arrogant annoying one of this season a la Stephen and Marcel, but I'm not really getting the full force of it yet. And hopefully I won't ever because I had enough drama last season, thanks.

The Elimination Challenge was really normal as well: create some high-end barbeque. I'm from the Northeast so I'm pretty sure I don't even know what real BBQ is but a lot of the chefs really just took the "grilling" part of the definition anyway. Again, some really tasty looking food. I'm pretty sure seafood sausage isn't really a "new" thing, but it looked pretty yummy and I was happy to see that Brian won with it. Micah bounces back from her poor Quickfire performance, proving that she really does have the chops, but I wonder if her roller coaster emotions are going to continue. Sara N. makes a surprise appearance in the top 3, despite what seems like a lack of confidence in general. Not sure about her either.

So 2 people down, 13 more to go. I always like to track the progress of the chefs on the Wikipedia entry and it looks like Micah and Hung are in good position, and Howie's on his way out. We shall see!