Mikey Likes TV

If there’s anything I like and know better than television, it’s burgers, so the fusion of the two on last night’s Top Chef Quickfire Challenge was a reason to smile indeed. Too bad the contestants were given the menu at Red Robin as a model for what they were expected to make. The White Castle slider pictured above is evidence that my tastes aren’t strictly highbrow, but that sort of corporate sponsorship is just embarrassing.

Of the eight remaining contestants, only two of them chose to actually use beef. The horror of watching Chef Daniel Boulud espouse Red Robin through clenched teeth was only overshadowed by our “pros” trying to pass off lettuce wraps and paninis for man’s simplest and most delicious creation. CJ won with his “scallop mousse and shrimp burger” though Howie’s truffle burger definitely appeared to be the tastiest. He may be annoying and combative, but at least he knows what a hamburger looks like. As of this week, contestants no longer win immunity during the Quickfire, so CJ’s consolation was picking his team for (drumroll) this season’s Restaurant Wars!

These challenges are simultaneously exciting and disappointing. The two teams are given a day to decorate a restaurant, design a menu and provide a full dinner service to 30 discerning costumers and a group of particularly picky judges. The result is almost always a craptastic train wreck, and this year proved no exception. Keeping with the grand tradition established by seasons one and two, the Miami folks started out by giving their restaurants horrible names – though none of them come close to last season’s comical mishmash of contestant girlfriend initials, “Lalalina.”

The horrible service, poorly planned menus and asinine scented candles all seemed to bode one of the most dramatic eliminations yet, but it never came (probably because both teams were kind enough to at least remember the booze). After all of the infighting and blame-placing, these kids get to try it again next week. Head Judge Tom Colicchio wanted them to think of the challenge as a “soft opening,” and with no one being sent home for all of the buffoonery, the opening clearly wasn’t the only thing soft about last night.

For good measure, have any of you caught these two ladies and their Top Chef recaps on YouTube? I’m pretty sure the one on the right is 12, but she talks about boozing it up at the Red Robin so I may be wrong. Regardless, I’m obsessed…

Photo: Melissa Hom/New York Magazine

I’ve been looking forward to last night’s match-up between the first two seasons of Top Chef for some weeks now, and not just because Sam Talbot (pictured above, with french fries) might be the most charming (and cheated!) contestant in the history of competitive reality programming. I wanted to see how the first seasons’ contestants would perform in a new environment. It’s been hard to tell if they were horrible because the show hadn’t yet hit its stride or if they were just annoying and boring. Turns out it really was the latter. Such a shame they’re better chefs.

They cooked their butts off, they won and, with the exception of Stephen, they had absolutely nothing to say. Ilan and Marcel, with their large personalities and absurd hair, were rarely out of the spotlight. And while being a douche is clearly just Ilan’s nature, I’m more convinced than ever that Marcel is just pandering to his audience. In the span of just one hour we got excessive gloating, a couple of fights and (yes!) another food rap. His saffron-infused egg foam was also the best dish of the night – if only for being the greatest show of passive aggression ever.

The new cast was on hand to judge the food, and, as you might imagine, they all thought that they could do better. This confidence will be short-lived though – they’re all about to be exposed on basic cable for the untalented, unattractive losers that most of them are. As far as excitement goes, the only real surprise of the night was at the judges table. Looking at sweet, stoned Padma Lakshmi – how is it possible that this was the first time I noticed the gigantic seven-inch scar on right arm? I thought maybe she’d pushed Salman over the edge since the last season, but it turns out she’s had it for 15 years. She’s got a pretty good attitude about the whole thing and, um, an interesting way of writing about it.

The next season of Top Chef starts next week, and if last night’s cameo by the competitors was any indication of how much I’ll like it, season two is looking more and more like an exception to a really crappy rule.