Thursday, July 8, 2010
News Top Chef, Week 4: When Good Pasta Goes Bad
Posted by Bruce Barry on Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 12:02 AM
- "Creativity and quirky avant-garde ... is who I am as a person."
With alarm and regret we are obliged to report that Nashville's Top Cheftestant Arnold Myint went down last night, eliminated in large measure because he was paired in a team challenge (with both members of the losing team sent home) with the feckless Lynne Gigliotti, who, despite being on the faculty of the Culinary Institute of America, evidently cannot cook a fucking bowl of pasta. More on that shortly.
The episode's opening "quickfire" challenge asked the chefs to make a dish that would appeal not just to host-judges Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi, but also would lend itself to a pureed version suitable for their very young kids. Arnold flew so far under the radar on this one that, unless I somehow missed it, his plate — a curried sweet potato bisque — wasn't even shown in the episode as edited for airing.
But Arnoldophiles still bitter at TBK (that bitch Kelly) over their run-in two weeks ago found some solace in her pork loin landing her in the bottom group on the challenge, with a stray lemon seed in the puree that had Padma getting ready to report TBK to Child Services. Best comment during the challenge came from Alex, who fretted about his lack of qualifications: "I practice making baby, but not baby food."
The elimination challenge put the chefs in pairs (self-selected) in a tournament-style contest to prepare meals that could be easily executed and served in Hilton Hotel restaurants. Each pair first prepared a breakfast, with the two best teams declared "safe" and done for the night. Remaining teams did lunch, with two more then "safe." The final three teams prepared a dinner plate, with the losing pair sent home.
One of the guest judges was a woman introduced as the Vice President of Restaurant Concepts at Hilton Hotels. It was enlightening to discover that Hiltons don't have restaurants, they have "restaurant concepts." I think I'll just stay in, watch a TV concept, and call a room service concept.
- The unhappy couple.
Arnold and Lynne's breakfast offering was mainly Arnold's idea — a tortilla española with chorizo and bacon with olive-pear salad and papas bravas. Sounds terrific but it drew mixed reactions. "It's actually pretty good," remarked celebrity chef-judge Eric Ripert, while Tom Colicchio thought "the texture is strange." So is the texture of your head, pal.
Moving on to lunch, Arnold deferred on the concept (if you'll forgive the term) to Lynne for a tuna cannelloni with forbidden rice salad and tomato vinaigrette. In an aside to the camera, Arnold worried that the dish might be "too quirky" (or did he say "perky"?) for a hotel restaurant. And although none of the judges panned it on flavor, one noted that "I don’t see this as an easy dish to execute," which was a key aspect of the challenge.
So having failed to make "safe" status in the breakfast or lunch rounds, Arnold and Lynne joined two other pairs in the final and potentially fatal dinner round. Curiously, the other two teams both went with a braised beef short rib, while our intrepid pair headed in a vastly different direction, making pineapple red curry mussels with squid ink pasta and focaccia.
For elimination it came down to Arnold and Lynne up against the lesser of the two short ribs. And ultimately, it came down to the noodles. If and when Arnold views last night's episode, the line that may torment him into eternity is the Frenchman Eric Ripert's charmingly accented observation that "zee pasta is not cooked at all." While they were preparing the dinner plate, Arnold and Lynne bickered endlessly about the pasta.
- The losing dish for the home team.
Arnold told Lynne repeatedly to get with the cooking of the pasta. Lynne kept insisting that because it's fresh pasta, it cooks in only a minute — so best to delay marrying pasta with water. Arnold: "Lynne's biggest concern is overcooking the pasta." Lynne: "If it’s overcooked it’s on you." Arnold: "At this point I really just don’t trust Lynne anymore."
End result: At the judges' table, everyone agreed the pasta was UNDERcooked! Then, when asked if they agreed, Lynne, knowing when it's best to just agree with your critics, conceded that it might have been. Arnold, on the other hand, perhaps thinking that defending your dish rhetorically is strategically wiser than assessing it honestly, told an incredulous panel of judges that "I think it was cooked beautifully." I figured he'd get sent home right there for asserting that the earth is flat.
Blogging after the episode, Colicchio wrote that he "was glad to hear Lynne acknowledge that the pasta was undercooked, since apparently she was the one who insisted Arnold wait to cook it. On the other hand, Arnold should have insisted they put it up sooner." (Like he didn't, chrome dome? Sheesh.)
In dismissing Arnold and Lynne, Colicchio complimented them for thinking outside the box, and described the undercooked pasta as "the only flaw." But while Lynne's pasta crash may have doomed the dish in terms of execution, it's apparent that the plate's concept was problematic in terms of hotelish appeal. "Squid ink pasta is a hard sell on a hotel menu," said Lakshmi. Again, Colicchio blogging after the fact:
We had to pick the weakest among strong dishes for elimination. Arnold and Lynne’s had larger flaws in the execution than did the other two dishes. Furthermore, one criterion of the challenge was to create a dish that Hilton could add to its menus worldwide. While tasty, Arnold and Lynne’s dish is not as widely appealing as were the two short-rib dishes. In this tough challenge, where chefs had three chances to outshine their colleagues, Arnold and Lynne repeatedly failed to do so.
Eric Ripert in his post-episode vlog, chalked it up to both bad pasta and bad karma:
Lynne and Arnold were not meant to be together as a team, that’s for sure. And we saw a lot of tension, we saw them fighting, almost. She was very moody, he was very frustrated; they disagreed on a lot of details of the recipe. Making fresh pasta with squid ink is not an easy task, but they did a good job, I think, on making the pasta. However, they disagreed on cooking aspects. At the end, we had a sauce that was really, really good — surprisingly sweet, but at the same time not too sweet. They had a certain acidity, they had a lot of flavors, it was going well with the mussels, and the problem was the pasta. The pasta was really undercooked — I mean almost to the point of being raw. And that was obviously a very, very terrible mistake that you cannot forgive.
And in the nail-in-the-coffin department: TBK's team won the challenge. As the old saying goes, evil triumphs when good men make pasta.
You can watch Arnold's "exit interview" video here, in which he reveals that had he remained on the show longer "there were plans for me to come down as Padma and do a whole scenario." The world will never get to see that, but here in Nashville we'll always have our beloved Suzy Wong. For her part, Lynne in her exit video graciously observed that "any place that Arnold was at was usually pretty funny."
Arnold's tweet an hour or so after the episode aired says it all. He is one glass-half-full dude.
Comments (27)
Showing 1-27 of 27
Talk about no class. After sandbagging Arnold with her inability to cook a pot of noodles, Lynne tells the camera she should have known better than to let a younger chef take the lead. She's about as welcome in Nashville henceforth as Gen. Sherman, dam spillage and the Jacksonville Jaguars.
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PS: This publication's food writers constantly refer to restaurant "concepts," such as serving steaks, for instance (What a concept!) , and with with a straight face. And they seem not to see why the term is laughable when called on it, because it's quote "an industry term," ya see. Ah, inside jardon! I'll remember this next time I want to eat an industry.
YES!!--Mr. Pink
I can't believe no one noticed that Lynne said that. She totally threw Arnold under the bus with the pasta then that backstabbing comment--cause the pasta is not the REAL REASON they were eliminated.
If you're on Team Arnold and want to offer personal condolences, Sunday would be a good day to go visit him at Cha Chah. After experimenting with this menu on July 4, he has decided to offer it every Sunday for at least the rest of July. For $20 you can get family style servings of
Watermelon Salad , Smoked Mustard Red Potato Salad, Shaved Roasted Corn w/ Chipotle Butter, Chicken Wings Two Ways, Orange Basil BBQ Pulled Pork & Jalapeno Bacon Corn Bread. It's all you can eat, so come hungry and stay for the 1/2 price bottles of wine.
I think that Arnold really did represent Nashville well, so head down and congratulate him while you take advantage of this great deal.
I am just as big of a supporter of Arnold as anyone, since he is (so far) the lone representative of Nashville in the Top Chef franchise. That being said, your review of last night's episode is incredibly biased. You have to admit that although Arnold and Lynne did take chances, and really weren't criticized at all for their flavor profiles, the biggest component of this challenge was creating a dish that was sellable on a hotel restaurant menu. They failed at that during both the lunch AND dinner courses, and then on top of that Lynne failed at cooking the pasta (something even a basic home cook could probably get right) and were sent home. I was really sad to see him go, but honestly, it was a deserved elimination last night. If only one person could have been eliminated, it should have been Lynne, but it was a team deal and they knew that going into it when they picked their own partners.
All that being said, I would LOVE to try both the squid ink pasta with mussels and the lamb meatballs from last week. When are they showing up on one of Arnold's menus??
Failing to create a dish that can be hustled and mass-produced in an overpriced hotel restaurant — and must be bland enough to suit the tastes of anyone from Kazakhstan to Kalamazoo — is my kind of failure. Gee, Wong Kar-wai, we're sorry you failed so miserably to make MARLEY AND ME. Thanks for playing.
It's kind of telling that the show would gather a group of highly individual, diversely talented chefs and set them all to making baby food and room-service chow. That's TV in a nutshell.
Yes, the review is completely on Arnold's side. If loving Arnold is wrong, we don't wanna be right. But just to be fair ...
Jiller: "That being said, your review of last night's episode is incredibly biased. You have to admit that although Arnold and Lynne did take chances, and really weren't criticized at all for their flavor profiles, the biggest component of this challenge was creating a dish that was sellable on a hotel restaurant menu."
Bruce: "But while Lynne's pasta crash may have doomed the dish in terms of execution, it's apparent that the plate's concept was problematic in terms of hotelish appeal. 'Squid ink pasta is a hard sell on a hotel menu,' said Lakshmi."
I was in NYC last week and all of the posters for Top Chef were sans-Arnold. I somewhat expected that he wasn't going to make it into the final 6.
Bravo has added former TC finalist Eli Kirshtein (last year - the Las Vegas season) as a blogger, and about last night he writes (http://is.gd/dkhsh):
"Arnold and Lynne went out pretty far on their dish in terms of flavor. This probably needed to be a little more approachable and less creative, but that wasn’t what gave them the loss. I think it was just undercooked pasta. Lynne did make the right call of not putting it in the water at 12 minutes left, but I’d be curious to find out what time it actually did go in. They should also have considered the challenges of doing a pasta dish in this setting, for exactly that reason."
Separately, regarding last night's quickfire challenge, several commenters on Colicchio's blog raise an interesting point about Angelo's use of honey in his dish. Here are a couple of them:
"I watched this episode and cannot believe that no one called Angelo out for using honey! You should never feed honey to infants under 12 months--their developing digestive tracts cannot handle the raw bacteria contained in it!! You missed an opportunity to educated people. And obviously Angelo, who considers himself a know-it-all when it comes to food, doesn't know as much as he thinks he does."
"Every honey bottle and jar has a caution stating not to feed honey to infants under 1 year old. There is way too much danger of an allergic reaction. Please have a disclaimer posted. If someone downloads the recipe and makes the puree for their infant, it could be disasterous!"
Apparently the Mayo Clinic agrees. (http://is.gd/dki2P)
The one good thing about this, however, is that now I no longer feel like I have to watch Top Chef. It's just confirmed everything I hate about the whole everything's-a-competition reality-show genre, from American Idol to Project Runway, starting with the idea that you take something creative and singular and soul-satisfying and fun — singing, designing, cooking — and turn it into a tontine of public humiliation.
And man, will I be happy to end my brief acquaintance with Padma Lakshmi, whose main attributes as a host are a pageant-queen-among-commoners smile and a force field of unearned entitlement.
Pink, I do believe Padma will be blushing when she reads your last comment.
And I guess I needn't bother to engage you in a deep convo about "Work of Art."
Come on, it's just entertainment. I could watch Padma in that old Hardee's commercial all day, but they won't let me. I think Arnold was great! And the way he proclaimed last week that he'd never been anybody's bitch sounded like he might be up for the challenge. I felt from the beginning he was over qualified for the show. How about the next Food Network star?
You are correct, BB. Although I can sing the praises of "World's Deadliest Police Chases" all day long.
I get the "it's just entertainment" argument, but then I hear people seriously make a case for the benefits of "American Idol" because it displays the weekly application of critical standards. If that's the case — if "American Idol" is convincing millions every week that belting and technique modeling and a disregard for the subtleties of interpretation are the standards that make for great singing — it's not a public service, it's a public menace.
My disappointment with "Top Chef," in the four episodes I've watched, is that the eminent judges miss all kinds of opportunities each episode to raise the bar for viewers. Arnold's pasta is undercooked? Well, how about telling us what perfectly cooked pasta should be like in taste and texture? Or how long to cook it? Maybe it's just because I'm a newcomer and am not familiar with the judges' tastes — that certainly makes a difference when you're, say, reading a movie review — but the judging sessions just sound like round after round of nitpicking.
Pink, you raise legitimate complaints about the form. One problem with "Top Chef" is too many cheftestants (until they weed it down in the late stages), which all too often seems to force the producers to edit the thing down to bite-sized nuggets of vapidness. Bravo helps somewhat with good and timely online backup content. I've quoted the judge's blogs, which gives them a chance to explain judgments and outcomes in more detail, and Bravo also puts up a video after each episode that is an extended (less edited or unedited) version of the judging panel's internal conversation leading to the outcome. Bravo has aired a couple of seasons of "Top Chef Masters" with older, more established chefs in a similar kind of elimination competition. That show does a better job "raising the bar for viewers," as you put it, because there are fewer competitors in a given episode and there is much more focus in detail on the food prepared.
mr. pink: sounds like you would like to watch a different show about cooking. There's probably a snoozer on PBS that tells how long to cook perfect pasta. This ones about supposed great chefs (who should all know how to cook pasta) trying to outdo one another. Only one survives. It's so exciting!!
Nope. Just watching a different show will be enough for me. Though if I want to watch talented chefs treated like performing monkeys, Iron Chef is a hell of a lot more fun.
I'm on board with relief at not having to watch any more episodes of Top Chef and the squabbling, whining 'personalities' . Arnold excepted, he was the only one of them with a personality. I'm disapointed that he was eliminated, but proud of the class he showed in his exit speech and not throwing Lynn under the bus as she did him. I'm also glad that Nashville had Arnold representing us. And I'm so on board for Sunday Supper. I can walk there and roll myself home.
THAT MEAN EVIL WOMAN had it out for him he deserves to come back, if not send him to open a place in Vegas, I can't believe the show would allow her to ruin his chances.
Thanks to bb for bringing up the honey issue. I was literally SCREAMING at my tv. Angelo has an infant; I hope he's not feeding that baby any honey. But, in fact, I wouldn't feed any of the "featured" dishes to an infant under 12 months; all of them contained inappropriate ingredients. I would, however be likely to feed an infant the sweet potato bisque. Points to Arnold for doing good with that despite not having his own baby. I'm a bit of an expert on this matter as six months into motherhood and I am still undecided and fretting over Baby Eats' first solid food. It was almost the banana brownie bread pudding at Suzy Wong's on Sunday night...turned my head for just a moment and a tiny hand plunged right onto my plate.
Anyhoo, back to the elimination challenge...hotel food isn't just chicken fingers and pasta primavera. And Hilton considers itself to be a leader in innovative hotel cuisine. That in mind, I don't think the Arnold/Lynne dish would be out of place at some of their properties. And despite what Eli wrote, I think 12 minutes would have been appropriate time-wise. I don't think it would have hurt the pasta to sit a few minutes before serving to ensure that it was fully cooked. Though I do like overcooked pasta myself.
mr. pink, you are right on. This formulaic program is no test whatsoever of who is the "top chef". A chef is (literally via translation) the chief of his or her domain, and setting up teams to jump through bizarre hoops is like deciding who is the better CEO by having them play team poker and sending home both if one performs poorly on a single hand. (ok that's a stretch but you get me.)
This experience reminded me of why I quit watching television in the first place. Back, now, to my beloved books!
p.s. I think he does (or did) a version of that lamb kofte on lemongrass skewer at Cha-Chah; haven't seen their menu lately....
Yes, I can confirm that the lamb meatballs are on the menu because I just had them last weekend. I'm in for Sunday night dinner, who else?
Pink, I'm with you (from way back when): so glad that I never have to watch another TC again... Had never watched it before, had no interest in it [other than Arnold] & am sorry for Arnold as it would have been a good thing for him long term, but I am so happy that I no longer have to reserve DVR space going forward. I know there are lots of fans out there, but I really cannot fathom watching the show unless one had someone special (Arnold) to root for.
