Posts Tagged ‘top chef kitchen’
The End of the Line
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
By now, you’ve no doubt heard that last week was my final hoorah as a contestant on Top Chef. C’est la vie.
For the most part, I feel good about my run–I made it to the final eight and I cooked some good food. Restaurant wars, the most anticipated episode of the season, was also a unique departure as a milestone in its own right, and a tough challenge. I’m glad that I made it this far and got to participate in this tradition with such a strong team. Coming off of the win on the quick fire the blue team was confident, focused and excited to be working together.
Perhaps this over-confidence was to blame for the missteps that followed. Right off the bat, we decided to skip a dessert, and in hindsight this was a mistake. A dessert course would have likely been an easier thing for Kevin to finish and/or plate, on top of the main course he was already handling…it turns into a game of What If fairly quickly. But I volunteered to tackle Front of House, and the team rallied behind that delegation, which left Mike Isabella to the first two courses, Jennifer Carroll on the second course and Kevin to prepare my lamb main course, in addition to his own pork dish. We had no trouble procuring all the items on our shopping list under budget and besides the minor drama with Robin over our “stealing” their idea to serve Pellegrino, we were in good shape at the end of the first day. Or at least we thought we were.
I finished the prep for my dish early on the day of the challenge, and turned to my colleagues to see if they needed help. Jennifer had said she had a lot left to do, but it wasn’t til I went to help that I understood how far behind she really was. Her mussels and clams still needed cleaning, the fish cut, the consommé finished. The status of the kitchen made it even more difficult for me to get out of the kitchen and into the dining room, which was my assigned post. By the time I was changed, the servers were already waiting for me and I had scarcely time to catch their names, introduce the chefs and go through the menu before I had to just put them to work. When Tom stopped by to check in, I assured him I trusted Kevin to execute my lamb and that I would be checking plates as they left the kitchen.
But once guests were arriving, time seemed to be moving at a clip and the diners arrived just as we were finishing a tasting with the servers. Although the kitchen wasn’t ready, I had to start seating tables. I visited the first round of diners and got some helpful feedback on the plates: namely, the pork loin was over cured and too salty and the fish course had just taken too long to arrive. I relayed the information to my colleagues in the kitchen, which should be useful for an experienced chef but that night seemed to only rattle their nerves. When the judges arrived hot on the tails of our first seating, we still hadn’t ironed the kinks out. I welcomed them to the Mission and then had to run off to deal with other issues; it was at that point, a matter of triage.
Which is why I didn’t linger over any one table, including the judges. A huge mistake, of course. In retrospect, one of many. From the start, we should have elected a leader. No matter how much respect you have for one another, someone should have been in charge. Also, two courses per chef was totally unrealistic. I let Kevin have final say on my lamb, another error in judgment. And personally, I lost sight of the fact that a dining experience is made up of two significant elements: food and service. I didn’t have enough experience in the latter to overcome the shortfalls of the former, and in the end, both suffered. By the end, I didn’t want to chat with the judges over their meal, I wanted the night to be over. We all left feeling defeated and it was a pretty bad night all around.
I’m not sure I was the weakest part of that team, or that I deserved to go home. But it was sort of a matter of time for me. Top chef gave me the opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with really talented chefs, cooking for some of the best chefs in the world. I forged friendships and had unbelievable experiences in the kitchen, which taught me a lot about myself, my style and my thoughts on food in general. I was exposed to different techniques and approaches to cooking that were entirely new to me.
So what’s next for this Top Chef ex pat? I intend to continue pouring my heart and soul into my business, Left Coast Catering and to continue working to position it as one of the Bay Area’s top catering companies. More specifically, I’m planning some private dinners at Coffee Bar here in San Francisco on November 7th and November 10th, which will feature a three course menu. I’m also looking forward to working with the kids at the KIPP school in the kitchen and the classroom, exploring where our food comes from and the best ways to cook it.
So Top Chef may be over for me, but I feel like I’m just getting started.
On the Road
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
Hi there. Just wanted to stop in for a second to let you know I’m on the road this week. I realize it is quite the week. So check back Tuesday for the recap of this week’s events on the show and a full update.
Not According to Plan
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
Can anyone say disaster? I think Dana Cowin can, only she pronounces it “cat food.”
Yes, this week’s challenge didn’t go quite as I had planned: a rustic French pork rillette to pair with the French pinot noir I had chosen. For those of you who aren’t familiar with rillette, it’s a rustic French dish similar to a spread-able pâté. It’s traditionally stored in a crock covered in fat and served as a spread with toast points. My first mistake was probably attempting a dish that I’d never done with pork before. I had made several rillettes, always with rabbit, in which case the rabbit is salted overnight, braised in stock or water until tender, shredded and mixed with duck or goose fat. Turns out, there’s a slight difference in technique between rabbit and pork rillette, which is that pork is braised in fat, while rabbit is braised in liquid.
My arguably larger mistake here was attempting this lengthy technique in our limited amount of time. I skipped the salting and curing stages in the interest of brevity, and without this preparation, the meat needed more time to braise, not less. Sometimes you can, in fact, make several mistakes in the course of a disaster. I had never timed a braised dish before, as it’s not a cooking method dictated by time. Mostly braising is used for cooking tougher cuts of meat where heat, time and moisture aid in breaking down the tough connective tisuue and collagens. When it’s done, it’s done, but not a minute sooner.
I’d like to think that when made properly, a pork rillette would have been an excellent pairing for that French Pinot Noir, though of course it’s hard to say. It wasn’t my first choice of the wines we tasted, nor my second, nor my third. I’m not much of a red wine drinker, truth be told, as it more often than not gives me a headache. When I do partake, I enjoy pinot noir and I almost exclusively drink varieties from the Russian River Valley. Ask any Pinot lover and they’ll tell you that the best California Pinot grapes come from the unique blend of Goldridge and Franciscan soil, from the early morning fog, from the warm days, cool nights and afternoon sea breezes you’ll find only in the Russian River Valley, in western Sonoma County. Living in San Francisco, I would never buy a French Pinot Noir. It would be a waste of food miles for it to travel around the globe, when I could get a superior wine two hour’s drive from my house. Read the rest of this entry »
Constructive Deconstruction
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
I’ve never done deconstructed food. It doesn’t really interest me. It seems over-thought, with little consideration for pleasure or sustainability–an intellectual style of cooking that lacks character or soul. I understand that to deconstruct is to break down, to dismantle, but I can’t figure why you’d take something apart if it isn’t broken in the first place.
If you asked me, I’d tell you I can cook pretty much anything…so long as my heart is in it. Maybe that’s where this week’s task challenged me: present a classic dish, deconstructed in a new way. In my case, fish and chips. It seemed contradictory, to ask us to be creative, but classic, constructing in deconstructing.
I devoured the best fish and chips I ever had with a friend late at night alongside a cold beer, after working a long shift. I remember it feeling so well-deserved. Fish and chips should always be eaten that way, late at night in a hungry fever, out of a plastic red basket. Doing a deconstructed version not only seems silly, it’s just not food I’d want to eat. It doesn’t hit the spot without the context.
Adaptation
©Marianne Jackson
As a catering chef, I have cooked in all kinds of kitchens, with all kinds of equipment, and nevertheless, it is always expected that I will deliver great tasting food on a pretty plate at an appetizing temperature. In catering, there are no constants. Things are always different and often unexpected. If there is any one thing that catering has taught me, it is how to cook anywhere.
When the show this week asked us whether we could cook anywhere, I know a lot of the other cheftestants didn’t expect that to mean over a fire pit in the middle of the desert. We’d been told we would be spending a night on the ranch and that we’d have to cook a high-end lunch for the ranchers. Thinking back to it, I have to chuckle; so many people were really thrown by the change of scenery. I was okay with the plan, but I know I was one of the few who didn’t find the cooking environment and the sleeping arrangement outrageous. Having lived on a ranch in Colorado years ago, I had an inkling of what to expect and the possibility of outdoor cooking had occurred to me. I realize now how that early experience adapting to a rustic ranch kitchen prepared me well for catering, and more recently, this challenge. Read the rest of this entry »
Together in Pasta Salad: the Integrity of the Team
The morning of the air force challenge, I woke up a bit tired (it was still dark out!) feeling really excited about our day. We’d be preparing food for 300 men and women stationed out of Nellis Air Force Base, and we’d be working all together, as a team. Preeti and I both had catering experience, which seemed advantageous for the challenge where we were cooking for the Air Force. As a group, we had planned a strong lunch buffet with plenty of variety for the military crowd.
I quickly realized that we were actually cooking for the judges, not the service men and women. Turns out this was a team competition, whatever that means, not a team-building exercise, and even though we did well as a team, one soldier–or, chef, got left behind anyway.
Before seeing any of the products we’d be working with, the group decided that the Preeti and I would prepare a cold salad of some sort to round out the rest of the menu on what would likely be another blistering Las Vegas day. Upon arrival in the base’s kitchen, however, we found the quality of ingredients to be very low. A tricky hurdle to jump, when you’ve planned to make a cold salad. Although pasta salad seemed like a good choice initially, the pasta itself was so generic that it lost its shape and looked more like wrinkled rectangles than bow ties in our finished dish.
We were competing for Top Chef and had just made shapeless pasta salad. I was embarrassed. And Preeti was a total team player through all of this. As I was growing increasingly doubtful, she pointed out how well-suited our dish was for the time of day, location and weather. We could be thankful for at least one thing: at least we weren’t serving hot bowls of clam chowder in that heat.
What’s In a Kitchen
Watching Eve go home last night, I was thinking back to a conversation we had the day of that elimination challenge about the competition. Even before that day of cooking poolside, I know she’d been thinking of resigning the competition because the whole Top Chef thing wasn’t for her. I remember her telling me how happy she was with her life and her career in Ann Arbor, and how much she loves to keep learning about food and about cooking. Eve already has a successful restaurant and a cookbook under her belt, and didn’t feel like she needed to prove herself to Bravo or to the judges.
Of course some of the chefs, like the Voltaggio brothers, were more competitive. At this stage in the show, I for one, wasn’t thinking of the elimination challenge as a competition among the chefs but instead as an opportunity to cook great food for the groom and his friends. That’s probably the caterer in me. I suppose I was a lot like Eve on this challenge–I just wanted to cook alongside talented chefs to craft a great experience and make the guests happy.
There is obviously quite a difference between a top chef in the real world and a Top Chef on Bravo. Bravo seems to think that a chef should be a highly driven, hyper-competitive badass with the ability to create well-executed food in any kitchen, on any day, in any amount of time, to meet each week’s unexpected challenge. Can I say, that not in 20 years as a chef have I had to pair food with a shot? Great food and boozey shots have never gone particularly well together, in my experience, but I suppose the scenario makes for good television. And what do I know? I’m just the chef.