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Caught the latest season of Top Chef Masters (TCM), with the format revamped from previous seasons. It's now more like Top Chef and Top Chef: Just Desserts, where one chef is eliminated on a weekly basis with the usual Top Chef-esque challenges.
Frankly, I didn't really find anything wrong with the old TCM format; I just thought that it was differently refreshing from the rest of the Top Chef franchise. But if they want to standardise the format, then fine.
As part of the revamp, Curtis Stone took over hosting duties from Kelly Choi (who? heh heh). I guess this is NBC Universal (who owns the Bravo)'s way of addressing the issue :P But also in line with Bravo's thing of having non-American (born) minor celebrities host their reality-competition shows. When I first heard that Curtis Stone is hosting this season of TCM, my only question was "Why?" Never mind that I liked the guy from before he was on American TV screens, but now with his judgvestor gig on America's Next Great Restaurant (also an NBC Universal thing) and between his previous shows like Surfing the Menu, My Restaurant Rules and the occasional episode of Take Home Chef, it's Curtis Stone overload for me.
Not being an American foodie, I didn't recognise most of the contestants this season - if I'm not wrong, Traci Des Jardins was a contestant back in the first season, but got the boot pretty early, so it was nice that they brought her back for a another shot at this. I'm gonna take a guess and say that these are the chefs that don't have to the time to appear as judges on Top Chef? Am I the only one that's glad Wylie Dusfrene is not back a THIRD time? Oy.
One of the things I like about the first Quickfire is to see who didn't finish in time. Crappy ingredients like marshmallow, licorice, canned corn beef were the mystery box ingredients. Three unfortunate cheftestants got disqualified for not done plating on time, which was a bit anticlimatic as they were competing in pairs and it means that the other person won by default.
Since it is TCM after all, it's only fitting that they get Restaurant Wars as their first elimination challenge - which I don't think it's that big a deal since most of them have opened restaurants before, so it wasn't terribly chaotic until service started. I think the only reason why diners preferred Leela over Mosaic was because they didn't have to wait too long to be seated. To wait too long for food is one thing, to be standing there waiting to be seated is another.
Critic-wise, the only constant since the first season is James Oseland, the guy from Saveur.
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