‘Top Chef: New Orleans’ review: Mayhem with the men
What in the world is going on when it comes to the guys of “Top Chef: New Orleans“? While there are a score of massively talented women on this season, there’s yet to be more than one or two of the men who are really rising to the occasion.
One who is doing very well at the moment is Justin Devillier, but the question that comes along with that is if he has an advantage some of the time thanks to being a local boy. He clearly did cooking at a local establishment, and one where the executive chef beat him recently for a James Beard Award. The guy knows how to cook local food! We know that not everything this season will be about Cajun food, but we’ve already seen a gumbo challenge and also one themed around cooking in the swamp. Him having replicate other popular Cajun meals from iconic chefs (something that is hardly interesting or creative to watch) was something that he was clearly capable of doing well.
In addition to the elimination challenge being kind of dull, the quickfire this week was not something worth jumping up and down at with excitement either. The idea of recreating bad food trends and turning things around for them was fun, but making this into an elimination challenge? Why not just cast one fewer chef in the season? We don’t like how this ended for Aaron Cuschieri, especially since he was in the top last week, and left over a guy in Bret Pelaggi who made something that he was specifically told not to make.
Speaking of Bret, he was unsurprisingly the chef to go home later. We don’t necessarily know if his food was the worst, but it was his third straight challenge in the bottom. He had said earlier in the show that he hadn’t been in the kitchen as much lately as some other chefs, and it showed. He just was a step behind most of them, and did not seem to be intense enough for the show.
So all of this summed up to be a still decent episode compared to other reality shows, but weak for “Top Chef.” It’s mostly because we’ve been treated to so much great visual cuisine here that this felt like a dish that suffered from a lack of simplicity. Grade: C+
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Photo: Bravo