‘Top Chef: New Orleans’ review: Fun with funnel cakes (and not much else)
“Top Chef” is now officially diving into the deep end of product placement. Instead of giving us challenges that encourage creativity, we had this week what amounted to a 30-minute commercial for Philadelphia Cream Cheese. This was not that long after we had a challenge that attempted terribly to make Reynolds Wrap into a star. We know that this stuff is necessary. We do. But the show is set in New Orleans! They were at a local farm this week! To do so much when it comes to emphasizing everything that is “local,” there is just so much irony in then going on to say that Philadelphia Cream Cheese had to be included. We’re not trying to slam the product; it’s just that the name itself suggests a geographical distance.
One other logistical problem with this sort of product placement is that basically, the judges had to sit there and taste 13 different dishes with cream cheese in them. Maybe this is something that only plagues us, but there is only one reaction that we would have in response to eating that much of the stuff … and we really should not have to spell that out for you too much here.
Yes, there was a slightly-cooler challenge before this one all about Creole tomatoes, but we personally found it somewhat hilarious that Nina Compton was proclaimed to be the greatest chef ever for figuring out how to chill a soup in the sunlight. Not that great an achievement. What we will give her credit for is cooking two amazing dishes tonight (as she won both challenges), and for managing to act likable despite the fact that she is clearly the best chef in the contest right now. Justin Devillier is probably the only other one that is close to her.
The problems with this episode continued when it comes to just being predictable. The moment that Nina started talking about how much she loved her little gossip table buddy Bene Bartolotta, it was obvious that the guy was going to be sent home from the competition. There was no other reason to give him that much airtime. Out of the other two he was in the bottom three; Sara Johannes seems like the best person to make a sort of Josh Valentine run pretty deep into the competition after finding herself. Travas Masar feels more like one bad critique away from a full-on meltdown.
But in the end, the predictability, overuse of product-placement (which is necessary, but should be either more appropriate to tasks or implemented differently), and even a bad performance from the chefs this week in the Elimination Challenge made this the worst “Top Chef” in a while. While it’s still a great show, we have to put on our Tom Colicchio bald cap here and say that the show can do way better than this. When the highlight is the sheer delight of seeing Nicholas Elmi make the judges a surprisingly-good funnel cake (which really makes us want one right now), you may have a problem. Grade: C-.
Click here if you want to read some more “Top Chef” news, and we will have a review soon for this week’s edition of “Last Chance Kitchen.”
Photo: Bravo