Top Chef Masters Season 3 Premiere Previews

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Top Chef All-Stars Reunion Show Previews

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Recap Roundup - Top Chef All-Stars Finale

Minxeats on Mike needing to win: "Mike says he has to win because he quit his job and missed his honeymoon. I have no idea what either of them have to do with winning or losing: he quit his job at Zaytinya in late 2010 to open his restaurant Graffiato, and he got married in August of 2009, long after Top Chef Las Vegas finished taping, and well before the All-Stars season was even a twinkle in Andy Cohen's eye."

Jordan Baker on Tom's kitchen visit: "Tom thru! It’s kind of the meanest Tom thru ever – he basically goes to each restaurant and tries to psych them out by reminding Mike he hasn’t been in the finale before and Richard that he blew up during his."

Grub Street on Mike's traits: "Richard rightly pointed out that Mike's strength and weakness are the same: confidence and swagger. Also, snarky jerk faces. But to be fair, he did seem to really pull out the leadership skills with almost no dickishness, unlike he has throughout his two seasons."

Fork in the Road on restaurant hopping: "Then all of the judges swap restaurants, and for a brief, horrible second it looks like we'll be treated to all of this interminable sweating and analysis all over again, but fortunately we get an extended montage instead, with Richard rushing to fix his lumpy foie ice cream.">

Monkeys as Critics on Mike: "Mike tells Richard that if Richard wins he’ll feel like bleep. Gee, that’s a nice sentiment. Just when I was thinking, well, Mike’s not all bad he has to go and convince me that, well, actually, he is."

My Monkey Could Do That on the winning: "But there is only one winner, and that winner is Richard! WOO! Everyone comes to mob him, but some people come to comfort Mike. Whatever! Mike lost! He’s so happy. Mike says 'I feel like I beat him, but I didn’t get the prize.' Shut up Mike. Richard calls his wife in confessional, and she can’t believe it, and it’s so cute."

David Dust on Carla: "if Carla Hall doesn't get her own show, then the people in charge of The Teevee need a swift kick in the Hootie Hoos. I would watch the hell outta anything she was on - especially if the show also included Carla's adorable husband."

Max the Girl on stealth techniques: "The best part of Blais’s group is Spike, totally creeping in the background, serving as spy. 'Spike is very crafty,' says Blais. (In fact, Spike couldn’t be less crafty if he were wearing a sign around his neck that read: 'Number One Spy.')"

Check out the Creative Loafing Top Chef 8 Finale Extravaganza Podcast (now with video)!

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Meet the Masters - Alessandro Stratta

Chef Alessandro Stratta is the owner and Executive Chef at two award-winning namesake restaurants, ALEX and Stratta, both located in the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. Chef Stratta comes from a long line of restaurateurs. After several years of working in hotel kitchens, he decided to pursue his dreams by enrolling in the prestigious California Culinary Academy. During this time he worked in one of San Francisco’s finest hotels, the Stanford Court Hotel, where he perfected his skills in the art of baking and pastry. He graduated with high honors was selected to work under Chef Alain Ducasse as a member of the staff opening the Louis XV at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco. After cooking two years abroad in Monaco, Ducasse sent him to work under Daniel Boulud at New York's famous Le Cirque restaurant. After moving up quickly in Boulud’s kitchen, Stratta was presented with the opportunity to assume his first executive chef position. At the young age of 24, he was chosen to head Mary Elaine’s, a gourmet restaurant at the new world class Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. Under his leadership, he established Mary Elaine’s as one of the premiere dining destinations in the Southwest and in 1992, the James Beard Foundation named the restaurant a "Top Dining Destination” and Stratta as America’s top hotel chef. Stratta currently showcases his talents at Wynn Las Vegas as executive chef of his two restaurants: ALEX, featuring French cuisine, and Stratta, an Italian-American restaurant. ALEX has been awarded two stars in the 2008 Las Vegas Michelin Guide and is one of only 14 restaurants in North America to receive this distinction. In 2005, ALEX was selected as one of the “Best New Restaurants in America” by Esquire magazine and in 2006, 2007 and 2008 it was recognized by AAA as a Five- Diamond restaurant and by Mobil as a Five-Star restaurant, one of only three in Las Vegas.

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TC News and Information 4.4.11

In case you're not sated with interviews from the final two after last week's show, here are interviews with Richard Blais from the Chicago Tribune, TV Guide, and Slashfood. And don't miss Eli Kirshtein's Bravo blog, which reveals a little more about the personal side of Blais, his mentor and hero.

Mike Isabella talks to Grub Street and the Chicago Tribune.

For a couple of different perspectives, here's an interesting blog about teachable moments from the finale. And here's a thought-provoking piece from the Village Voice about why more women don't win Top Chef, with comments from several of the female chefs from the All-Stars season (thanks to reader Jennifer for mentioning it in the comments!).

Speaking of girl power, NYC pop-up-of-sorts, What Happens When, is launching a Monday night series featuring "female chefs, female pastry chefs, and female sommeliers." Check out the line-up, which includes Season 1's Lee Anne Wong, All-Stars Jennifer Carroll and Carla Hall, and Season 5's Leah Cohen.

You can find more about Fan Favorite Carla Hall's petite cookies here.

And as a new winner is crowned, Season 5 winner Hosea Rosenberg is shutting down his Boulder food truck business, while Season 4 winner Stephanie Izard continues to pursue Olympic dreams and the prospect of being a James Beard Award winner for her Chicago restaurant, Girl and the Goat.


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Meet the Masters - Hugh Acheson

Hugh Acheson is the chef/partner of Five & Ten, The National, Gosford Wine, and Empire State South. Born and raised in Ottawa, Canada Acheson started cooking at a young age and decided to make it his career. At age 15, he began working in restaurants after school and learning as much as possible. Today, Acheson's experience includes working under Chef Rob MacDonald where he learned stylized French cuisine, wine and etiquette at the renowned Henri Burger restaurant in Ottawa as well as in San Francisco as the chef de cuisine with Chef Mike Fennelly at Mecca, and later as opening sous-chef with famed Chef Gary Danko at his namesake restaurant. Taking these experiences, Acheson developed a style of his own forging together the beauty of the South with the flavors of Europe and opening the critically acclaimed Athens, GA restaurant Five & Ten in March of 2000. Since 2000, Acheson has gone on to open Gosford Wine in 2004 with sommelier Ben Giacchino, The National in 2007 with fellow chef Peter Dale and his Atlanta based restaurant Empire State South in 2010. Acheson's fresh approach to Southern food has earned him a great deal of recognition including Food & Wine’s Best New Chef (2002), the AJC Restaurant of the Year (2007), a four time James Beard nominee for Best Chef Southeast (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010) and a 2007 Rising Star from StarChefs.com. Chef Mario Batali chose Acheson as one of the 100 contemporary chefs in Phaidon Press' Coco: 10 World-Leading Masters Choose 100 Contemporary Chefs. In addition to running three restaurants and a wine shop, Acheson is writing a cookbook titled A New Turn in the South: The Cuisine of Hugh Acheson. This book is to be published by Clarkson Potter in the fall of 2011.

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Top Recipe - Top Chef All Stars Finale

Check out Rick Moonen preparing Richard Blais' black cod and pork belly dish here.

Find the printable recipe here.

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Meet the Masters - John Currence

Recipient of 2009 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef, John Currence was honored as Restaurateur Of The Year and Chef Of The Year by the Mississippi Restaurant Association in 1998. In 2006, he received the Southern Foodways Alliance Guardian of Tradition Award, won the 2008 Great American Seafood Cookoff in New Orleans and the 2009 Charleston Food and Wine Festival’s Iron Chef Challenge. Currence’s humble beginnings began in his home in New Orleans Louisiana where his family loved to cook and spend time in the kitchen. While studying at the University of North Carolina, Currence got his first job working at Neal Crook’s Corner, where he worked his way up from washing dishes to becoming a cook. After three years at Crook’s, Currence returned to New Orleans to open Gautreau’s as sous chef. After several years, he started working for the Brennan family of restaurants to help open Bacco before settling in Oxford, Mississippi, and opening City Grocery in 1992. Since then, the City Grocery Restaurant Group has had a number of openings, including Nacho Mama’s, Kalo’s, Ajax Diner, City Grocery Catering Company, Bouré, Big Bad Breakfast, and Snackbar. In addition to the City Grocery Restaurant Group’s success, he has served as chairman and president of the Mississippi Restaurant Association and president of the Yoknapatapha Arts Council. He is also a contributing editor for Garden and Gun Magazine and is an active volunteer with St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Currence’s current projects include: a cookbook and Adventures of The Big Bad Chef video series.

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Meet the Masters - Floyd Cardoz

Floyd Cardoz is the Executive Chef of the forthcoming restaurant from Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group. Before embarking on this new restaurant, Cardoz was the executive chef of Tabla, a groundbreaking restaurant that served New Indian cuisine cooked with the sensual flavors and spices of his native land. With Cardoz at the helm, Tabla received numerous accolades including a three-star review from The New York Times. The restaurant also spawned an entirely new category of modern Indian restaurants across the country and internationally. After 12 incredibly rewarding years, Tabla closed its doors in December 2010. Cardoz began his career in his native Bombay, where he attended culinary school and interned in the kitchen of the Taj Mahal Intercontinental Hotel. To further his classic culinary technique, Cardoz moved to Switzerland, and spent his days at the hotel management and culinary school, Les Roches. Cardoz later moved to New York, and worked under Chef Gary Kunz of the venerable Lespinasse. During his seven years at the world-renowned restaurant, he rose from Chef de Partie to Executive Sous Chef. In 2006, Cardoz wrote his first cookbook, One Spice, Two Spice (Clarkson Potter). In 2009, he launched a line of meals for online grocer Fresh Direct. He is also the consulting chef for El Verano Taqueria located at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. Actively engaged in the community beyond the walls of his restaurants, Cardoz received the "Humanitarian Award of the Year Award" from Share Our Strength in 2007.

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Conference Call with James Oseland, Ruth Reichl, and Curtis Stone

Earlier in the week, I participated in a conference call with new Top Chef Masters host Curtis Stone and new judge Ruth Reichl, along with James Oseland, who has been judge for the past two seasons. Right off the bat I learned that James and Ruth like Curtis - they really like him. Honestly, they couldn't say enough nice things about Stone, which was good to hear because, personally, the man has never impressed me.

If you didn't know already, Curtis was on Celebrity Apprentice a couple seasons ago and says the experience helped him empathize with the Masters cheftestants:

It was very interesting. It gave me a real perspective on how the contestants were feeling in this competition because, you know, you’re standing there thinking am I going to look foolish here? You know, is he going to destroy me? And just like with these guys, it’s their credibility on the line and they’re doing the best they can but we give them some really unbelievable circumstance to cook under on Top Chef Masters and, no matter how great these chefs are, we really make their lives - you know, we really make them show that mastery through their cooking in the limited time we give them and all the rest of it. So I could really empathize with them.

Curtis also felt that with his experience as a chef, part of his responsibility at Judges' Table was to "plead [the chefs'] case to the critics and to try and justify why...what ended up on the plate that’s in front of us."

There’s nothing more nerve wrecking than cooking for other chefs apart from cooking for critics who hold your career in your hand. I think - I value both and I know this sounds like a copout of a response - but I really do value both equally because I think chefs can understand what you’ve done from a technical perspective...what kind of techniques did you use, how did you treat the ingredients to get them to taste a certain way. So they look at it more from a technical perspective. But then critics look at it from the diner’s perspective and I think that that is probably maybe even slightly more important because you can impress a chef but at the end of the day, they’re not your customers. Diners are.

James Oseland thinks the new format is beneficial to the participants:

I think that the chefs ultimately became more comfortable because we were giving them the chance over the course of multiple episodes to become more...familiar with the kitchen, to know where the salt was kept, to know that...the kind of salt that’s used in the Top Chef Masters Kitchen is...a coarse-grained kosher salt versus a fine-milled kosher salt, so we weren’t tasting food that was...aggressively awfully salty. Whereas on the first two seasons, a lot of times it was...really hard to get a sense of who they were because they were in so many respects just sort of really struggling with the sort of basic fundamentals of cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen.

Ruth Reichl was asked about her thoughts on the online character who is a hybrid of her own Twitter persona and Anthony Bourdain, "Ruth Bourdain," nominated for a James Beard Award this year. Reichl's theory on Ruth Bourdain's true identity might be an interesting guessing game for Top Chef Masters viewers as she said, "there is actually a little suspicion in the back of my mind that it may be one of the people who was a judge this year." Hmmm...who could it be?

Speaking of judges, there are some interesting guests this season: Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) and her husband, Geoffrey Arend (Body of Proof), are serious cooks. Ruth Reichl found it a bit intimidating that such a beautiful woman would also spend time making her own puff pastry. Singer Kelis is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef. Maroon 5 and contestants on the Biggest Loser also make appearances.

It all has my interest piqued...yours?

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