The Mango Lassie

I never thought I would be writing this, but my favorite show on television right now is a reality show. My excuse: there’s food involved! As you’ve probably guessed by now, the show is Top Chef. This season takes place in Chicago, and my familiarity with the location only adds to my enjoyment. Amazingly, I’ve even gotten Empanada Boy hooked on it. All it took was the first shot of the Chicago skyline and the season’s opening scene inside Pizzeria Uno to get him excited.

For those of you who’ve never seen it, Top Chef (Bravo, Wednesday 10/9c) features 16 chefs from around the country who compete against each other for the title. Each episode includes a Quickfire Challenge where chefs have half an hour to complete a simpler assignment and an Elimination Challenge where they spend 90 minutes on a more major assignment. The chef who is judged the weakest performer gets set home at the end of the episode. Among the challenges in the first two episodes of the season were a deep-dish pizza competition and a test of the chefs’ knowledge of classic French dishes. In the most recent episode, the chefs catered an event for the staff of the Lincoln Park Zoo where each team designed a menu based on the diet of one of the animals. The penguins won with a table of seafood dishes. It’s a real credit to the show’s creators that they can keep coming up with interesting location-specific challenges. And that’s one of the reasons I’m hooked.

Another reason this show is so addictive is the characters. While watching Top Chef the other day, Empanada Boy remarked that the interactions between the chefs reminded him of working with musicians. In other words, drama is prevalent, and emotions are constantly running high. There are also plenty of prima donnas to keep things interesting. All of these traits are pretty typical of most reality show casts. The difference here is that these people also have a considerable degree of talent to back it up. They may whine about their fellow competitors behind their backs, but they can also completely reinvent duck a l’orange in 90 minutes flat. (Chicagoan Stephanie Izard did this and won on the first episode.)

One final thought about why this show has captured the hearts of so many foodies and aspiring foodies: this is a competition that allows viewers to get a taste of what goes on behind the scenes in a fine-dining restaurant. I’m not trying to imply that restaurants are under the same kinds of start-to-finish time pressures or the same challenge-specific stipulations. But all chefs have to perform under pressure and develop menus that will please guests while also remaining in a given budget range. More significantly, the show allows us to see these chefs in action as they chop, sauté and plate the food. Instead of just seeing the finished plate, we see how it got that way. I’ve heard that many restaurant chefs like to watch the show, mentally putting themselves in the place of the contestants and determining what they would do in the situation.

I know I’m not the only Top Chef fan among my readers. I would love to hear from you about your take on the show and your predictions for the final outcome. And for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, don’t judge me until you have. You may find yourself an addict like me.