Grub Street Previews Season 4 of Top Chef
February 20, 2008 by Tracey Thompson
Filed under Recipes
When you are affiliated with a powerhouse like New York Magazine, you often find yourself on the receiving side of great opportunity. The gang at Grub Street were privileged to see a preview of the upcoming season of Top Chef.
From who gets the honor bestowed of becoming the thorn in every one’s side to the Cheftestant who portrays that frazzled, out-of-their league character, Grub Street has the scoop. Anthony Bourdain and Rocco DiSpirito have returned along with all the product placement. Hmmm, I am trying to imagine Bourdain inside a Uno’s….I think this sounds more of a job for DiSpirito:
The location is a nonfactor — the main contribution Chicago makes is a Pizzeria Uno product placement. But the contestants still fit into those archetypes we love to argue about with Adam Platt.
None of the New York contestants really stood out, but we hope that will change. This year’s Hung is obviously Ryan, a San Francisco–based chef of such surpassing smugness that we are already rooting against him. (He’s handsome, too, the pisher.) There’s a nice rivalry brewing between this season’s Marcel, a pointy-haired molecular gastronomist named Richard, and a very angry, more than somewhat spazzy Andrew, a New York cook who won’t reveal where he actually works, if anywhere. We already have a soft spot for Stephanie, a Janeane Garafolo type whose nerves threatened to derail her in a pretty unchallenging deep-dish-pizza challenge. The ending of the first episode was sad, as was last year’s debut dismissal of poor Clay, who packed up his knives on day one. It always makes us misty, and Platt mocks us.
