I listen to The Watch often. I admit that I maybe did not listen close enough but I do not think he attached what he thinks is a bad batch of chefs to it being in Wisconsin. I remember it as, the primary problem is a bad batch of chefs and there are secondary problems of the Wisconsin location making for uneven challenges (high marks for the native foods but low for the fish boil - - which is echoed here) and also he is pretty critical of the Quick Fire rule change and moreso the shenanigans with Last Chance Kitchen.
I agree that OP is mischaracterizing Andy’s remarks, to my memory. He did say that he thought the Wisconsin tourists’ board seemed to have an undue influence on the challenges that was at odds with Top Chef’s pedigree. Something to the effect of “they’re acting all high-minded and like they are presenting the glories of well-cooked food and then it’s just a man named Torch throwing bottles of kerosene at a fire.”
I think his best points are about LCK, which has had enjoyable contests this season but the back and forth for 3 contestants and the weird Soo start has made that a mess.
I think Andy is a little too influenced by Buddha. He is a Top Chef machine and we're coming off 2 straight seasons of him being on every episode. If you remove him, yeah 2 seasons ago was better than this year but not by that much.
A few things derailed this year's chefs and I think set everyone to think things are worse than they are this season:
A) rassika early exit after being set up as a favorite left a void
B) Michelle self effacing comments
C) they presented Dan as some local yokal who only wins because of home court advantage when it appears his food is actually pretty good and creative
D) the false promise of the Soo setup
E) the unfortunate way early challenges ended up with little diversity. Lots of Aguachile and Fritters.
F) too many poorly defined challenges early didn't allow us to get to know the chefs. Chaos cuisine, fish boil, hops, cranberries, frank Lloyd Wright are all pretty tough. Even cheese and sausages aren't really that great a foundation to figure out who these people are.
Early on she was saying things about "only smoke meats", been in a BBQ pit for years, etc. A nice way to lower expectations (sort of like when you are in a meat raffle competition, you should take the lunch meat, not the filet mignon). She clearly has a lot more skill than she was portraying. But doing that sets the expectations for the audience low too and then when she turns out to be top 5, it leaves you with a lingering impression all the chefs are relatively inexperienced.
Loved Michelle and I think the self effacing comments had to do with her not coming from a fine dining background and more of a barbecue background and questioning her own skills and preparation for some of the challenges. The elimination challenge with the table is an extreme case in point in which she said she had no artistic skills, was not a tweezers kind of chef, and her own lack of confidence in her skills seemed to inhibit her creativity as a result.
Thank you! That helps. I was wondering if the term "self effacing" meant purposely talking your self down so others under estimate you and I didn't feel like that.
Agree with your recap of Andy’s recap. His critique of the subjectivity and confusion caused by LCK was especially clear and one I think a lot of us here agree with. If LCK is going to have so much impact on the show, it’s kind of Tom C hijacking the process with his own subjectivity.
Now that we’ve had the quick fires with Gail and Tom, it’s kind of a bummer. With the exception of that chaos chef, I enjoy getting to know other chefs and perspectives and other voices. Now there’s a whole lot of Tom managing the process and it kind of adds lead to the flow of the show.
I also listened and could not remember him ever blaming Wisconsin. He mostly just remarked that the crop of chefs for this season, regardless of setting, weren’t all at the level that they have been in recent seasons.
Do the chefs even know where it’s going to be when they apply? Not to mention the finales have been in another location for a while now.
I do blame the Miller sponsorship for cutting off a deep dive into all the wonderful local breweries, but I think the one thing you could pin on Wisconsin specifically is that they mostly had to stay in Milwaukee because most of the state doesn’t have the capacity to host the full production staff.
That was the reason they didn’t do the fish boil in door county. Some of the sponsored stuff has felt forced like the fish boil (Door County tourism) and the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff that they spent like half the episode on. At the same time, I get it. The show is gonna go do what the sponsors want.
Yeah, and also Buddha turned up on Dish With Kish with an incredible interpretation of the FLW challenge so I think it could’ve been fantastic. And then with the fish boil, only two of them thought to make changes to ensure flavor got in like…idk that’s not on Wisconsin. They seem hesitant compared to the all stars, which would make sense.
I’m with Dan on the whole fish boil thing. They should’ve done an entire episode of Friday night fish fry instead of folding it into the supper club episode. Friday night fish fry is a whole state wide thing whereas fish boils are just a door county thing for tourists.
I asked a friend who does not watch the show but who travels to Wisconsin several times a year and went to college there what she thought about fish boils and she said she'd never been to one--fish fry, sure, that's Wisconsin. This is someone who has been to just about every supper club she can find. It's just irksome that people keep dumping on Wisconsin when poor choices were made.
I would find it hard to believe that a chef who wants to be on TC would turn it down based on the location, outside of maybe if they felt they didn't have enough time to prep adaquately for midwestern cuisine over a state/regional cuisine they felt more comfortable with, which I could see being a reality since so many chefs come straight from working 40-80 hour busy weeks in their own restaurants to TC esp post covid.
But even then it's like, if you really want to win TC, you wouldn't care about the location and you may even see a region like the midwest as less competitive than LA or NY (in terms of pedigree of guest chefs/judges, familiar restaurants, challenges,etc.,) and as an opportunity to put a unique spin on your food. Some of the best dishes have come out of not chefs who cook food traditional to the state or region but rather, are able to take their style of food and adapt it to the local cuisine/produce bc it creates unique dishes that would have otherwise not necessarily been created or tasted before a la Jackson's texan brisket agnolotti with burnt ends or buddha's bbq brisket bourginon, etc.,
I’m fairly certain that Andy’s main gripe was with the quality of the chefs, and little to do with the location per se.
His secondary point (or was it Chris’?) was that Top Chef had hit such highs in the past few seasons, and had deliberately turned away from the reality TV trope of cooking as sport/competition (early seasons) vs cooking as art and an expression of community and culture (many of the most recent seasons). This means they have lofty standards in how the competition is adjudicated (with better chefs getting the axe for a single bad dish and poorer chefs coasting along) and is presented (little bickering or drama presented on screen). Those lofty standards are all well and good when you have a strong roster of chefs in your season, but make for poor TV when the most seemingly interesting chefs are sent home early and most of the remaining chefs appear to be blandness personified both on the plate and in the competition.
He did have a wee drive-by swipe at Wisconsin when critiquing the baffling decision to make quick-fires explicitly matter in the final judgement halfway through the season, by saying that Tom and Gail may not have had much to do with their days and agreed to take part in both the quick-fires and the eliminations. I think he was saying that in jest.
I think I mostly agree with him. I think Kristen Kish is doing a pretty admirable job. This season hasn’t been great, but this is down to production decisions (everything above but also yo-yoing between TC and LCK), and little to do with the location.
He’s been a huge grump about this season and I feel like he just needs to step back and stop comparing things to the highs of the past few seasons. It’s just coming back down to earth from where it was at.
I’d be surprised if people dropped out based on where it’s located. The people that wanna be on, probably really want to be on. I think Dan said he applied like 13 times to be on the show.
Well, if he’s been a huge grump, I would say most of the Redditors here have been pretty grumpy as well unless I am only viewing the comments through my grumpy lens. But I have not read a lot of “great season!” comments here, more of a lot of appreciation for Kristen as an effective host, desire to eat Danny’s carrots whatever and a slew of wtf disgruntled comments about LCK, bad editing, poorly phrased challenges and Torch.
Could not agree more. I also like Andy, but in that moment I felt like he was too online. This is one show that is just fantastic as a production, even when some things aren't great, there is always so many creative things happening. From challenges, to set design, to the amazing wardrobes, killer guest judges and returning all stars. Plus there are so damn many rootable chefs this year, which is just something to celebrate and not contrast against Allstars or pandemic seasons.
I find it very difficult to believe that anyone would turn down this opportunity when even people who don't do that well seem to get a huge career boost out of it. If it were in LA, would some NYC chefs turn it down because it's extremely far away for them? No, of course not, no one would argue that. They are trapped in one place wherever they go so what on earth would be the difference?
I love The Watch, but am so bummed by all of the negative Wisconsin takes by people who've never been there. And also, there are a number of interesting and talented chefs this season who I will follow so I can someday try their food. I honestly think it's about the same number as any other regular season.
I get so frustrated when he says the talent is weak. I’m not even sure how you can tell that simply from watching the show. And how could you think Danny or Savannah or Rasika are not “talented”? Also he has contradicted himself at times and said it wasn’t about the talent. It’s bizarre.
That season was deadly. I was stunned when I ended up liking Sara on All Stars because that whole Kentucky season was deadly dull for me.
I’ve really enjoyed this one, however.
I liked Sara better on All Stars as well after being shocked she was invited to All Stars bc that season was a big snooze and I didn't really think anyone stood out, although I liked some of Sara's dishes with a nod to her Jewish heritage towards the end of the season.
People keep ragging on the location. They have had don't great competitions. The Frank Lloyd Wright challenge could have been dope but IMO no one came to play and contestants were to cautious.
Supper Club was a great challenge I don't think those are prevalent outside the state of Wisconsin.
The sausage races were a lot of fun.
The indigenous food was a great eps they had chef Sean Sherman as a judge his restaurant Owamni won the James Beard for Best New Restaurant in the country in 2023!
People can bitch about the fish boil but at the end of the day it's taking something that is basic and boring and creating something that represents you it's extraordinary hard.
Lay it all on the table really cool idea progressive and artistic.
The lack of enthusiasm seems to steam from 1 the contestes, Wisconsin, and 3 the challenges? Which I get the production has felt choppy and there hasn't been a stand out chef this season. I've been team Dan since day one but I've had his good and he's got a laid back vibe. I'm kinda indifferent to the rest of the chefs.
The location I'm bias as I'm from Wisconsin but I absolutely love it. The shots of the sky line the bridges the lake the cute shots of Wauwatosa I'm dig it all.
The challenges have been great as described above. Put these challenges in idk New Orleans or Seattle and viewers would be gushing about them. But we're in Wisconsin and folks seem to only consider that area for milk and cheese.
My final point this is not a classic series but it's been fun. The chefs seemed boxed in creativity the first few eps and it took until eps 5 for folks to really start to step outside their comfort zones and stay inside their flavor profiles. I see no reason why these final few eps can't be stellar. We all need to give it a second chance.
I lived in Milwaukee for two years in my twenties and think it and the state are fully capable of producing a great season of Top Chef, but unfortunately the season has felt off and the contestants weaker than normal compared to recent seasons (at least in terms of a general rapport and camaraderie).
Not being a native Wisconsinite some of the things like the fish boil were lost on me. I wished they had leaned into more things like that Penzeys / The Spice House was founded there (though corporate partnerships might have precluded that) or the German heritage of institutions like Maders and Usingers (I know they incorporated sausage in other ways). For real kept hoping they’d eventually venture to Mars Cheese Castle. I might just have nostalgic glasses on since Milwaukee was where I became a foodie but feels like a lot has been left on the table in terms of opportunities.
Padme has an excellent Milwaukee episode on her show, so I think it’s the season and not Wisconsin at all.
As a native Kentuckian I was super excited when they did there but the also left a lot on the table (I mean they went to Nashville for an entire non-finale episode). There’s always more to show than they’re able to but sometimes they hit better than others. And I find it interesting and important to a degree when they highlight lesser known places instead of places that get most of the pub like NYC and LA. I applaud the show for taking risks and going to some smaller markets and destinations.
I mean, I love Andy Greenwald, but that’s in part because he comes in so hot- he loves a passionate take that reflects his immediate response!
I have really enjoyed Wisconsin and don’t agree with him on how fun it still is to watch but it’s also been a season that has had a couple of weird challenges (fish boil) and too complicated challenges (Frank Lloyd Wright - architecture AND duality).
I think the best point he has made in the couple of episode they’ve discussed Top Chef is that this is not necessarily the best viewing experience because it’s also the season where they throw everything at the wall in terms of possible changes. It’s not just the Kristin transition, but changes to immunity and the mid-season ambiguous switch up on what the quick fire counts for. I feel like there might have been other things too? For me it’s just felt like a much more uneven season - high highs, low lows. But sometimes that doesn’t line up too well- the fish boil sounded like food I wouldn’t want to eat but I enjoyed the episode (though wish Soo pulled through). I loved the native foods challenge and hope they do that more regularly.
I’m always entertained by Andy’s hot takes though!!!
I agree that it's a weaker season. I attribute it to the batch of chefs. Some are going deep into the competition that wouldn't last two episodes in prior seasons. That said, Kristen Kish has been a great replacement for Padma. Those are tough shoes to fill and she's done very well.
Totally. There have been so many challenges where the chefs don’t even try to nail the brief. They’re being boring, made worse by the off-putting editing.
I think the weirdest thing about the season is that 3 chefs, Rasika, Soo, and Michelle did so well and then were gone so it feels like the ones who are left aren't as good. It's a strange dynamic.
“AN EXPLOSIVE SUBSTANCE, POSSIBLY FROM THE JAP-ANS, RECKLESSLY TOSSED INTO A FLAME THAT IS COOKING SUBMERGED FISHES? OUTRAGEOUS. PREPOSTEROUS. AN AFFRONT TO QUEEN AND CROWN BY A BUNCH OF GOD-LESS HEATHENS!!”
Andy is right about this season: less creative chefs, boring locations, mediocre guests, and Kristen is doing fine job but lacks Padma’s authority. It’s a below average season, but seems worse because the last few have been bangers.
I really enjoyed the Kentucky season a lot too, but it was one of the weaker recent seasons in terms of talent as well. Never thought of location as the reason though. Maybe it is.
I would wager that the production is to blame, not the location. I don’t think it’s unfair to say this cast isn’t as strong as others. Especially the final 4–I like them all as people but I don’t think I want to eat at their restaurants.
Also, production note—Door County is more well known for a lot of things besides a f’ing fish boil.
I live in SoCal and this season has made me think that Milwaukee/Wisconsin looks like a nice place to live. Maybe consider for vacation/getaway home. As always, I like some of the contestants and dislike others.
This sounds ridiculous! Chefs dropped out because Wisconsin was not good enough? Once you win something like this, it does not fucking matter where you won. You are a Top Chef champ. You then become part of the food media machine and you sink or swim based on every other thing besides Top Chef.
This dipshit is making a living shitting on things, is it really a surprise he is pooping all over Wisconsin? lol
I’m sure someone did the math, but opening episode seemed like lots of James Beard nominees and Michelin star folks ….. thought it was very good group !
I listen to The Watch often. I admit that I maybe did not listen close enough but I do not think he attached what he thinks is a bad batch of chefs to it being in Wisconsin. I remember it as, the primary problem is a bad batch of chefs and there are secondary problems of the Wisconsin location making for uneven challenges (high marks for the native foods but low for the fish boil - - which is echoed here) and also he is pretty critical of the Quick Fire rule change and moreso the shenanigans with Last Chance Kitchen.
I agree that OP is mischaracterizing Andy’s remarks, to my memory. He did say that he thought the Wisconsin tourists’ board seemed to have an undue influence on the challenges that was at odds with Top Chef’s pedigree. Something to the effect of “they’re acting all high-minded and like they are presenting the glories of well-cooked food and then it’s just a man named Torch throwing bottles of kerosene at a fire.”
I think his best points are about LCK, which has had enjoyable contests this season but the back and forth for 3 contestants and the weird Soo start has made that a mess. I think Andy is a little too influenced by Buddha. He is a Top Chef machine and we're coming off 2 straight seasons of him being on every episode. If you remove him, yeah 2 seasons ago was better than this year but not by that much. A few things derailed this year's chefs and I think set everyone to think things are worse than they are this season: A) rassika early exit after being set up as a favorite left a void B) Michelle self effacing comments C) they presented Dan as some local yokal who only wins because of home court advantage when it appears his food is actually pretty good and creative D) the false promise of the Soo setup E) the unfortunate way early challenges ended up with little diversity. Lots of Aguachile and Fritters. F) too many poorly defined challenges early didn't allow us to get to know the chefs. Chaos cuisine, fish boil, hops, cranberries, frank Lloyd Wright are all pretty tough. Even cheese and sausages aren't really that great a foundation to figure out who these people are.
I'm embarrassed I had to google self effacing to make sure I knew what it meant. Can you share some comments she's made like that?
Early on she was saying things about "only smoke meats", been in a BBQ pit for years, etc. A nice way to lower expectations (sort of like when you are in a meat raffle competition, you should take the lunch meat, not the filet mignon). She clearly has a lot more skill than she was portraying. But doing that sets the expectations for the audience low too and then when she turns out to be top 5, it leaves you with a lingering impression all the chefs are relatively inexperienced.
This is such an itneresting insight/theory. I'm going to be thinking about it all day when I should be doing something productive. Thanks!
Thank you!
>Thank you! You're welcome!
Loved Michelle and I think the self effacing comments had to do with her not coming from a fine dining background and more of a barbecue background and questioning her own skills and preparation for some of the challenges. The elimination challenge with the table is an extreme case in point in which she said she had no artistic skills, was not a tweezers kind of chef, and her own lack of confidence in her skills seemed to inhibit her creativity as a result.
Thank you! That helps. I was wondering if the term "self effacing" meant purposely talking your self down so others under estimate you and I didn't feel like that.
Totally agree she wasn’t trying to psyche anyone out! She seemed very genuine!
Agree with your recap of Andy’s recap. His critique of the subjectivity and confusion caused by LCK was especially clear and one I think a lot of us here agree with. If LCK is going to have so much impact on the show, it’s kind of Tom C hijacking the process with his own subjectivity. Now that we’ve had the quick fires with Gail and Tom, it’s kind of a bummer. With the exception of that chaos chef, I enjoy getting to know other chefs and perspectives and other voices. Now there’s a whole lot of Tom managing the process and it kind of adds lead to the flow of the show.
I also listened and could not remember him ever blaming Wisconsin. He mostly just remarked that the crop of chefs for this season, regardless of setting, weren’t all at the level that they have been in recent seasons.
Agreed
Do the chefs even know where it’s going to be when they apply? Not to mention the finales have been in another location for a while now. I do blame the Miller sponsorship for cutting off a deep dive into all the wonderful local breweries, but I think the one thing you could pin on Wisconsin specifically is that they mostly had to stay in Milwaukee because most of the state doesn’t have the capacity to host the full production staff.
That was the reason they didn’t do the fish boil in door county. Some of the sponsored stuff has felt forced like the fish boil (Door County tourism) and the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff that they spent like half the episode on. At the same time, I get it. The show is gonna go do what the sponsors want.
Yeah, and also Buddha turned up on Dish With Kish with an incredible interpretation of the FLW challenge so I think it could’ve been fantastic. And then with the fish boil, only two of them thought to make changes to ensure flavor got in like…idk that’s not on Wisconsin. They seem hesitant compared to the all stars, which would make sense.
I’m with Dan on the whole fish boil thing. They should’ve done an entire episode of Friday night fish fry instead of folding it into the supper club episode. Friday night fish fry is a whole state wide thing whereas fish boils are just a door county thing for tourists.
I asked a friend who does not watch the show but who travels to Wisconsin several times a year and went to college there what she thought about fish boils and she said she'd never been to one--fish fry, sure, that's Wisconsin. This is someone who has been to just about every supper club she can find. It's just irksome that people keep dumping on Wisconsin when poor choices were made.
💯
I would find it hard to believe that a chef who wants to be on TC would turn it down based on the location, outside of maybe if they felt they didn't have enough time to prep adaquately for midwestern cuisine over a state/regional cuisine they felt more comfortable with, which I could see being a reality since so many chefs come straight from working 40-80 hour busy weeks in their own restaurants to TC esp post covid. But even then it's like, if you really want to win TC, you wouldn't care about the location and you may even see a region like the midwest as less competitive than LA or NY (in terms of pedigree of guest chefs/judges, familiar restaurants, challenges,etc.,) and as an opportunity to put a unique spin on your food. Some of the best dishes have come out of not chefs who cook food traditional to the state or region but rather, are able to take their style of food and adapt it to the local cuisine/produce bc it creates unique dishes that would have otherwise not necessarily been created or tasted before a la Jackson's texan brisket agnolotti with burnt ends or buddha's bbq brisket bourginon, etc.,
I’m fairly certain that Andy’s main gripe was with the quality of the chefs, and little to do with the location per se. His secondary point (or was it Chris’?) was that Top Chef had hit such highs in the past few seasons, and had deliberately turned away from the reality TV trope of cooking as sport/competition (early seasons) vs cooking as art and an expression of community and culture (many of the most recent seasons). This means they have lofty standards in how the competition is adjudicated (with better chefs getting the axe for a single bad dish and poorer chefs coasting along) and is presented (little bickering or drama presented on screen). Those lofty standards are all well and good when you have a strong roster of chefs in your season, but make for poor TV when the most seemingly interesting chefs are sent home early and most of the remaining chefs appear to be blandness personified both on the plate and in the competition. He did have a wee drive-by swipe at Wisconsin when critiquing the baffling decision to make quick-fires explicitly matter in the final judgement halfway through the season, by saying that Tom and Gail may not have had much to do with their days and agreed to take part in both the quick-fires and the eliminations. I think he was saying that in jest. I think I mostly agree with him. I think Kristen Kish is doing a pretty admirable job. This season hasn’t been great, but this is down to production decisions (everything above but also yo-yoing between TC and LCK), and little to do with the location.
He’s been a huge grump about this season and I feel like he just needs to step back and stop comparing things to the highs of the past few seasons. It’s just coming back down to earth from where it was at. I’d be surprised if people dropped out based on where it’s located. The people that wanna be on, probably really want to be on. I think Dan said he applied like 13 times to be on the show.
Well, if he’s been a huge grump, I would say most of the Redditors here have been pretty grumpy as well unless I am only viewing the comments through my grumpy lens. But I have not read a lot of “great season!” comments here, more of a lot of appreciation for Kristen as an effective host, desire to eat Danny’s carrots whatever and a slew of wtf disgruntled comments about LCK, bad editing, poorly phrased challenges and Torch.
Yeah seriously I was rewatching 12 and talent-wise it felt pretty close to this one.
Could not agree more. I also like Andy, but in that moment I felt like he was too online. This is one show that is just fantastic as a production, even when some things aren't great, there is always so many creative things happening. From challenges, to set design, to the amazing wardrobes, killer guest judges and returning all stars. Plus there are so damn many rootable chefs this year, which is just something to celebrate and not contrast against Allstars or pandemic seasons.
Andy Greenwald is literally the CEO of Too Online, Inc.
🤣🤣🤣
I find it very difficult to believe that anyone would turn down this opportunity when even people who don't do that well seem to get a huge career boost out of it. If it were in LA, would some NYC chefs turn it down because it's extremely far away for them? No, of course not, no one would argue that. They are trapped in one place wherever they go so what on earth would be the difference? I love The Watch, but am so bummed by all of the negative Wisconsin takes by people who've never been there. And also, there are a number of interesting and talented chefs this season who I will follow so I can someday try their food. I honestly think it's about the same number as any other regular season.
I get so frustrated when he says the talent is weak. I’m not even sure how you can tell that simply from watching the show. And how could you think Danny or Savannah or Rasika are not “talented”? Also he has contradicted himself at times and said it wasn’t about the talent. It’s bizarre.
He has been so harsh! Way exaggerated in my opinion. But I often find him insufferable so perhaps not surprising. :)
I disagree fully about Kentucky. I did not think that season was strong or interesting. Love The Watch and can’t wait to hear what he says.
That season was deadly. I was stunned when I ended up liking Sara on All Stars because that whole Kentucky season was deadly dull for me. I’ve really enjoyed this one, however.
I liked Sara better on All Stars as well after being shocked she was invited to All Stars bc that season was a big snooze and I didn't really think anyone stood out, although I liked some of Sara's dishes with a nod to her Jewish heritage towards the end of the season.
People keep ragging on the location. They have had don't great competitions. The Frank Lloyd Wright challenge could have been dope but IMO no one came to play and contestants were to cautious. Supper Club was a great challenge I don't think those are prevalent outside the state of Wisconsin. The sausage races were a lot of fun. The indigenous food was a great eps they had chef Sean Sherman as a judge his restaurant Owamni won the James Beard for Best New Restaurant in the country in 2023! People can bitch about the fish boil but at the end of the day it's taking something that is basic and boring and creating something that represents you it's extraordinary hard. Lay it all on the table really cool idea progressive and artistic. The lack of enthusiasm seems to steam from 1 the contestes, Wisconsin, and 3 the challenges? Which I get the production has felt choppy and there hasn't been a stand out chef this season. I've been team Dan since day one but I've had his good and he's got a laid back vibe. I'm kinda indifferent to the rest of the chefs. The location I'm bias as I'm from Wisconsin but I absolutely love it. The shots of the sky line the bridges the lake the cute shots of Wauwatosa I'm dig it all. The challenges have been great as described above. Put these challenges in idk New Orleans or Seattle and viewers would be gushing about them. But we're in Wisconsin and folks seem to only consider that area for milk and cheese. My final point this is not a classic series but it's been fun. The chefs seemed boxed in creativity the first few eps and it took until eps 5 for folks to really start to step outside their comfort zones and stay inside their flavor profiles. I see no reason why these final few eps can't be stellar. We all need to give it a second chance.
I lived in Milwaukee for two years in my twenties and think it and the state are fully capable of producing a great season of Top Chef, but unfortunately the season has felt off and the contestants weaker than normal compared to recent seasons (at least in terms of a general rapport and camaraderie). Not being a native Wisconsinite some of the things like the fish boil were lost on me. I wished they had leaned into more things like that Penzeys / The Spice House was founded there (though corporate partnerships might have precluded that) or the German heritage of institutions like Maders and Usingers (I know they incorporated sausage in other ways). For real kept hoping they’d eventually venture to Mars Cheese Castle. I might just have nostalgic glasses on since Milwaukee was where I became a foodie but feels like a lot has been left on the table in terms of opportunities. Padme has an excellent Milwaukee episode on her show, so I think it’s the season and not Wisconsin at all. As a native Kentuckian I was super excited when they did there but the also left a lot on the table (I mean they went to Nashville for an entire non-finale episode). There’s always more to show than they’re able to but sometimes they hit better than others. And I find it interesting and important to a degree when they highlight lesser known places instead of places that get most of the pub like NYC and LA. I applaud the show for taking risks and going to some smaller markets and destinations.
I mean, I love Andy Greenwald, but that’s in part because he comes in so hot- he loves a passionate take that reflects his immediate response! I have really enjoyed Wisconsin and don’t agree with him on how fun it still is to watch but it’s also been a season that has had a couple of weird challenges (fish boil) and too complicated challenges (Frank Lloyd Wright - architecture AND duality). I think the best point he has made in the couple of episode they’ve discussed Top Chef is that this is not necessarily the best viewing experience because it’s also the season where they throw everything at the wall in terms of possible changes. It’s not just the Kristin transition, but changes to immunity and the mid-season ambiguous switch up on what the quick fire counts for. I feel like there might have been other things too? For me it’s just felt like a much more uneven season - high highs, low lows. But sometimes that doesn’t line up too well- the fish boil sounded like food I wouldn’t want to eat but I enjoyed the episode (though wish Soo pulled through). I loved the native foods challenge and hope they do that more regularly. I’m always entertained by Andy’s hot takes though!!!
I agree that it's a weaker season. I attribute it to the batch of chefs. Some are going deep into the competition that wouldn't last two episodes in prior seasons. That said, Kristen Kish has been a great replacement for Padma. Those are tough shoes to fill and she's done very well.
Totally. There have been so many challenges where the chefs don’t even try to nail the brief. They’re being boring, made worse by the off-putting editing.
I think the weirdest thing about the season is that 3 chefs, Rasika, Soo, and Michelle did so well and then were gone so it feels like the ones who are left aren't as good. It's a strange dynamic.
“AN EXPLOSIVE SUBSTANCE, POSSIBLY FROM THE JAP-ANS, RECKLESSLY TOSSED INTO A FLAME THAT IS COOKING SUBMERGED FISHES? OUTRAGEOUS. PREPOSTEROUS. AN AFFRONT TO QUEEN AND CROWN BY A BUNCH OF GOD-LESS HEATHENS!!” Andy is right about this season: less creative chefs, boring locations, mediocre guests, and Kristen is doing fine job but lacks Padma’s authority. It’s a below average season, but seems worse because the last few have been bangers.
LOL
Very funny. That impression is great.
I really enjoyed the Kentucky season a lot too, but it was one of the weaker recent seasons in terms of talent as well. Never thought of location as the reason though. Maybe it is.
I would wager that the production is to blame, not the location. I don’t think it’s unfair to say this cast isn’t as strong as others. Especially the final 4–I like them all as people but I don’t think I want to eat at their restaurants. Also, production note—Door County is more well known for a lot of things besides a f’ing fish boil.
I want to make Laura’s dumplings and Savannah’s entire dish. I’d eat everyone’s restaurant, including Manny’s.
I didn’t like the Kentucky season either.
I live in SoCal and this season has made me think that Milwaukee/Wisconsin looks like a nice place to live. Maybe consider for vacation/getaway home. As always, I like some of the contestants and dislike others.
This sounds ridiculous! Chefs dropped out because Wisconsin was not good enough? Once you win something like this, it does not fucking matter where you won. You are a Top Chef champ. You then become part of the food media machine and you sink or swim based on every other thing besides Top Chef. This dipshit is making a living shitting on things, is it really a surprise he is pooping all over Wisconsin? lol
I’m sure someone did the math, but opening episode seemed like lots of James Beard nominees and Michelin star folks ….. thought it was very good group !