First Impressions: Top Chef Masters

After watching the first episode of Top Chef Masters I realized that I was sitting in a pile of my own drool. Watching the likes of Tim Love and Hubert Keller whip up menus on the fly made my eyes water, my nose search, and my tongue hang out of my mouth. Beyond my food lust though lays a very good show.

The producers of Top Chef have done just enough to tweak the format for these world famous chefs. I had blogged earlier that I wasn’t looking forward much to seeing these guys in bunk beds or cuddling on the couch like the normal contestants. Thankfully and realistically these guys could not leave their empires for the amount of time a regular season of Top Chef takes. Instead there are 6 semifinal matches where the winner goes on to the final. I’m guessing the final may turn out to be a more traditional Top Chef format where only one goes home but either way I’m intrigued. I love that all the chefs are playing for charity and that the winner of each ep receives $10k for his charity. Also, while the Quickfire and Elimination Challenges are still there, we now have a point system. The scoring system goes up to 5 stars and in the premiere there were a total of 25 stars available.

In the first ep we got four chefs all over the culinary spectrum. I love Tim Love whose southwestern restaurant has almost made me want to visit Fort Worth. I quickly sized up his main competition as that of Hubert Keller, the acclaimed chef of Fleur De Lys and Burger Bar. Host Kelly Choi seemed to pronounce his name Q-Bert. Speaking of hosts, Kelly is not bad and is just really there. Meanwhile I love the judges especially that cranky old bag Gael Greene.

The Quickfire Challenge was a bit of an easy one as they had plenty of ingredients although it was dessert. The judges were Girl Scouts and they were tough. I thought Keller excelled with his presentation and inclusion of all things that make dessert, dessert (whipped cream, chocolate, etc). Meanwhile the Elimination Challenge was much tougher as the four chefs had to cook in college dorm rooms with only a hot plate, toaster oven and microwave. My man Love, froze his food on accident and while he redeemed his ingredients you just knew that Keller was going to take this thing especially when he unveiled his mac and cheese with prawns. The other two chefs I was less familiar with but I was surprised that one came within one star of Hubert. It was a clear sign that these shows will be very competitive.

While I’m not sure if I’ll be doing weekly coverage just yet I can proudly say that Top Chef Masters is the cure to our summer culinary TV blues. As expected it makes the Next Food Network Star look like a McDonald’s training video and it simply provides more drama as well.