Top Chef: The Finale

Well, again life and work has gotten into the way of some quality blogging time. Unfortunately, I missed the live showing of the Top Chef season finale. I finally got around to catching a rerun of the final episode last week. Wow, I guess that I didn't miss much. I don't know about you, but I thought that was perhaps one of the most boring episodes of Top Chef that they've ever broadcast. It would have been a forgetable mid-season episode, but for a season-ender, it was a downright snoozer. I would have almost rather watched an episode of that train wreck on the Food Network. Almost.

If you missed the episode, I suggest that you check out David Dust's summary of the episode for a fictional but far more entertaining version of the finale. Despite the end of the season debacle, I'll still be tuning in for the next season of Top Chef which will be set in the Big Apple.

The Final Four

Well, we're now down to the finals of this season's Top Chef. The venue for the last two episodes will move from the Windy City to the warmer climes of Puerto Rico. Had Lisa been eliminated instead of Dale, I believe that the top four of the original sixteen cheftestants would be vying for the title of Top Chef. Who will it be, early favorite Richard or five-time Elimination Challenge winner Stephanie? Or will it be one of the dark horses?

In any case, the Top Chef finale should prove to be some entertaining television, of higher quality than the train-wreck-that-I-can't-stop-watching, The Next Food Network Star. I hope that at the very least, they'll eliminate that chef from planet Vulcan before she drives me nuts with her "cooking education, community outreach, and culinary craft" blather.

Reality Food TV

I told myself that I wouldn't do it, but I'm getting sucked back into watching reality food TV. Last night, I watched the special Top Chef All-Star Challenge pitting selected chefs from Season 1 against competitors from Season 2. I know that I said that I wasn't sure if I would watch that series again after the stuff that went down at the end of last season, but I did. Was it just me or did that show appear to be rigged? What a marvelous coincidence that the antagonists from each season (Stephen from Season 1, Marcel from Season 2) were selected to lead each team and then were set up against one another in a head-to-head battle! Or how about each season's winner (Harold from Season 1, Ilan from Season 2) duking it out over "Battle Duck"? In my opinion, the best thing that came out of that show was that a deserving charity got a $20,000 donation.

Tonight, I caught a rerun of the premiere episode of this season's The Next Food Network Star. I found it oddly entertaining, though certainly not a demonstration of culinary excellence. After watching the episode, I had a feeling that I just watched a slow-motion train wreck. A two hour train wreck. Nevertheless, like a rubbernecker staring at the scene of an accident, I was sufficiently drawn in to continue watching for the time being. Not so sure about this season's Top Chef though, but then again, I might change my mind.

Offal Is Good!

Did you know: Duck fries are to mallards as Rocky Mountain Oysters are to bulls?

I found out this fascinating fact tonight during my dinner at Incanto (1550 Church Street; 415-641-4500), the Italian restaurant in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco known throughout the Bay Area for their house-cured meats. Food Network fans may recognize Incanto executive chef Chris Cosentino from his recent challenge against Mario Batali on Iron Chef America in "Battle Garlic". (During the next couple of months, Incanto will be featuring a special garlic dinner menu on Friday and Saturday evenings that serve up the same dishes as the ones created during that ICA battle.)

Karen and I had talked about paying a visit to Incanto well before Cosentino's television appearance brought the restaurant into the spotlight, so we took advantage of the opportunity to check it out tonight. In addition to their cured meats, Incanto is well-regarded for their emphasis on using fresh, local ingredients and their award-winning collection of Italian wines. Cosentino is also well-known for his creative use of offal in his menu. In fact, Cosentino writes about variety meats and their preparation in his blog, cleverly titled Offal Good.

Since this was our first visit to Incanto, we decided to stick with the house specialties. We started with the antipasto plate for two, which consisted of house-cured meats, roasted garlic and green onions, and marinated carrots. (We did consider the duck fries though.) The plate had several kinds of cured meats, including a homestyle head cheese, a lamb pâté, some mortadella made with pistachios, and some goose proscuitto. Karen really liked the head cheese, and I was quite pleased with the mortadella. For our main courses, we decided to split a pasta dish and an entree. For the pasta course, we chose the chicken liver agnolotti with fava beans and chianti. I had been looking forward to trying an agnolotti dish after reading Alan Richman's article touting his favorite variety of pasta in the January 2007 issue of Bon Appétit. The pasta was good; the savory filling was silky smooth and bursting with flavor inside al dente wrapping. For the entree, we picked the roasted lamb neck with cardoon, mint, and polenta. The lamb was perfectly cooked, its exterior roasted into a beautiful and tasty crust encasing a generous portion of juicy, fall-apart tender meat. It was great, definitely a dish that I would order again and again. The polenta was quite good as well - we were wondering how much cream and butter went into its making.

We both really enjoyed dinner tonight at Incanto and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in trying something different. Unless, of course, you are a vegetarian, in which case you should look elsewhere for dinner. There aren't a lot of options for non-carnivores there. There are a couple of interesting things to note about Incanto. In response to the San Francisco ordinance requiring restaurants to boost their minimum wage and provide health care benefits for all employees, Incanto instituted a 5% service surcharge to pay for the additional costs. The second note of interest is that Incanto offers filtered still and sparkling Hetch Hetchy water, free of charge, to address concerns about the environmental impact and costs of bottled water. The additional cost of the service charge ended up being balanced out by the free sparkling water - it was a wash for us.

Good Eats Wins a Peabody Award

Earlier today, Good Eats, the Food Network show hosted by Alton Brown, was named a winner of a George Foster Peabody Award. The Peabody Awards, administered by the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia, recognize distinguished achievement in radio and television broadcasting and are generally recognized as one of the most prestigious honors in the field of broadcast journalism and educational programming. With regards to Good Eats, the award press release cites:

Rarely has science been taught on TV in such an entertaining – and appetizing – manner as it is in Alton Brown`s goofy, tirelessly inventive series.

Kudos to Alton, the Good Eats crew, and all of the folks at Be Square Productions that make it all happen week after week!

Coming to the Bay Area... Tyler Florence

My sweetie pointed out an article about Tyler Florence's upcoming move to the Bay Area. A national pitchman for Applebee's and the host of several shows on the Food Network, Florence is in discussions with the Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group about managing one of the company's many restaurants in the Bay Area. The list of local Kimpton restaurants include Fifth Floor, Kuleto's Trattoria (where I dined last Friday), Ponzu, Scala's Bistro, and Grand Cafe, the latter two both lacking an executive chef at this moment. According to the article, Florence also has potential opportunities at some of the major hotels in the area that are revamping their restaurants, including the Hilton, Marriott, and the Westin.

More Musings from Anthony Bourdain

Some thoughts on Food Network's current lineup of celebrity chefs.

Food for Design

I don't often find an opportunity to talk about food in the context of my professional work, but I came across an interesting intersection of the two worlds the other evening. Last Sunday night, I caught the episode of Iron Chef America featuing the contest between Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto and molecular gastronomist Homaro Cantu in "Battle Beet". It turns out that Cantu, the executive chef of Chicago's Moto Restaurant, is deeply interested in the topic of design and, in fact, runs his own design firm. Cantu Designs focuses on taking the dining experience to a new level through the use of technology. He is motivated by the question, "What if you could enhance not only the taste but also the scent of your dining experience?" In partnership with the industrial design firm deepLabs, Cantu has helped develop many innovations that allow for new ways to deliver food to the end-user, i.e. the diner, accumulating numerous patents in the process.

I can't help but wonder whether any of the tools and processes that he has developed to innovate can be applied to the enterprise software domain. Given the food that I saw being created on ICA, I wouldn't mind my team working on a project with him.

The Hungry Detective

I've recently seen a couple of commercials for the upcoming series "The Hungry Detective", which premieres on the The Food Network on October 17. The host of the show is Chris Cognac, who you may have seen in the Alton Brown mini-series Feasting on Asphalt. He is the police officer who shows Alton the good eats around LA after Alton's unfortunate spill on his bike in the Nevada desert. Cognac, who is a member of the Hawthorne, California Police Department, moonlights as food columnist for the Daily Breeze newspaper and maintains a blog of his culinary adventures.

I've been thinking about ways of how I can get a gig like this. After all, I also write about food, albeit, not for a newspaper. Maybe I can use the same angle and get some air time on Alton's next show. Of course, I'll have to find a good name for the show, which combines my day job with my love of food. "Gastronomic Solution Architect" doesn't exactly roll off your tongue, does it? How about "The Food Prototyper"? Well, I guess that I'll have to work on that...