Ultimate Foodie

I guess this thread should be subtitled “Padma-mania Begins” as I can’t deny that the gorgeous and foodie-licious Padma is one of the big reasons I got hooked on the show initially.

I think that the results of the first episode were predictable with the two least experienced competitors Lauren got  bounced in the opening quickfire after she thought that she could take the easy way out and open with an apple salad with bacon when challenged to “make a dish using apples and the ingredients on hand”  and her fellow cellar dwellar from the  quickfire challenge Patrick was ejected from the competition following a really cliched main challenge dish.   NYC has an awesome Chinatown that is the home of some absolutely incredible food and the best he could come up with is a weak Mirin-glazed Salmon on Black Rice Noodles and some Bok Choi.

Dude… you are a freakin chef…. go out and experience some real food!

Granted, Patrick was a CIA student and has way less experience that anyone else in the competition, but I could have kicked the guys ass in that challenge… or at least lost with some more creativity than that.

Another weak performance came from Ariane - who ended up in the bottom 2 with Patrick and was admonished by Tom for mentioning that her dish wasn’t her style… and that if she needed to cook that style for some reason, she’d get a recipe from a book.

She runs a 4 star restaurant in Jersey… Tom reminded her that Chefs learn from eating and experiencing, not from books and that she didn’t love far away from NYC and the opportunity to experience pretty much any cuisine at any time.

The first episode was great and I am looking forward to this season as there were some awesome dishes cooked that had me drooling… or was that Padma in the judging panel?

Anyway… until next week