Mention It All - We’re Cookin’ With Gas (Top Chef)

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Top Chef is back, and Dylan returns with a bonus episode to break down the International All-Stars premiere. From global chefs to a new sponsor furnishing the grand prize, it’s a busy episode, and Dylan does his best to unpack the culinary forces at work in both challenges. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Betches Media presents Ha ha laugh funny Mention It All A Bravo by Betches podcast We don't say that But now we said it With me Dylan Hafer We're going to check me both

Hey everyone Welcome back to the mention at all podcast I am Dylan Hafer And We are cooking with gas Because Top Chef is back It is It's Friday

And I am here With a brand new episode of Top Chef international all-stars to discuss the season premiere of this historic season. And you know what? After a week of Scandival, look, I've enjoyed the Scandival as much as anyone. Enjoyed is a strange word because it's a tough time emotionally. But it has been an unprecedented period, unprecedented period of us coming together as a community, as team Ariana, all of us, one and all, to really, you know, come together for the common good.

But it has been a stressful week. It's been busy. It's been hard to focus. Every morning I've woken up and something is happening on Instagram from seven hours ago because I'm on the East Coast and all these Vanderpump idiots are on the West Coast. and they can't ever post anything during business hours. It's been a week. And I'm so glad to be here.

Back on a Friday, just me, myself, you, and all of us talking about Top Chef. I love Top Chef. If you were here for the bonus episodes last year, you know that I love getting into Top Chef every week. We just do a quick little 10, 15 minute recap, go over the most important things, react to everything. And then I'll send you on your merry way for the first. weekend. So I am excited to be back for this season. And also, I had the chance earlier this week to sit down with Top Chef Portland finalist and now Top Chef All-Star contestant, Don Borell. I talked to her about her whole Top Chef journey experience. That is going to be on Mondays.

Mention It All episode along with some more Scandival updates, whatever happens over the weekend. So make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss Dawn, so you don't miss any of the news. you know, lots more good stuff coming down the pipeline. But now let's, uh, let's away to London for Top Chef, the premiere. This season, it's a little different. If you are just catching up, we are doing international all-stars. So that means we have 16 chefs that are finalists and winners from 11 different international Top Chef franchises.

I always, I've said a lot, I think Top Chef does one of the best jobs of any show on television, let alone not just Bravo, of incorporating diversity in so many different ways, from the contestants to the challenges, to the guest judges, to the types of food they're using, the locations, the all of every, every part of it feels genuinely so creative and diverse and, you know, just individual. And bringing people together from around the world that have competed in different Top Chef franchises is so brilliant to me. Like, what a great idea. I want to see the best chefs from Thailand and the Middle East and Mexico and Brazil and Spain and France and Germany and Poland.

This is, I mean, chef's kiss. Great job. Top chef's kiss. Top chef's kiss of the week goes to the top chef producers. But we are in London. Padma tells us that this season, the cash prize of $250,000 is furnished by Cerville, Saratoga Springwater. That is my favorite thing about Top Chef.

Not the cooking, not the challenges, but hearing about who is furnishing these, these lovely prizes. And thank you to Saratoga Springwater. They are not a sponsor of this podcast yet, but they are a sponsor of Top Chef. And, you know, congratulations. It is fun to get to meet all these new people. We have people from all over the world. There's a man named Ali from Top Chef.

Middle East to North Africa, who is a, if I do say so myself, a fucking snack. You know, we've got Don, who I was excited to see again. Like I said, I talked to her. But, you know, she immediately is like, yeah, last time I didn't win because I couldn't get my food on the plate in time. She knows what she has to work on. It's fun to see everyone. And of course, we go right into a quick fire. This quick fire, they have three minutes and they get five ingredients from the pantry.

But there's no protein. Where's the protein? well, Gail and Tom roll out this big, big ass table covered in seafood. I just love this show. Being back with Padma and Gail and Tom and we're in London,

it just feels like home. So they each have to team up with another chef and use their five ingredients that they got from the pantry plus one of the proteins from the table and make a seafood dish. And this is great. It's interesting to see the differences a little bit from the international Top Chef franchises.

Because this man, Samuel, I think his name is, from Top Chef France, he's like the shortest time we ever had on Top Chef France was 90 minutes. 90 minutes. That is luxurious. That is leisurely. Imagine if Dawn had had 90 minutes for some of those challenges. These quickfires, we're doing 20. We're doing 30. We're doing sometimes 15. Forget about last chance kitchen.

They're cooking in five minutes. 90 minutes. It'll be interesting to see kind of whether the people that have are used to with the typical top chef, I guess, US format, have any sort of leg up. I love Sylvia with a W. Sylvia from Poland saying that Buddha was a little bit of a snob on his season. Not wrong. But, you know, they work together. And, you know, they do well in the challenge.

Some of this show, I always forget how technical and impressive the food is. And then I'm looking at these dishes and I'm like, I don't know what half of these things are. What is turbot? Like turbo with a tea on the end? Like turbotax without the axe? Cabbage poached salmon. Langestines with Gramellata. Accio, a pepe, risotto with oil.

oyster. That sounded really delicious to me because I love Kancho Pepe. I love risotto. But also making risotto in a in a quick challenge, you're in danger. Like, they're lucky that this is in the quick fire because risotto, it wasn't done. It wasn't cooked. It was a little too oldened. But it's fun to get to meet everyone to get a little more sense of their personalities. There's a woman

named Beconia from Spain. I like her a lot. There's Luciana from Brazil. She seems fun. They're serving a scallop with a shot of lobster water. We're doing lobster water this season, people. This is major. But anyway, Luciana and Gabri are in the top.

Sylvia and Buddha are in the top, despite Buddha being a little bit of a snob. And Sarah and Dale are in the top. They are the winners of the challenge. They made Langestines with Gramalada. Sounds delicious. Langestine is like a lobster, right? I'm not making that up. Anyway, the last thing I ate was like a rice crispy treat that was in the office that looked delicious and had like lucky charm pieces in it.

So I don't know if I'm the person to evaluate the food on Top Chef, but I do enjoy watching it. That leads us to the elimination challenge. Their challenge this week is to make a vegetable forward dish with prer. protein as a seasoning or accent. So this is interesting because it's not a vegetarian dish or a vegan dish or anything of that nature, but it's important to highlight the vegetable. It should be the star of the dish. So it's not a vegetarian dish, but it is a vegetable dish.

And this is important because obviously they're expected to use some type of protein. They're expected to have people are using meat, people are using fish, people are using seafood, you know, there's lots of different options, but the vegetable has to be the thing. I think that's really beautiful because, you know, vegetables don't always get like the spotlight. And I think it's nice that they get that time, really. They still go to Whole Foods. I didn't know they had Whole Foods in London, so that's chic. But they get their dollar amount that they get to spend because it's in pounds, not in dollars.

So I guess it's a pound amount. Isn't that fun? I guess this should be really obvious to me that it's like, you're going to have 250 pounds to spend. But something about it, I'm like, oh, that's quaint. Maybe I need to travel more. I haven't been out of the country in a minute. I'm like, oh, no dollars?

I know that they don't use dollars in the UK. I might probably sound very stupid, but I did not know that they had whole foods there. So that's exciting. I guess Amazon has sunk its teeth into the continent of Europe. Sylvia says she wants to be on Love Island and girl, I can relate.

Top Chef is one of those things. I talked to Don who, by the way, Don Borrell, if you're not aware of her background, she went to the fucking Olympics in the year 2000. She was a long jumper. Who knew? I knew. I asked her about it. She said that Top Chef is like the hardest thing she's ever done in her life. And she went to the Olympics.

So Top Chef, obviously, cool. You love food. You're passionate. But like, wouldn't it be a little more fun to be on Love Island? You get to kick back with your water bottle, wear that little microphone around your neck, and just like make out with people. Talk shit. I don't know. I don't really watch Love Island. I'm too busy with Bravo. But I feel you, Sylvia. Top Chef is hard work. Everybody that gets, everybody that goes on Top Chef after the season should get like a two-week tropical vacation on Bravo's dime. because they are busting their asses in these kitchens.

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Sounds a little basic. Sounds like something you could get at Arby's. Obviously, he's not doing, like, Arby's food. Like, it's giving, like, French dip sandwich. which, you know, but more on that later. Gabri in the kitchen spills water in Dawn's pan. And I, Don is trying to make these onion patties.

It's just like, Gabri's like sloshing around the kitchen, just like freewheeling, like nobody else needs the space. use your brain. And Don said she's not mad. She just is bad with time. And like, good for her. But like, get the fuck out of the way.

I always wonder with Top Chef because for the most part, obviously there have been moments in past seasons that have gotten a little more tense, a little more, you know, not everybody is always, you know, BFFs with each other in the kitchen. But I always wonder, like, these people are very. competitive, don't they ever just fucking hate each other? Like, if it was day two or, I guess, yeah, day two in the kitchen, it's the first elimination challenge. And I'm out here fighting for my life. I have flown across the country. I have cleared my schedule for a month, left my responsibilities at home to be here. And I'm making my onion patty. And you're just like, running around the kitchen, splishing. splashing,

water everywhere. Get your shit together. Like, leave me out of it. Mind your own fucking station. Stay away from me. And Dawn ends up in the bottom. I was,

you know, not to go too hard on Gapri, because he's also in the bottom. And to his credit, you know, The judges voiced their concerns about Don's Dish. And Gabri speaks up and he, he offers up the information of what he did to, I definitely think what he did made Don's Dish weaker.

And I appreciated that he, uh, you know, called himself out for that. Because I do think it, I don't know if Don't have gone home otherwise, but I think it sort of, it elevated her one notch up. And in the end, Samuel went home. And I was fine with that. You know, he made a tiger prawn with some veggies. I don't know. I was trying to take notes of like everybody's dish.

And at a certain point, I think I wrote the word veggies like six times. Because it's all just veggies. Like two people did cassava, cool. The two people did eggplant. Somebody did cauliflower. We have the onions, which actually, you know, he won the challenge. so good for him. Not so basic. Not so Arby's anymore. But like, we got a garden salad. That's veggies. Tiger prawn with veggies. Summer bass with garden veggies. That's what Nicole made. Glazed and pickled veggies. That's all I wrote for Amar. Like I don't, I will say when it's like a vegetable challenge.

It's hard to be like super inspired. Because everything they were making looked beautiful. Like the plating was great. Whatever. But it's like, Like, okay, it's still just like eggplant with sauce. It's still just like carrots. I can't get excited about carrots, you guys. I don't even, I don't dislike carrots, but it's like, it's carrots. So I'm hoping, I really enjoyed this episode, not to be, not to be a doubt. I'm hoping that next week is like a little more like showstoppery. I don't know.

But anyway, Charbel wins for understanding the onion. By the way, he's only 25, and he won the Middle East North Africa franchise six months ago before filming this. What? What the fuck am I doing with my life? Nothing. That's what. I'm talking about Top Chef on a microphone. And I will do it till the day I die.

Well, I hope everyone has a great weekend. I am excited for this season of Top Chef. Let me know if you're happy to have the Top Chef content back because it's going to be a good season. I can tell, I can feel it on my bones, I can taste it on my lips like garden veggies. Thank you so much for listening. As always, don't forget to rate, review, follow the show with lots more good stuff coming up next week and beyond. So don't forget to subscribe. You can follow us on Instagram at Bravo by Betches.

You can follow me at Dylan Hafer. And until next time, be cool. Don't be all like uncool. Mention It All is produced by Dylan Hafer, Sean Kilby, Jorge Morales Pico, and Rebecca Sousmaqat. Editing by Jorge Morales Pico. Social media by Dylan Hafer, guest booking by Dylan Hafer and Ali Friedlander. Be sure to follow at Bravo by Betches on Instagram and Twitter. All.

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