I’ve been binge-watching Top Chef recently. Top Chef is a cooking competition on the Bravo Network. People from all over the world apply to compete in the show. Some of them are restaurant owners, but some of them are cooking students or sous chefs.
There’s also a Top Chef Masters. On that show, the chefs are more seasoned and often have a chain of restaurants, a James Beard award or a Michelin star or several.
I’m on season 5 (of 17) of Top Chef. On each show, there’s a quick fire challenge and an elimination challenge. The quickfire challenges are often unusual. They’re cooking with weird ingredients or in weird places. Then the elimination challenges are more elaborate.
Every season, there is a restaurant wars show where the contestants split into two teams and open their restaurant from an empty space in 24 hours.
Each episode, someone is eliminated until the Top Chef is crowned.
So far, the contestants bring a lot of drama but some good cooking as well. I find myself cheering for some contestants more than others. I was cheering for the winner of season 3 but not so much for the winner of season 2, although they seemed like a nice person.
Damn, that sounds right up my street but I can’t get Bravo, what country are you in?
It looks as if I can get old Top Chef Masters and Top Chef Dual through on Catch Up on Peacock, though, and Top Chef Series 13, 14 and15 on Amazon Prime, but the newer series they want you to sign up to Hayu and that’s £4.99 a month
I’ll have a look at the ones I can get free then, thank you
I looked it up in the UK before I posted this and saw HayU. I didn’t realize that was paid.
The seasons are pretty similar, so starting with season 1 probably won’t make much difference. I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts about Top Chef if you get a chance to watch it.
I really like Top Chef Masters. It’s a lot less drama. Maybe I should start a thread on that instead. The old pros are older and wiser and don’t waste their energy with yelling at each other as much, although there were a couple explosive scenes.
A caveat if you watch Top Chef Masters and want to watch the first 5 seasons of Top Chef. In one episode of Top Chef Masters, they reveal the winners of the first 5 seasons as judges in one of the competitions. I promptly forgot them, but it’s a spoiler for some people.
I am now firmly hooked on this show. I’m on season 9 at the moment.
3 female chefs got together and bullied a very mild Asian female chef. The bullying was so bad that it was all over the magazines at the time. This was in 2011.
I finished watching the season. She didn’t win but made a good run.
Then just coincidentally, I found people discussing this season on Reddit. They explained a whole different story. The Asian woman, Beverly had sued one of the top Chicago chefs for not paying his chefs minimum wage. She won the suit. The bullies were chefs in Chicago who took offense to the lawsuit in loyalty to the icon chef. That didn’t make it better, but it did make it more understandable.
Beverly won in the end though. She’s the only contestant on Top Chef to have a Michelin starred restaurant, a feat no other contestant has been able to maintain. They say that only one other contestant was able to get to that level, but his restaurant closed.
