Talking with My Mouth Full (17 page)

Padma has embraced her new role as a single mother with bravery, passion, and utter adoration for her beautiful daughter. After suffering for years from endometriosis, she has become an integral advocate (she cofounded the Endometriosis Foundation of America in 2009) and a poster child for overcoming its odds.

Our crew is exceptional. We’ve had the same production team since our first season. We have a blast together on and off the set, descending on hotel bars and restaurants from city to city, celebrating milestones (births, birthdays, weddings, an Emmy), and supporting one another in moments of need (illnesses, accidents, family emergencies). I think of us as a traveling band of food gypsies.

Reality TV is an undertaking like no other. Our production company, Magical Elves, turns a barren warehouse in each city into a working television studio with a fully equipped professional kitchen, an art department, a culinary prep area, a video village of monitors and soundboards, production offices, the stew room for our contestants, and dressing rooms complete with makeup stations for us.

It’s awe-inspiring what they accomplish in such a short amount of time. Once we’ve finished taping a season, and the flames and drama have subsided, the whole set is broken down and packed up, and the warehouse looks just as empty as the day we moved in.

In the beginning, the crew and producers held my hand, teaching me the internal lingo of production (chefs needing a “10-1”; “repo to one”; “OTF interviews”) and
never
to assume that your microphone is off unless you turn it off yourself (for example, when you take a “10-1” and go to the bathroom).

My greatest fear has always been that the show will make me appear mean-spirited or overly critical. During the first few seasons I was occasionally labeled “the sinister judge” by the press. In the earlier days of reality TV, I think viewers and networks alike tried to fit all show judges into
American Idol
–style roles. It took me a while to understand that it was not Bravo’s intention to make me look evil, and just as long for them to realize that only showing our most critical moments would not endear us to our audience either. Overall, I think they edit us more kindly now—and the show is better for it. After all, if my fellow judges and I come across as passionate about the subject and well informed, viewers will trust our decisions and respect the show. We try the food on the audience’s behalf. They need to believe us.

People often ask me what percentage of the food that I eat on the show is good. I would say 40 percent needs work in some way, 40 percent is great, and 20 percent is truly exceptional. There have certainly been bites I wanted to spit out, but I can say (gratefully) that not one of the countless dishes I’ve tasted on the show has ever made me sick. (I can’t speak for the other judges, but so far I’ve been lucky. Knock on wood.)

Not that we haven’t eaten some revolting dishes.
Top Chef
has required me to taste things I never dreamed of putting in my mouth, and hope never to again. There was Season 2’s opening challenge, for instance, that required the chefs to combine escargots with processed cheese. Then there was the leathery rattlesnake in Season 3, and the huge, offensively phallic saltwater clams, called geoducks (pronounced, not for nothing, “gooey ducks”). It’s hard to erase from my memory Emily’s painfully over-salted surf & turf from Season 2, or the soggy ostrich-egg quiche with rice-pecan crust that Jill made in Season 5. I will forever associate the chewy chicken feet Casey made for us on
Top Chef: All-Stars
with a rubber tire.

Of course there are moments of eye-opening brilliance, when I am humbled and awed by the contestants’ skill: dishes like Tiffani Faison’s creamy artichoke risotto from the Season 1 finale, cut to the finest
brunoise
, with flecks of crispy pork; or Bryan Voltaggio’s airy and inspired sweet-and-sour macaroons with guacamole, corn nuts, and fresh sweet corn purée. Some dishes stand out for the chef-testants’ ability to capture the essence of a specific culture or locale, like Ed Cotton’s piping-hot banana fritters with a spicy drop of chili paste and just the right amount of salt to bring it all together (for our Singapore finale in Season 7), or Carla Hall’s New Orleans–style oyster stew, delicately sprinkled with bacon, celery, and potatoes (in Season 5). Kevin Gillespie’s poached lamb loin with sherry-glazed golden beets and asparagus in sunchoke cream amazed a panel of the most intimidating and critical chefs to date, including Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud, and won Kevin a spot in France’s legendary culinary competition, the Bocuse d’Or. And I still find myself craving the dishes Richard Blais made the night he finally won his Top Chef title in Season 8—especially that raw hamachi with fried sweetbreads, Asian pear, and pickled radish—at once bright, ambitious, rich, and satisfying.

Sometimes at Judges’ Table I learn more from the contestants’ vast knowledge than they might learn from our critiques. One of the most insightful chefs we’ve had on the show was Kevin Gillespie. He was committed to bringing together soulful Southern food and modern technique. Though he didn’t win, I will always feel that Kevin was the most articulate chef on the series to date. He could rationalize any technique he employed: why he chose to pan-roast instead of grill; why he chose to sear instead of poach; why he chose to combine two disparate flavors. After my six seasons as a judge on the show, Kevin gave me a new perspective on cooking.

Unfortunately, Kevin’s finale dinner was not his best meal. It didn’t go as planned, though he fought hard to sell us on it. During Judges’ Table he broke into a soliloquy about his slow-roasted pork belly—and for twenty minutes, he had Tom, Padma, Toby Young, and me completely mesmerized. Kevin described the exact degree of doneness of his meat and explained exactly why (although it seemed too chewy to us) he preferred it that way. It was entirely convincing. When he finally stopped to take a breath, our producer cut the cameras and ran over to us.

“Guys:
three million people
just changed the channel!” Nan shouted, her eyes blazing. “
None
of this is getting on the show—it’s boring! We need to move on. What’s come over you?”

To us, this was the most fascinating conversation we’d had in the show’s history—like a lecture by our favorite nutty professor. But, yes, we all had to agree, it would make for terrible television.

Kevin Gillespie wasn’t the only man of intrigue who spent time on our set. The universal nature of our subject matter has lured stars of all types. One memorable episode included my introduction to several other of the country’s brightest talents simultaneously.

Rock legends, food lovers, and enthusiastic
Top Chef
fans, the Foo Fighters agreed to do an episode with us for Season 5, which we shot in New York during the summer of 2008. They were on tour, performing in Rochester, so we decided to stage the Elimination Challenge there. The plan was to have the contestants cook Thanksgiving dinner for the band and their crew backstage before the show. The meal had to be ready by four o’clock, so the band could eat, digest, and go on at eight.

The episode’s guest judge was none other than Grant Achatz, a young chef at the forefront of modernist cuisine. His Chicago restaurant, Alinea, is among the most ambitious in the country. Everything in the thirteen- to twenty-four-course tasting menu is a play on temperature, flavor, and the conventional dining experience. Grant was a
Food & Wine
Best New Chef in 2002, so I’d been following his career for years and was thrilled to finally have the chance to meet him in person.

He and I were supposed to fly up to Rochester around noon, but early that morning a summer storm grounded all commercial flights out of New York City. Tom was flying in from an event elsewhere. Padma was flying privately. So the producers arranged for a van to drive Grant and me up to Rochester together.

Grant’s willingness to participate in the show was especially valued. Not only were we asking him to take four days away from his restaurant, but he had just endured an incomprehensibly difficult struggle. The year before, Grant had been diagnosed with tongue cancer; after months of aggressive treatment, one of America’s preeminent chefs had lost his sense of taste. And yet he never let the disease deter him from his devotion to the craft of cooking. Through it all, Grant was constantly thinking up new combinations of ingredients, which he would execute through his sous-chefs. (He documents his remarkable story in his memoir,
Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat
.)

Fortunately, Grant made a full recovery, but he was still getting his strength back when we met that day for the first time. During the seven-hour drive to Rochester, he shared with me his incredible story. He talked about the ordeal with immense gratitude, as his temporary loss of taste ultimately allowed him to gain a new perspective on the nuances of food and flavor, let alone life itself. When you go through something as traumatic as that, I can only assume that the details become either more important or infinitely less so. In Grant’s case they became vital. He embraced his work with newfound passion and realized, more than ever, the value of what he could contribute to the culinary world. We’re all the richer for it. I keep Grant’s story close to my heart not only because it’s a moving account of how someone overcame enormous adversity, but also because it serves as a constant reminder to never take for granted even the simplest actions—like putting a piece of food on one’s tongue—or the perpetual joy derived from tasting something new.

When we arrived on location, the production had set up a tented kitchen for the chefs outside the concert venue. In the middle of the shoot it started to rain, and we had to bring everything into the basement. It was a messy production, but the meal was impressive, all things considered.

Let me point out that I’m a serious Foo Fighters fan and have been for years. Lest we forget: Dave Grohl was in Nirvana, which for me defined the early 1990s. He and Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, and Chris Cornell were like gods to me. And here I was, chitchatting with Dave and his band about craft services and where to get the best tacos in LA.

I walked with Dave to dinner through the stadium hallway. He seemed nervous and excited.

“I can’t believe I’m going to be on
Top Chef
right now!” he told me. “How cool is that?”

“Yeah,” I said, teasing him. “I know perfectly well how cool it is that
you
are going to be on
Top Chef
right now.”

It was surreal. Dave Grohl was about to play a concert in front of thirteen thousand screaming fans, and he seemed more anxious about being on
our
show.

Sure enough, he and the rest of the band loved the eating and judging process. During their show we sat backstage by the sound booth. At one point Padma jumped onstage and played the tambourine. It was all pretty awesome.

Beyond my own delight in doing the show, it’s immensely gratifying to be part of something that’s helped educate people around the world (the show now airs in dozens of countries, from the Philippines to Brazil) about food and cooking.

When
Top Chef
launched in 2006 on Bravo, it served as an antidote to the plethora of shows already in existence about fast, easy home cooking.
Top Chef
has always been about professional chefs. It’s for people who are interested in a glimpse of that more rarefied world behind the kitchen door. It turns out, there are a lot of us. As I write this,
Top Chef
is the highest-rated food show on cable television.

I believe we’re helping people talk about food in a smarter way. A friend tells me she keeps a food dictionary on the coffee table when she and her husband watch
Top Chef
. When they hear a word they don’t know, they grab the book and look it up. They learn chef names and terms like
chiffonade
and
mise-en-place
, and it helps them understand the language of the kitchen.

College campuses around the country now have
Top Chef
parties on Wednesday nights. I am constantly stopped on the street by parents who claim their young children want to become chefs. They watch the show religiously, help their parents cook dinner, and would rather stage elaborate, make-believe Quickfire challenges than play videogames. The “cook-off” has become a phenomenon for a whole new generation, who are paying more attention to what they cook and what they put in their mouths, trying something new, or simply being more conscious of where their food comes from. It never fails to amaze me when people write in and tell me how we’ve stirred their imaginations, made them more food-curious, or changed how they look at an ingredient, whether they’re dining out or cooking at home.
That
is a big deal. Everyone has to eat. Now there’s a greater dialogue about it.

Spreading the gospel of good food was never a goal of mine, specifically, at least not until
Top Chef
came along. But doing so has been infinitely satisfying. Sometimes life’s greatest rewards come down to serendipity. Several months after that first screen test, Dave Serwatka told me that part of the reason they decided to cast me was because of my ridiculous omelet story. They had never met anyone who could get
that
emotional over a meal. And to think, if I’d been served a decent omelet at that greasy-spoon diner, all this might never have happened. Perhaps the moral of the story is this: Be true to yourself, and know that sometimes it’s okay—in fact well-advised—to cry over burned eggs.

TWELVE

Confessions of a Food Judge

IT’S THE FINALE
of the first season of
Top Chef Masters.
The chefs are an inspired group: Hubert Keller, a classic French chef from Alsace and the chef and owner of Fleur de Lys in San Francisco, a bastion of haute cuisine; Michael Chiarello, established TV personality and lifestyle entrepreneur, chef of the rustic Italian restaurant Bottega in Napa Valley, a born showman; Rick Bayless, an American who’s become the foremost authority on regional Mexican food in this country. Each one has been asked to serve dishes associated with his most cherished food memories. Each chef tells a story related to his love of cooking. A spare rib tastes better when you know why it’s significant to the chef, as opposed to when you get it from a chain restaurant. Food is a window into a chef’s culture and life. Hubert Keller’s
baeckeoffe
is a stew of lamb, beef, pork, and potato cooked in a clay pot. It would cook on Sundays while he and his mother did the laundry. To Hubert, the braised meat and chunks of vegetables covered with pieces of roasted potato symbolize his home in Alsace. When he lifts the lid, he invites us into his childhood house, located over the family’s bakery. It’s a warm and comforting place to be. Michael Chiarello prepares two takes on his grandmother’s gnocchi—one classic, one modernized—that are so different from each other it’s hard to believe they’re made from the same ingredients: one is light and delicate, bathed in a simple, vibrant tomato sauce; the other is rich, pan-seared, and laden with truffles. Rick Bayless’s quail with hickory sauce takes us to his Oklahoma hometown, where his father works the grill at his family’s barbecue joint. And Rick’s remarkable pork
pibil
transports us to the table of his very first Mexican restaurant. In a mouthful, we understand why he fell in love with Mexico and its varied and ancient cooking methods. All three chefs cook with vulnerability and passion. They reveal themselves to us through the deeply personal nature of their food, giving us so much insight into what made them who they are. I’ll never look at them the same way again.