The fifth season of "Top Chef" is premiering Wednesday, November 12 at 10:00 pm on Bravo.
Padma and Tom, Top Chef, photo from Bravo
Bravo’s “Top Chef” is part of the intelligentsia of all reality TV and features two striking hosts, Padma Lakshmi, and Tom Colicchio, who entertain a great range of guest hosts such as Anthony Bourdain to the Foo Fighters this season.
The show is a true pressure cooker of culinary prowess, where you get to see tons of dishes cooked up, from an amous bouche to a simple pizza.
Food porn with a brain.
Joining the New York contestants is a former Indian model, stunning multi-lingual gourmand Padma Lakshmi, who sits alongside head judge Tom Colicchio, a renowned culinary figure and chef/owner, Craft Restaurants, also with judge Gail Simmons, of Food & Wine Magazine.
In what Bravo promises will be the most exciting season yet, some of the biggest and most respected chefs will guest star on "Top Chef: New York."
Other guest stars this season will be Martha Stewart, Jean-Georges, Eric Ripert, and Natasha Richardson. The winning chef will receive $100,000 in seed money to help open a restaurant and a showcase at the Annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.
Monsters and Critics joined a few online journalists and was fortunate to speak with Padma and Tom on Friday.
Tom Colicchio : Are you going to be a monster or a critic today?
Oh, I’m neither monstrous nor a critic.
Tom Colicchio: Okay.
Tom, I’ve been to your restaurants and I enjoy them very much, especially Craft here in Los Angeles. My question for you - your menu, how often in a fine restaurant or in a chain of restaurants like yours do you feel that you need to revamp the menu or change it? Does it change daily?
Tom Colicchio: Yeah, first chain, I hate that word. I only have seven restaurants. I’m not a chain.
Padma Lakshmi: You’re more like a (string).
Tom Colicchio: No, we change the menu constantly because the menu is printed everyday and it changes according to what’s in season and what’s available.
The chef in Los Angeles, Matthew Accarrino, has pretty much full charge and range to change the menu how he sees fit as long as the food stays within a certain sort of reference.
But we have a woman who pulls up in a truck that she gathers vegetables from different farmers all through probably within a local radius of Los Angeles. And she pulls up three days a week and opens the truck, and that’s when we start planning the menu.
I’m not sure of the individual farmers but I would say 97% of our produce is from local farmers.
Padma, do you have a guilty pleasure for cooking shows, or one that you never miss?
Padma Lakshmi: Yeah, sure but I don’t know if they’re on TV now. But somebody gave me one of the best presents I ever received which was a complete collection of all of Julia Child’s cooking shows from the 50s and 60s...in black and white.
When I was growing up -- I know he’s a pedophile but I didn’t know this then and neither did anyone else -- but when I grew up on public television I would watch the Frugal Gourmet.
I loved that he would pick a country and he would learn all about that country and all about its food. And I watched that program as religiously as I watched Sesame Street or The Electric Company.
And so those are my two. And I also like the Galloping Gourmet - Graham Kerr was great. I was always waiting for his (fular) to get set on fire. He seemed a bit toasted. But I like those old school shows.
I have to admit I don’t watch a lot of TV now. If I do, it tends to be like Flight of the Conchords or Mad Men.
You worked recently with Aishwarya Rai, the Indian bombshell.
Padma Lakshmi: Yes.
I mean you’re both bombshells. So is she a gourmand or does she like straight up Indian cooking only? Or is she adventurous?
Padma Lakshmi: She eats what she wants. She’s an old school Indian girl. She doesn’t work out. She doesn’t care about her weight. She - Indian women traditionally, we like fuller women.
So she eats whatever she wants and she has a good appetite. I mean, we were filming in the Isle of Wight so we didn’t have a lot of Indian food.
But, she’s from a very interesting part of India. She’s Konkani and that food is delicious. It’s in the south - on the west coast of India and they use a lot of coconut milk.
Tom, how far along have you filmed Top Chef New York and do you have any interesting stories to wit, to date?
Tom Colicchio: Well we shot everything through the finale. We’ll go back and shoo the finale in January sometime.
I don’t think we have a location nailed down yet for the finale. And, what’s interesting about this season, it was somewhat of a difficult shoot.
I think because we were shooting in New York and we all live in New York, we’re going back to our regular lives as soon as we were off the set, at least I was.
Padma is always on the set. I mean she works a lot more than I do on the show.
But - so it seemed to be hard to sort of get back into the sort of mindset of the show and I think that was, the only thing that was difficult.
However, obviously shooting in New York lent itself to a lot of just amazing things that New York has to offer - a lot of different ethnic cuisines.
So it was a lot of fun but it was challenging as well.
Padma Lakshmi: I’ll say the one thing - another journalist did ask about the weight thing. I gained less weight this season because I was at home and I could watch a little bit of what I ate and then I would just not - I was able to go to the gym more.
I really was. I mean I’m very proud of this show for doing just that, like not only going to fine restaurants like Tom’s or Eric Ripert’s, but also really looking at the city holistically.
Tom, how are your chef contestants vetted for the show?
Tom Colicchio: We look to see how much butter they use. No, I’m kidding.
Padma Lakshmi: I thought he said butter, too.
Tom Colicchio: I definitely said butter. I wasn’t - how much better? Okay. Well I think that’s been sort of a mission of the show is of - to try to always, you know, find better contestants.
Also, I think as has become accepted in our industry as something that - doing more chefs of notoriety are coming out. So I think it’s a combination of something that we’ve been trying to do and all our chefs are making themselves, you know, available to the show.
Padma, what can you tell us about this season’s crew?
Padma Lakshmi: Well they’re an interesting bunch. Like, most of our cast, they come from all over.
I thought they really held their own. I think the one thing I noted this season is that it was really interesting to watch the evolution of more than a few of them.
Talk about your simple pleasures in food-personally for each of you.
Padma Lakshmi: Oh, lots of stuff. I like grilled cheeses. I mean that’s pretty simple.
I like scrambled eggs. I like Tom’s scrambled eggs. He made them once in the dressing room when we were in Chicago. I don’t know, Tom?
Tom Colicchio: You know, usually I don’t eat fancy food (at night), and most chefs don’t.
Padma Lakshmi: Yeah.
Tom Colicchio: I like a good burger. I like simple pastas. Usually every morning I wake up eating dry cereal.
I think this idea that chefs eat fancy food all the time, I usually find that chefs crave, you know, a lot of sort of junk food.
Do you guys gain weight during production?
Padma Lakshmi: I’ll take that one. Yeah, I mean I gain about 10 to 15 pounds over the course of six weeks. And, you know, luckily for me I gain it all over so I just get kind of exponentially bigger by one size.
I would say…I’ve never gone up two dress sizes, but I certainly always go up one dress size without fail.
I mean it’s incredible. I can actually feel it. I mean the woman who irons and gets out clothes for us, she has a lot of work to do because she really has to think about that when she’s planning my dresses because we often buy things in two dresses, you know, for the first half and the second half of the show.
Tom is probably better at only taking small bites than I am. I haven’t mastered that skill yet.
Tom Colicchio: Yeah, I’ve actually lost about 20 pounds since the show started three years ago or four years ago.
Padma Lakshmi: I think I put them on.
Tom Colicchio: Yes, I’m giving them to Padma.
How would you two describe the art of cooking?
Tom Colicchio: I think the act of cooking is what’s really, I think, sensual. it’s the... really I mean think about it, it’s the ultimate foreplay if you’re cooking for somebody. It’s - there’s just no better way to, I think, you know, woo someone’s heart.
Padma Lakshmi: It’s very nurturing too, yeah. I mean I can’t cook for people that I don’t like.
And it is, cooking is a very physical thing.
I will say that, my job as a food writer is to be descriptive and expressive, and communicative about those smells and those tastes, and those textures that I’m experiencing on the plate.
So I feel like that’s part of my job. It’s what I do off of the set anyway. But I also think that people eat with their eyes. So that helps us.
Tom Colicchio: You always think about things like oysters and caviar, and things like that as being sexy. But again, I think it’s not so much about what. I think it’s more about just the act of doing it.
Padma Lakshmi: I think I would cook things that you could eat with your hands.
How much do you eat during the show?
Padma Lakshmi: It’s - the amount of food consumed is staggering. And we - especially in the first half of the show when we have so many contestants, you do - I feel and I’m sure Tom would agree, the onus is on us to make sure we sample every contestant’s dish adequately, in fairness. So it does become difficult.
Tom Colicchio: Yeah. in fact, we spent a lot of time -our Assistant Director who runs the set, that’s something, he’s really cognizant of is making sure not only are we tasting everything, but we’re getting everything when it’s hot, when it’s first made...so it’s not sitting around for five or ten minutes, sitting around wilting. So there’s so much - so much of eating is obviously visual, and so food will start to change very quickly after it’s plated.
So we’re very, very much on top of making sure we get everything, as soon as it’s finished.
What’s a good cook? What does that mean?
Tom Colicchio: Well to be a cook there’s a certain amount of the technical knowledge you need, to be a good cook. There’s so much technique. I mean obviously the knife skills play a part in it.
They don’t have to, but they do a little bit. Certain things, if they’re cut certain ways, cook better or cook differently.
But again this gets into cooking at home or cooking at restaurant.
It’s very different. But I think also having a command of seasoning, knowing how to balance flavors, how, acid works with a dish and how it works with salt.
I mean you can only taste four flavors on your tongue: salty, sour, sweet and bitter. So it’s learning really how to take a dish and trying to hit those four senses, but then also trying to figure out which part of those four things you should amp up.
And there’s also the fifth taste that they call (umami) which is more of a - characterized as almost a meaty flavor that you can taste. So it’s balancing those things and creating different textures and different harmonies.
Padma Lakshmi: I think the definition of a good cook is someone who really has a command and mastery of their ingredients and knows how to manipulate those ingredients either, by developing flavor through heat or (marination), or other ways, and really elevating the sum of those ingredients into something better - is to manipulate the combination of those ingredients and knowing how to make that dish better than just a collection of things on the plate and make that delicious.
Does a large personality matter in becoming a popular chef?
Tom Colicchio: Yeah, I think so but, yes and no. I mean there’s certain personalities, if they’re larger than life they’re going to sort of be more and more front and center and people are going to sort of see them more and they’ll spend more time on TV.
But there are a lot of really good cooks that you don’t hear about who are quiet. I know who are good on TV. I can think of Jonathan Benno who runs per se for Thomas Keller in New York.
I can think of Grant Achatz in Chicago. He’s very reserved and quiet, and you’ll see him on our show this season.
But he’s just a wonderful cook. Like I was saying there are so many cooks out there that, just out there that you won’t hear from...
Padma Lakshmi: That you don’t know about, yeah.
What’s your response to people who say that chefs are getting lazier and want a quick break thanks to Top Chef?
Padma Lakshmi: I don’t think anybody who has come through the process of being on a - being a contestant on Top Chef would say that laziness got them through the challenge.
That of course it is very lucrative to one’s career to have a platform on TV. But, they’re on TV. They’re on national TV and they are followed by seven or eight cameras in that kitchen.
So if they’re sloppy or lazy, the camera sees it. And if their food isn’t good, they get eliminated.
Tom Colicchio: Nobody gets anywhere by being lazy. I find that to be a very strange comment. I don’t think there are any shortcuts to getting there.
I mean there’s a vetting process and, you know, you’re not going to sort of get through that process if you haven’t some sort of skill.
I find our industry has changed. It’s changed a lot and it’s changed a lot because of TV...and because of media. And it just strikes me as very silly is when you get chefs who talk about back in the day and how old-school this and back in the day, my feeling is if you weren’t working in kitchens before 1986, stop talking about back in the day.
If you’ve been cooking for six years there’s no back in the day for you. So, truly come on, this is getting ridiculous.
It’s very easy to badmouth the show if you’re a professional chef for whatever reason because some people look at this as a shortcut to fame.
But you know what, most of these guys who have been on the show, if they don’t back it up in their everyday life they’re going to fade away, a year from now. They’re going to have their 15 minutes.
If the chef is like Harold who will continue to do really well and continue to be taken seriously. So no, I don’t find this is a shortcut to - I don’t think that this is a lazy way to do anything.
And I think there was some comment made recently from what’s his name, I’m losing - I think I have a note here somewhere …Bret Thorn, Thorn made some kind of comment, too. Well, my feeling is - we travel around and I talk to a lot of people. I can’t tell you how many teenagers who watch the show and are contemplating going into cooking.
Padma Lakshmi: Oh yeah me too. I mean...kids love the show and I think it’s - I think Top Chef is a great opportunity. If you’re lucky enough to actually make the cut and be one of the contestants, it’s just a chance to show if you’re good or not.
But if you’re not good, you’re not going to last on the show. And that comment about how TV and media has changed, you know, the food industry, guess what? The TV and media have changed all of our lives in every industry.
Tom Colicchio: But, getting back to that for a second, I think the comment was something about people are attracted to the industry who don’t deserve to be part of it or diners that don’t come to those restaurants that start making comments.
Padma Lakshmi: Yeah. Also I mean, one of the things that I’m really proud of is, I have people come up to me all the time and it’s young people or old people, or whatever, who say, now I know what an amous bouche is or, you know, now I know the difference between a chiffonade and a julienne.
The thing that American food always gets knocked for -- especially in Europe -- is being kind of backward or pedestrian, or uninformed.
I think that Top Chef also does a great service in informing people about food and cooking technique, and eating right and using, good local ingredients. And you’ll see that a lot, especially on this season.
TV has changed the way people look at food for the good - for the better I believe.
What characteristic will increase the odds of being a contender for the grand prize?
Padma Lakshmi: I think there are a few things. I think one thing is just to think before you just charge into the challenge or the quick - obviously I do the quickfires as well and it’s difficult because a lot of times you have very little time.
But I think taking that just that few minutes to really compose an idea, look at the resources that are given to you at that given challenge and really thinking about what you’re doing and thinking about not only surviving, but how can I hit this challenge out of the park.
How can I do something that’s really interesting or do something that’s really simple but just execute, you know, execute it to the fullest.
Tom Colicchio: Personality wise our contestant is being strategic about it, no, because we’re not privy to all the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on.
We’re not there when they’re shooting it. We don’t really know much about it. We strictly judge on food.
And so the strategy of winning and getting to the finale is making great food.
Padma Lakshmi: Oh yeah. I mean I don’t know about the personalities, yes.
Tom Colicchio: Well what Padma is saying is - goes to creating great food, thinking about what you’re doing first and putting some thought into it.
Any trendy ingredient you would like to retire?
Padma Lakshmi: I really roll my eyes at truffle oil as well. I never used it and then when I tried it I hated it, and then now I know why.
But I will say that I am always excited when a contestant shows me a new ingredient that I haven’t used because that’s teaching me something that I haven’t tasted before or seen before, or touched or smelled before.
And that’s really cool. Now whether that ingredient works in the recipe that they’re doing is another question.
Tom Colicchio: Yeah, I can think of something. I mean I think Richard - he put together a dish with salmon with white chocolate wasabi. And when I heard that, I was like this has got to be disgusting…
Any up-and-coming sort of community or environment for an exciting culinary scene?
Tom Colicchio: Sure, Portland. Just northwest. I mean years ago they called Seattle a new San Francisco and I think just from a standpoint of the ingredients native to the northwest and they’re cooks are better.
I just read something recently where they’re such a tight-knit community and a guy who works for me for a bunch of years is now in Portland. But it seems to be such a really tight-knit community of chefs who are doing a local war thing but doing it because it’s not trendy, doing it because they’re passionate about it.
Padma Lakshmi: Yeah. it’s interesting because I haven’t had a chance to travel as much as I’d like to throughout the country. But I mean I’m looking at writing my new cookbook.
One of the things I wanted to do was just kind of go like culinary spelunking, which is just like what I love to do - is just go to new parts of the world and just travel, just walk around their stores and go to the places that are not the fancy restaurants but just where everyday people eat.
I would really love to go to Peru and I’d love to go to some more parts of Southeast Asia that I haven’t traveled in yet.
And also some parts of Africa I’m really interested in going to and seeing what their cuisine is. I’m always - for me, I’m looking at it more, you know, from an everyday person’s perspective.
I like to track really a culture through its food. And that’s very interesting to me. You can see also historically how certain pockets of people have gone to another country and how that affects the food, whether it’s Jewish people coming to this country or Japanese people going to Peru, or, you know, like any of that, like French people going to Vietnam.
Like those migrations of people really help the local cuisine - like the Arabs, you know, and the Moors in Spain - that all very much interests me.
When cultures bump up against each other and comingle, and you get all of these wonderful, wonderful new variations of cuisines that sprout up, that’s very interesting to me because I guess it’s what’s happened to me in my own life.
Do young people approach you as fans of the show?
Padma Lakshmi: Yes. I mean I actually have a cousin who recently graduated from Hofstra University and, you know, he and his friends all have Top Chef viewing parties.
They sort of all gather around and watch it together because they love to watch it. And, I think people are attracted to watching someone be really passionate about their - what they do and going flat out towards that goal.
It’s not unlike live sports. I think the same thing that people are attracted to a live sport for is what attracts them to a show like ours, the competitive, you know, the competitive element, the sort of striving beyond, you know, all possibility, the clock., all of that.
So, we’re all very practiced at having really strong opinions about what we eat, whether we’re, Ruth Reichl or, the line cook or, just a regular insurance salesman because we’ve all been eating since we were born.
Every creature on the planet eats. So we all have really strong opinions about it. We’re used to sizing up things with our eyes and by other visual cues that our brain gets in making those opinions even if we don’t taste the food.
And then, of course, you’ve got the four of us sitting up there, waxing endlessly about it.
Guest judges, this season?
Tom Colicchio: Guest judges - Eric Ripert comes back. I think we have Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters, you know, show and Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart is on. Who else? I don’t know, a bunch of...
Padma Lakshmi: Yeah, I don’t know how many more of those guest judges we can reveal. But I will say that...
Tom Colicchio: No we can reveal all of them.
Padma Lakshmi: Yeah, we can? Okay. I mean I think the last supper was pretty incredible to sit at one table with not only, Wiley Dufresne and Marcus Samuelsson, of course but really Jacques Pepin, I mean and (Lydia) -, I mean that was incredible.
To have all of those palates on one table was, for me, a great, great honor. And, you know, also obviously the Foo Fighters being on was pretty damn cool.
What about the new judge, Toby Young?
Padma Lakshmi: Toby is somebody that I had never met before except for on the set on the first day of shooting that he came in. I didn’t know what to expect, but I found him very charming, very witty, and very sweet.
I can only tell you from my experience of him but that’s what it was.
Tom Colicchio: I think with the contestants. I mean he was brash. He was opinionated. He was very funny and witty as well.
Any holiday cooking anecdotes –disasters you can share?
Padma Lakshmi: I once dropped a pie. But I mean it just sounds not that interesting but if you were there, I dropped a berry pie and I don’t know how I managed to make such a mess because it just didn’t fall but it kind of flipped and fell and exploded.
And everybody said please don’t clean it up. We’ll clean it up after dinner because, , everything is - we’re having dinner.
And the whole time during the dinner, I was so distracted by this kind of , berry tie-dyed explosion in the kitchen that I could hardly concentrate on what anyone was saying. So great was my desire to get up and go on my knees, and scrub it all clean.
Name a guilty nosh eaten at home, if you’re home alone
Tom Colicchio: Beef jerky, I love beef jerky. And licorice - I love licorice and that red stuff is not licorice. It’s candy. Black - licorice is black.
From Bravo: Meet the new cheftestants:
ARIANE AGE: 41
CARLA AGE: 44
DANNY AGE: 26
FABIO
GENE AGE: 33
HOSEA
JAMIE
JEFF AGE: 30
JILL
LAUREN AGE: 24
LEAH
MELISSA HOMETOWN: Maryland – currently resides in Boulder, Colo.
PATRICK
RADHIKA AGE: 28
RICHARD AGE: 27
STEFAN
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