Lunchtime score! Apparently somebody hit up Graffiato for lunch (Restaurant Week visit, perhaps), and offered up he leftover pizza in the office kitchen!
(This is the only Jersey Shore-named product I approve of).
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After the premiere, I’m definitely excited about this Top Chef All-Stars season.
And after Just Desserts, I’m excited about a Top Chef franchise that’s about food and drama, not just drama.
Pulling for DC chefs Mike Isabella and Carla Hall (and to a lesser extent, Spike), and some other favorites from previous seasons, like Richard Blais and Jen Carroll.
We checked out We, the Pizza, Spike Mendelsohnn’s new pizza place on Capitol Hill, with a couple of friends (and fellow Top Chef fans) visiting DC for the weekend. The man himself wasn’t there, but someone else in the kitchen was sporting a fedora.
Spike has said that he wanted to go away from the Neapolitan style popular in most of DC’s best pizza joints, and aimed for more of a New York style. In terms of the simple cheese pie, it didn’t quite work. The crust is a bit too bready and crispy, and it’s thickness dominates the cheese and sauce. If they’re trying to emulate the best of NY-style, they haven’t gotten it yet.
However, that same crust becomes an asset when the slice is loaded with more toppings. A sausage and peppers pie was well-balanced, and the toppings definitely shined. Similarly, the pancetta and potatoes slice was punctuated with spice and crispiness.
The prices are reasonable ($3 per cheese slice, $4 for a topped slice). Generally speaking, I’m glad that we checked it out, and it was pretty good. If friends were interested in going, I’d be happy to pop in again (but I’d stay away from the regular cheese), but I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to cross the city, when there are significantly better pizza options in the District.
(cross-posted on Yelp)
Some sites to check out for Top Chef DC recaps and snark—any great ones I’m missing?
With the new season of Top Chef rolling out here in the nation’s capital, thought I’d share some of the blogs I’m definitely looking to for recaps, local insights, and lots of delicious snark throughout the TCDC season:
Capital Spice: A great DC food blog for finding great restaurants, recipes, and purveyors of fine foods, Cap-Spice is using the home-team status (as neighbors of Spike Mendelsohn’s Good Stuff Eatery) to help educate fans on some of the local people and places that are shown briefly in episodes of TCDC. They also came up with this sweet graphic:
Metrocurean: Amanda gets great scoops on DC restaurant openings and news, and her new restaurant roundups are a favorite feature. Looks like she may be doing the same thing with her “Morning After” roundup of local Top Chef reactions.
Endless Simmer: A foodie blog written by a group of folks in DC and, well, other cities, the Simmer will be doing weekly interviews with the most recently “offed” contestants, which provided some great Stefan and Fabio quotes last year, and so far this year, a bizarre if admirable declaration of confidence in the face of results from Dreadlock McGee:
Who’s the most talented?
From what I saw, I’m the most talented. Being first eliminated, might be hard to swallow.
DCist — their recap of episode one pretty much sums up what to expect:
The D.C.-based location lets us watch the show while combining two of our favorite activities: judging contestants on Top Chef and judging outsiders for totally misunderstanding D.C. And, fear not, you’ll hear plenty of both.
Relatively Entertaining: A general TV blog run by three Bahstin-area “quibbling siblings,” who among them, cover a remarkable number of TV shows. Also provide a non-DC-based opinion of things DC, as below:
Tell me, did you think it was odd they continued the Vegas tradition of high stakes Quickfires? I was a bit shocked to see bundles of cash under the last dome. Would it have been more appropriate if they’d put it in an envelope, as if it were being used as a bribe?
Creative Loafing: Based out of Tampa, food editor Katie Machol (on twitter,@culinarypirate) has been been doing the Top Chef blogging for a while now, and doing it quite well. From last week’s recap:
For the Elimination Challenge, we viewers got to know a bit more about the contestants’ backgrounds when they had to cook a dish that represented where they’re from. “Rasta Lurch” (John Somerville), sporting his long, nappy dreads, decided to use pre-made puff pastry in his Michigan-inspired dessert. Big mistake.
And certainly not least, one of my favorite Top Chef fan blogs, Please Pack Your Knives and Go, who offered up their Week 1 Power Rankings, which included:
1. Padma’s boobs: Need we explain?
2. Angelo: We wanted to hate him when he said he was planning on winning every challenge. Then he proceeded to … win every challenge.
3. Kenny: Kenny’s so good, child protective services looked the other way when he was cooking eggs at three years old.
4. Kevin: Top-4 in the Quickfire, Top-4 in the Elimination, good enough for No. 4 in the first Power Rankings.
5. Alex: Yay Russia.
6. Tamesha: We thought her jerked chicken looked like the best dish.
7. Andrea: Not going to lie, we don’t even remember most of these people.
8. Kelly: To show off her Colorado roots, made … New York strip steak.
9. Amanda: According to Tom, would be dominated by Wolfgang Puck in a seasoning-off.
10. Lynne: Her hometown is apparently the “Culinary Institute of America in New York.” Can’t wait until she’s eliminated so we can ask her what it was like using a mixing bowl as a pillow all those years…
Which great sites am I missing?
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I loved coming home last night to my own Top Chef challenge. And according to the judges, err, judge, I nailed it!
Bravo’s popular reality cooking competition only wrapped local production this past weekend, and now we have an official air date: The first episode of Top Chef’s 7th season will premiere on Wednesday, June 16 at 9 p.m. According to an announcement from the cable network, this season will feature guest appearances from famous-for-D.C. types like Buzz Aldrin, Nancy Pelosi, White House chef Sam Kass, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.), Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), CIA Director Leon Panetta and NBC White House Correspondent Savannah Guthrie. Celebrity chef Eric Ripert will serve as a regular guest judge. A couple of the locations we’d heard were used for challenges can now be confirmed: Nationals Park, and a kitchen inside CIA headquarters, to start.
Well, that was fast.
But not a moment too soon — fun summer viewing, I assume with great summer viewing party options!
This just in…
Silver Spring Whole Foods is the Top Chef DC Whole Foods.
PS - This is the worst Whole Foods in history. Small, cramped and terrible produce. And the cheese department is seriously lacking. Maybe they are spiffing it up a bit for the show. I hope.
Booo! (Not that my Whole Foods needed any more traffic, though).
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Attention Top Chef Fans
Newly departed Mike Isabella dishes in a live chat on the hometown Washington Post’s website, right now.
(Photo via capitalspice)
Saturday Night Live - Natalie Raps (via huluDotCom)
In honor of Natalie Portman’s guest judge spot on Top Chef tonight, here’s one of her greatest hits!
