Monsters and a Monster Store

I don’t think I’ve seen our chefs more excited to meet a guest judge in all my days on Top Chef than they were this week when they met Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Telly Monster. And not just those chefs who are parents. All of them were thrilled, since most of the chefs competing grew up watching Sesame Street. And don’t get me started on the crew, who were so happy to show up for work that day!

I admit to having been excited myself, even though I was just a bit older and “past it” when Sesame Street first hit the airwaves, so I didn’t discover Elmo and friends until my older son began watching the show. That boy loved Elmo with the reverence my grandmother saved for the Pope. And now my toddler, who calls Elmo “La-La” (because of Elmo’s theme song, in which “la-la, la-la” is the chief lyric), is a raging fan. He’s unimpressed when he sees Daddy on TV… but loses it with joy when La-La’s on the screen. His two favorite items are firetrucks and La-La. We actually found him a Firefighter Elmo which he calls “Woo-woo-woo-woo La-La.”; So cute it hurts. A friend’s three-year-old was excited to dress as Elmo to attend a Halloween party this year… until he entered the room and every other preschooler acted like teenaged girls at a Justin Beiber concert. He narrowly escaped the stampede and couldn’t get the costume off quickly enough. I could go on and on. It’s crazy, the hold Elmo has over the tiny tots.

…Or so I thought until I got to spend time with him in person (in muppet?) on Top Chef. I no longer find it crazy at all. The outsized charisma of that little furry red monster is utterly disarming. Kevin Clash, who plays Elmo, David Rudman, who plays Cookie Monster, and Martin P. Robinson, who plays Telly Monster (and looks like him, too!), were so much fun to hang out with, and even more fun to watch at work. They’re ambassadors of happy, leaving a trail of joy wherever they go. I don’t normally have to be at the set for tapings of the Quickfire Challenges, but there was no way I was going to miss this -- I brought my toddler and the two daughters of dear friends, and we had a blast hanging out with them in the green room. They have great senses of humor and of fun. Even the muppet wrangler was fun, whose tasks include making sure the muppets fur is fluffed just so.   

It was amazing to watch Kevin Clash, David Rudman (Cookie Monster), and Martin P. Robinson at work. These puppeteers are so adept at what they do, are so very talented, and make it all seem so fluid and effortless that folks almost forget it’s not the muppets themselves talking, despite actually watching the muppeteers in action. It was astonishing. Kevin Clash can actually make it seem as though he and Elmo are talking simultaneously -- I've never seen anything like it. Watching their exit from the table after the Quickfire Challenge was so cool -- they were hilarious. It was far and away one of the best days we all have ever had on Top Chef.Parenthetically, I knew Jim Henson -- he lived upstairs from Mondrian when I was there, and was in the restaurant all the time. In fact, he ate there the night before he died. He was a great guy, and he really loved food. I couldn't help but think it was only fitting that the descendants of his first muppets wound up on a food show.

Oh, yeah, I should probably discuss the Elimination Challenge, shouldn't I?

It was a fun but difficult challenge. We showed up at about midnight and worked through the night. The Target we were in was a super-sized monster store, and our chefs were running back and forth -- it was physically challenging. I was surprised that most of the chefs did not approach the challenge as they would the planning of a professional restaurant. When planning the kitchen of a new restaurant, a chef first must ask, "What kind of restaurant am I doing, what kind of food am I serving, and, thus, what do I need?" A restaurant serving Chinese cuisine will need more woks, a steakhouse will have more grills than other restaurants. I would first have checked out the food aisles to determine what I would be cooking; only then would I have made my way to the kitchen supply aisles.

People may quibble with our having awarded the win to grilled cheese and tomato soup, but they should understand that it was a very, very good version of grilled cheese and an equally good version of tomato soup, prepared smartly given the parameters of the challenge. As I've always said, food need not be fancy to be well-made. The soups certainly weren't attempts at haute cuisine. The chefs understood that this challenge didn't require of them that they prepare high-end food. Dale made smart choices and his dish reflected them.

Once in a while, we have a challenge where we judges know immediately who will be sent home. This was just such a challenge. There was no need for discussion this week, and there was certainly no debate. Of course, this being a television program, we couldn't just walk up to Angelo the moment we tasted his soup and inform him that he would be going home, even though we knew at that moment that his was the weakest dish by a mile. Given the structure of the competition and the show, we needed to bring the chefs who'd made the bottom three dishes to the Judges' Table to discuss all three dishes. But none of the judges could get past the first bite of Angelo's soup. Unlike Dale's dish last week, which was saltier than it should have been thus yielding diminished returns as we continued to eat it, but was still tasty and otherwise well-seasoned, Angelo's was simply inedible  Its level of saltiness far exceeded that of Dale's. And where it comes to amounts of salt, that is an apples and oranges difference.Angelo knew it, too, and accepted the judges' decision with humility and graciousness. We are at the point in this competition at which it is hard  to see anyone go, and we were sorry to tell Angelo to pack his knives  It will just get harder from here on out. By the same token, though, there is less and less room for error by the chefs. They will need to stay focused and on their games, and perform under constant and increasing pressure.  Stay tuned….