I’ve been recapping Top Chef episodes for years now, doling out mildly derisive nicknames and Monday morning quarterbacking culinary choices as if I know what I’m talking about (risotto? have you even seen this show before?!). Whereas I watch shows like Project Runway at least partly out of exoticism, wanting to see people complete challenges the most foreign to my experience — I have no clue how you make a party dress out of road flares and recycled sneakers, I’ve only made sleeveless t-shirts out of regular t-shirts, with middling success — with cooking shows, even when my tone of expertise is mostly a joke, there’s still at least a wisp of wondering how I might do it better.
I consider myself a decent cook and regularly get wins in our Uproxx Cooking Challenges, though those involve cooking in our own kitchens with no time limits or live judges. Naturally, I’ve always wondered how I might fare under actual TV cooking conditions — no pre-seasoning, strict time limit, in a foreign kitchen with a familiar television personality roasting you for the results. This past week I got just such a chance.
I’d been invited to cover a Top Chef Junior dinner attended by the show’s host, Vanessa Lachey, and head judge, Curtis Stone. The invitation described it as “a quickfire challenge and dinner.” Watch some kids cook and eat free food? Sounds great. People always talk about journalists being on the take, but the sad truth is that all it takes to buy a little influence is the occasional free meal.
When I arrived to Curtis Stone’s test kitchen on Sunset, half asleep and fresh off a drive through the teeth of LA traffic, the publicist manning the list handed me a purple wristband. Hey, what’s this for? As it turned out, we weren’t there to watch a quickfire, we were there to participate in one.
I mentally prepared for the contest while aproned waiters with copious wrist beads plied us with glasses of champagne and trays of canapés — kanpachi poké cut into exceedingly tiny cubes atop a purple cracker, along with a vegan version made with hearts of palm, both very good — in the foyer of Stone’s restaurant, Gwen, one of two LA restaurants named for his grandmothers.
Once the RSVP’d journalists had all arrived, Stone made his first appearance (tall for TV, obnoxiously blue eyes), and they herded us upstairs to the test kitchen. There, we gathered around the main stove while Stone and his co-star, Lachey, resplendent in a floral dress, hoop earrings, and flawless make-up, prepared to give us a cooking lesson. Nick Lachey, he of 98 Degrees and ex-Mr. Jessica Simpson fame, gave encouragement from just off to the side, directly across the stove from me. I couldn’t help notice his unnaturally white, almost bluish teeth. Do not smile near this man, you will appear a gremlin.
Stone began his demonstration, which turned out to be a simple lesson on how to properly cook a steak on the stove top, while assigning Lachey (Vanessa) the task of making a pesto with a pestle. It took her a second to figure out which of the many herbs bursting from adorable mason jars all over the table was basil.
Stone, working on an induction burner (presumably for an added degree of difficulty), explained that the secret to a good steak was cooking “quickly, but slowly.” Which is to say, sear it hot and fast to achieve that Maillard reaction (he didn’t use those words), and then rest it, to allow for “carryover cooking” (he did use these words), the cooking that continues even when the meat is off the heat, to fully empinkify the center without overcooking. He seasoned his New York strip with salt, then seared it in a piping hot pan. You’ll want to have the windows open and hopefully a good hood fan on your stove before you try this one at home, whenever I do it, I smoke up the apartment and my dog hides under the bed.
Stone started by rendering off the fat cap, holding the fatty part at the edge of the steak to the hot pan with tongs. Then he seared the steak for about a minute on each side. He set it aside to rest while showing us the ol’ finger test for steak doneness. That’s where if you touch the fleshy part of your hand just below your thumb on one hand with the finger of your other hand, you can feel what a properly cooked steak is supposed to feel like. Touch the index finger to that thumb and feel the flesh below it, that should approximate the feel of a rare steak. Middle finger, medium rare. Ring finger, medium well. Pinky, well done. I’ve seen it before and if you cook, you kind of just know what a rare or medium steak feels like without comparing it to your thumb meat, but it is a neat trick.
Stone seared the steak, rested it for four or five minutes, then seared and rested again. Double-resting was new to me. You can… do that? On the second sear, he added a hunk of butter to the pan along with a couple garlic cloves and some herbs (thyme and rosemary) to baste the steak, forming a pretty dark crust on the outside of the meat. That was something I’d wondered too — whether it was okay to put butter into a screaming hot pan like that or if it’d just burn and end up tasting bitter. Turns out it’s just fine! Helpful tips, these. After a rest, Stone sprinkled with some more salt to finish, and cut his steak diagonally, against the grain, in half-inch increments, fanning them out in a half circle across the plate, which he topped with a quinelle of Lachey’s pesto. Voila!
Then it was our turn. We were given 20 minutes to cook a steak with an accompaniment. I was paired with Alison Ashton from Parade, which was good, because it became apparent pretty early on that, unlike a lot of the other journalists present, she had experience. When it was time to divide the assignments, I definitely wanted to cook the steak. I’ve made pesto before. It’s good, but not particularly exciting — more assemblage than cooking, really. Of course I also didn’t want to come right out and say “I’ll cook the steak!” like an asshole, since I assumed that’s what everyone wanted to cook. But Alison expressed enough impartiality towards assignments that I felt okay jumping on it.
I chose a nice looking fatty NY strip and salted liberally. On the gas stove behind the center stove I heated a pan extra hot and cooked… well, basically exactly like Stone had just shown us. Ours would be a triumph of following directions, I thought. Meanwhile, Alison mortared up a batch of herb chimichurri. With one de-seeded red pepper, it had a nice, mild heat, with bright acids and enough garlic to make it count, but not enough to make your date hate you. I thought it tasted just about perfect.
As for my steak, ideally I probably would’ve basted it more, but I only had a small spoon to baste with and I soon found that I don’t have quite the basting dexterity of famous television chef Curtis Stone, so I couldn’t get quite the same volume of liquid butter over the top of the steak in the same time window. I took it off at the heat at about 90% of ideal crust level to keep from overcooking. The narrower side ended up being a perfect medium rare and the fatter side closer to rare. Still, not a bad job. My only creative flourish was grabbing some tiny cherry tomatoes that were on the tables and tossing them into my fatty sear pan until they burst, sprinkling them with some flake salt and serving them up with the steak.
I don’t want to brag, but it was a nice touch. Which was mediated somewhat by the fact that everyone saw me do it and instantly copied me. Bastards.
I’d always been impressed that chefs on Top Chef or Chopped could turn out restaurant quality dishes in 20 minutes. Granted we didn’t have to actually conceive a dish in that time, just heat a steak and whip up a garnish, but 20 minutes turned out to be plenty. Alison and I raised our hands when the time was up just like we’d seen on TV, clinked wine glasses, and waited to be judged, feeling reasonably confident.
Stone and Lachey made their way around the table, tasting and bantering for the benefit of us assembled. Lachey clowned her husband’s effort, giving him a deliberately pedantic “great job, hon!” Someone asked who does the cooking at home, and Vanessa said she does. But it’s okay, because Nick loves the clean up! Uh huh, I’m sure he’s a demon for cleaning, that chore we all love. Something tells me neither of these sparkling cap tooths are doing much of either.
As we waited for them to reach our station, I’ll admit that I’ve scarcely felt more anticipation in my entire life. Have I mentioned that I’m incredibly competitive?
Alison introduced our dish to Vanessa and Curtis, “Patagonian cowboy steak with rustic chimichurri and burst, end of Summer tomatoes.” (She was really good at naming)
As they took their first bites I did what I do when I see a stranger fall down — try not to stare like a jackass even though I desperately want to.
“Very flavorful,” Lachey said. Adding “Ooh, and a nice finish.”
“It’s very good,” Stone said, nodding and chewing. “Very good.”
He dinged me a little for not enough crust (it was still pretty crusty!), and a little unrendered fat (in retrospect, my fault for choosing the steak with the biggest fat cap and not trimming any). It was also (admittedly) a little too red on the fat side. I should’ve paid more attention when Lachey said she used to order her steaks medium well before she started hosting a cooking show. I’d cooked it the way I like it.
The judges moved on around the table, leaving us to sample the rest of our work. I’m telling you, it was damned good, and I’m not even a steak guy. Most times when I go to a steakhouse I order the lamb chops. Few things bum me out as much as a big, expensive, bland steak, and I’ve eaten so many of them that I’m forever gun shy. I didn’t think there was any way a steak grilled to order and salted just before cooking wouldn’t be slightly bland. I always, always salt any thick piece of meat at least a few hours in advance. But this one was so good we ate almost the whole damn thing, even though we knew we were about to eat a real dinner.
Come judging time… we were not recognized. Stone named some of the Top Chef producers the bottom team, perhaps partly for the irony value. The winners were the yellow team, Jean Bentley from The Hollywood Reporter and Russ Weakland from Hollywood Life, supposedly on the strength of a “perfectly cooked” steak and a “unique” walnut pesto (come on, when has “unique” ever not been a veiled insult when it comes to food?). Though I’m pretty sure the win had something to do with Bentley being tall and bubbly and using her colored wristband to make a fetching yellow top knot. I think it was partly the look that put them over the top, but hey, that’s probably just sour tomatoes. Curtis Stone, that pretty boy, what the hell does he know anyway?
Later, when I squeezed between Stone and Lachey to take a picture for the step and repeat, Stone leaned over and muttered, “yours was actually really good, mate.”
Ugh, so I’m supposed to not hate the handsome TV guy now? This is why everyone hates you, charming people.
In our subsequent dinner downstairs at Gwen, everything was excellent, from the house-aged charcuterie to the dry-aged ribeye to the sea bream to the fancy lettuces and creamed leeks. And I say this as someone who’s no stranger to free wine and white tablecloth bribery. Usually at least one element is mediocre, but nothing was.
I admit, in the past (okay, one post) I’ve called Curtis Stone everything from a “blandly inoffensive Australian man” to a “shirt wearing word sayer.” I must begrudgingly confess that in person, I found him at least medium-delightful. The food certainly helped, and I also think that there’s something about Australians’ peculiar natural character, that they’re a little too naturally feral and a little too resistant to puffery to ever go full Hollywood phony. You can cap their teeth, but you can’t keep them from using “cunt” as a term of endearment. I appreciate this quality.
It’s also impossible not to bond a little with anyone with whom you’ve shared a meal. No matter how mundane it gets, no matter often we abuse and manipulate it, there’s something ritualistic to the act of sharing food, something deep in our cultural memory that uncannily connects shared meals with friendship. It’s there in the story of Thanksgiving. It’s the Last Supper. There’s probably a cave painting about it somewhere.
And that, I think, is why I enjoy thinking and writing and talking to people about food. Just about the only time I can truly turn off my natural cynicism and skepticism is when my mouth is full.
Top Chef Junior season 2 premiered September 8th. New episodes every Saturday on Universal Kids. This meal was hosted. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. More reviews here.
