A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

That was one of the best season-openers of a reality show I've seen. Usually it takes a while for me to get a sense of who everyone is, but in this case I mostly already knew, and the two contestants I didn't (from Season One) quickly gave an impression of their personalities and skill levels. (Doomed. Especially Stephen, who apparently hasn't been cooking for a while.)

The quickfire was smart, and the elimination challenge was inspired.

Previews show the contestants cooking off against Tom Colicchio. Oh boy oh boy, I cannot wait.

Blogs by Anthony Bourdain and Tom Colicchio, up at bravotv.com, add a lot to my enjoyment of the show. I recommend them if you're watching.

( All the scallops come home to roost )

Yesterday Oyce and I drove to Torrance for the excellent Korean fried chicken at Kyochon, and it was... closed! OH NOES! Seriously, I am baffled by this. It's a popular chain and certainly seemed busy every time we were there before.

So we drove to Sue's Kitcher, a Chinese place, and got fried fish (best eaten on the spot, not as take-out, I now realize), noodles, scallion pancakes, and various sides of greens, pickles, tea eggs, mabo tofu, etc. Very good. We will have leftovers for lunch today.

While eating, we watched Top Chef Masters, the episode which introduces bad-ass chef Anita Lo, she of the infinite range of dour expressions. She made truffled eggs in the half-shell with one hand tied behind her back - literally! She made steak tartare enclosed in a braised daikon atop a seascape with wave noises! She chopped onions at lightning speed without looking down and while carrying on a conversation! The other three chefs occasionally glanced at her with the expressions of gunslingers in the presence of the Man With No Name.

When she said, "Hmmm," Oyce pointed out that if you gave her glasses, a gender-switch, and slightly longer hair, she would be Jin from Samurai Champloo. Oyce then noticed that her chef's top was actually a gi!

We then went to Clementine for afternoon tea, featuring delicious tea sandwiches (gravlax, turkey with sun-dried tomatoes, egg salad, and cucumber) and currant scones with clotted cream and extraordinary, spoon-licking homemade soft strawberry preserves. Due to Sue's Kitchen, we have leftovers (not of the cream or jam).

And then! We met up with yhlee and her lizard (child), and took them to dinner. I kind of liked Sue's Kitchen better, but was thrilled with free surprise soup dumplings, even if they were not up to Din Tai Fung standards. The lizard, even more surprisingly, was also thrilled with the dumplings and ate three. While driving back, the lizard happily murmured about "Legendary Flamingo," which ought to be a shounen attack. "Lengendary Flamingo! Engage!"

And THEN, Oyce and I watched the first episode of Project Runway ever! She had never seen first season (so please don't spoil her.) We were delighted by Austin Scarlet, who seemed to have escaped from From Eroica With Love. (By the way, that must take incredible courage for a guy that age to have already constructed a persona like that - even in New York City.) We also want to know how he gets his hair to do that.

Also, we boggled at Heidi Klum in a KISS T-shirt and models in jeans, and were appalled by Wendy Pepper's candy bikini and other horrors, like a five-minute shower curtain dress. And also how everyone kept ignoring Tim Gunn! We hope they will soon appreciate his awesomeness.

Oh my God, I covet those Mardi Gras gowns Padma and Gail were wearing. I can't decide which I liked more, Gail's black velvet and satin, or Padma's corset. Padma Lakhshmi in a mask, choker, and corset, there's an image to set the screen on fire.

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Yay! Restaurant Wars!

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Oh, that was sweet, so sweet.

( Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! )

Mark from New Zealand cracked me up in this episode. He's amazingly even-tempered, which makes me like him ("How can I throw a shrimp on the barbie when everyone else got all the shrimp?"), and when Tom was detailing his gross cooking practices with unfeigned disgust (He tasted the soup and then stuck the licked spoon back in!) I almost fell off the couch. Plus, the gruesome grill! The patent bewilderment at all the football terminology! The cheap porno bubble bath! Reality TV gold.

It blows my mind how people keep losing challenges by failing to follow the directions. If the challenge is "barbecue," don't poach lobster in butter. If the challenge is "football food," don't cook elegant desserts. Though I don't think I've ever seen anyone thrown off for food that's delicious but didn't meet the theme; it's always food that's incorrect and not toothsome either.

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Is anyone but me watching? I love the show! It's comforting to me to see that even pro chefs can screw up and produce inedible disasters on occasion.

I wish old episodes were available on DVD or online, so I could watch previous seasons! Here, Check out Hung's breakfast Smurf village on youtube!

It's too early to have real favorites yet, but I am currently rooting for the lesbian couple. I'm also rooting for the "molecular gastronomist" to make into the finals, because his food is so entertaining. It's a little early to tell who's actually got the best cooking. Though I have to say, Hung's food was consistently inventive and looked delicious from very early episodes on.

Was I the only one who mixed up the two smug, arrogant, scrawny white guys with light brown stubble? I totally thought they were the same person, sometimes with and sometimes without a hat, until they were all lined up together. Oops. It reminds me of how I went through 3/4 of The Thin Red Line thinking that two blue-eyed, dark-haired soldiers were the same guy, until one of them died. Anyway, they were both insufferable and I was hoping one of them would get the boot.