Great episode this week.
Top Chef Wisconsin (aka Top Chef Season 21) may be over, but the Top Chef Frotcast Post-Show isn’t. This week we welcome Top Chef season 13 finalist and season 20 fan favorite Amar Santana, chef/owner of Broadway and Vaca, both in Orange County, California. Amar is great interview, and actually seems to enjoy talking to us for whatever reason. Which I hope won’t get him into any professional trouble. Years ago I tasted Jamón Iberico for the first time thanks to Amar, which is one of those things you never forget.
We get all the Top Chef inside info from Amar, including what his casting process was like, how much editors manipulate the show, and whether Top Chef winners still dream of opening new restaurants. He takes us back to when he first heard about the show, working alongside Ilan Hall (who went onto win Top Chef season 2) as line cooks for Charlie Palmer, and why he decided to be on it. He talks about the moment Top Chef stopped feeling like a reality show and started feeling like a legit cooking competition (it involved the Voltaggio Brothers), as well as the auditioning process, the psych evaluation, and more.
Finally, we made Amar go back and watch the first episode of the first season of Top Chef, and we discuss all the things that make it kind of hilarious to watch now, from Katie Lee being the host instead of Padma, to Tom Colicchio’s soul patch, to that crazy Irish guy who got kicked off for putting his finger in Hubert Keller’s sauce (Ken Lee). Uh, that’s DJ Hubert Keller to you.
As always, thank you to our sponsor, Blackwood Distilling Co. (Yes, the show has a sponsor, that’s why it’s free on all platforms).
Other Top Chef and Entertainment News
-The next season of Top Chef is going to Canada!
Great news for actual Canook Gail Simmons, bad news for Top Chef Canada (which has been a thing for 10 seasons, though you could hardly find it here). Somewhere, there’s a James Beard Award winner furiously practicing deconstructed poutine with Canadian bacon foam and maple-infused aguachile.
I won’t bore you with the pull quotes from the execs (they’re press release quotes, I’m sure you can imagine what they are). Instead I will take this opportunity to bust out my favorite Canadian joke that I learned in junior high:
Two Canadians are playing 20 questions. First Canadian asks, “Okay, is it edible?”
Second Canadian: “Uh… kind of.”
First Canadian: “Hmm. Is it… moose cock?”
Second Canadian: “Dammit, how did you know?”
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-Someone needs to pry the CGI out of Robert Zemeckis’s hands.
The trailer just hit for Zemeckis’s new movie Here, starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. It’s the sixth collaboration between Zemeckis and Hanks, and was written by Forrest Gump writer Eric Roth.
Based on a graphic novel by Richard Maguire, it has digitally de-aged actors and one big gimmick (well, another big gimmick besides the de-aging, anyway): “The camera sits at a fixed angle for the entire 104-minute duration without moving,” per the trades.
Uh… cool?
Can someone shake Robert Zemeckis by the shoulders and convince him he doesn’t have to do this? For God’s sake, man, you made Forrest Gump and the Back to the Future movies, you don’t have to keep being the digital gimmick guy! (and I say that as one of the 10 people who actually liked Allied).
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-Melissa McCarthy was approached to play Martha in Baby Reindeer.
Have you seen this show? It’s great. The dad yelling “Good luck with the transsexual, son!” as his train left the station was the most genuinely heartwarming TV moment I’ve seen in a long time.
Anyway, Variety has a piece about all the people who’ve sued Richard Gadd, Baby Reindeer’s creator and star, for doing art about them in his based-on-a-true-story show (surely you’re allowed to talk about your own stalker, no?). In it, there’s a bit in it about Gadd’s agents pushing so hard to cast Melissa McCarthy as his stalker, Martha (played perfectly by Jessica Gunning) that he fired them.
…those familiar with the production say Gadd micromanaged casting and fired his CAA agents after they and Netflix pushed aggressively for Melissa McCarthy to be cast as Martha. (A knowledgeable source says McCarthy met Gadd about the role but ultimately wasn’t interested.)
I can’t stop laughing about the idea of Melissa McCarthy as Martha in Baby Reindeer. It’s the ultimate agent idea because it makes perfect sense from a theoretical financial standpoint (putting a huge star in your mostly-unknown client’s thing so that people hear about it) and from an artistic standpoint it sounds absolutely terrible. Good on Gadd for sticking to his guns, glad it worked out for him. (The real-life Martha lady is suing him for $170 million). ((I’m almost positive he will win but having to pay for lawyers still sucks)).
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-’The Bear’ is back tonight.
My hot take on The Bear is that the great directing and acting are making the show’s content seem more interesting than it actually is, but it’s refreshing to see a show that’s actually compelling to look at regardless (FX in particular seem like they’re really good at this).
Joey and I attended a party/food event in LA promoting the season premiere. Here’s what that was like, in a nutshell:
Yes, the guys in the hats are huge on TikTok.
Top Chef Frotcast Post-Show: Amar Santana on S1E1