Welcome to The #Content Report, a newsletter by Vince Mancini. I’ve been writing about movies, culture, and food since I started FilmDrunk in 2007. Now I’m delivering it straight to you, with none of the autoplay videos, takeover ads, or chumboxes of the ad-ruined internet. Support my work and help me bring back the cool internet by subscribing, sharing, commenting, and keeping it real.
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This is the podcast section of The #Content Report. It’s different than the regular section. You put it in your ears!
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What is the cruelest Top Chef challenge of all time? After this week’s episode of the Top Chef Frotcast Post-Show, we humbly submit Top Chef season 1, episode 8, “Wedding Bell Blues.”
In this week’s Top Chef season 1 rewind, the five remaining competitors (season one had only 12 chefs, as opposed to later seasons which usually had 15) were challenged to cater a 100-person wedding. That sounds challenging, perhaps, but not necessarily cruel.
Ah, but that’s not all: the chefs were told to prepare a cold prawn canapé, sketch a cake, and pitch a menu for the couple about to be married, who would then choose the pitch they liked best, and the contestants would then work together to cater the wedding based on the winning menu. Again, challenging, but not mean. It was only after all the chefs had whipped up their best prawn whores deserve’s (do not correct my French) and pitched their most pie-in-the-sky catering concepts that Tom Colicchio introduced the big twist: Oh yeah, the wedding to be catered is tomorrow.
At which point the chefs had to do their best to reproduce a speculative concept, pitched under partially false pretenses, using ingredients sourced from a regular grocery store, and prepped over the course of a single night. Wedding food is inevitably disappointing even under ideal circumstances, let alone this. And so this was essentially an impossible-to-succeed task, guaranteed to disappoint the two newlyweds who so helpfully allowed a production crew to shoot an episode of a reality show they’d never heard of on their most special day (I’m sure they saved a bundle on it, but still). This challenge was cruel to just about everyone!
Especially our beautiful big-tie knotted boy Stephen Asprinio, who ended up (spoiler alert) getting kicked off, despite preparing nowhere near the worst food of the episode and being the undisputed ratings MVP Top Chef season 1. Zero chance this show makes it to its soon-to-be-released 22nd season without Stephen Asprinio. How’s that for gratitude? I tell ya.
Helping Joey Devine (of the Roundball Rock NBA podcast) and I discuss Top Chef S1E8 is Jordan Mattox, of the Fresno’s Best Podcast.
Recording this week’s episode was made slightly more difficult on account of Peacock having summarily removed seasons 1-7 of Top Chef from the channel between the recording of our last episode and this one. You can now find it (with ads) on the Bravo app (if you have a cable subscription), or buy episodes on Prime Video. Remember when we thought “the internet is forever?” Ha! We were so naive. Can’t wait until corporations can decide to no longer offer software updates on our pacemakers or whatever.
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