Top Chef episode 1 recap

Top Chef recap: Houston chefs shine in highly anticipated Season 19 premiere

Dawn Burrell, second from right, joins Kristen Kish, Tom Colicchio, and Padma Lakshmi.

Photo by: David Moir Bravo

The eyes of the culinary world will be Houston for the next few months thanks to Top Chef. The award-winning reality show filmed season 19 in the Bayou City, and it’s expected to serve as a showcase for the city’s diverse culinary offerings.

Throughout the season, CultureMap will take a look at each episode through a Houston lens by highlighting the familiar people and places featured in the show. We’ll also track the progress of Evelyn Garcia, the only cheftestant from Houston. Of course, we’ll note which chef is told to pack her knives and who looks like they’re a true contender for the title and its $250,000 cash prize.

The season premier features a tricky Quickfire, a beef-centric Elimination Challenge, and lots of prominent Houstonians.

Featured Houstonians
Chef Dawn Burrell, who reached the finals in last year’s season of Top Chef, serves as a guest judge for the season’s first Quickfire Challenge. Teams of three contestants each are given 30 minutes to create a dish, but they only cook one at a time and cannot speak to each other about what they’re doing.

One team gets a little flustered and doesn’t finish plating in time to serve anything to Burrell or host Padma Lakshmi. The chef famously struggled with timing during her time on the show, so she shares a little wisdom.

“Chefs, I understand what it feels like to lose track of time in the kitchen, but please let that be a period-new paragraph moment and pick yourselves up for next time,” she advises.

The elimination challenge requires the contestants to serve three dishes made from a specific beef primal to the judges, including Top Chef season 10 winner Kristen Kish, along with a who’s who of Houston chefs: Burrell, Robert Del Grande (The Annie Cafe), Trong Nguyen (Crawfish & Noodles), Hugo Ortega (H-Town Restaurant Group), Monica Pope (Sparrow Cookshop), Chris Shepherd (Underbelly Hospitality), Kiran Verma (Kiran’s), and Chris Williams (Lucille’s Hospitality). Held at The Annie Cafe, Del Grande also appears at the judges’ table to render the final verdict.

What's a little bit strange is that the show doesn't provide viewers with any context about who these people are. The editing keeps the show moving quickly, but not to acknowledge their accomplishments may leave all but the most food-obsessed Houstonians wondering why they've earned seats at such an important meal.

Very briefly, the table included:

Three of the four Houston chefs who have won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest in Del Grande, Ortega, and Shepherd
Nguyen is a pioneer in Houston's signature Viet-Cajun cuisine through his restaurant Crawfish & Noodles
Pope changed the way Houston eats by being a tireless advocate for local producers at her restaurants Boulevard Bistro, t'afia, and Sparrow
Verma has achieved decades of success as the chef-owner of Indian fine dining restaurant Kiran's
Williams is the chef-owner of Lucille's, the co-founder of the Lucille's 1913 non-profit that's fed thousands of people during the pandemic, and is Burrell's business partner in her new restaurant Late August.

Similarly, the show doesn't provide viewers with much geographic context. With most of the action confined to the Top Chef kitchen and The Annie Cafe, viewers don’t get to see any of the city’s notable landmarks — unless driving on one of the Museum District bridges over U.S. 59 counts as seeing Houston. Thankfully, a preview montage that includes NASA and the Houston Museum of Natural Science provides proof that more context is coming

How did Evelyn Garcia do
Overall, our local cheftestant had a solid first episode. She’s the first contestant who speaks in the opening montage, and her team acquits itself reasonably well in both the Quickfire and Elimination challenges. Another contestant quickly dubs her “the Houston girl,” which feels like it might stick.

Who wins
The brown team of Robert Hernandez, Sarah Welch, and Jackson Kalb takes the victory for their dishes made from the chuck: beef tartare with tonnato sauce (Kalb), braised pot roast with potato gnocchi (Hernandez), and tallow-seared beef with eggplant puree (Welch).

“Yours was clearly one menu. That’s what stood out to all of us,” Simmons tells the winners.

Hernandez gets the individual win. The judges cite the texture of his gnocchi and the depth of flavor in his pot roast as two major accomplishments.

Who loses
Leia Gaccione goes out first for a failed attempt at a spring roll made with grilled top round. Top Chef is never shy about a little foreshadowing, and Gaccione’s observation that her meat is chewy — “I can’t turn the top round into a filet mignon. It is what it is” — previews her quick departure.

Who exceeded expectations
Buddha Lo shows deft attention to detail in the Quickfire, when he not only adds a fish sauce butter to his team’s Thai-seasoned steak but also has the presence of mine to warm his team’s plates in the oven prior to serving the dish. Winning means immunity in the Elimination Challenge; he takes a risk and makes a beefy dessert: spotted dick with beef fat caramel and miso ice cream.

“I love that Buddha decided to make a dessert,” Colicchio says. “He has immunity, so why not go for it.”

Dawn Burrell, second from right, joins Kristen Kish, Tom Colicchio, and Padma Lakshmi.

Photo by: David Moir/Bravo

Dawn Burrell, second from right, joins Kristen Kish, Tom Colicchio, and Padma Lakshmi.

chefs real-housewives

washed-up debate?

Ken Hoffman soaks up the deluge of controversy surrounding how often to change bath towels

Photo via Unsplash

How often should you switch out the thing on her head?

Former ESPN anchor turned author Jamele Hill caused a stir on Twitter when she revealed — omigosh – "I change my bath towel every 3-4 days. I feel that's about right. Am I wrong for this? Changing your towel every day feels excessive to me."

Is nothing personal anymore? Thousands replied with their bath towel routines and schedules. Some said they use the same towel more days, some said fewer, many thought Hill had it about right, and as always, some went Howard Hughes weird — using paper towels to dry certain, let's say "enclosed" body parts. In that case, I would recommend Bounty, the quicker picker upper. That’s the last place you want your paper towel to shred and fall apart.

So I change my towel every 3-4 days. I feel like that’s about right. Am I wrong for this? Changing your towels every day feels excessive to me.
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) February 22, 2023

One person said, “I change my bath towel at the same time I change my tires, when there’s a hole in them.”

The debate hit 11 when ESPN football analyst Dan Orlovsky dropped this pearl of personal hygiene: “How many times do you use a bath towel post-shower till you throw it in the laundry? I’m 30 times or so till it goes in.”

After 30 showers a bath towel can throw itself in the laundry. Orlovsky once played quarterback for the Houston Texans, so his thinking may be rattled.

Question is:

How many times do you use a towel post shower till you throw it in laundry? I’m 30 times or so till it goes in

And no I agree but that air better be HOT
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) March 15, 2023

Online sports pages lit up with posts titled, “Dan Orlovsky reveals bizarre hygiene take that has people cringing.” And “Dan Orlovsky has disgusting bath towel routine.” And “Dan Orlovsky is absolutely disgusting.”

Last week Charles Barkley dropped this shower-related bon mot during March Madness coverage. He said, when he played in the NBA, teams had so little time to get to the airport after games that players often showered in their uniforms.

While that makes no sense and I don’t believe it, here’s an even odder story about one NBA player, an all-time legend, and his post-game routine:

Wilt Chamberlain began his NBA career in 1959 playing with the Philadelphia Warriors. To show you how long ago that was, Chamberlain, as a rookie, was the NBA’s highest-paid player. He made $30,000 that year.

According to Wilt lore — and I believe it this time — Chamberlain, although he played in Philadelphia, lived in New York City. He had a plush apartment in Harlem. He commuted to Philadelphia by train every day.

Trouble was, the last train from Philadelphia to New York left at 10 pm, so Chamberlain had to rush from the arena to the station after games to catch that train. He didn’t have time to take a shower and change clothes, so still in his sweaty uniform, he threw on a trench coat and rode the train home to New York.

While Chamberlain was known to exaggerate details about his life, especially his exploits with women, I’m buying that he wore his uniform on mass transit after NBA games.

My bath towel schedule sometimes aligns with Hill’s three-to-four day limit. Sometimes I go shorter, sometimes longer.

I have my own bathroom. And the laundry room is in my bathroom. That gives me the ease and luxury of using the washing machine as my hamper.

When it gets full, I hit “quick wash” and start. I don’t separate towels and regular clothes because you’re not supposed to use bleach on towels, even white ones. Did you know that? It’s because cotton isn’t naturally white and bleach will harm and wear down the fibers.

Also, don’t use too much soap when you’re washing towels and never use fabric softener. That will make your towels less absorbent over time. Take that, Hints from Heloise. (Editor's note: Don't tempt us to e-mail her, Ken.)

When you don’t share a bathroom, you don’t run the risk of sharing a bath towel, which would have me taking a bath in Purel.

To me, bath towels are like T-shirts. I have a hundred T-shirts, but I generally wear only five to 10 of them — I have my favorites. My go-to is a gray T-shirt with a Henley collar. It’s exactly like the T-shirt that Paul McCartney wears in the Beatles video for Revolution.

My bathroom closet has about five stacks of bath towels. I use one — a thick, thirsty, fluffy purple beach towel that is rivaled only by a mother’s womb for serenity. (Editor's note 2: Ummm...)

After each use, I hang it over the shower rod, fully extended to enhance drying time. Hanging a towel on a hook is dumb. It crumples together and doesn’t allow maximum surface area to dry. Plus, living in Houston typically means you have relatively high humidity in your house, which increases drying time. Drying yourself with a damp towel is a yuck.

Hanging your bath towel over the shower rod also makes it convenient to wipe the stray toothpaste off your face just before you leave the bathroom to go to work.

So what’s the best, recommended routine for swapping out your bath towel? The New York Times polled several health experts on the subject. Most said Jamele Hill was on target: after three showers is a good schedule.

You listening, Dan Orlovsky?