Top Chef: Cheeky Pints and Pub Bites

March 25, 2023 7:36 PM - Season 20, Episode 3

GABRI: The kitchen is freaking insane right now. There's a lot of chefs running like dogs in a boat. Have you ever seen dogs in a boat? It's like… [floundering]
posted by sixswitch (6 comments total)

Man May got robbed. I know team challenges are a thing, but she was done dirty. As a watcher of the American show I know it's a trope where the person just goes along with it to their downfall, I'm not sure if the Thai version is structured similarly, but she should have been listened too. I liked the Canadian before this episode, but the editing made him a real tool.
posted by Carillon at 9:25 PM on March 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Dale feels like he got robbed, but May is right--they shouldn't play it safe.
posted by tofu_crouton at 8:10 AM on March 27, 2023

Yeah, Dale steamrolled an accomplished chef and doesn’t take any responsibility. What a loser! I hope Chef May kicks his ass and makes it back into the competition.

Great work by this week’s top teams. And Buddha didn’t get overdramatic on his potato override.
posted by sixswitch at 4:30 PM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yeah, team challenges are never my favourite; there's so often some unfairness in it. Dale did turn into a bit of a jerk here; he never communicated well with May at all. I did love the premise of the challenge; classic English pub dishes. And I liked that there was at least a little legit choice for the chefs, including one option left on the board. (Poor Sylwia; all the potato talk, there are five of the eight dishes with potato, and she gets stuck choosing from two of the three dishes that didn't have potato.)

Also props to the Bravo team for doing the same food fact note describing what Yorkshire Pudding is that they sometimes do for foods and ingredients from non-European countries. (And those notes are great; they fly by, but they're a great way to add the detail without stopping the show's progress.)

Buddha was 100% right on the potatoes from what I could understand; if you do them in a blender like a Thermomix, so much starch gets released that the potatoes get super gluey. You can make vegan nacho cheese out of potatoes in a blender if you want a sense of the texture; to me that would 100% read like bad mashed potatoes no matter how you dressed it up. But luckily him and Luciana worked through it like adults. (I don't want to seem like the world's biggest Buddha stan, but I think he told May "very good" in Thai as he was hugging her goodbye.)
posted by Superilla at 10:31 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Just poking in to say how much I enjoy this season so far. Really enjoy seeing these Top Chef winners from the satellite shows. Has anyone watched some of the regional shows like Top Chef Thailand? Here's a clip that was promising; excellent production values and English subtitles.

I can't figure out any legitimate way to watch it in the US. Nor pirated; it's not on Usenet or Pirate Bay on a simple search for [Top Chef Thailand] in English.
posted by Nelson at 7:43 AM on April 2, 2023

A friend helped me find Top Chef Thailand: season 1 is on Internet Archive, seasons 2 & 3 are on YouTube. One catch though; no subtitles, it's all in spoken Thai. I couldn't find any fansubs online with a quick look.
posted by Nelson at 1:35 PM on April 2, 2023