Capital Spice

Brace yourselves.  We just need a minute to totally lose our cool:

WE GOT TO HANG OUT WITH TOP CHEF STEPHANIE IZARD!

Ah, much better.  If you’ve read Capital Spice before now, you know we’re kind of huge Top Chef fans.  And our first big interview was with Chef Spike Mendelsohn as he prepared to open Good Stuff Eatery, so we’re especially partial to Season 4 (Top Chef Chicago).  So when we were given the chance to attend a dinner prepared by Spike and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard, we jumped at it.

The dinner, which took place on Wednesday, November 16th, was part of Chef Izard’s tour promoting her new cookbook, Girl in the Kitchen.  Rather than subject herself and her fans to a series of low-key bookstore signing events, Izard has partnered with local chefs in cities across the country to put on special dinner events benefiting Share Our Strength.  The “Goat Tour” (the name is a nod to her year-old, critically acclaimed Girl and the Goat restaurant) has the look and feel of a concert tour, right down to the t-shirts worn by Izard and her team featuring a map and a list of dates on the back.  With everyone from Jimmy Fallon to the Wall Street Journal calling chefs “rock stars,” it’s only fitting.

A four-course pizza feast with a pair of fun chefs after the jump. (more…)

First, the good news.  Congratulations to Jessica, who won $10 worth of veggie treats at this weekend’s DC VegFest!  We selected her comment using Random.org’s integer generator to select a number between 1 and 43 (the number of comments we received by the deadline).  We’re hoping Jessica will come back after the festival and let us know what she spent the VegFest bucks on!

Now on to the bad news.  On Wednesday, Bravo announced the lineup for Season Nine of Top Chef.  Set throughout the Lone Star State, it is fittingly called “Top Chef: Texas.”  Normally, this would be the time when we here at Capital Spice would get all excited about rooting for another local chef.  After all, we’ve had a string of talented representatives stretching all the way back to Top Chef: Chicago in Season 4:

Chicago: Spike Mendelsohn
New York: Carla Hall
Vegas: Mike Isabella, Bryan Voltaggio
DC: Tamesha Warren
All-Stars: Spike, Carla and Mike, with Isabella going all the way to the finale

We’ve also had contestants in both seasons of Top Chef: Just Desserts – Heather Chittum in Season 1 and Matthew Peterson, who is still competing in Season 2.

All this to say, Washington has certainly been well-represented within the franchise over the past few years.  Until now.  And it’s worse than you think.

This time, Bravo’s press release didn’t just announce the finalists who will be competing for the title of Top Chef.  Instead, they announced a total of 29 “hopefuls” who will be pared down to 16 for the statewide competition.  So we didn’t just miss out on having at least one local representative among the 16 cheftestants…we missed out on even having one among the 29 aspiring cheftestants!

To be fair, Washington isn’t the only culinary destination without a hometown chef to root for: Philadelphia, Las Vegas and San Francisco were similarly shut out.  In all, 18 of the 29 chefs who will appear in the season premiere on November 2nd hail from four cities: Chicago (6, including 2 from the SAME RESTAURANT), New York/Brooklyn (4), Los Angeles (4)  and Seattle (4).

Because we’ve worked with the folks at Bravo to interview so many of the previous competitors, we reached out to ask about lack of geographic diversity among this season’s cast.  A spokesperson for Bravo told us location “simply isn’t a factor” when determining who the cheftestants will be.  “We don’t pick our chefs based on where they cook,” they went on to say.  “These twenty-nine chefs are the best of everyone we saw.”

That made us wonder about where Bravo and Magical Elves (Top Chef’s production company) went looking for chefs for Season 9.  We found this seemingly official image from Harlem World back in March announcing casting dates across the country.  Open calls were held in Chicago, New York, LA and Seattle…but they were also held in Philadelphia and Las Vegas.

So what do you think?  Were DC chefs passed over for this season of Top Chef?  Or did our top talent take a pass on this season’s auditions?

SPOILER ALERT

If you have not yet watched last night’s season finale of Top Chef All-Stars, you probably won’t want to read this interview just yet.  We spoke with Washington’s own Chef Mike Isabella, chef-owner of the forthcoming Graffiato, for the third time this season just a few minutes ago.  And yes, we talk about how he did in the finale last night.

With that disclaimer out of the way, join us after the jump for the conversation.

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No spoilers in this post, but just wanted to give everyone a heads up that we’ll be posting our one-on-one interview with Top Chef Finalist Mike Isabella today at noon.  We’ll be discussing the Blais versus Isabella finale, what Chef Isabella is most proud of about his time in the Bahamas, and some more details about Graffiato (we hear there are lasers involved!).

See you back here soon.

Photo credit: Bravo

We have to give credit where credit is due.  The chefs who came back for this All-Star season of Top Chef have given us lots of reasons to root for them.  And the quality of this season has done a lot to wash the bad taste of Season 7 (filmed here in Washington) out of fans’ mouths.

By the end of tonight’s episode, we’ll be down to four remaining chefs.  And if bringing an extra chef along to the finale in the Bahamas means we get one additional week of sunny skies and killer cooking, we’re all for that.

Yesterday, we shared our interview with Mike Isabella as we head into the finals.  Today, we’ve got our pick for fan favorite, Carla Hall.  There’s something about the way Carla seems to root for everyone to succeed that is endearing and rare on competition shows like Top Chef.  Watching her fall short of her own expectations – especially when working with “her flavors” and cuisines – is heartbreaking.  But we’re not telling you anything you haven’t already seen for yourself.

We talked to Carla about her deceptively strong performance so far, her involvement with local causes, and some of the things she’s got in the works:

Capital Spice: You’ve really come out swinging this season!  Three Elimination Challenge wins, three big prizes.  How does it feel so far?
Carla Hall: It’s great, but I really don’t know when Matthew [her husband] and I are going to get a chance to take all those trips.

CS: Beyond the trips, you seemed really excited to win Jimmy Fallon’s challenge.  Are you that big a fan of his?
CH: There were two things going on there.  I’m definitely a fan of Jimmy’s, and it was so much fun to be on his show.  He really is just like you’d expect him to be.  But I’ve got a personal connection to chicken pot pie as well: that’s the first thing I ever tried to cook for myself back when I was modeling and going back and forth to Paris.

CS: So this was a recipe you’ve made before?
CH: It was, though I’ve never tried to make the upper crust by forming them around cookware like I did.  I’m glad it worked out!

More of Carla’s projects in the works after the jump.

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Image by Bravo

When the list of competitors for this All-Star season of Top Chef was announced, we were excited to see Washington represented by three of the most memorable characters from their respective seasons.  As the season has gone on, we’ve been cheering ever more enthusiastically as two of our three local cheftestants demonstrated that they have what it takes to go the distance (or at least as far as the Bahamas).  Our chefs now represent 40% of the Final Five, and the smart money is on at least one of them making it into the Top Three.

We got a chance to chat with both of our local chefs after last week’s episode, and what we heard from Mike Isabella and Carla Hall made us even more excited for what is yet to come – both on the show and in their local endeavors.  Check out our interview with Mike today, and then join us tomorrow for our chat with Carla before watching the first of the finale episodes tomorrow night.

Capital Spice: Congratulations on making it all the way to the finals, Chef.  You’ve been a solid competitor throughout the season.
Mike Isabella: Thanks.  It was definitely tough competition to get there.

CS: Let’s talk about your new restaurant, Graffiato, first.  How’s everything going?
MI: It’s going good.  We’re still under construction, putting in the duct work, the heaters, the framing.  Next week we’ll be laying the pipes for the water and gas.  I’d say we’re looking at a later spring opening at this point.

CS: Being in the middle of all of this construction, it must have been hard to travel and stay focused for the finale episodes as a result.
MI: Actually, I was really focused.  I have a great team working with me on Graffiato, including a lot of chefs and staff who are coming over with me.  That freed me up and allowed me to focus [on Top Chef] again.

After the jump, we talk Quickfire wins – both satisfying and controversial – and find out who Isabella thinks went home before their time. (more…)

If you’ve had a chance to check out the first two weeks of the new Top Chef season, then you know that the producers have chosen to bring back competitors from each of the first seven seasons who came *this* close to winning it all.  This “All-Star” season, set in New York City, pits some fan favorites (and some favorite villains) against each other in a rematch to see who has grown the most since their initial Top Chef appearance.

Here in Washington, we’re lucky enough to have THREE local competitors vying for our slavish loyalty.  In order of original appearance, they are:

• Spike Mendelsohn (Season 4 – Chicago), chef/owner of Good Stuff Eatery and We, the Pizza.  In his first season, Spike came across as…arrogant.  Has wisdom come with age?
• Carla Hall (Season 5 – New York), owner of Alchemy by Carla Hall.  She’s transitioning from catering to gourmet sweets and savories.  Hootie hoo!
• Mike Isabella (Season 6 – Vegas), who has moved on from his position at Zaytinya and is in the process of opening his own place, Graffiato.  He had trouble with leeks last time around (what…that’s NOT what you remember about him?).

Over the past two weeks, we’ve had a chance to chat with each of them.  We asked about what they’re doing professionally, the differences between their first appearances and this season, and what made them decide to subject themselves to the pressure cooker competition again.  Sure, a victory would be big for any of them, but each brought a sense of perspective to the show that they may not have had at first.

Check out some of our conversations with the cheftestants – including big news from each about the directions their projects are heading – after the jump. (more…)

Okay, so technically Friday morning isn’t exactly Thursday morning…

Thanks to everyone who took the time to submit an entry for our Top Chef Prize Pack giveaway.  We had a lot of fun reading over your answers and seeing which former Cheftestants you would like to see in an all-star season.

We were surprised that one of our favorite DC competitors, Carla Hall, didn’t come up.  Of all the runners-up so far she’s the one we most want to see get another bite at the apple.

And we loved your ideas for guest judges…the idea of Gordon Ramsay trying to judge Top Chef style instead of throwing a Hell’s Kitchen-quality fit made us smile.

Our winner (chosen at random) hit on a previous challenge that we would definitely like to see make a comeback – and for exactly the same reason.  Food trucks really are popping up at an amazing rate here in Washington, and it would be fun to see the all-stars try their hand at some more creative mobile dining options.

Congratulations to Amy – you win the prize pack that includes Top Chef Season Six (Las Vegas), Top Chef Masters Season One and the Top Chef Quickfire Cookbook.  We’ll be in touch shortly to arrange delivery.

Thanks again to everyone who entered.  We love offering these kinds of contests and we hope to do more of them in the future.

Image by Bravo

We missed you!

Sorry for the post silence lately – we promise we’re still keeping an eye on openings, eating around town and trying some delicious dishes at home.  We’re just a bit behind on letting you know about it.

So…how about that Top Chef DC?  Yeah, definite wasted opportunity.  It had its moments: Sam Kass and school lunches, for example.  But Washingtonians and viewers in general pretty much agree that this season was lackluster.

Oh well – they’re off to Thailand and we’re ready for the rumored-but-not-officially-confirmed Top Chef All Star season that may or may not be currently filming in New York (more on that later – some familiar faces from DC may be involved).  We’re also rooting for the home team on Top Chef: Just Desserts when it debuts this week, cheering on Hook’s Heather Chittum as she takes on a field of eleven other pastry chefs.

And we’re also looking back at some more enjoyable Top Chef memories, as well.  Top Chef Season 6 gave fans plenty of talent and competition – and gave DC fans a favorite to root for clear to the end in VOLT’s Bryan Voltaggio.  The first season of Top Chef Masters provided a fun twist on the format and a winner who’s just such a darn nice guy.  And then there was the Top Chef Quickfire Cookbook – everything you need (except years of training) to duplicate some of the most inventive dishes from the show’s first five seasons.

They’re all available for purchase now…or you can win them right here.  That’s right – we’re having another Top Chef Finale giveaway contest this week.  The winner gets a prize pack that includes Top Chef Season 6, Top Chef Masters Season 1, and the Quickfire Cookbook!

Want to win?  Leave a comment with three components (one for each prize):

1. A celebrity chef you’d like to see as a judge next season
2. The competitor you would MOST like to see in an “All Star” season, were there to be one
3. A challenge from a previous season you’d like to see brought back

We’ll announce a winner (selected at random from all eligible entries) on Thursday morning, just in case you don’t get your fill of Top Chef with Wednesday night’s back-to-back episodes.

And thanks for reading!

It’s hard to imagine Spike Mendelsohn deep in the weeds in a restaurant kitchen.  He’s a personality, a character – the smirk and the fedoras are too colorful to keep under wraps behind the scenes.  One of the things that guests at Good Stuff Eatery love is that they frequently find the former Top Chef contestant front and center when they stop in for the balanced meal that is a Blazin’ Barn burger and a Toasted Marshmallow milkshake.

As a result, it’s easy to forget that he and his cohorts at Good Stuff Eatery, Mike Colletti and Brian Lacayo, come from a sit-down restaurant background.  Working in popular New York restaurants like Mai House and Le Cirque, they’ve honed some pretty serious upscale dining chops.  Last month, they gave lucky guests at Alice Waters’ Sunday Night Sips event a tasty reminder.

On Sunday night, Spike and his team take on Michael Symon in the first episode of the new season of Iron Chef America.  In between publishing a Good Stuff Eatery cookbook and preparing to open We The Pizza next door, they found time to head up to Kitchen Stadium for what Spike described as “a kitchen brawl.” And you can bet the secret ingredient wasn’t burgers.

We caught up with Spike to ask about the experience and some of the interesting connections that show what a small world the restaurant business really is.

Capital Spice: Why Iron Chef?
Spike Mendelsohn: We’ve been doing Good Stuff Eatery for a year and a half now, and it’s been great.  But we’re not just about burgers.  Iron Chef was an opportunity for me, Colletti and Brian to put on chef coats and get our hands dirty again.

CS: What was it like to go head to head with Michael Symon?
SM: It’s funny…they always advertise the show as a one-on-one competition, but it’s really all about the team.  I didn’t feel like it was just me competing against Symon, it was the three of us working together against the three of them.  I really hope that comes across on television.

More on Kitchen Stadium, secret ingredients and a possible rematch after the jump. (more…)