Bayless Victorious in Top Chef Masters
Rick Bayless embraces Art Smith, a fellow Top Chef Masters competitor during a finale watch party at Frontera Grill in Chicago on Wednesday.
Master chef Rick Bayless reached back into his Oklahoma roots then to his passion for Mexican cuisine to capture Bravo’s first-ever Top Chef Masters title.
After a nine-week competition with some of the greatest chefs in the U.S., Bayless stood alone as the best of the best.
He said the competition was the most difficult undertaking of his career, but in the end the show’s impossible tasks and unforeseen obstacles couldn’t keep Bayless from winning $100,000 for his Frontera Farmer Foundation.
The foundation provides capital improvement grants that allow farmers to purchase equipment to allow them to remain profitable.
Bayless said the foundation began when a local producer to his two Chicago restaurants teetered on the brink of closing.
“We started it out as a $10,000 loan to be paid back in product. It was so successful, we decided to form the foundation.”
In Wednesday’s finale, he competed against French chef Hubert Keller, who resides in San Francisco and Italian-American chef Michael Chiarello, from the Napa Valley.
They cooked in the historic Getty Villa near Los Angeles. Guest judges included all five winners from Bravo’s flagship reality show, “Top Chef” plus the regular judges for that show Tom Colichio, Padma Lakshi and Gail Simmons.
The three chefs were asked to cook a three-course meal that took diners through a historic, culinary journey through the chefs’ careers.
Bayless drew from his parents’ barbecue restaurant, The Hickory House, where he first learned to cook. The dish was a hickory-smoked quail in the hot barbecue sauce and “sour slaw” his parents served through the 1960s.
From there, he served classic Oaxacan black mole, which is an ultra-complicated sauce that requires nearly 30 spices from dried chile to bitter chocolate. The dish is an incredible balancing act. He said on the show, the recipe took 20 years to perfect. He served it with plantain tamales, seared tuna and nopales (cactus). The dish was clearly his best, drawing raves from the judges.
Next, he served cochinita pibil. Translated, it means baked suckling pig. The traditional dish from the Yucatan typically involves a whole pig marinated in achiote paste, citrus juices and numerous herbs and spices, then wrapped in banana leaves and cooked over hot coals — preferably underground. But Bayless put a more sophisticated spin on the dish, packing it tight in a pan and roasting into a block that could be sliced into squares then plated with sunchoke puree and topped with batter-fried pig’s feet.
His final dish was Arroz a la Tumbada with tomato-jalapeno broth and chorizo “air.” This dish was his weakest in the judges’ estimation. They felt it suffered more from the logistics of the dinner than execution.
He scored 18 stars out of a possible 20 to take the crown.
Bayless watched the finale from his Frontera Grill in Chicago, where he was hosting a watch party. He took time away from his party, to call a local party hosted by chef Ryan Parrott at his Iguana Mexican Grill. He said as he and the competitors were waiting, they assessed the reaction of the judges opposite of the final result.
“We thought Hubert took first, Michael second and me third,” he said.
Bayless has won three James Beard Awards and numerous others, but he said winning this prize was more personal.
“In this competition, it really was my achievement. If I needed garlic, I had to peel it.”
The party drew about 60 people, filling the bar and spilling into the dining area where Parrott had a big-screen TV brought in.
Local chefs in attendance included Sean Cummings, Vince Howard and master chef John Bennett. One fan in attendance attended high school with Skip and Rick Bayless at Northwest Classen High School.
Bayless’ “Mexico: One Plate at a Time” begins its sixth season in September on PBS. A book featuring the sixth season’s recipes is planned for the spring.
Rococo: I Sing the Body Eclectic
It all starts with the Rococo Jumbo Lump Crab Cake. Perfection.
Rococo was a garish 18th Century style of art and interior design. It was garish, whimsical and modern, which royally shook the establishment with its damn-our-upbringing style that dared be artful at every turn.
Rococo Restaurant and Fine Wine is aptly named. The vibe at the old Tony’s Italian Specialties is a conveys chef/owner Bruce Rinehart’s bi-coastal life: chic and classy, cool and relaxed. That’s Bruce. That’s Rococo, unpretentious and eclectic.
He’s lived an interesting life, where I started to breathe: San Diego. Bruce’s first real job was at the Hotel Del Coronado, an iconic American hotel in city by the sea where I was born. The Hotel Del is grand, gorgeous, ostentatious and a place where no details are overlooked. Perfection surrounds you. At the same time, it oozes cool. It’s welcoming and lacks the formality of other hotels of its ilk, a product of the laid-back, permanent-vacation lifestyle of Southern California.
Bruce, who hailed from Connecticut, has all the bravado, confidence and audacity you would expect from an East Coast guy. But that SoCal influence is still evident today. His menu is playful (Gangster Cookies anyone? How about ”A Great Piece of Tail”?) but broad, spanning from Thailand to Palermo and touching all points in between. He offers a little something for everyone and allows the diner to decide what kind of experience he/she will have, offering burgers and sandwiches for under 10 bucks to surf-and-turf trios rising into the $70s, depending on market prices.
Lori and I went in back in June and started, of course, with the crab cake. I’m not from Maryland and have never been to Baltimore, so I can’t tell you how it compares to the fare over there. (Seuss anyone?) But I can tell you it’s the best crab cake I’ve ever had, though, admittedly, my limited crab-cake consuming career is fairly pedestrian. I loved everything about this dish: flaky, rich, succulent with just a hint of crunch. Lori usually the carrier of our dinnertime conversation, limited most of her commentary to “mmmm” and “oh my Gaawwd.” I concurred.
For dinner, she opted for Lobster Risotto and I a surf-and-turf trio that included the aforementioned great piece of tail, a filet and a butterflied shrimp carefully stuffed with, you guessed it, crab cake. Rather than go into a series of carefully crafted hyperbolic sentences, I will simply tell you everything was perfect. Beautiful, delicious and delivered with care and pride. To be honest, what more can you ask for from a dining experience. If a chef delivers a well-crafted meal, you leave satisfied. If a chef delivers a meal using all the skill, passion, and creativity he has at his disposal, you are lucky indeed. That’s a connection. In the end, isn’t connection the thing we constantly crave but can never put a finger on? Isn’t connection the thing we can never get enough of in our short time?
We had great service from Kerry, who hand-picked us a wine to go with both our meal. (Kerry, you never did give me the name!)
A memorable meal in a place made memorable by force of the proprietor’s love and passion for what he does. I’ll take that every time I go out to eat.
Have you been to Rococo? What did you think?
Camilya’s: A Tale of Two Lunches
Beef shewarma from Camilya's in Quail Springs Plaza.
It was the best of meals, it was the worst of meals.
Lori and I visited Camilya’s, 10942 N May in Quail Springs Plaza, a few months back — anxious to add another quality Mediterranean cafe to the rotation that includes Mediterranean Deli, Nunu’s, Zorba’s, Gyro’s Etc. and Couscous Cafe.
Anxious was the wrong thing to be. We waited approximately 35 minutes for her falafel sandwich and my beef keftah to arrive. And trust me, I’m leaning to the low end when I say 35 minutes.
Camilya’s is a tiny cafe, so we didn’t have much to chat about other than the tiny patio. It was hot the day we were in, so outside wasn’t an option. Though we agreed there was some merit to the little outdoor spot for a nice spring lunch.
When the food finally arrived it looked and smelled phenomenal. I couldn’t wait to dig in, perhaps it was the long wait or more innate ability to go from 0-100 on the hunger scale in 1.2 seconds.
So dig I did, only to find a completely raw center to my cylindrical burgerloaf. I won’t go into it, but we politely left with a promise to return down the road.
Lori couldn’t be convinced as the experience planted a grudge in her that she wasn’t willing to lift just yet. So, I went it alone one mid-afternoon to avoid any possible lunch rush problems. This time, I went with the beef shewarma (their spelling, not mine). I wouldn’t say the food was delivered promptly this time, but that’s not always a major faux pas for me. I only pass it along for those that need speed when lunching.
Falafel with yogurt sauce
I also ordered a side of falafel. Camilya’s brand was shaped like little hockey pucks rather than hushpuppies and they were more than satisfying, served with a smooth, garlicky tzatziki interpretation.
The center was lush and the crust crisp, you can’t have good falafel without those elements. I think it was good enough for Lori to lift the embargo.
The beef in the shewarma was reminiscent of taqueria-style sirloin chopped in larger pieces and surrounded by the trimmings we’ve come to expect with gyros — pita, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions and tzatziki. Delicious. The sauce with the sandwich was a variation on the sauce with the falafel. This one was thicker and included more parsley. The falafel sauce was a little thinner with a more rich flavor.
Overall, definitely something I will return for. Whether I can get my wife to come with me will probably necessitate an order of falafel delivered to her desk.
Have you been to Camilya’s? Let me know what you thought.
Where do you go for your Mediterranean food urges?
Julie and Julia: More Julia please
One iconic American woman portrays another as Meryl Streep becomes Julia Child in the new film "Julie and Julia."
In Nora Ephron’s new film “Julie and Julia,” there are three main characters: Julia Child, Julie Powell and French cuisine.
By movie’s end, you care about two of the three. It might not be perfect, but two out of three ain’t bad.
Julie Powell performed each recipe from Julia Child’s first book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” inside a year and lived to blog about it in 2002. The Julie/Julia Experiment graduated from blogspot to book-form. Then to this film, which interweaves Julia’s long road to being a published cookbook author with Julie’s attempt to be noticed on the Internet and write a book.
Meryl Streep’s carefree, almost bawdy, portrayal of Julia Child is so charismatic, that I was left wanting more — much more of her and less of Julie Powell.
The food is so lovingly photographed and portrayed that I I could taste the butter. As the movie progresses, food gets less and less screen time. Meanwhile, the longer you watch Julie Powell the less you care.
Amy Adams is one of her generation’s finest talents, and she portrays Julie Powell winningly. Powell has written a poignant and aggressively intimate memoir of a woman in need of inspiration.
Maybe Streep’s Julia is so ebullient, I felt I was missing something when she wasn’t on screen.
Julie’s story is about picking yourself up and getting yourself going. We can all relate to that. It has it’s own bit of inspiration. You want to pat her on the back, but juxtaposed with Julia’s achievement, Julie comes off a little marginal.
Maybe that’s because as Julie delves deeper into the year, she becomes shrill and a touch obsessed without regard to much else while Julia’s battle to publish her book took four times as long to accomplish, never left her a crying mess nor did anything but enrich her love life.
Julie was paired with a juggernaut and reduced to Robin to Julia’s Batman.
Watching Streep perform is generally worth the high price of movie tickets. In this case, you get to see Streep do the impossible: forget Dan Ackroyd’s Julia send up on Saturday Night Live until Ephron has the guts to include it in the film.
Stanley Tucci is perfectly understated as Paul Child and Chris Messina depicts Powell’s ever-patient husband Eric with panache.
If you have a modicum of interest in culinary history, you’ll enjoy seeing the French explosion onto the culinary landscape. If you haven’t watched Food Network since Emeril got demoted to Fine Living Network, you might lose interest about 70 minutes into the film.
I give it 2-1/2 stars
California Meets Kaiser’s, Chef Bennett Meets his Match
Photo by NATE BILLINGS
The Julia Child Rose
When Julia Child’s niece, Phila Cousins, got married in Sausalito, Calif., master chef John Bennett was there. For the wedding party, he had Kaiser’s ice cream flown in from Oklahoma City.
When the time came to serve it, John stood before the wedding party and proclaimed: “This is Kaiser’s Ice Cream from Oklahoma City, it’s the finest ice cream in the world!”
To which Paul Child quickly shot: “Have you tasted every ice cream in the world?”
Perhaps it was pay back for chef Bennett’s use of the framboise back in Cambridge.
And for those of you who were curious, I present the chef and his master, Riley…
Chef Bennett isn’t the only one who springboarded into a long, illustrious culinary career after his fortuitous meeting with Julia Child. Bob Dickson, the singing chef of Charleston, has done quite well for himself, too. Next time you’re in South Carolina, you can visit his restaurant, which has flourished for more than three decades.
