by Iron Chef Leftovers
The new season of Top Chef-Masters has begun and it is an impressive collection of chefs with 3 of Seattle’s own – Jerry Traunfeld of Poppy, Maria Hines of Tilth and Thierry Rautureau of Rover’s, competing. My track record with picking the winner is usually not good for the regular Top Chef (although my choice usually ends up in the top 3 finishers), I did nail Season 1 of Masters with Rick Bayless winning.
Here are my predictions – Maria Hines is the only Seattle contestant to make it into the championship round. She probably has the most dynamic cooking style of the 3 (Traunfeld and Rautureau are both classically trained and never struck me as particularly innovative) and I think that creativity is going to carry her forward. Unfortunately, I don’t see her in the finals.
My picks for the finals – Rick Tramonto, Marcus Samuelsson, Jon Waxman and Mark Peel (I believe 4 go to the finals) with Samuelsson winning it all. Samuelsson is the best overall chef in this competition and should be able to handle everything they throw at him.
The two chef who I would love to see do well – Jody Adams and Wylie Dufresne probably won’t make it out of the elimination round. Adams is a fantastic chef, but like Traunfeld and Rautureau, does not strike me as particularly innovative and Dufresne’s molecular gastronomy style does not seem like it is going to hold up in this type of competition.
Let’s revisit this in a couple of weeks and see how I did.
FlatbreadGarden 
I just hope a Seattle Chef can make us proud. Last few chef shows I have seen someone from Seattle they shown the best of our quality food. I just hope we are not embarassed again by Seattle chefs.
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Molecular gastronomy = rapid elimination in cooking competitions. My bet would be that the producers will keep Dufresne around to about the final 8 just because he’s different.
I agree with the Mark Peel and Jon Waxman picks. I’m going to be rooting for Peel.
Michelle over at Thursday Night Smackdown is liveblogging the shows for those interested. She’s really entertaining, check her out on the link at the right.
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Actually, being a molecular gastronomist tends to lead to doing well in these compitions – you generally see at least one student of MG in the finals of every season of Top Chef since season 2. Since MG is basically the breaking down food into its component flavors and reassembling them in new ways (not just using chemicals to do it), I think the MG chefs have a better understanding of how to put a dish together and make it taste fantastic under those conditions than a classically trained chef. That being said, I think what seperates a MG chef that will do well from one that won’t is the ability to produce something unusual without being too off the wall. Dufresne has never struck me as someone who can produce food that is something that you could make at home. I think Heston Blumenthal is probably one of the 10 best chefs in the world, but I couldn’t begin to make any of his recipies at home since they are closer to a chemistry experiment than cooking.
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