this season sucks, which is a shame because Kristen is doing a GREAT job and I fear she's going to be blamed for its problems. the contestants are mostly blah, the challenges have not been good, and the editing is whackadoo. I'll watch it because I've watched every single episode but I'm really annoyed on behalf of Kristen
I think it's starting to get interesting because there's no clear frontrunner just yet but I will watch a bad Top Chef so maybe I'm not the best person to give an opinion
I think coming off of WORLD ALL STARS and how good it was - it was a real choice to come back with…Wisconsin. I feel a lot of the challenges these season are very straight forward (Cheese!) or kinda convoluted (Frank Lloyd Wright inspired food but also duality). I’m just not connecting or feeling I’m getting a sense of Wisconsin’s culinary identity.
I'm not watching this series, but I think you'd have to be both pretty creative and pay close attention to the history of immigration to the state, its agricultural production (11th in the nation), and its past-times to plan "themes" related to culinary identity. The joke (like in much of the Midwest) is that much of the food is pretty bland because of the heavy Nordic/Germanic background, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to find good restaurants or they couldn't challenge the chefs to put their twist on (or improve upon) traditional Norwegian/German/Cornish (Cornish miners went up north) recipes. There's a lot of farm-to-table, and there are restaurants sprinkled throughout the state that are specifically marketed as serving traditional Nordic cuisine.
Also, hunting deer and ice-fishing is a massive part of the culture (especially the north), so even if the show couldn't use wild game (illegal) they could at least challenge the chefs to do something with farmed venison or other fish found in the area. I'd say they could also
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Fwiw, everything I've seen or read about this season so far has been nothing but praise for Kristen. I think people realize it's not her. I also wonder if eliminating immunity for quickfire wins has anything to do with it.
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I'm not watching this series, but I think you'd have to be both pretty creative and pay close attention to the history of immigration to the state, its agricultural production (11th in the nation), and its past-times to plan "themes" related to culinary identity. The joke (like in much of the Midwest) is that much of the food is pretty bland because of the heavy Nordic/Germanic background, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to find good restaurants or they couldn't challenge the chefs to put their twist on (or improve upon) traditional Norwegian/German/Cornish (Cornish miners went up north) recipes. There's a lot of farm-to-table, and there are restaurants sprinkled throughout the state that are specifically marketed as serving traditional Nordic cuisine.
Also, hunting deer and ice-fishing is a massive part of the culture (especially the north), so even if the show couldn't use wild game (illegal) they could at least challenge the chefs to do something with farmed venison or other fish found in the area. I'd say they could also ( ... )
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