These "nice guys" were in it to the end of this season of Bravo's "Top Chef Masters"

In a cute final-episode twist, this season's new host, chef Curtis Stone, cooked for finalists Mary Sue, Floyd, and Traci.

by Ken

I still haven't exactly watched the Top Chef Masters season finale. I've had it on a couple of times while I was trying to do other things, and so maintained only sporadic contact. I don't know, maybe I would have been more attentive if I hadn't liked all three finalists. I mean, liked, as in having warm personal regard for. So I didn't have a strong rooting interest for or against them -- and two of them, after all, had to lose.

So maybe the producers of "reality" TV are right after all, that it's conflict viewers really want to see, whether we acknowledge it or not. Nevertheless I thought it was pretty cool that the three finalists were pretty much the nicest people in the field, especially Floyd Cardoz and Mary Sue Milliken. Now niceness doesn't make them good cooks; their cooking skills do that. But I don't think the niceness is irrelevant. Beyond the obvious role of food in providing us with nourishment and fuel to live, its most important function is the one embodied in the concept of "breaking bread": serving and sharing one another. And somehow I can't help feeling that I'd rather eat the food prepared by a cook set on sharing something special than by one interested in feeding or vindicating his/her own ego.


The Top Chef Masters winner, Floyd Cardoz, didn't pick himself to win. (Warning: I've found that the Bravo TV video links don't work great. Sorry.)

I should say that I had a sentimental attachment to Mary Sue dating back to Two Hot Tamales, the show that she and her longtime restaurant partner (notably in Border Grill), Susan Feniger, did in the early years of Food Network (I'm kind of afraid to look it up and find out how many years ago it was), back in the days when cooking shows actually were cooking shows, rather than excuses for spending half the time out iin the field groping for viewer-grabbing destinations. No, the cooks came in the studio and they cooked, and shared their passion for the cooking.

I had the same proprietary feeling when Susan competed in one of the earlier seasons of Top Chef Masters -- and did pretty well, I was happy to see, until In the end the judges seemed to find her food too homey, too unextravagant, probably the qualities I found especially attractive about it. I thought it was great that for the gala dinner for which Mary Sue, Floyd, and Traci cooked their final challenge, Susan was among the culinary swells on the guest list.

I couldn't get Mary Sue's exit interview to play even once, so instead here's a photo of her with Susan. (They like to point out that Mary Sue is now married to Susan's ex-husband.) [UPDATE: But see below!]

There was something special about those lemon soufflés Mary Sue [not "Susan," as I typed originally! -- K.] made for that final meal, to satisfy the declared craving of the judge for whom her meal was tailored. (Ruth Reichl, wasn't it?) She explained in voiceover that she had once worked a restaurant soufflé station, but hadn't made a soufflé in -- I think she said -- 30 years, and didn't plan on doing it for the first time in the competition. Totally sensibly, she took time during the night-before preparation period to make a test batch, which came out pretty well, she thought. Alas, in the actual preparation she beat her egg whites too soon and wound up with nowhere near enough batter, and was persuaded that she had ruined her chances. But she focused, got her sous chef whipping egg whites like mad, and the judges went crazy over the soufflés, and were still talking about them in the final judging discussions.

Which is not to say that I didn't have really good feelings about Floyd too, so gentle and yet intense -- especially the feeling that he's someone you would love to be fed by. And Traci Des Jardins is clearly an experienced and skilled chef, who managed to adapt her apparent sense of order and control to the improvisational circumstances of a competition like this.


IS THE ROCCO DiSPIRITO DINNER-PARTY THING AS
YUCKY AS IT SEEMED? (THEN THERE'S MASTERCHEF)

I also had it on but didn't actually watch it, and I'm wondering if anyone can tell me if it was as appalling as it seemed? The contestants didn't seem to have much in the way of food knowledge or cooking skills, and Rocco -- whom I found quite charming when he opened that Italian restaurant featuring his mamma's meatballs in the reality show The Restaurant -- seemed fairly obnoxious. Maybe Floyd and Mary Sue have me spoiled.

MasterChef's Joe B., Gordon R., and Graham E.

You have to give Gordon Ramsay credit for finding in Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot a pair of fellow judges for MasterChef (which I actually have been watching -- don't ask me why) who would make him seem by comparison warm and cuddly. We'll talk about MasterChef, whose gimmick is that it's a competition for "America's best" home cooks, farther down the line, when we're past the freak-show atmosphere of the early episodes. As I recall from the first season, it eventually turned out that there were good cooks in the bunch, and challenges of some culinary interest.


I GOT BRAVE AND LOOKED UP THE DATE OF
MARY SUE AND SUSAN'S TWO HOT TAMALES

It debuted on Food Network in 1995. That's not so bad. More and more often events that I remember taking place "awhile back" turn out to be 25-30 years ago.


TOP CHEF MASTERS POSTSCRIPT

First, I see that judge James Oseland, editor of Saveur, has a blog entry in which he writes that in the final-challenge deliberations he and fellow judges Ruth Reichl and Gael Greene initially championed three different candidates! Meaning that each of the three finalists in effect "won" a judge. I like that!

Second, at the moment I'm having no difficulty playing Mary Sue's exit interview, and it's very, well, Mary Sue. So here it is:

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