A Taste of Top Chef DC

Last week on Top Chef DC, the cheftestants were paired up and asked to work together to create a “bipartisanwich” (gotta love the DC food puns). The catch was that they were doing the kitchen equivalent of a three-legged race—cooking collaboratively, limited to using one hand each.  In order to determine who worked with who, they did a classic Top Chef “knife pull,” drawing knives with numbers on them; the chef who drew a number 1 would work with the other chef who had drawn a number 1, etc.

All this was very entertaining to be sure, but what was most interesting to me as I watched it today (getting caught up from my hectic week last week) was one of the chef pairings in particular—Andrea and Kevin.

Kevin and Andrea (courtesy of Bravo.com)

Why so interesting? Because it just so happens that I went to both of their restaurants last week!

First up, was Rats (yes, the name is unfortunate) in Hamilton, NJ, at which Kevin is the executive chef.  It happens to be located about 10 minutes away from my old office and when I was there last week finishing things up, some of my coworkers took me to Rats for a farewell happy hour. Unfortunately, I didn’t really get to eat much of Kevin’s food (it is a pretty pricey restaurant) but I did enjoy some awesome homemade hummus and bread as well as a vichysoisse (a chilled potato and leek soup) that was pretty fantastic. Not only that but the restaurant itself was really nice—charming and whimsical on the inside—making me somewhat disappointed that I might not ever get a chance to actually eat there.

Courtesy of Google Images

Then, two days later, Jason and I went to Talula, Andrea’s restaurant, in Miami Beach. Before we left I had done a little bit of research on where we should eat while we were there and Talula came up on several local food blogs I checked out. When I realized that it was the restaurant of a TC/DC contestant, I decided we had to give it a try. All in all, it was a good meal. I had a Ceasar salad and the baked grouper with lemon and thyme, while Jason had a tomato bisque and some sort of grilled or seared wahoo. Although the meal was good, I left a little disappointed. I guess I had wanted to like it more than I actually did.

Also found on Google Images

So far they have done pretty well on the show and it was fun to be able to get a bit of an inside scoop on what their food is like. I’ll be watching their progress on the show with even greater interest now!