The new spinoff of Top Chef starts tonight (Wed 9/15) on Bravo. As the name says, this is a dessert only competition in the style of TC.



Our Host:
Gail Simmons

Our Judges:
Johnny Iuzzini
Hubert Keller
Dannielle Kyrillos

Our Chefs:

Bravo Bio Page
Danielle Keene, 29 — Resides in South Pasadena, California (Hometown: Los Angeles, California)
Eric Wolitzky, 38 — Resides in Manhattan (Hometown: Rochester, New York)
Erika Davis, 40 — Resides in Jacksonville Beach, Florida (Hometown: Tamms, Illinois)
Heather Chittum, 37 — Resides in Washington, D.C. (Hometown: Brooklyn, New York)
Heather Hurlbert, 40 — Resides in Atlanta, Georgia (Hometown: Seoul, South Korea)
Malika Ameen, 35 — Resides in Chicago, Illinois
Morgan Wilson, 37 — Resides in Dallas, Texas (Hometown: Sonora, California)
Seth Caro, 34 — Resides in New York, New York (Hometown: Chappaqua, New York)
Tania Peterson, 39 — Resides in Boston, Massachusetts (Hometown: Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Tim Nugent, 41 — Resides in Oakland, California (Hometown: Alburgh, Vermont)
Yigit Pura, 29 — Resides in San Francisco (Hometown: Ankara, Turkey)
Zac Young, 27 — Resides in New York, New York (Hometown: Portland, Maine)

oh man I have a big pastry boner for this.

It's interesting that there's so many FCI graduates. Maybe that's a coincidence, or maybe their pastry program is better than CIA? I dunno. I was underwhelmed by the CIA Baking & Pastry textbook, so I'm not surprised.

I'm curious to see how much of a douche Johnny Iuzzini will be, every time I've seen him on TV he's come off as a huge snobby egotard.

I'm glad hubert keller is a judge, he definitely knows what he's talking about.

I've never heard of the other judge, but she sounds like an airhead magazine editor with no real pastry experience except making pies when she was a kid.

The overall talent looks pretty good. There isn't anyone in their early 20s, and I think all of them are actual pastry chefs.

I wonder if Zac is gay:

pastry chefs are much better looking than savory chefs. Tall brunette chick is nice.

uber keller.

don't think i can handle all the ghey, Zack is making it unwatchable

Haha, def a lot of gay in this, but who didn't expect that. I much prefer to watch the savory chefs, but the diva factor of the dessert chefs could make this good.

Love Top Chef. This is way over the top ***** for me. I do like Gail so may watch it just for her.

i lol'd

I liked it overall. Interested to see what kind of challenges they come up with, since making a great chocolate dessert seems insanely basic. Seth seems like a good character and looks like he'll use some interesting techniques. Zac is pretty much unbearable. Gail and Johnny seem like good judges but that other woman was pretty much a waste of space.

uh...no.

Er I didn't mean basic as in easy to do. Basic as in it's a super obv challenge for them to throw at the contestants. I'm curious if they do any of the insane constraint based challenges the way regular Top Chef does.

Iuzzini seemed like a really good judge so far, but I wonder why HK wasn't there for the first ep.

Morgan at first seemed like he might actually be a normal person, but that went out the window when he got in the bottom 3.

This show has confirmed my theory that pastry chefs are all insane bipolar dramafags, even the straight men, sometimes especially the straight men.

One thing I was really shocked at is when the black chick said they weren't allowed to use recipes. That's ****ed up, even for professionals. The quality of the food is definitely going to suffer because of that.

oic

I think the chocolate dessert challenge is an obvious choice for the first episode. Chocolate desserts are always a crowd pleaser, and I think they're trying to make sure they don't alienate any viewers. I think if the first challenge was something like sugar showpieces or croque en bouche, then half the audience would've been like "ugh this show sux, wtf are they making." But if they do those halfway into the season, people would be more likely to accept it in the context of challenging the chefs on a wide range of pastry skills.

That being said, I really hope they never do sugar showpieces or croque en bouche lol.

susur lee dominates croque en bouche

I'll watch it because hopefully they show off some neat stuff. I don't typically go to high end restaurants so almost never have a chance to try these desserts that seem completely unfamiliar to me. Of course with top chef I don't get to eat the high end food either but at least I can relate to it or have some idea about it. With the desserts its completely a new world.

I did however have lunch at Jean georges while on vacation in NYC where apparently that Johnny guy is the pastry chef. TO be honest the two desserts I had there looked very interesting but were very bleh. I would have rather got another order of the foie gras brulee for dessert. Maybe it was because this was on the lunch menu. It was cheap though, each dessert plate (labelled by theme) was only $8.

Why was that shocking? Top Chef contestants have never been able to use recipes, and that's including with savory chefs that have to fix a dessert (where I would argue a recipe would be more helpful. )A professional pastry chef should know their recipes and ratios if they're going to play this kind of game.

I thought I'd give this show a try, since I love top chef. I lasted until "I will cut you with my flavour."

his line from the commericials was the best..."my desserts are like your mom made them and then someone slapper her in the face"...something like that at least, wtf does that even mean?

Memorizing recipes is not a skill that separates good and bad pastry chefs. Every pastry chef in the world uses recipes, especially when they're creating a new dish. Not allowing recipes is simply going to lower the quality of food produced on the show.

I understand the idea behind not allowing recipes. You don't want the contestants to just flip through a book to find a dish that fits the criteria of the challenge. But I can gaurantee you that in a pastry competition, a no recipe rule will result in people screwing up relatively simple things and being a lot less experimental than they otherwise would. We already saw evidence of this in the first episode. I think it makes a less entertaining show.

I didn't watch the whole first episode, but Seth crying is pulling me through the second.

Seth might be legitimately insane. Hopefully he sticks around because it's kind of awesome to watch him interact with all the passive-aggressive women/gay guys.

Seth basically made the show unwatchable for me.

WTF dude is insane.

I prayed he got eliminated, he is a whole new level of annoying for reality TV. When he started talking about mom mom mom for my mom mom for my mom and then cried because his ice cream didnt freeze and then the insanity that went on @ the elimination challenge selection made me hate him more than anyone I have ever hated on a show like this.