Yes, it has come to this — cops and Occupy protestors at one of the last major encampments in the United States are fighting over a kitchen sink.
Boston police moved in with heavy force on Thursday’s General Assembly meeting in Boston’s Dewey Square to remove a DIY grey-water sink intended to help Occupy Boston members …
Imagine watching professional football religiously all year long. Then imagine that it’s finally time for the Super Bowl, and, suddenly, whoever is in charge of the NFL announces that some team you forgot even existed is playing, because it won a whole other football season that was happening on the Internet. Ridiculous, right? Well, that’s what’s going on with Top Chef this season.
This week, Bravo.com premiered the first episode of Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen, an online-only series in which two chefs, eliminated from the TV show, compete head-to-head in one final challenge. The winning chef each week goes on to cook against the next eliminated chef; this proceeds until the finale, when the remaining chef will be able to rejoin the competition.
Last Chance Kitchen is fine, on a creative level — it’s a well-paced and professional package that adheres closely to the show’s format (overly dramatic music stings and all). But as a case study in integrating web content into a pre-established series, it’s a potential disaster, largely because of its distribution.
I will not make fun of the fact that the Bravo website, in lieu of embeddable video, is offering a widget to distribute Last Chance Kitchen — because I am kind, and also because the series is thankfully also available on Hulu.
But while super-fans may already be subscribed to Top Chef on Hulu or visiting Bravo.com on a daily basis, for most of the show’s 1.6 million viewers, the only way they’ll remember that Last Chance Kitchen exists is if the show uses precious ad minutes to nag them into going online and watching. As the Los Angeles Times’s John Horn complained, “you have to get up from the TV, start up your laptop and (of all the indignities!) be forced to watch the commercials.”
If Last Chance Kitchen were Hulu Plus and available on phones, tablets or other connected devices, that would be a significant improvement. Unfortunately, it’s note. In fact, Hulu’s note about Bravo programming is one of the more peculiarly-worded ones I’ve seen: “Hulu can offer a select number of full-length episodes from Bravo’s lineup each calendar month. The episodes featured and when they are posted are at Bravo’s discretion.” In short: Don’t blame us. It’s Bravo that’s being stingy.
Last Chance Kitchen also proves problematic when you consider how it changes the competition. Let’s say the winner of this first Last Chance Kitchen (no spoilers) goes on to dominate each subsequent episode — competing against chefs who were eliminated later and are thus, by the logic of the show, better chefs. While winning 12 cook-offs against arguably more talented cooks is an impressive feat, it’s an entirely different experience than the challenges the actual cheftestants will be going through — challenges meant in theory to evaluate each chef’s skill in handling a variety of situations. And so when the winner of Last Chance Kitchen re-enters the competition after not having been on television for potentially weeks, he or she will be altering the narrative of the show.
Top Chef has been nominated for Emmys for its efforts to integrate the web and TV in the past — some of the work they’ve done with online polling and Twitter is groundbreaking. In theory, this is what convergence culture creates: the blurring of lines between television and web to tell a story richer than the sum of its parts. But Last Chance Kitchen may well be a major misstep for the show.
That’s because, when creating an experience on multiple platforms, you either have to make sure that each element can be enjoyed separately with no consequences, or make sure that all elements of the experience are easily accessible. For Last Chance Kitchen, neither of these things is true.
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Foam-crazed chemist-cooks have become increasingly obsessed with transforming basic foodstuffs into abstract sculptures over the past few years. Syfy taps the molecular gastronomy trend Tuesday with a new show that stars chef Marcel Vigneron, the talented but snarky perfectionist known to fans of reality series Top Chef.
Question by GODDESSA: What’s the worst you’ve ever injured yourself with a kitchen gadget?
I sliced the top of my thumb off with a potato peeler when I was in high school. It was hanging by a thread. I wanted to go to the hospital but my stepdad told me it’d be fine and threw a bandaid on top of it. My mom came home and screamed.
Needless to say, I don’t peel potatoes anymore. That is now my husband’s job.
Best answer:
Answer by Nina Lee
OMG, ouch!!!! I don’t mind peeling potatoes but every time I try to grate them for hash browns I lose some skin.
I did the same thing to my left, middle finger. I don’t remember how it happened but remember it was with a brand new Cutco knife. I had to have stitches & thought it would never stop bleeding. That was about 8 years ago.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Question by Wondering: What is the coolest new kitchen gadget around?
Something that every home should have… nothing really specialized (i.e. no pastry utensils or anything). What is it used for? Links, etc are welcome! Thank you very much!
Best answer:
Answer by willa
this is supposed to be pretty cool. i just saw in one of my magazines the other day. they point out the fact that chopping with just a knife (2 stars) is sticky and labor intensive, and using a garlic press (1 star) is hard to clean and turns your garlic into mush (i gree with both). my magazine this (3 stars)is fun to use, chops up the garlic nicey, and no sticky stinky hands.
Chef’n Garlic Zoom
http://www.amazon.com/Chefn-GZM-CDU12-Garlic-Zoom/dp/B000ZM7CV8
http://www.chefsresource.com/chefn-garlic-zoom-garlic-chopper.html
http://www.surlatable.com/product/kitchen+&+bar+tools/new+kitchen+&+bar+tools/chef’n+garlic+zoom.do
Give your answer to this question below!