Gin and Cobbler

lucky boozers…

Am I becoming disenchanted with my favorite show?

I’m ok with cross-marketing when it highlights chefs and their restaurants, or maybe a high quality name brand ingredient or sweet blender or something. But I’m a little worried when Cold Stone asks the kids to come up with a Mix-In for ice cream as a challenge. No wonder Hung went all freaky with the cauliflower foam, isn’t this supposed to be high-level sutff? And worse yet, before they cut to commercial, they highlighted Dale’s wining peach cobbler recipe and tagged it “which is a perfect pairing with Bombay Sapphire Gin” and a big ol’ graphic of the blue genie bottle. Yeah, because when I’m indulging in creamy-peachy-fruity all I’m looking for is sharp and piney to wash it down. It was a disgusting plug for their Perfect Pairings promotion, which OOOPS has been canceled for 2007.

But maybe that was the theme this episode, drunk consumption.

I liked the fact that they had to cook for clubbers from a hot-truck. That they thought they were going out to party and had to work instead, well that actually happens in the real restaurant world quite a bit. When a cook walks off the line in the middle of a Saturday night, it doesn’t matter if you have tickets to the moon, somebody’s gotta cook.

The chick factor bugged me. Sara wore the heels to dance in, but she can’t grocery shop in them? Suck it up sister, there isn’t a grrrrl cook in the world who hasn’t come home from the club with a gaggle of hungry drunks that demand sustenance. I can picture a particular New Year’s with my husband flipping hashbrowns dangerously low to the floor while I made sure my earrings didn’t fall into the eggs. Way it goes.

As for my boy Brian, did he put on a show or what? I’m still a little whipped over CJ (you know I like ’em tall), but Brian knows how to work a crowd and I think he should have won the challenge. Tre’s food looked really good, but Brian threw the party and kept the eaters hooked. When you think about what it takes to run a restaurant, to read what the guest wants and deliver it, that’s a Top Chef.

And what about Govind? Was he the most boring guest judge yet? All I could think about was poor Dale, dinner conversation might have been the tougher challenge. Unless it was sponsored by Bombay.