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My guilty pleasure is Top Chef on the Bravo Network.  It’s what you think–a group of 12 or so aspiring chefs who compete in challenges and get eliminated one-by-one.  It’s so much fun watching these skilled chefs cooking food.  What they also do is incorporate the drama of reality TV, as well.  One of the things they do is get the challenger’s comments on particular challenges.

This week, I got pretty hacked at the contestants.  The "quickfire" challenge had people pairing beer with a dish that they cook and the elimination challenge was to prepare food for a Bears tailgate party.  The contestants had this mixed response.  Some were happy about it and some of them thought it was beneath them.  This is a consistent trend throughout the seasons; whenever there’s a competition where they are preparing food for people that aren’t Michelin 5-Star Chefs they feel it’s beneath them. 

Let’s look at this logically.  If the people they were preparing food for were exactly who they thought they were (John Goodman and "Da Bears"), they are chefs–they cook for their audience.  Otherwise, they shouldn’t be chefs.  However, let’s look at who they were really cooking for–people who can afford NFL football tickets.  The people that showed up were all middle-aged, affluent people that were probably used to occasional haute-cuisine.  The challenge should have been a matter of converting one of their recipes into being something a little more "fun".  A true "Top Chef" would be able to do that easily.  Fortunately, one of the guys that didn’t get the idea of cooking for the audience was eliminated.