In the Land of Cocktails

The Secret Is Out!!

Posted by Ti Adelaide Martin on February 26th, 2009

02/26/2009

Well, the secret is finally out – the sea­son finale of Top Chef was filmed here at Commander’s Palace.  It was quite an expe­ri­ence.  After work­ing with the fan­tas­tic pro­duc­ers Liz Cook and Nan Strait for sev­eral months it all came together beau­ti­fully and the restau­rant trans­formed into a Hol­ly­wood set overnight. What a team they have over at Mag­i­cal Elves!

Nan and Liz were gen­er­ous enough with their time to sit down for inter­views with me – the pro­duc­ers of a major TV show actu­ally sat and gave inter­views for our crazy cock­tail site dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of their sea­son finale.  WOW.

The excite­ment (or shall we say ner­vous­ness) began to grow in the kitchen as the clock ticked down and I headed next door to Mom’s to pre­pare for the evening.

The judges and guest judges then headed upstairs to the Lit­tle Room (a din­ing room that became the dress­ing room for the day) to visit the make up artist and “get mike-ed” as they say (I needed no touch-ups as my own makeup job passed the artist’s cam­era ready qual­i­fi­ca­tions, thank you very much.  Aunt Ade­laide would be so proud).

The evening began upstairs in the Par­lor with Saz­er­acs, Tequila Mock­ing­bird II’s and fan­tas­tic hors d’oeuvres.  The con­tes­tants really blew us away with that course.  What a ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion they are put in!  They’re work­ing in a kitchen they don’t know with sur­prise ingre­di­ents they don’t work with and are given vir­tu­ally no time to brain­storm and exe­cute the meal.  In fact, some of their braver attempts fell flat.  There is no way to over­es­ti­mate the dif­fi­culty of work­ing in an unfa­mil­iar kitchen.  Add to that bizarre ingre­di­ents like a whole alligator.

No we don’t nor­mally have an entire alli­ga­tor in the mid­dle of the kitchen.

The final­ists were all really tal­ented.  I cer­tainly had my favorites.  I ended up sit­ting near Fabio – a past con­tes­tant.  He is a dynamic char­ac­ter and sweet all at once.  Across from me was Toby Young – hys­ter­i­cal – pithy.  I was glad he wasn’t judg­ing our food.  Bran­ford Marsalis was charm­ing and fun – a new friend.  Tom Col­ic­chio was a gen­tle­man and a pro.  And it is always good to have friends John Besh and Susan Spicer in the house.  Susan is a liv­ing doll and occa­sion­ally when I am work­ing so hard on my busi­ness and every­thing is not com­ing up roses I always know that Susan is across town doing the same thing.  I have always admired her so much.  John hit the nail on the head with his food crit­i­cisms – but in a very down to earth way.  He is always a plea­sure.  Padma is even pret­tier in per­son than on TV.

It was one of the longest 3 course meals I’ve ever expe­ri­enced but it was a great crowd and a plea­sure to be in the com­pany of indus­try experts.  Tom and I did get in a bit of a squab­ble when I sug­gested that per­haps “macho­ism” is to blame for the lack of con­cen­tra­tion male chefs put on dessert.  He pointed out that one of the con­tes­tants tried a dessert and it fell flat (lit­er­ally – it was a souf­flé that didn’t rise) – but at least she tried.  We’ll agree to dis­agree but I’d say that was about as heated as the con­ver­sa­tion got.

Well ladies and gents, I’m head­ing next door to the restau­rant and then to cel­e­brate Lundi Gras, but I’ll leave you with this food for thought … when will they pro­duce a TOP BAR CHEF?  Though the con­tes­tants were offered some of our more exotic cock­tail ingre­di­ents (Cre­ole Shrubb and St. Ger­main Elder­flower liqueur for exam­ple) none of the con­tes­tants cre­ated cocktails.

So let’s keep the rev­o­lu­tion rolling … cheers!

- Ti