Jennifer Carroll worked at Le Bernardin for five years, and now heads another Eric Ripert restaurant, and she can’t pronounce ceviche?!? Oh the vapors, possums, the deliciousness of it all.
It made us think of that speech Anthony Hopkins recites in The Silence of the Lambs, about Jody Foster’s character wearing cheap shoes and being a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. We know nothing about the background of Jennifer Carroll—who, to our delight, described herself as “a freakin’ bitch in the kitchen” who’s “made enough boys cry”—but something about her gives off a whiff of the trailer park. Is it the accent, her admission that she drinks too much and does stupid things as a result? Is it the way she looks perennially unkempt, or drunk, or angry, or on the verge of tears? Whatever it is, we love this hot mess, and the woman can cook. Had this been last season, we would have pegged her as the one most likely to engage in drunken hate-sex with the Asshole of New Jersey, except that this isn’t the season of Leah and Hosea, and the Asshole of New Jersey doesn’t deserve so much as a hate ass-whoopin’, much less a hate fuck.
Make no mistake about it. She may be unfamiliar with a comb, but she can handle a spatula like a dream, and will make for entertaining television. And best of all, she might just take the whole thing.
We won’t get into the reasons for our absence of the past week, mostly because in spite of all recent, firsthand evidence to the contrary, we refuse to accept that we inhabit a world in which illness and mortality have any more purchase than they do in a Pedro Almodóvar film. Into the bubble of the blogger’s basement no shafts of reality must be allowed to make their way, nor shall they.
Instead, let us agree to a version in which our silence was that of the well of loneliness, the soundless scream of the daughters of Bilitis, at the pykagging of our Sapphic mini-Fergie, Miz Jamie Lauren. Fortunately for us, though, our Uranian grief was assuaged by the sweet, sweet balm of the Christian Bale freakout remix on constant replay.
After all, which of the world’s ills can’t be cured by a good house beat? As a straight (that’s what he said) friend told us many years ago, being a good gay is about “dancing through the pain.” Mind you, this was in the context of the Hex Hector remix of Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart,” but the principle is the same.
And so, yes, the loss of Jamie was rather difficult, all the more so because it seemed so unavoidable and so very just under the circumstances. In the wake of Jamie’s exit, we wondered whether it was possible to feel simultaneous boredom and despair—despair at her departure, and boredom at the prospect of a final that doesn’t include her—as one feeling would seem to negate the other.
Oh, fickle, fickle gays!
We could not possibly have anticipated just how good and entertaining last night’s episode would be, and we had to laugh at the pleasure of watching the show cheerfully violate its own stated principles about it being a one-challenge-at-a-time, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately competition.
Had that principle been followed, Stefan Richter would and should have been sent packing for the undistinguished (and undistinguishable) spinach and the salmon that was unanimously deemed to be overcooked, an unpardonable sin on a season that has been so much about “respecting the protein,” and on an episode that was preceded by the hazelnut-and-butter-accented presence of the St. John the Baptist of fish cookery, Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert (come to think of it, his accent is more the equivalent of Nutella eaten out of the jar with one’s finger, but we digress). What is a thinned hollandaise sauce in comparison to that?
Surely on the scales of PYKAG justice, Leah’s sin of a thin hollandaise sauce was outweighed by the greater, audience-perceived sins of weakness, whininess and immorality (about which more later). We declared ourselves fans of Stefan from the outset, so we would have been grieved to see him go, but it also would have made a satisfying kind of narrative sense for him to have gone out now—hubris, Icarus, the Finland vs. Sweden thing, etc. Instead, the show opted for a more timeless kind of American narrative—Hester Prynne is pilloried to satisfy public morality while the bald, stolid, chin-merkin’d Dimmesdale (and how dim indeed) is allowed to continue in a halo of xenophobic, phallocentric (tiny shrimp!, eel!) anxiety and insecurity to battle the European savant Chillingworth (we haven’t quite worked out all the details, but give us time). How will it all turn out?
Fish man and panty-dropper (redundant?) par excellence, sometime Top Chef guest judge Eric Ripert is visiting our fair shores while on a book tour. Our pal Lesley of Eater LA and Betty Hallock at the bankrupt L.A. Times both snagged interviews with Coquille St. Jacques the Ripert, and collected the French-accented pearls that fell from his pillowy, piscine lips. One bit from the Timesinterview left us just a teensy bit gobsmacked:
One guy rented out the entire restaurant for his daughter's bat mitzvah. His daughter is a big fan of "Top Chef" and we set her party up like the show. He flew in a chef from an obscure restaurant in Maryland and we did crab cakes. There were 15 girls on my team and 15 girls on his team. His crab cakes were phenomenal. He kicked my .... !
Miss XaXa’s first reaction: “Eric Ripert gave crabs to 15 teenaged girls?”
“They were probably Reform,” we tried to reassure her, not bothering to clarify the antecedent.
What struck us, aside from the whole Gilded Age excess of the thing (and which now seems so long ago), was Ms. Hallock’s delicacy. Go on, Betty; surely on the day that parent company Tribune filed for bankruptcy protection you can allow yourself a tiny three-letter word.
Besides, what with Ripert’s melted-Échiré-butter accent, it likely wasn’t even “ass.” Rather, we suspect he said, “aws,” or maybe “ahs,” as in oohs and ahs (or is it ooze and ahs?)
As it is, we can’t wait for the episode that will feature Ripert and Fabio Viviani going acento a acento in the lambent interior of Le Bernardin. Viewers will swoon, and knickers will fly.
In its Q&A with Le Bernardin chef and Top Chef guest judge Eric Ripert, Bravo lists his age as 30, but, as you can see, Ripert was born in 1965. For that kind of treatment, who wouldn't want to be a guest judge on Top Chef?
