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Top Chef Masters: The Vegan Challenge
Aug. 14th, 2009 07:27 amThis summer, Bravo debuted a new series in the Top Chef franchise. Top Chef Masters is a charitable competition where twenty-four well-known chefs and restauranteurs compete, elimination style, for a chance to win $100,000 for the charity of their choice. These pros are pitted against Top Chef's infamously devious challenges--creating delicious dishes under all sorts of creative pressures. The producers of Top Chef are little tricksters. One day, the chefs might have to cook an egg dish with one hand literally tied behind their backs, in another, producing haute cuisine for a crowd with only microwaves and toaster ovens or to make a five course meal with access to only what $10 can buy you at 7-Eleven. That's the gig they sign up for, and these chef finalists are the biggest names in their field, so it was especially surprising to see how shaken and irritated some felt when asked to cater a dinner party for Zooey Deschanel and nineteen of her friends and family. There was no underhandedness or last-minute change-ups. Chefs were told, from the beginning, that they needed to create a dish that was vegan as well as being gluten and soy-free. That's all. They had time, they had money, and they had both hands to work with.
Eating out as a vegan can be treacherous. There is a lot of trust involved, hoping that the restaurant staff is both honest and informed enough to vouch for the vegetable soup's lack of meat stock, whether the red sauce is laced with cream or cheese, whether lard is in the refried beans. Very few restaurants explicitly mark vegan items on their menu, so ordering almost always involves asking questions about ingredients and cooking procedures. It can be exhausting, especially for people like me who are shy and naturally reticent about feeling bothersome. If the staff reacts to these questions in a hostile, irritated manner, all potential joy is leached out of the dining experience. Ordering meals that are outwardly vegan, in order to avoid the eye-rolls, can lead to a lot of unadorned salads and bland steamed vegetables.
Going to Sizzler or something, where the cooks are just cooks reheating, searing, and unboxing the chain-wide fare, I can't expect to get something specially made, but at any chef-run restaurant worth its salt, a vegan meal can be cheerfully improvised on-the-spot. One of the best vegan meals of my life was an impromptu vegan tasting menu at Top Chef Master's contestant Hubert Keller's Vegas Fleur de lys restaurant. At a Wisconsin supper club, where nobody had even heard of veganism, there was willingness if not culinary talent and an off-menu pasta dish was turned out with great pride from the teenagers manning the kitchen. I'll never forget that meal, where every person in the place from the hostess to the bartender to interested diners within earshot threw themselves into a great show of compassion, adaptation, and hospitality. What I'm trying to say is this--vegans are easy to please and dying for a show of kindness from the meat and dairy-centric food world. In six seasons of Top Chef tomfoolery, this was the chance for them to show vegan cuisine at a foodie, creative level and it was clear from the beginning that the cast was divided in their reaction to these "dietary restrictions".
( Cut for spoilers, annoying quotes, and me ranting a bit. )
Eating out as a vegan can be treacherous. There is a lot of trust involved, hoping that the restaurant staff is both honest and informed enough to vouch for the vegetable soup's lack of meat stock, whether the red sauce is laced with cream or cheese, whether lard is in the refried beans. Very few restaurants explicitly mark vegan items on their menu, so ordering almost always involves asking questions about ingredients and cooking procedures. It can be exhausting, especially for people like me who are shy and naturally reticent about feeling bothersome. If the staff reacts to these questions in a hostile, irritated manner, all potential joy is leached out of the dining experience. Ordering meals that are outwardly vegan, in order to avoid the eye-rolls, can lead to a lot of unadorned salads and bland steamed vegetables.
Going to Sizzler or something, where the cooks are just cooks reheating, searing, and unboxing the chain-wide fare, I can't expect to get something specially made, but at any chef-run restaurant worth its salt, a vegan meal can be cheerfully improvised on-the-spot. One of the best vegan meals of my life was an impromptu vegan tasting menu at Top Chef Master's contestant Hubert Keller's Vegas Fleur de lys restaurant. At a Wisconsin supper club, where nobody had even heard of veganism, there was willingness if not culinary talent and an off-menu pasta dish was turned out with great pride from the teenagers manning the kitchen. I'll never forget that meal, where every person in the place from the hostess to the bartender to interested diners within earshot threw themselves into a great show of compassion, adaptation, and hospitality. What I'm trying to say is this--vegans are easy to please and dying for a show of kindness from the meat and dairy-centric food world. In six seasons of Top Chef tomfoolery, this was the chance for them to show vegan cuisine at a foodie, creative level and it was clear from the beginning that the cast was divided in their reaction to these "dietary restrictions".
( Cut for spoilers, annoying quotes, and me ranting a bit. )
