Top Chef Recap

Dallas bad boy chef John Tesar emerges as reason to watch Top Chef this season

John Tesar was the best part of Top Chef's season 14 premiere.

Photo courtesy of Bravo

Dallas reality show fans and chef groupies have a new reason to live with the December 1 debut of Top Chef, the cooking competition series from Bravo channel. Two words: John Tesar.

That's not provincialism. In the premiere episode of season 14, which takes place in Charleston, South Carolina, the colorful Dallas chef emerges as the best reason to watch, with oodles of quotable quotes.

Tesar is back as part of a crew of returning chefs who make up half the cast. It's this season's kooky plot twist, which pits eight new chefs against eight retreads who appeared on prior seasons.

The twist adds drama to an otherwise dull premiere. The newbies sullenly resent the hoggy selfishness of the returning chefs, while the returning chefs sagely sermonize about the pitfalls of reality TV.

"I'm not really interested in getting to know the veterans," whines new chef Emily Hahn. "I feel like they've had their time; now it should be ours."

New chef Jamie Lynch, the tattooed guy, makes tattooed guys everywhere proud, saying to the returning chefs, "I'm not gonna lie. My butthole puckered when I saw you guys walk in."

For returning and former Dallas chef Casey Thompson, the situation presents a canny opportunity to capitalize on the new chefs' inexperience by stealing a bed from a newbie.

The show makes a big deal out of staking out a bed. "As veterans, we all know we want to pick our room," says returning chef Katsuji Tanabe.

"My room is awesome," Casey says, after stealing said bed. "They had the room but, rookie move, they didn't put anything on their bed. So when they left to check out the rest of the house, I went right in. Veterans 1, rookies 0."

The rest of the show plods through the getting-to-know-you phase. In one painful segment with the new chefs, Padma asks in a stilted conversational manner, "Aren't you the such-and-such chef who won such-and-such award?"

Returning chef Shirley Chung refers to herself in the third person, when she talks about the questionable wisdom of returning for another season. "Seriously, Shirley Chung?" she asks.

Tesar also tosses out a third-person John Tesar, tucked between lots of first-person introspection.

"People either find me refreshing or they find me the biggest dick in the world, but I'm a kinder, gentler chef these days," he says. "At 58 years old, I'm kind of a dying breed, because a lot of people my age have either burned out or faded away or, let's face it, they're either Emeril or Bobby Flay. For me, winning Top Chef, I wouldn't call it redemption. I just think it's validation."

Tesar is one of two chefs who come in at the bottom. The climax consists of a cookoff between him and Florida chef Gerald Sombright.

"I have this dual apprehension," Tesar says. "Should I game play, or should I just beat him? People are asking, 'Where's that John Tesar I saw in season 10?' No way, brother. That guy's gone."

The cookoff theme is oysters. Tesar does oysters poached in cream. You get to see him open a bottle of cream with his bare teeth. Suddenly, he pulls out a truffle from his bag. It sparks a roar from the watching chefs.

"What — did you bring truffles?" asks one chef, agog. "WHAT?" asks another, aghast.

"Do you think I want to go home on on episode one, folks?" Tesar asks. "On Top Chef, we're allowed to bring a few ingredients. And I have some really nice truffles. And I'm going to take out that truffle and use it."

The show ramps up the sympathy for Sombright, splicing in a segment where he reveals he split from his wife and is maybe possibly living in his car. But his roasted oysters with a Thai mignonette do not have truffles.

"How can you compare a a mignonette with a creamed oyster," Padma stage-whispers to the other judges in horror. "I wish there had been more smoke," sighs disappointed judge Gail Simmons. For judge Tom Colicchio, it's just not Thai enough. "If you're going to do a Thai dish, we want a little more heat."

Sombright packs his knives, and Tesar wins.

"On day one, to be the loser of the quickfire and the winner of the cookoff, it gives you that full circle of energy," he says, tracing a circle in the air with his finger.

---

Top Chef airs Thursdays at 9 pm CST on Bravo.

tv chefs

Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

---

Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

movies film

Top Chef Recap

Dallas bad boy chef John Tesar emerges as reason to watch Top Chef this season

Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Holiday week is not slowing down this round of Dallas restaurant news

Biggest oat milk company in the world to open factory in North Texas

Another Broken Egg Cafe brings breakfast & brunch to Lemmon Ave Dallas