One of my all time favorite shows ever is Top Chef. I remember the first time I saw it. It was about 4 or 5 years ago and I was channel surfing with my then boyfriend. There was absolutely nothing on TV so he picked a cooking competition show that happened to be having a marathon. I wasn't too happy about this since I had been forced to spend many an hour watching cooking shows with my mom and I found them incredibly boring. However, it didn't take very long for me to get really excited about the show I was watching. It was the first season and it was really exciting to see the contestants running around my future home (I was living across the Bay in Berkeley at the time) of San Francisco competing in various cooking challenges.
It wasn't long before I was hooked and set aside some time on a Wednesday night to cheer on my favorite contestant of the season, Harold, as he took home the very first Top Chef title. Ever since then, I have religiously tuned in to watch each season of chefs compete in challenges that got more and more difficult each season. Top Chef was my gateway drug to liking cooking shows. I pretty much keep it to challenge type shows like Chopped, Iron Chef, Challenge, etc. but Top Chef was always the first.
However, despite how impressive the chefs looked, every season there was one thing that never failed to be true - all of the chefs sucked at making a really impressive dessert. It quickly became clear that making pastry desserts required a different science and skill set than savory cooking and many of these incredible cooks just could not make a top dessert.
Well, Bravo decided to capitalize on this and made a Top Chef season soley for dessert chefs. I, of course, tuned in.
After a long and very interesting season, it was finally time for the finale. I had been planning on watching it at home as usual but then I found an exciting alternative. Macy's was hosting a viewing party for the show and they were having one of the finalists, Yigit Pura, there for a meet and greet. Yigit was a cute Turkish pastry chef who runs a catering company in San Francisco. I RSVP'd and eagerly looked forward to the event.
My roommate, Try, and I showed up early to make sure we got good seats and we got a decent spot in line. However, as we got closer to the front we noticed a lot of people weren't being let in. When we got to the front, I gave them our name and it turns out we weren't on the list. I was pretty frustrated since I had RSVP'd the week before and was disapointed in the event staff for not planning the function better. They should have closed the RSVPs if they were over booked. It was even more frustrating when it became clear that 80% of the guests were actually employees at Yigit's catering company. I understand him wanting his friends there to support him, but then they should have tried to find a bigger space to host the event since it wasn't really a public event after all.
Eventually, they let us in and said we could stand in the back. We could hardly see the TV so we decided to just go home and watch it on the DVR. However, we managed to snag a couple of $10 gift cards. We browsed the kitchen section and then realized there was a little Godiva stand. One of the challenges had been to make 4 Godiva chocolates. My favorite contestant, Morgan (he was a rock climber so it was an easy choice...), had won that challenge. We decided to use our gift cards on the chocolates so we could take them home and have an actual taste of Top Chef while watching the finale.
As a note - I did take pictures of the chocolates... on my camera.... so sorry that you can't see what they looked like. One of them had an acai filling though since he had been married to a Brazilian (another reason to like him!) and it was incredible. If you find yourself near a Godiva, I really suggest trying it!
And... I bought a new camera! I'm basically giving up on the last one and writing all of these posts without pictures has made me realize that I can't really go without one. Here's to not losing my new camera and using it to take lots of fun pictures for my lovely readers.
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