Photo by Szurdak&Pepin/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Anthony Bourdain may have been among the first to skewer the vapidity of celebrity chef TV culture, but South Park has taken it to a whole new level with its recent "Creme Fraiche" episode. The animators eviscerated the Food Network and its many imitators, leaving no sacred cow with its entrails intact.

Not surprisingly, the episode has been a hit among cynical ink-stained (radiation-scorched?) wretches like me. Take a look at some recent commentary:

• Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice offers a giddy blow-by-blow.
• FNH says that South Park "somehow managed to cram almost every celebrity chef stereotype into a 22-minute episode."
• Broward/Palm Beach New Times says the show "might just be the best episode of South Park in years."
• Eater calls the episode a "story of modern-day suburban sexual frustration channeled into unhealthy food obsessions and celebrity worship."
• Even the Chowhounds were delighted to watch their celebrity chefs take pot shots.

You can watch more scenes from the episode here.

Don't skip this video. It's one of the best parodies of celebrity chef cooking shows I've seen. The Monster Munch garnish is brilliant.

Video from Jezebel

Young & Hungry has become Spiked TV or something like that. For the second week in a row, Spike Mendelsohn has dominated the blog, both with the news of his New York-style pizzeria, due to open today, and with the old, never-say-die story about his apartment eviction on Capitol Hill.

Take a look at the Top 5 from last week:

1. Spike Mendelsohn's We, The Pizza to Open on July 19
2. The Stadium Club Combines Steaks and Strippers (*)
3. 'D.C. Cupcakes' Debuts on July 16 on TLC
4. Spike Mendelsohn Evicted from His Capitol Hill Rental House
5. Don't Put Your Money on Kenny Winning 'Top Chef'

* A certain light-drinking Budweiser beer was, once again, a popular item among readers, but we’ve stopped counting it.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Well, that wasn't a promising start.

After all the celebrity stalkings and quick-fire guessing games during the show's filming, Top Chef D.C. premiered last night and laid a large goose egg on the White House lawn.

Sure, the decision to conduct the first quick-fire challenge atop the Newseum was a clever change of venue, a "kitchen" that offered vistas of D.C. (as if the producers offered us many), but the challenge itself was as boring as, well, peeling potatoes. Which is what the cheftestants were asked to do. That and brunoise onions and break down chickens. Good skills to know as a chef, no doubt, but watching cooks dice onions packs all the excitement of watching someone write a blog item.

And what was up with that elimination round broken into four groups in which the quick-fire winners picked their competitors, the worse chef the better? It was more convoluted than Senate procedural rules, which, come to think of it, may have been the point.

The four worst dishes in the challenge were likely going to be the four worst dishes, regardless if they came from a pool of 17 contestants or four groupings of chefs allegedly competing against one another within their own group. (The idea was that the worst chef in each group would stand repentantly before the disapproving judges and find out which one deserves a one-way ticket home.)  I guess, technically, one group could have produced two really crappy dishes, and one of those chefs who produced the crappy dish would have skated.

Follow all that? If so, please explain it to me. Because here's what I don't understand: Why force the "cheftestants" to compete against only a handful of competitors? Isn't the whole point that they compete against everyone on the show? The only excuse for this restricted format is TV drama, so we can watch chefs pick teams as if they were on the schoolyard playground, getting to humiliate their fellow cooks by selecting those who were deemed inferior.

During the elimination round, the judges asked the chefs to create a dish that reflected their hometowns or regions. It made for a nice window into each chef's background, but what did it have to do with D.C.? Other than, perhaps, the fact that the District is full of transplants from all over the country. I wonder if the producers even thought that deeply about the challenge.

Next week's episode will be slightly more D.C.-oriented, but only if you define D.C. by the federal government. It will ask the chefs, in the spirit of Michelle Obama's anti-childhood obesity initiative, to prepare a healthy school meal for only $2.68 per student, which as Obama Foodorama notes, "is the reimbursement rate schools receive for each child who is eligible for free lunch under the federal program."

The school lunch episode has already drawn the ire of Slow Cook, Ed Bruske, who takes issue with the math skills of Top Chef producers.

This is shaping up to be a long Top Chef season.

Photo courtesy of Top Chef

People, what are you doing reading this? It's Memorial Day. It's gorgeous outside. Get off the computer and fire up the grill. Or take a walk. Go to the park with your kids and your dog. Eat something good. Who cares what the top five items were last week on the Young & Hungry blog?

1. Mild-Mannered Eric Ripert Rips Gordon Ramsay at the Warner (*)
2. Anthony Bourdain on Foie Gras
3. D.C.'s Street Food Scene Is Ready to Explode
4. SAVOR Mania: The Master List
5. Pupatella Pizza Cart Heads Indoors with Brick-and-Mortar Debut

* A certain light-drinking Budweiser beer was, once again, a popular item among readers, but we’ve stopped counting it.

Y&H: You’ve been a chef in the pre-online world and right in the middle of the online world. What’s your take on food bloggers and instant food critics and how has that changed the way perhaps restaurateurs and chefs work?

ER: I think it has changed much more the journalistic world than my world. (Laughs.)

Y&H: Well, that’s true. I can attest to that.

ER: You know, some bloggers are credible and have created a certain following. Some bloggers have no credibility whatsoever, and then naturally they limit themselves from the scene of the bloggers. I think the more people talk about their experience, the more we learn, the more we understand what people feel. We have a relationship with our clients in the dining room. It’s not like someone comes and nobody is asking, ‘How was the experience?’ So we already have a little bit of feedback. It’s basically additional feedback from the blogs. I see that with a very positive eye. It doesn’t bother me at all. I think it’s a good thing to have people writing about their experience, and to have some blogs which are, like, more kind of official….I have no complaints at all.

Y&H: Do you read any particular blogs and then take some of their advice to heart?

ER: Occasionally, I’m going on the usual suspects like Eater and Grub Street, and so on. Sometimes I’m looking at the comments and sometimes the comments are right. When I’m saying they are 'right,' they may be positive, obviously, but they may also be not as positive. And sometimes it’s just like people venting and lying, and it’s OK.

Y&H: As I’m sure you know, your colleague on Top Chef, Tom Colicchio, is no fan of Eater.com. Where do you stand on that particular site?

ER: I have no problem with Eater at all. Again, it’s an opinion, and today, opinions, through the Web, it’s a much more democratic process than it used to be. Now, I still believe strongly that food critics are very relevant…but I don’t mind the democratic process of anyone being able to say what he has to say. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Sometimes, I’m learning something. I’m very open to it.

Y&H: Top Chef. You guys just finished filming down here in D.C. You were, I guess, a guest judge for this particular season.

ER: For part of the season. I’m replacing Gail Simmons when she’s not there.

Y&H: So how many episodes were you in?

ER: I don’t remember. Around six or seven or maybe eight. Something like that.

Y&H: Can you give us any hint of some of the challenges they did in D.C.?

ER: For sure. We shot, which I believe was amazing considering the location, we shot at the CIA. I mean, that’s a pretty big deal, which I was, even myself, totally surprised that we could shoot with the director of the CIA in his executive dining room. Leon Panetta, I think, is his name. That was, I thought, a big deal.

Y&H: What was the challenge?

ER: I cannot say the challenge.

Y&H: OK, did you have to get a high-security clearance?

ER: Yeah, big time, and that should reassure everybody. (Laughs.)

Y&H: I wanted to ask you about fine dining in general. Where do you think we’re at culturally with fine dining? Do see that it’s peaked and is starting to decline? And casual eating is where people are at?

ER: I am disagreeing with people who think that fine dining is not doing well or going down. I have a lot of arguments to disagree with…I’m talking about New York, because I don’t have a fine dining restaurant anywhere else. But in New York, in 2009, in the year of the great recession, when everybody was really scared of the year, the first week of January, we announced that we will give, for every person coming to Le Bernardin, $1 to a foundation called City Harvest. That is dedicated to serve food shelters, because we wanted to be involved in the community. I was hoping, without really doing some studies of numbers and so on, but I was hoping to give them about $100,000, which means 100,000 people. We were able to give them $93,000. To me, when you have 93,000 people coming in the door, it means your restaurant is busy and successful. Fine dining in New York is doing very well, and the reason it’s doing very well is because it’s a very transient city. It’s a lot of people passing by…tourists, business people. You have also a very strong, educated, wealthy clientele. At the end of the day, you can very well love to go see a concert of U2 and then, a week later, go see the opera…So it’s the same for restaurants. I think a lot of people like to go to casual concepts, but plenty of people like to go to places like us, for celebrations, for having great food, for doing business, or XYZ reasons. My conclusion is that fine dining is not endangered, and fine dining is doing well. I mean, I see my competition. I look at Daniel and Jean Georges and Thomas Keller, and they’re doing well, too. When I started at Le Bernardin in 1991, we were about, I believe, 80 employees. Today, we are about 130 employees. We don’t hire people just to hire. [We hire] because we need them. The restaurants are busy.

Y&H: So there’s been no sort of revenue drop-off at any point for you during the recession?

ER: Of course. 2007 was a record year. It was the bubble. It was absolutely insane, and then last year, we were minus nine percent compared to that, which is very manageable.

Y&H: This is a little bit out of your area of knowledge, but I’d love to get your opinion because Fabio Trabocchi obviously worked in D.C. and was beloved by many diners here. Do you have any sense why Trabocchi didn’t work out at the Four Seasons?

ER: Ahh, no. (Laughs.)

Y&H: Do you have opinions but you’re not willing to share them?

ER: I mean, I have no idea. It’s a given that he’s very talented. Everybody knows in my industry that he’s talented. He proved it in Washington. Four Seasons is an institution. It’s a restaurant that’s been there for a long, long time. They have a soul and they have a style. It seems to me that they had to have time to integrate it further or to understand each other. But I never talked to Fabio, and I never ate his food at the Four Seasons and never talked to the Four Seasons about Fabio…I really don’t know what happened there.

Y&H: Let me ask you about something closer to home. The Westend Bistro. There was a lot of speculation over why the sudden chef change. Can you say for the record what really happened?

ER: (Long pause.) No. (Laughs.)

Y&H: That’s perfect. That says everything you need to say.

ER: It was an internal decision that we took, and we took it in collaboration and we changed the chef. And today, Leo [Marino], who was our chef at the time, is working for Jean Georges in New York.

Y&H: You keep in touch with him?

ER: Yeah, yeah.

Y&H: So you’re still on friendly terms with him?

ER: Polite. (Laughs.)

Y&H: Oh, you are subtle. All right, I’m just about done with my questions. I appreciate your time.

ER: You’re very welcome.

Y&H: A couple of just silly questions here at the end. What dining trend would you like to see end?

ER: Hmmm, that’s a good one. I don’t know if I’d like anything to end. I just don’t go to the places that I don’t really like the food. I’m not a fan of tofu. It doesn’t mean that tofu is not good. A lot of people love it. I don’t go to a place that serves tofu. In New York, we have a restaurant that specializes only in tofu, so I don’t go there. (Laughs.) Then in terms of trends, I think some restaurants serve items that I’m tired of…Like pork belly. I ate so much pork belly the last few years that I’m done. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it’s not for me any longer.

Y&H: Do you ever get tired of people calling you handsome?

ER: I don’t care. I seriously don’t care, because at the end of day, it doesn’t matter in the kitchen. I’d rather have them call me “handsome” than ugly. (Laughs.)

Y&H: This is true. You know, it gets brought up all the time in interviews that I’ve read. You don’t pay attention to it?

ER: No, I don’t. I don’t at all. I have never. Look, obviously, I don’t want to be fat, bald, and ugly, but I don’t care.

Y&H: Last question. I read something, and I was a little surprised, that said you enjoy a good tequila.

ER: Yes, I enjoy a good tequila.

Y&H: What is your favorite tequila?

ER: Well, lately I have discovered a new one, called Casa Dragones, which I like very much…It’s an artisanal tequila. It’s basically a silver, and I drink that very often. And then on the weekend, I like a Don Julio 1942.

Y&H: What I like about the fact that you like tequila is that there are some people, I think, who still view tequila as a rather…

ER: Something to get drunk fast… No, I sip tequila and I enjoy it. And I have tequila every night. But I don’t have a bottle. I have a bit of tequila every night. I don’t drink it like a shot. I sip my tequila.

In case you missed it, here's Anderson Cooper's profile of José Andrés from 60 Minutes.

Oyamel chef Joe Raffa

First it was a Penn Quarter chatter who wanted to know why everyone kisses José Andrés' ass. Now it's Restaurant Rater, DanniZ, who takes down the celebrity chef for charging for chips and salsa at Oyamel. (To be clear, the first round of chips and salsa is free here; after that, you pay $4 per refill.)

DanniZ's also bent out of shape about paying $13 for tableside guacamole, a crime compounded by the fact that the serving didn't even include tomatoes. The Rater's none too pleased about the service, either, though, in a moment of charity, DanniZ does admit liking the fish tacos at Oyamel. (Ah, tacos, here are some more recs.)

In the end, this Restaurant Rater would rather go to a place in Burke, Va., than Oyamel. Take a read:

Food was alright. I wasn't too impressed. I find it absolutely ridiculous that at a Mexican restaurant, you have to pay for your chips and salsa, I don't care if the first one is free! If little hole in the wall Mexican restaurants can afford it, Oyamel, I'm sure you can too! Not to mention their guac is $13!!!! Sure they make it right in front of you (Again, big woop! I can make guacamole too. It's not that hard), but come on! It was extremely spicy, so much so that I didn't even really want to eat it that bad and theirs didn't include any tomatoes which is usually a staple for guacamole.

The service was not great either. I was there at 3pm on a Sunday, so it was very slow. I believe there were, maybe 6 other tables. Our waiter was MIA most of the time. Our empty chip basket and salsa dish (which went fast due to the lack there of) sat on our table for over 20 minutes (my boyfriend and I had a bet) while busers and waiters, including our own, walked by it like 50 times.

I will say, the fish taco I got was very good, but thats about the only good thing I experience there.

Overall, extremely disappointed in pretty much every aspect of this restaurant. Never again!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I'd recommend La Tolteca in Burke, VA. Absolute best Mexican restaurant EVA!!!)

Do you disagree with DanniZ? Then go to the Restaurant Rater page and get a-writin'!

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Samuel Fromartz, if you'll recall, was the surprise winner of Y&H's debut baguette competition last year, beating out breads from local icons like Marvelous Market and Breadline, even national big boys like Le Pain Quotidien and La Brea Bakery.

Well, good news travels fast, or semi-fast. Last week, Fromartz got a call from the office of a celebrity chef. Not just any celebrity chef, but one of the biggest in the history of celebrity chefs. She wanted him to bake bread for her charity dinner on Sunday.

Fromartz picks up the story here on his blog, ChewsWise:

I was leaving the gym when I checked my messages. Alice Waters' office at Chez Panisse was calling — yeah, right. Who was this really?

When I called back, it turned out Waters was calling and looking for a baker for her charity dinner in Washington, to replace one who had dropped out. Barton Seaver, a friend and chef at Blue Ridge, suggested me. "We hear you make the best baguette in DC," said Sarah Weiner, Waters' assistant. "Well, yeah, I won a contest," I stammered, "but I just bake at home. The most I've baked was for Thanksgiving dinner."

They needed to feed 40 — at a $500 a plate dinner at Bob Woodward's house. Could it be done in my home ovens? I said I'd call back. I went home to figure out how much bread I needed to bake and realized I could probably do it — 5 big loaves and several baguettes. I then called Peter Reinhart — the renowned baker and author I've known for a couple of years — to see what he thought. "That's not a lot of bread," he said, and he encouraged me to give it a whirl.

So began my first gig as a professional baker — at an Alice Waters' dinner.

You can read the rest of the story over on Fromartz's blog, including how his breads turned out.

Photo courtesy of Samuel Fromartz