Kevin Gillespie, owner of Altanta's Gunshow and a popular former "Top Chef" competitor from season six, almost took home the $100,000 "Top Chef Duels" prize this past Wednesday. He fell just short of victory thanks to a rubber ducky.
The spin-off series featured nine head-to-head competitions among past "Top Chef" and "Top Chef Masters" contestants. Gillespie faced off against "Masters" participant Art Smith and won. His Southern home-grown food won out over the rustic classicism of Smith's fare. (He also tortured Smith by making him cut up a pig.)
Gillespie said he found competing again in "Top Chef Duels" "actually fun. It was a little less scary to know you were going up against people you know personally. It was more of a comfort factor." The tradeoff: the competition was inherently tougher.
He anticipated "a little bit of a bloodbath" in the final episode. where 10 chefs vied for a single prize in one crazy hour.
The first two challenges - making food that looked black, then white - was amusing to Gillespie. "I've never been asked to cook in that manner," he said. "I don't do high-concept food. I tend to be more organic. Building flavors without color goes against everything we do as chefs. Food has to look dynamic. Green is the magic color."
Gillespie's black chicken albondigas with Oaxacan black mole and his New England scallop chowder with lemon vinegar and bacon impressed the judges enough to land him into the final four. He was proud of making the chowder look as underwhelming as possible but pack a punch in the flavor and texture departments. (Former Atlantan Richard Blais did well with his molecular gastronomy but simply didn't make the final cut.)
The final round, where Gillespie faced off against "Top Chef Masters" Takashi Yagihashi, Tiffani Faison and C.J. Jacobsen, featured three dishes based on three concepts: love, honor and pride, in that order. Each round, a chef was cut.
Gillespie opened with a scallops and grits dish his wife loved but he knew it was a risk. "Trying to convince non Southerners to love grits. It's an unfair battle," he said. "Making it a mainline ingredient was probably not the smartest decision." He still managed to make the final three with Yakihashi going home.
The second dish focused on pride. Gillespie chose a duck dish he had proudly done thousands of times before at Woodfire Grill and Gunshow. But he had a problem: the duck was simply too tough. He said under other circumstances, he would have switched out proteins. He couldn't do it in this competition.
Gillespie had to go with the duck he was given and he tried everything he could to make it tender. Nothing worked. And he went home.
This meant judges never got to try out his third dish focused on honor: his signature slow-roasted pork belly with risotto. "It's one that has been written about in magazines," he said. "I knew it would have crushed."
He ultimately realized that given the way the finale worked, winning was a pure crapshoot. But he gives C.J. props for taking home the prize. "He was executing at a high level," Gillespie said. "Even if he looked like an outsider, he wasn't."
Gillespie said he wasn't ready after season six in 2009 to come back to "Top Chef." But given how successful he has been since then, he was ready to jump into "Duels." "It's more about where you are at the moment," he said. "It's with Gunshow and a new restaurant I'm working on for next year."
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Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Daytime Atlanta syndicated judge show "Lauren Lake's Paternity Court" is doing so well on the local CW affiliate at 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., the network has decided to dump repeats of "Rules of Engagement" and "How I Met Your Mother" in favor of two more episodes of the show at 5 p.m. starting Monday.
The judge show is only in its second season but is seeing major increases in ratings. Year over year so far, "Lauren Lake's Paternity Court" is up 45 percent at 1 p.m. and 27 percent at 1:30 pl.m.
With better time slots in many markets, the show is up 40 percent nationally year over year.
The show moved to Atlanta this year and Lake has spent much of the time in Midtown shooting the program. A singer and attorney, Lake also lived in Atlanta in the mid to late 1990s.
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Credit: Jewel Wicker
Credit: Jewel Wicker
AMC's "Small Town Security," a reality show shot in Ringgold, is over after three seasons.
The show focused on a security company in the small north Georgia town and its wacky employees, along the lines of programs such as "Pawn Stars."
AMC has announced it's getting out of the unscripted world, save for "Talking Dead" and "Comic Book Men."
"Small Town Security" joins "Freak Show "and "Game of Arms" on the chopping block, along with anything in the pipelines. AMC has decided to focus on its strength: scripted dramas.
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