Those who fail to learn from reality TV are condemned to repeat it. One of the thrills of a long-running reality competition like Bravo’s Top Chef is seeing which contestants end up making the same old mistakes. As we go into Season 6 (debuts Aug. 19), we’ve now seen enough aspiring top chefs rise and fall like soufflés to offer some hints for the competitors.
1. Do not rely on the freezer. Because it will break your heart. In season after season, the freezer door has been a gateway to icy-cold disappointment. Or, often, insufficiently icy-cold disappointment: gelati that fail to set, premature melting and empty refrigerators that are mistaken for freezers. Nobody wants to eat a vanilla-bean-flecked puddle.
2. Do use bacon. People love bacon. Carnivores love it, health nuts crave it, vegetarians forswear solemn oaths for it. Dishes featuring bacon regularly get praise, even gratitude, from judges. Indeed, the power of bacon is so great, it can even overcome the do-not-rely-on-the-freezer rule: Richard Blais did well in Season 4 making bacon ice cream. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go crumble some into a sundae.
3. If you’re not a dessert chef, don’t make dessert. You think you’ll get credit for trying something new. You will not. Your dessert will fall apart on the plate. The judges will pay lip service, but in the end, if it stinks, it stinks. If, like Carla Hall in Season 5, you can whip up an apple tart in your sleep, then by all means work it. But the human heart is not powerful enough to forgive a bum pudding.
4. Be assertive. They say there’s no I in team. Yeah? Well, there’s an I in win. If you’re leading a group in Restaurant Wars or any other group challenge, don’t be a jerk, but be sure you make the final call–because you will suffer for your teammates’ bad decisions. And if you’re paired with a guest chef in your finale, don’t let him or her take over (as Carla did in her heartbreaking Season 5 finale loss). It’s your aspic on the line, not the guest’s.
5. Don’t try to hide from the cameras. In Season 5, contestants Hosea Rosenberg and Leah Cohen–with a girlfriend and boyfriend at home–struck up a flirtation, which led to a surreptitious smooch session on the Top Chef house couch. Their love nook wasn’t secluded enough to escape the cameras, however.
O.K., that last one won’t actually affect your performance in the competition; Hosea ended up winning Season 5. But it may make your return home a little easier after you pack your knives and go.
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