Pack Your Knives Count The Dings
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- TV & Film
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Kevin Arnovitz and Tom Haberstroh bring their die-hard fanaticism of the hit TV show Top Chef and combine it with their NBA analytical instincts to draft “fantasy” teams, interview contestants and talk about America’s food and restaurant trends. Follow along weekly as the top cooking competition meets top-shelf analysis.
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S21 Ep 11: Lay It All on the Table
Tom Colicchio does work in the Top Chef kitchen, where the wok is king in the Quickfire challenge.
Coming off her Last Chance Kitchen run, Laura re-enters the main competition and makes dessert for an elimination challenge that demands imagination.
Tom H. feels that desserts are a market inefficiency that more cheftestants should opt for.
Kevin shares how You Can Count on Me explains Michelle’s allergy to blue-sky Top Chef challenges without specific parameters.
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Mina Kimes Interview - Free Preview
With her sharp analysis, Mina Kimes can break down any NFL pass coverages or team-building strategy — and Top Chef field. She joins Tom and Kevin to discuss how Season 21 stands up to previous Top Chef seasons, to grouse about Soo’s controversial elimination at the fish boil, and to size up the remaining six contestants in the competition.
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S21 Ep 10: Door County Fish Boil
No chef has built confidence and momentum in recent weeks like Savannah Miller. She bagged a Quickfire win with canned corn beef (!), only to slice her hand open while filleting her fish for the Fish Boil.
Though it looked like she prepared the worst of the six plates, she was spared elimination.
Kevin was on hand in Milwaukee for the Fish Boil, and tasted three of the six fish boil dishes. He shares his impressions of the production, Soo’s beurre blanc, and Miguel’s winning boil.
Tom argues that, even with the new “Quickfire factor” at the chopping block, the judges didn’t make the right call.
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S21 Ep 9: The Good Land
For weeks, the judges have been threatening to send home not one — but two chefs — if circumstances demand it.
This week, they did just that when they sent a quarter of the remaining field packing in a challenge that highlights the indigenous cuisine of the Northern Plains.
Tom and Kevin note that Kristen is bored stiff by Manny’s generally successful (but tiresome) formula in the kitchen, and celebrate Savannah and Dan for a master class on how to endear yourself to the judges by “embracing the challenge.”
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Rasika Venkatesa Interview - Free Preview
Few chefs have demonstrated the talent to execute risk in the Top Chef kitchen like Rasika Venkatesa.
Her pretzel-barley cake with honey mustard sabayon and her daal quenelle have been highlights of the season, during which she emerged as a fan favorite.
Rasika stops by Pack Your Knives to talk about her desire to reinvent cooking from Tamil Nadu, which she recently visited on a months-long food tour.
She recounts her trip, which included convincing village fishermen to take her back to their homes to cook snapper with their families.
She also shares her experiences on Top Chef with little formal training, despite rising from station cook to Chef de Cuisine in three years.
👇Hear the full episode right now on the Pack Your Knives Substack👇
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Follow PYK on Twitter: @packknives & Instagram: @packyourknives
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S21 Ep 8: Restaurant Wars
As Wimbledon is to the pro tennis calendar, and the Masters is to the PGA, Restaurant Wars is to Top Chef.
It’s the signature event of the season, after which things start to get really serious as the field of chefs is whittled down on the last stretch to the finale.
Tom and Kevin react to this season’s 5-on-4 imbalance (boo!) and the new twist with two judges tables so that both restaurants have to shine early and late (yay!).
They also dive into the controversy that erupted over Danny’s winning scallop chou farci from a few weeks back.
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Rate PYK 5 Stars on Apple or Spotify
Follow PYK on Twitter: @packknives & Instagram: @packyourknives
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Customer Reviews
Best top chef pod out there
I love this pod (a competitive analysis would show there’s nothing even close) but it’s killing me how long the new eps are taking to be released for non-paying subscribers. I honestly would pay $50 annually but can’t do it all at once. Can you please make a monthly option? Would be a little over $4/mo which is way more doable. Please consider, thanks!
Monday morning quarterbacks
I really enjoyed this show in previous years, but this season the hosts are hyper focused every week on some perceived flaw of each Top Chef episode. I keep hoping it gets better but each week now it’s 4 full mins of ads to start to show followed by ~20 mins of griping (e.g. about how there have been too many team challenges, or how unfair the randomly drawn teams were, or how they disagreed with the judges’ decisions). Even if I occasionally agree with a criticism of the challenge design they point out (which I often don’t) what can I do about it? Write an email about it to the showrunners? Call Tom and Gail? No. Nothing. It just kinda tarnishes the enjoyment of the show by focusing on the negatives of the game design all. The. Time. How about talking about the food????
Disappointed
PYK has always been my favorite TC podcast. No others come close but the episodes air so late now I’ve forgotten or lost interest. I always looked forward to your show the next day with as much anticipation as the episode of TC itself. It seems all the attention is going into your new paid subscription format, which is to expensive for such a short TC season.