Scary But Harmless: Casey Thompson Fries Up Fellow Competitors While Amuse-Biatch Expresses Pronounced Disapproval

While you wait for tonight’s episode, possums, let your brain turn to mush as you watch this morning show segment from NBC5 in Dallas featuring cheftestant Casey Thompson as she tries to fry a fish and talk to a blowsy, vaguely nurse-like hostess while saying absolutely nothing.

(Miss XaXa thinks the nameless hostess resembles not so much a nurse as the meddling female neighbor on Small Wonder, that creepy but compulsively watchable, long-ago syndicated show about a pinafore-wearing robot named Vicky. On closer inspection, we think she’s more like the Philip Seymour Hoffman drag queen in that Robert DeNiro movie Flawless.)

During the segment, you will learn nothing about frying fish, and next to nothing about Top Chef. The two things we gleaned from Casey were that (1) the restaurant she works in and the restaurant Tre Wilcox works in are both owned by the same people; and (2) she thought the other contestants were scary but harmless.

Casey herself seems harmless, and the scariest thing we’ve seen about her has been her headscarf, but we do have a bone to pick with her.

During the Quickfire Challenge last week, she was picked as the Definition Girl, the Vanna White of sorts (last year it was Ilan Hall) who helpfully defines the term “amuse-bouche” for the audience. Naturally, we winced as we heard her pronouncing it, “AH-moose bouche.”

Of course we blamed her, as she really ought to know better, but we were willing to cut her just a teensy bit of slack because Padma, Lady Rushdie, pronounced it the same way while introducing the challenge.

But she really got our goat when, later in the episode, she scoffed and sneered at Clay Bowen’s apple-sized amuse-bouche. “I’m an executive chef, I know what an AH-moose-bouche is.”

Look, Junior Missy, Elle Woods, Floaters, Mini-Spice Rack, Sweet Potato Queen (we haven’t quite settled on a nickname), you may know what it is, but you cain’t hardly pronounce it. For the love of God, it ain’t that hard. It’s pronounced just the way it looks—ah-MEWS—like the English word “amuse.” (Padma certainly knows better; witness her asking Tom, after the tasting, “Were you amused?”).

So, darlin’, if, despite being an executive chef, you cain’t pronounce the word, don’t you go bein’ all stroppy about it with poor Clay.

And while we’re at it, why is it that, as the brilliant and ever-perceptive Eric3000 points out, Fontainebleau is being pronounced “Fountain Blue” rather than the correct “fawn-ten-BLOW”?

Oh well. Plus ça change....

Amoose-Biatch's Rocky Relationship with Bullwinkle

Among Cliff Crooks' manifold sins on last week's episode, there was a sin even greater than the clumsy, chilly service he provided during the restaurant challenge. (We especially loved that his rationale for handling front-of-the-house duties on the challenge was, "This is what I do at my restaurant anyway." If that's the case, his restaurant must be a particularly welcoming place. That the restaurant where Cliff works is called Salute!--after the cheesy, stereotypical, faux-hearty Italian toast--is an especially piquant detail.)

So what sin warrants a scarlet "A" on his chef's whites? Well, nothing less than the sin of pronouncing "amuse" (in this case, Marcel's chicken dish) the way Padma Lakshmi does, as "ah-MOOSE," which still sets our teeth on edge and makes us reach for the nitroglycerin pill to place under our forked tongue.

Is it really too much to expect chefs and cookbook authoresses to do what the average English-speaker can do, and pronounce "amuse" correctly? Perhaps it is. We don't know if Cliff says "ah-MOOSE" instead of "ah-MEWS" because of Padma's pernicious influence or because he is tone-deaf as well as color-blind.

So, for absolutely, positively the last time, this is a moose:

















(Miss XaXa's last word on the subject: "I'm a muse, Charlus is the biatch.")

Amuse-Biatch's Handy Clip-N-Save Pronunciation Guide

Here at Amuse-Biatch we're not just about serving it up, we're also about serving (though we won't deny a fondness for dishes best served cold).

We have been asked why we harp on mispronunciations by cheftestants, guest chefs, and hostesses alike. We assure you that there is a method to our folie (and not just of the La cage aux variety). We do it not just because we're haughty, anal, obsessive compulsive, neo-Victorian, post-Carson Kressly mini-despots with a twinkle in our eye.

We do it because these are people who ought to know better, who are supposed to be food professionals, and that entails being knowledgeable about food. And we would feel a lot better if the people making our food knew enough about it to at least pronounce it correctly.

We won't make fun of our Aunt Lavinia for mispronouncing "amuse-bouche" at the Thanksgiving table. But when a self-described "egghead" polyglot married to a Booker Prize-winning novelist and possessed of a penchant for displaying her breasts to all and sundry repeatedly mispronounces "amuse-bouche," even after Chef Suzanne Goin pronounced it correctly in her presence several times, why yes, at that point, the yellow dogskin gloves come off.

And so, without further ado, and in the interest of service and avoiding further bloodshed, we present our handy clip-n-save pronunciation guide.

Amuse-bouche, pronounced (can you hear us, Padma?), "ah-MEWS boosh." Not "AH-moos." Not "ah-mew-SAY." "ah-MEWS boosh." Got it? Good.

Gelée, pronounced "zhell-AY," and not, as certain meringue-headed cheftestants who ought to know better insist, "jell-EE."

Lychee, pronounced "LEE-chee," a fruit of the soapberry family which, when mispronounced "LIE-chee," is known to cause lying, cheating, spasms of self-righteousness in flat-chested pastry chefs, and reality tv hara-kiri (yes, yes, bushido-heads, we know seppuku is more accurate, but we're writing for the masses here).

Offal, pronounced "AW-ful," and pronounced awfully by a couple of the cheftestants, one of whom, after pronouncing it "ah-FALL," suffered a fall from grace and was told to pack her knives.