When Eater LA asked our little Gong-Li-in-training, Hung Huyhn, about Anthony Bourdain's gentle exhortation ("A little humility; a willingness to accommodate what people are likely to enjoy and appreciate, instead of pursuing that which honors only his own perceived genius, would be a good adjustment."), Lilliputz had only this to say:I totally accommodate other people. And I'm definitely a team player. He loved my first dish, he said it was flawless.
Ah, how short-lived is flawlessness....
The second edition of Bourdain's guest-blog (since Tom Colicchio is out here in Los Angeles opening his restaurant, Craft, about which Eater LA also has a lot to say), contains some choice words for Hung. To wit:
"A realistic assessment of the situation is exactly what Howie [Kleinberg]’s good at--and what talented but increasingly delusional Hung seems utterly incapable of. When a pastry chef of MANY more years experience practicing their trade than you’ve got out of diapers tells you your chocolate mousse is crap? It’s crap. When you’ve got to resort to the transparently desperate measure of lining your saggy-ass wedge of chocolate tart with strawberry slices (to keep it from leaking all over the table like baby puke)? It doesn’t MATTER if you think “the flavors are there”. “Flavor” counts for very little in a competition for “Top Chef” if your dish looks like something you’d find circling the bowl after a whiskey binge. Hung’s look of utter incredulity and contempt when being advised of his deficiencies, his seeming total inability to receive or accept or understand criticism is dismaying. It seems almost…pathological."
Delusional? Pathological? Sounds flawless to us. Maybe we do have a great Gay Villain on our hands. Is it time to bring out the white Angora cat for him to stroke?
And finally:
"[H]e seems incapable of the economy of movement that all professionals learn EARLY, and which even Martha Stewart has in spades. And when the majority of your Latino guests, all the judges, and Tom Colicchio in particular agree that your RICE blows? That’s not anybody’s 'personal opinion'. It’s a fact."
The Angora cat definitely says, "Meow!"
