Is There an Amuse-Biatch “Top Chef” Curse?

Well, possums, perhaps it serves us right for being so immodestly pleased that, as shown above, our endorsement of Carla Hall for the title of Fan Favorite (and its attendant prize of 10,000 scallop shells) is going to be shown on tomorrow night’s Reunion Show. Caught and held fast in the gauzy web born of the Gail Simmons giggles we inspired, we failed to think our usual pessimistic thoughts.

Fortunately, one of the properly cynical possums, watching the second video’s bit on the “birthday curse,” suggested that there might be an Amuse-Biatch curse as well, at least where Fan Favorites are concerned.

A curse? Sure, “fan site” is not exactly how we would refer to this endeavor (“cyber scratching post,” or “tiny, clawed fist shaken in the general direction of the aspirational reality tv panopticon” might be more to our liking), but a curse?

But the Santayana-quote-wielding possum was merciless in her remembrance of things past. We were reminded that during Season 2, we endorsed Carlos Fernandez, only to have him lose to Sam “Not That Guy” Talbot. During Season 3, we endorsed Dale Levitski, only to have the title won by Casey “Beaver Boots” Thompson, a title she might not win again if the voting were held today. During Season 4, we endorsed perhaps the biggest fan this website has ever had, self-proclaimed metrosexual and logorrhea sufferer, Ryan “Chicken Piccata” Scott, but the fans chose Stephanie Izard instead.

We must face the very real possibility, then, that in endorsing Carla for Fan Favorite we inadvertently doomed her chances of success, putting us in the company of none other than Dick Cheney. Just great. Why, oh why, didn’t we endorse Ariane “Silencer of the Lambs” Duarte? Why?

The “Grews” Had a Word for Them: While Cockteasing Raggaydy Andy, Spike “Asshat” Mendelsohn Confirms Jen and Zoi Are Kaput

Seriously, possums, this is a document for the ages. Spike:

* confirms that Jen Biesty and Zoi Antonitsas have broken up, that they had broken up by the time the reunion show came around, that Zoi was “more into the breakup” than Jen, and that, indeed, Zoi brought along a new girlfriend to the reunion! Quel scandale!

* says Ryan Scott has “quite a mouth on him”

* calls Lisa Fernandes “pretty miserable of a person.” He also says he “gave her [his] old restaurant.”

* does his best impression of a red-light district catamite, though Raggaydy Andy doesn’t rise to the bait, other than to say the Greeks are “AC/DC”; what could possibly have given him that idea, Spike? Surely not the pawing, the leering, the giggling, and the suggestive talk? Nah. Anyway, we simply figured that, unlike the blond Navy boy from The Bachelor, Spike simply wasn’t Andy’s type.

* says he hit on Padma during the show. Raggaydy Andy refuses to confirm that Padma is single. Very interesting.

Wayward and Biatchstein Investigate: Mystery Man Revealed as Fabio Viviani

‘Tis true, possums, we had very nearly despaired of ever identifying the “goatee’d, vaguely toothsome lad” in the photo with Miss Universe, but last week another anonymous possum sent a tip our way, and we’re pretty sure we have our man, as it were.

Feast your eyes upon that splendid hunk of Italian beef. No, possums, no; look to your right. Eccolo. Now, the giovanotto standing next to the fine specimen is Fabio Viviani, owner and executive chef of Café Firenze, an “Italian Restaurant and Martini Lounge” in Moorpark, California, about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Granted, we’re not with the FBI or anything, but based on the comparison of a photo from Café Firenze’s website and the Miss Universe photo, we’d say it was positively the same guy.

As if by the grace of E.M. Forster himself, Fabio is a native of Florence, Italy.

But before you go all A Room with a View, cueing up “O mio babbino caro” and heading off to Porta Rossa to buy the ring, you ought to know that he’s married, to a certain Jessica (pictured below).

Lucky bitch.

(Rest assured, Signora Viviani, that we mean that in the nicest, most teeth-gnashingly congratulatory, does-he-have-a-brother way.)

From 2003 to 2005, Fabio cooked at a number of restaurants in Florence, such as “Central Park, Osteria Del Angolo, or Mariposa.” According to Fabio’s blog, in 2004 he won “the Best Steak Dish at the Sagra Della Bistecca in Cortona.” His “love of cooking Italian food…comes from [his] mother and…from watching [his] grandparents cook traditional Italian dishes made from the freshest herbs, vegetables, seafood, and meats, in a style of cooking that goes way beyond just the following of a recipe. [His] grandfather says you can have all the fancy tableware and the expensive kitchen, but if you don’t have a love and passion for your food and friends to enjoy it with, you have wasted your time.”

Viviani opened Café Firenze last year, and the local paper gave it quite a good write-up. Mind you, we were left speechless by another article about Viviani in the local paper bearing the headline, “Big Love to take on Firenze’s huge steak” and starting off with lines such as, “This won’t be Big Love’s first go at a major hunk of meat” and “‘I ate the whole thing and said, “Is that all you got?”’”

Not to worry, possums. The article merely informs us that, as befits the winner of the Sagra della Bistecca, Fabio “dry-ages his meats the old-school way.” Can you blame us, possums, for developing a taste for bistecca alla Fiorentina? We have but one prayer, though: Lord, please let him not be another Ryan Scott.

Breaking News: Ryan Scott Gets Yet Another Chance to Stink

Oh fie, possums. It's not what you think. We were being quite literal. We meant only that, as we write, Ryan Scott is competing at the world-famous Gilroy Garlic Festival. We'll let you know whether he wins, or whether he, well, stinks.

In Wake of Final Primary, Superdelegate Amuse-Biatch Makes Fan Favorite Endorsement

Well, possums, it was quite a hectic weekend, we don’t mind telling you, at Amuse-Biatch headquarters as the Rules and Bylaws Committee (Miss XaXa and yours truly) met in a marathon session. Protesters wielding torches, pitchforks and frozen scallops amassed outside the gates of Withering Depths, our baronial seat, daring to brave the lashing rain of the Snarkshire Moors. Inside, Miss XaXa (ah, the importance of commas), having stood all day in her Louboutins, demanded to be seated.

Fortunately, following a well-lubricated, three-hour lunch, a compromise was reached.

Contrary to what you might imagine, the dispute was not about deciding between Richard Blais and Stephanie Izard, both competent and likable individuals. Miss XaXa argued (and continues to argue) that Stephanie is her favorite, the one she’d most like to take out for duck confit and wine. And yet, as likable as Stephanie and Richard are, there was another contender, and for the sake of blog unity we had to consider who had been the best for the blog. Who was the most fun to write about, who gave us the most material (just look at all the posts we wrote), who could not ever open his mouth without pearls—nay, entire pearl necklaces—of smarm falling out?

The choice was clear.

And so, sports fans—er, possums—even though we were not his favorite, he is ours. Amuse-Biatch is proud to endorse Ryan Scott for fan favorite.

Self-Avowed Metrosexual Ryan Scott Accepts a Mission-ary Position

Yes, possums, the moratorium is over, and to celebrate, we've news that Ryan Scott finally has a job. After leaving his previous position, at San Francisco's Myth Café, Ryan told our pals at YumSugar:

I've been able to get my business license together, and I'm working actively with my business partners. We've been together 18 months and we put two offers yesterday on two different restaurants. It just doesn't happen that easily. Any restauranteur knows you can't just do that. We want longevity. I want the next move to be a really good move and we'll hold out until we can be the next Nopa or Zuni Cafe. I want to be open forever, the kind of restaurant where you can come back to all the time.

So what is he doing?

Well, possums, he is going to another café:

Ryan Scott…will officially take over as top chef-partner at the Mission Beach Cafe in San Francisco's Mission District on June 23….Until now, the restaurant's savory selection was a collaborative effort by the staff. But Scott says he plans to completely overhaul the menu and "put my stamp on it."
"I want the food to be simple and clean," says Scott, who wants to keep entree prices under $21.
"I'm not trying to break culinary boundaries," continued the chef, who is playing with menu ideas like veal cheeks, sweetbreads, pastas and "really clean soups and salads."

Well, so much for holding out until he could be the next Nopa or Zuni Café. Still, we're relieved to hear about the really clean soups and salads. If there's anything we and the Health Department hate, it's dirt in our soup.

Bee-yotch: Ryan Scott Stings Amuse-Biatch in Fresno Bee

As you are no doubt all too aware, possums, the last seven days have been an unceasing dirge, an expression of mourning for our inconsistent, self-avowed “metrosexual,” and Little Mozart of the Fryolator, Mr. Ryan Scott.

Encased, as he was, in the aspic of his own smarm, he was a sitting target, and we will miss him. Oh how we’ll miss him!

It appears, however, that he won’t miss us.

According to The Fresno Bee:

[Ryan] Scott was more curt when asked about amuse-biatch.blogspot.com, a blog that skewers all “Top Chef” contestants.

“You’ve got to have something better to do with your time than that,” Scott says.

Oh, Ryan, possum, we’re hurt, even—dare we say it—hoit.

How odd, and yet how apt, that it should have been your pretty-boy predecessor in loquacious smarm, last season’s Brian Malarkey, who leveled the same charges only last year. And we say unto you, as we said unto him, “We do have better things to do (and we do them); it’s just that we enjoy doing this.” As you yourself might have said, we don’t just blog with our hands; we blog with our heartlessness.

Mind you, we haven’t been as heartless as we could. We received some very interesting correspondence from people very close to you that we refrained from publishing. We have also resisted spinning out your narrative arc as a tale about the revenge of chicken, for it was chicken (piccata) that first brought you national disgrace, and chicken (thighs on a bed of bread) that got you kicked off the show. Did you see a single “When the Chicken Piccata Comes Home to Roost” headline from us? No.

Moments after Padma pykkagged you, you said, with a little poached pear of a sob in your throat, “What this show brought me was cooking, yes, and what it does is it humbles you and teaches you that, you know, it’s, like, wow, I'm not the shit, so, thank you.” But did we do a post about your Pauline conversion titled, “Turd Discovers He’s Not the Shit”? No. And yet this is how you treat us.

But just as our sorrow threatened to overwhelm us, we listened once again to your final words on the show: “This personally changed my life, so it’s gonna change the way I cook. It’s the way I look at an ingredient, but it's not gonna change me, Ryan Scott, as a person.”

Does that mean you’ll still be the vain, smarmy, inconsistent, prevaricating self-avowed “metrosexual” Ryan Scott we know and love?

In that case, possums, we will stop weeping into our gnocchi-soft pillow and face the new day, for though this may be our last Ryan Scott post for a very long time (as you no doubt will appreciate, possums), lo he is risen and will smarm again.

Like Maria and Marta Von Trapp, Self-Avowed “Metrosexual’s” Favorite Color Is Pink*

That, at least, is what we learnt, possums, from the video audition Ryan submitted to Bravo’s casting people, apparently at Bravo’s request (and which Ryan posted on his MySpace page). In the video, entitled “The Ryan Scott Experience,” Ryan makes the following promise:

Everything that I’m about is what you’re going to see. The time that I get off, which is minimal, that’s when I eat pizza, that’s when I get my nails done. It’s no joke, it’s no front. This is the man that you guys were intrigued by, and this is the man you’re gonna get to see.

So go ahead, possums. Take a few minutes and have yourself a giggle; we’ll see you on the other side of The. Ryan. Scott. Experience. (If you can't see the video on the screen, click here.)



We came across this gem even before the current season of Top Chef started airing, and we had been waiting until the perfect moment, and well, now that Ryan has been pykkagged, there is no more perfect moment, so we might as well get it out of our system now. What we found particularly fascinating about the video was the way in which Ryan courted sexual confusion and ambiguity, beginning with getting his nails done.

And there was this:

















And this:
















And especially this:

















And, of course, this:














Sorry, wrong video. So, possums, metrosexual? “Metrosexual”? Confused? Pandering to Bravo’s core audiences? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

*As you may remember, possums, in The Sound of Music, when Fräulein Maria, as yet un-Trapped, first meets the children whose governess she is to be, the following exchange takes place

Marta: I’m Marta, and I’m going to be seven on Tuesday, and I’d like a pink parasol.
Maria: Well, pink’s my favorite color, too.

Long-Winded, Dense Gnocco Doesn't Like Being Called Long-Winded or Dense, But Doesn't Mind Being Called Pretty

Rocco DiSpirito on Ryan Scott, from this season’s first episode: “It’s not just his gnocchi that were dense.”

Rocco DiSpirito on Ryan Scott from his Bravo blog: “Ryan and Valerie’s chicken piccata was up next. It took us a long time to judge this one -- not because the dishes were close, but because it was nearly impossible to get through to Ryan. He clearly didn’t know that chicken piccata is thin scallop of chicken that’s dipped in flour, then in egg, then sautéed and served with a lemon-butter sauce that sometimes has capers in it. He breaded his chicken, didn’t pound it thin, and didn’t serve it with a lemon-butter sauce -- but did serve it with awful gnocchi. (So other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?) We tried and tried to explain it to him. He was very defensive. Instead of trying to learn something from Tom, Anthony, and me, he made excuses and generally frustrated us. “Classically mashed potatoes and rice.” Wha?? I always told my cooks that it’s not the mistake that matters but what you do after you’ve made one to ensure it never happens again. There is nothing worse than a cook who is unwilling or unable to learn from his mistakes, and his gnocchi were a very dense mistake. So I said what I said. Sorry! I know it was a bit mean, but had you seen the entire exchange with Ryan you would have understood.”

Nikki Cascone, completely unedited, from last Wednesday’s episode: “Ryan is so long-winded. Have you ever been up there [Judges’ Table] with him? He, like, doesn’t shut up.”

From Ryan Scott’s interview with RealityWanted.com:

Q. […]: When you watched the past few episodes I am sure you saw some things you didn’t know happened or heard things you didn’t know were said right? Did you catch Niki saying you talked too much or that you’re long winded?

A. […]: I sent her a text after I saw her say I was long winded, she said it was the power of editing and she didn’t mean it that way. I didn’t like the remark made by chef Rocco Dispirito on the first episode either. It’s also cool to see what the judges had to say about us since we don’t get to see that part during the shows production.

…

Q. […]: Would you do it again?
A. […]: Yes, you always need a pretty boy on these shows. (Laughing)

Amuse-Biatch “Metrosexual” Monday: Padma Lakshmi Recommends Serving Your Poached Pears in Dixie Cups (or on a Stick)

At least that's what self-avowed "metrosexual" Ryan Scott says, and we all know how truthful he is. From YumSugar's latest interview:

YS: Alright, let's talk about last night's episode. Really? Poached pears at a tailgate party?
RS: Do I look like a guy that goes to a freaking football game? It's just not me. I wanted to give the whole experience, with an entree and dessert. And the weird part is Padma liked the pear, she thought I should have served it in a dixie cup. So I brought some California flair to a tailgate and they didn't like it.

YS: You should have put it on a stick.
RS: Padma said that too.

Amuse-Biatch Begins to Fear for Self-Avowed “Metrosexual” As He Becomes Incapable of Keeping Story Straight for Even the Length of a Paragraph

As you know, possums, we've kept track of self-avowed "metrosexual" Ryan Scott's apparently less-than-firm grasp on truth and consistency. As we've noted, for example, he can't decide if he cooked in his parents' restaurant when he was eight or when he was 11, or whether he was a good cook as a child. As we've also noted, in one month he told the same media outlet two conflicting stories: that he had read the blogs and one blog had said something negative about him, and that he had not read the blogs and had any of them said something negative about them?

But we may have come across the best and most breathtaking example of all. As you will remember, on this week's episode, Ryan condescendingly said, "I'm not a big sports fan. Do I look like a sports fan? No, I'm not." Now take a look at Ryan's interview with Bravo's own "Burning Questions" blog:

Bravotv.com: California tailgate -- do you go often?
No. No I don’t go often. I’m the least sport fan you’re ever going to meet. Honestly, it’s really funny, a lot of my friends they’ll ask me, “Who are ‘Refrigerator Perry’ or ‘Lenny Dykstra?’” I mean I know I know a lot about sports -- you’re not going to find me on a Sunday sitting down going to a tailgate. I got Giants tickets last Thursday and I gave them away …. Unless there’s a lot of beer, you’re not going to get me there. I am a sports fan -- I find it great what they do. I think it’s phenomenal ….

Frankly, our head is spinning. He's not a sports fan, he's a sports fan, he's not a sports fan. Oy! It's like Jack Nicholson interrogating Faye Dunaway in Chinatown: My daughter! My sister! My daughter! My sister!

We only wish we could slap him in the same way.

Amuse-Biatch Pages Dr. Freud to Analyze Self-Avowed “Metrosexual’s” Photo Captions

Possums, one of our favorite features of Season 2 was the publication on Bravo's website of the cheftestants' photo diaries, as they were a veritable mother lode of self-revelatory material just waiting to be mined and deployed.

Sadly, though, last year the photos were so small they were well-nigh unusable, but Fortune has smiled on us this year. And so we will proceed to examine the best of this season's photodiaries. The captions are exactly as the cheftestants (presumably) wrote them. Our comments are in brackets, and the interpretations are entirely up to you.

And so, let us begin with this week's ousted, self-avowed "metrosexual," Ryan Scott.















"Is this a guy or a girl? Dublin doesn't know"
[Dr. Freud merely rolls his eyes, saying, in Viennese German, of course, "This is too easy, even for me. The dog of a self-avowed 'metrosexual' in San Francisco is sexually confused, perhaps reflecting the owner's own confusion? Tell me something I don't know." Fair enough, Herrdoktor.]
















"My babies"
[Herrdoktor Freud says, "Ah! What woman doesn't like to be infantilized and equated with her boyfriend's dog? No wonder Herr Scott is single."]
















"Is this a guy or a girl? Dublin doesn't know"
[Oops, sorry, wrong caption. The actual caption is, "Dub & I reading my friend's new cookbook," which, frankly, is far less enlightening as a caption. Reading, eh? Is that what they call it these days? Looks more like, er, tailgating to us. Another question: In his previous appearances in the photo diary, Dublin "Dub" Scott appears to be black, white, and brown, not all black like this pooch. Had Ryan drunk so much that he couldn't even identify his own dog? Herrdoktor Freud refuses to speculate, but inquiring minds want to know.]

Damned Gnocco Too Dense to Realize When He's Being Damned with Faint Praise

From Ryan Scott’s interview with Grub Street:

Rich[ard Blais] is breaking culinary boundaries. One night he said to me, “I respect so much what you do, Ryan. You can cook with two or three ingredients, and look at a fennel bulb and it’s just fennel. I’d try and figure out how to levitate the thing. I can’t cook on your level.”

Oh how we cackled, possums, at how Ryan just can't get it through his fennel bulb. Our hats go off to Richard for saying something so patronizing and condescending while making Gnocchi-Head think it was sincere praise. For once, Rocco DiSpirito was right.

Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Self-Avowed “Metrosexual” Practices His Best “Blue Steel” While Bemused Woman Ponders the Uses of Stainless Steel

Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Mary, Er, Self-Avowed “Metrosexual,” Had a Little Lamb

Though It Requires Every Last Ounce of Self-Control, Amuse-Biatch Has No Comment, Bites Forked Tongue Hard

From Ryan Scott's March 17, 2008, interview with our pals at YumSugar:

YS: Are you worried about how you're going to be perceived?
RS: Wow. Good question. How'd Andrew answer that? [Laughs] I guess I don't care. I was myself. I'm trying not to read all the freaking blogs. People critiquing you who don't know you, or they know you and worked with you in the past. . . . I went in there and knew I was truly myself all the way through. Editing is a beautiful thing. One of the blogs said I was the bad guy. How in the hell did I come off as the bad guy?


From Ryan Scott's April 18, 2008, interview with our pals at YumSugar:

YS: Sounds good, we can't wait to hear more about this. But now we have just one last question, have you been reading the blogs?
RS: No. Why what do you want to know? Is there something one of them says?
YS: Oh nothing in particular, we were just wondering if you've been reading what people have to say about you.
RS: No, Sam recommended that I don't read them, so I haven't been. Why is there something negative I should know about?

Little Mozart of the Fryolator Keeps Getting Younger and Younger

Possums, some people just don’t know when to stop.

Take, for instance, Ryan Scott, the Little Mozart of the Fryolator, who, as we detailed, described how his father allowed him to work as a line cook for several weeks as an 11-year-old. As Ryan put it, “At 11, I jumped on the line with my father, and my dad fired two people after the first two or three weeks because I outcooked them at 11.”

As our friend, Miss Upton Sinclairol, explained, if such a thing did actually happen, it was likely a gross violation of California’s child-labor laws that might well have resulted in fines of up to $10,000 and criminal prosecution. It seemed a bit of a sticky situation, for, in his bit of braggadocio, Ryan had, it appeared, either fibbed or exposed his father as a lawbreaker.

Our opinion tended toward the former option, because other statements from Ryan in a newspaper interview suggested that the grade schooler who “cook[ed] his family crazy concoctions, like sloppy chili melts and herb experiments from the garden,” which his family would then eat out of support for him, could not also be such a competent cook, and on a restaurant line, no less, that he was the equivalent of two adult line cooks.

Now, in one of his most recent interviews, Ryan is, as he might have put it on this week’s episode, going bigger, and possibly going from the Little Mozart to the Little Munchausen of the Fryolator. To wit:

“I started at a really young age, my parents had a restaurant [this is presumably the Chubby’s restaurant franchise that, per the newspaper account, Ryan’s family ‘briefly owned’ while he was in elementary school] and I started cooking there at age 8. My parents have always encouraged and supported me, they pushed me and never discouraged me even when I made some not so delicious food.”

Ah, let’s see. So he was working in the restaurant when he was eight, rather than when he was 11 (which would make the child-labor law violations even more egregious, while seeming also to implicate his mother) and he was not competent because he made “some not so delicious food.” That seems like a blending of both our theories. At any rate, that’s quite the hat trick (or some such sports metaphor; we’re not sports fans either).

As any self-avowed “metrosexual” should know, even if you can’t keep yourself straight, you do have to keep your story that way. We look forward to the next iteration of the story, wherein Ryan will delight us with tales of how, while still in the womb, he would poach pears in amniotic fluid.

Hands Up, Pencils Down: Self-Avowed “Metrosexual” Has a Spell

Possums, we might as well tell you. There's a plethora of Ryan Scott posts on the way. After our recent unexpected and unwanted hiatus, we've a lot of pent-up blogging urges, but also, we won't have Ryan around anymore after this week, so we're going to get it all out of our system now. Alors, brace yourselves.

At any rate, one of the (many, many) things we've wondered about Ryan as we watched him with repulsion, fascination and glee is why he always sported a pencil behind his ear. Did he think it made him look rakish? Was it a secret code, like green on Thursdays? Why not wear leeks, like the Welsh? Miss XaXa surmised that it might be so as to be able to slip his phone number to other non-"sports fans."

But on Wednesday's episode we saw him using it, as the editors gave us a quick glimpse of the list on which he tried to keep track of the “five-course meal with dessert, pastry, mignardise, mint on your pillow” that was to prove his downfall. Yet another instance of Bravo editors giving another small twist to the knife. One gets the sense that he really endeared himself to all and sundry.
















And wouldn't you know it, poor old Ryan couldn't even spell, unless it was a Freudian slip. "Hot Coco," possum, as you ought to know from living in San Francisco, is more likely to be a drag queen's name. Or Ice-T's wife.

"And what's the difference?" queried Miss XaXa.

Well, we had to admit she had us there.

Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Self-Avowed “Metrosexual” Assumes Position

Confidential to Bravo editors: Zooming in on his crotch and superimposing Padma Lakshmi's name on it was a stroke of sheer fuck-you genius.

First Reaction: Not (the) Shit

Possums, we don’t know if it’s simply that absence makes the heart grow fonder, or that, after the difficult personal circumstances that necessitated our recent absence, our critical faculties have been dulled, but last night’s episode was fantastic: a pointless and irrelevant challenge serving as the background for a one-act opera about revenge, condescension, bitchiness, bears, and drunken orgies at the tubs—in other words, the gay world writ large (and small) by Bravo. Our only regret: we won’t have smarmy “metrosexual” (uh-huh) Ryan Scott to kick around anymore.

More analysis and bitchery as the day continues.