Harold Dieterle Fatally Ignores Tim Gunn's Injunction, "Don't Bore BruNina"

Oh, possums, just as contestants on Project Runway live with the tattoo-beat of fear throbbing from Tim Gunn's flaming-sword injunction, "Don't bore Nina [Garcia of Elle]," so, it seems, must Top Chef winners who actually manage to open a restaurant live in fear of boring New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni, whom we might as well call BruNina.

BruNina's one-star review of Harold's restaurant, Perilla, is studded with bits of critical gristle, backhand-compliment adjectives that make clear the critic's displeasure: "agreeable," "soothing," "unassuming," "undemanding," "primness," "more like the dutiful flourishes of a studiously conscientious tradesman than the inspirations of an artist letting his imagination roam" (ouch!), "retiring," "vapid," "cautious," "focus group," and "safe[...] path."

BruNina laments that "[Harold's] packed restaurant is a result of his fame on the small screen. That’s reality television for you — it scrambles cause and effect, defying the laws of celebrity physics." Further, though on two occasions at Perilla, BruNina caught sight of famous chefs Wylie Dufresne and Marco Canora, "On neither of those occasions did [he] lay eyes on Harold Dieterle....And this dichotomy — the conspicuous presence of his curious peers, the behind-the-curtain invisibility of the man himself — says a lot about Perilla’s odd genesis and how he has responded to it."

Which made us think that Frank Bruni is one of those Gays who didn't much care for the ending of The Wizard of Oz.

Persnickety BruNina also brings up Harold's "reluctance to hold court in his restaurant, as other chefs do in theirs," which prompted Miss XaXa to ask, "Doesn't it sound like BruNina just wanted Harold's autograph?"

Oh, Harold, to think that a signed napkin or 8 x 10 might have gotten you that extra star.

Project Pontificate

So why did “Top Chef” finally hit its stride with the third episode of this season?

Well, at the risk of pontificating like Marcel, we have a theory. We think it’s because Episode Three saw the near-total “Project Runway”-fication of the show, and that’s a good thing.

If we’re honest, “Project Runway” has always had an inherent advantage over “Top Chef” (and no, we don’t mean the obvious ones like Tim Gunn and the Three Horsebitches of the Apocalypse, Heidi Klum, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia). Fashion design is inherently more visual, and thus telegenic, than cookery, which makes it perfect for a reality television competition. We’ve all got eyes, so we can all judge whether an outfit looks good, and this helps us become more involved as audience members.

Of course there’s a visual element to food, but as Gail reminded us this week, food is for eating. There’s no way we, lounging, as we do, in a moiré dressing-gown in our well-appointed sitting room at Withering Depths under our Boldini portrait, can judge how good any dish on “Top Chef” tastes. This means we simply cannot get as worked up about which untasted and untasteable dish tastes better and therefore should win. So yes, although “Top Chef” is a reality television competition about food, it’s not really about the food.

So what does that leave? Well, the competition part, which mean interpersonal drama, bitchery and hi-jinks galore, bien sûr. That’s what will make for entertainment, and that’s what we got in spades last night. That has been the complaint from some about the most recent season of “Project Runway,” and it appears to have migrated to “Top Chef.” So now we have a hostess best known for posing in bikinis and lingerie, challenges that involve shopping and budgets, and time limits, and sponsor-monikered tools and amenities (à la Macy’s Accessory Wall and Loreal Paris Make-up Room), delusional contestants who self-destruct à la Vincent Libretti (we mean you, Beer Bong, though Marcel might fit, too), and cheating scandalets (like pantalets and pantaloons, when it comes to scandal, we can conceive of scandalets and scandaloons). It may not be good eating, but it’s certainly good television. Watchin’ good in the neighborhood (yes, yes, our scullery maid has told us that’s not the TGIFriday’s slogan, but you catch our drift).