Category Archives: food

Top Chef Frotcast Post-Show: Amar Santana on S1E1

food, TV, , ,

PLEASE SIGN UP ON PATREON, EVEN IF IT’S FOR FREE! Posting everything here has become a burden, and if you’re only listening to this feed you probably aren’t getting all of the episodes. Patreon dot com slash frotcast! This episode is free, but Patreon subscribers saw it earlier. 

Top Chef Wisconsin (aka Top Chef Season 21) may be over, but the Top Chef Frotcast Post-Show isn’t. This week we welcome Top Chef season 13 finalist and season 20 fan favorite Amar Santana, chef/owner of Broadway and Vaca, both in Orange County, California. Amar is great interview, and actually seems to enjoy talking to us for whatever reason. Which I hope won’t get him into any professional trouble. Years ago I tasted Jamón Iberico for the first time thanks to Amar, which is one of those things you never forget.

We get all the Top Chef inside info from Amar, including what his casting process was like, how much editors manipulate the show, and whether Top Chef winners still dream of opening new restaurants. He takes us back to when he first heard about the show, working alongside Ilan Hall (who went onto win Top Chef season 2) as line cooks for Charlie Palmer, and why he decided to be on it. He talks about the moment Top Chef stopped feeling like a reality show and started feeling like a legit cooking competition (it involved the Voltaggio Brothers), as well as the auditioning process, the psych evaluation, and more.

Finally, we made Amar go back and watch the first episode of the first season of Top Chef, and we discuss all the things that make it kind of hilarious to watch now, from Katie Lee being the host instead of Padma, to Tom Colicchio’s soul patch, to that crazy Irish guy who got kicked off for putting his finger in Hubert Keller’s sauce (Ken Lee). Uh, that’s DJ Hubert Keller to you.

As always, thank you to our sponsor, Blackwood Distilling Co. (Yes, the show has a sponsor, that’s why it’s free on all platforms).

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Top Chef Frotcast Post-Show, Episode 2

food, TV, , ,

PLEASE SIGN UP ON PATREON, EVEN IF IT’S FOR FREE! Posting everything here has become a burden, and if you’re only listening to this feed you probably aren’t getting all of the episodes. Patreon dot com slash frotcast! This episode is free, but you would’ve heard about it sooner on Patreon.

Vince and Joey are back talking the latest episode of Top Chef, part one of the finale in Curacao. This week, part one of Top Chef’s season 21 finale took the chefs to the Caribbean nation of Curacao, where the final four competed in a battle to combine gouda and lionfish, and then in an eight-course fish tasting menu on a Holland America Cruise Line with fresh fish ambassador, Morimoto! As promised last week, host of the Roundball Rock podcast and Top Chef superfan, comedian Joey Devine is helping me, Vince Mancini from The #Content Report/Frotcast, break down the latest Top Chef ‘sode. Enjoy, share, subscribe, and check out our sponsor, Blackwood Distilling.

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Bonus #Content: Phil Rosenthal Talks ‘Somebody Feed Phil’

comedy, food, TV

So, I know we didn’t do a new show last week, and this week we’re doing a Ben tribute episode that’s going to be Patreon only. We’re getting the whole band back together for that one. Including Bret! So we’re going to do that one Patreon only and donate the proceeds to charity.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share this interview I did with Phil Rosenthal. Phil created Everybody Loves Raymond and he has a new food show out on Netflix, Somebody Feed Phil. I do a lot of these phone interviews and they don’t always make great audio, but I wanted to share this one because Phil is just such a great interview. I can tell he’s good because when I get the transcripts back I barely have to edit anything. He just naturally speaks in complete sentences. He’s great. Enjoy!

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Extra: Kyle Mooney, Tom Colicchio

food, movies

We couldn’t get the Frotcast gang in the same room this week, but, I do have some interviews to share. The first is with SNL’s Kyle Mooney and Dave McCary, who starred in (Kyle) and directed (Dave) Brigsby Bear, a strange yet sweet movie about a kid who’s raised off the grid watching a TV show that his father has made just for him. We get deep with Kyle and Dave about the filmmaking process, and about San Diego-based comedy, something they have in common with the Frotcast. The second is with Top Chef host Tom Colicchio, who tells us about his first food memory, the validity of “Jersey red sauce,” the way the food industry has changed with the advent of food TV and the internet, and more. Donate at Patreon dot com slash Frotcast, email us at frotcast@gmail.com, and we’ll be back with the whole gang next week. 

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