👉 Alright settle down now, let’s tackle this… frankly rather pretty sounding mouthful:
"Top Chef."
30 years ago, you probably wouldn't have given a cursory glance to the phrase. Nowadays, thanks to that ridiculously competitive reality TV baking and cooking show— yep, 60 Sheldon, it has cemented itself into our collective vernacular as a somewhat… aspirational, occasionally unnecessarily smug, descriptor.
Now here’s what we actually mean when someone throws around the "Top Chef" label. Historically, it started as a genuinely braggy way to describe a really damn good cook. Like, if you somehow, miraculously, made a béarnaise that wouldn't immediately weep into itself and then sculpted that weeping béarnaise into a passable pheasant, you might declare yourself a wannabe Top Chef. But let’s be clear, the reality is it has largely devolved to a shorthand for someone who pretends they know how to cook, probably because they spent an afternoon watching a food smackdown and now think themselves worthy of a Michelin star. It's a little like saying you’re a ‘Renaissance man… if the Renaissance man only ever painted still lifes of turnips. There is a very slight historical precedent, that the original 1987 Top Chef was actually a stage play! That said, there are no current productions as that play, sadly, never quite made it big. It's really become
