Sweet and Sour in Boston

Work and real life has forced this blog to take a back seat. However, nothing too exciting has happened in our food-life this past week. We'll start with the last two crap-tacular Top Chef episodes.

Top Chef s5, ep 8

Restaurant Wars! More like crap vs crap wars. First you got Leah and Radhika winning the quickfires and getting to be the captains/leaders of their restaurants. Neither chooses Stefan until he's the last pick. Idiots!!!! If I could have chosen, it would have been Jeff, Fabio and Stefan. Game, set, match. Then we get a quick glimpse, with crappy porn music, of Hosea and Leah making out. Joyous! The most least interesting couple in all of food reality history. What makes it worst is their confessionals about how they cheated on their significant others and how they hope they are still together when this ends. Wow...talk about trying to suck up immedietly after getting caught. First of all, they must have done something more than kiss. I'm not saying they had sex or anything, but I'd gather Leah's hands weren't empty. I think they could have played off a kiss as something minor to their significant others (I was cooped up with nothing to do but a lot of booze and this floozy chick with this "so-called" incredible rack...it was just a kiss!) and they wouldn't have gone into defcon 5 mode. From reading other blogs, I guess both Hosea and Leah tried to make it work with their significant others, but then got dumped to the curb. Go significant others! Also, I guess Hosea and Leah are together now...good, the only person that will have the other person in a relationship...they deserve each other.

Anyway, both teams basically suck it up for restaurant wars, with Radhika not knowing how to be front of house and Crazy Eyes screwing up her first dessert for their team and the Hosea and Leah crapfest of food brought down their team. Stefan, the dude who keeps winnning yet noone wanted on their team, and Fabio won the competition, unfortunately saving Leah. Ugh...I hate Leah. Radhika gets sent home, and to be honest, her body language was basically suggesting to everyone that she wanted to leave.


Top Chef s5, ep 9

Fan-freaking-tastic...an All-Star challenge, with former top cheftestants. Now, if it was really an All-Star challenge, wouldn't have Harold, Hung and the other two winners be on this show, not the rejects that sucked? Just saying...

This episode was so hard to watch. Basically, everyone was annoying the hell out of me. Fabio and Jeff were getting the loser edit from the beginning and sadly, along with Stefan, were up for elimination. Those 3 are the only reason to watch this show! WTF?!?!?! Jeff gets sent home for once again doing too much. Whatever, he's proven to be a much better chef than everyone other than Stefan on this episode.

This show is getting harder and harder to watch each week. Luckily they have the great Eric Ripert coming on next week, so of course I'm "hooked" once again. (Get it, get it?)

Orinoco

It seems like such a crime that I have never been to Orinoco yet, even though I've lived so close to it. When I first lived in South End, I was around the corner from Orinoco. Now, I'm just a few blocks away. It seemed like a good time to try it out, so Abby and myself joined our buddy Vivek there for an early dinner on Thursday. So early, that when we arrived at 5:58, they wouldn't let us in because they don't open until 6pm.





We started with the shrimp/mango ceviche special while Vivek got some sort of salad. The shrimp/mango ceviche was good, just very acid-y. (I know it's "acidic", but saying "ass-y-dee" is fun.) We did get a lot of shrimp to start, so that was nice, and the mango was a good touch, I just wish the acid was cut down a bit. Vivek said his salad was very, very good.








I got talked into getting the skirt steak and it was very good. Cooked nicely, with this sweet and spicy sauce accompaning it. However, the steak was cut in such a way that there were lots of tough fatty strips in every piece that made the steak a bit tough to eat. Abby's salmon was very good, and Vivek enjoyed his portobello mushroom "sandwich-thingy". Though Vivek did say the dough around the mushroom was very heavy.

Overall, I was pleased but also disappointed. I was expecting greatness, but just got good to very good. I'll have to give Orinico another try one day though, maybe for brunch where I've heard their menu is fantastic. I give Orinoco a 3 1/2 out of 5.