Top Chef and I: Andrea Beaman, Season 1
- Jordan
- Oct 12, 2024
- 9 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
We’ve reached the halfway point of season 1, and man does it feel good! Welcome to another edition of “Top Chef and I,” and in this edition, I’ll be taking a look into Andrea Beaman’s participation on the fire competition that is Top Chef. Look over the guidelines before you venture forth, and I’ll take it from here.
Profile
Name: Andrea Beaman
Residence: New York, NY
Position: Natural Nutritionist
Synopsis
Episode 1 (Who Deserves to Be Here)
“Natural Nutritionist” Andrea Beaman teaches people how to get better food in their diet after rapidly changing hers when she was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, but none of that matters when she is placed on the line at Hubert Keller’s restaurant in the first episode and is told to survive in that environment for 30 minutes. With no restaurant experience under her belt, she gets stopped 16 minutes in when she drops food on the floor. In her defense, her drop seemed to merely consist of a container of something landing face up over any kind of real spill, but I guess it still wasn’t acceptable for Hubert’s standards.
It didn't seem like anything happened, but I digress
The next day, Andrea is among the first to cook for the elimination challenge that had the chefs make their signature dish, and she cooks up (or should I say harvests out?) a shrimp and broccoli stir fry with a spicy plum sauce. Competitor Stephen Asprinio whispers to fellow competitor Brian Hill that there’s sand in the kale once all the dishes are ready for tasting, and the overall consensus with the dish is it being a flop.
With the judges seeing both technical and conceptual issues with the dish as well, Andrea slides her way into the bottom 3 but ends up being spared from elimination over fellow competitor Ken Lee.
Episode 2 (Food of Love)
In the next episode, Andrea reveals to the audience that she thought she was gonna go home due to her lack of finesse in presentation. With that in mind, she plans to do better in the next challenge that just so happens to be presentation-based.
Tasked with making a fruit display, Andrea takes a simpler approach compared to the others and…places the fruit directly on the plate unchanged. Now is that lazy? One could interrupt so. But having the finesse to just say “Fuck it. It looks good already.” deserves some credit. Guest Judge Elizabeth Falkner sure did give some credit to that idea but suggested to put less on the plate to cement that ideology more (something Andrea herself admitted in wanting to do before backing out of it).
Andrea’s fears of losing based on lackluster presentation skills pile more into the next elimination challenge when the chefs are tasked to make desserts for a fetish event. Going with a simpler approach, she petals nuts around chocolate covered peanut-butter balls and shifts the focus of her dish toward its benefits in boosting sex drive over anything else. Judge Gail Simmons questioned such decision to create the generic treat as it didn’t scream “Fuck me, baby,” and Andrea lands in the bottom again. Quite shocked to be in such position compared to the last time, her efforts end up not being enough to continue on, and Andrea is sent packing.
Episode 3 (Nasty Delights)
In a surprise turn of events, Andrea returns to the competition to replace Cynthia Sestito in the elimination challenge that pitted the chefs against each other in two teams where they’d both cook for kids. Members of both teams are thrilled (including Brian of the opposite team as if he didn’t just discuss her assets not long ago...emphasis on the ass).
Evening the playing field, Andrea ends up winning with her team when the kids decided that their meal was better than the opposing team’s. Bouncing back toward a victory after being defeated? Not bad for the natural nutritionist.
Episode 4 (Food on the Fly)
When Andrea finds out that the next quickfire involves making a dish out of food from a gas station, she is appalled, but she perseveres through to make peanut noodles with beef jerky (taking Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as the base to make the sauce). Unfortunately, guest judge Jefferson Hill felt the sauce was too peanut-buttery and ends up not winning (though she's not placed at the bottom either).
Even without that win, she has a gleaming winning attitude in the next challenge when she finds out she's making microwaveable meals for the junior league. The core audience she provides her services to, she proceeds to do a quinoa dish with sweet potato mash and is excited to present it when the day arrives (even though she admits her microwave skills aren’t up-to-par as of late).
A quick recap of pressing start (among other things, of course) led Andrea to the top with fellow competitors Harold Dieterle and Tiffani Faison. Even without the win, Andrea is miles ahead her previous go at the competition.
Episode 5 (Blind Confusion)
Andrea senses that even with some form of success under her renewed belt, she is seen by some as not worthy of being here. She doesn't name anyone in particular, but she does point out that Stephen and her don't talk often (comparing herself as the anthesis of Stephen).
When the next quickfire comes away of identifying food based on taste, Andrea is particularly excited. Having tried a lot of ethnic foods, and seeing contestant Lee Anne Wong's flushed expression when she returns from her quickfire experience, Andrea believes she's got a chance to win. She doesn't fare off well at first from the viewers' eyes when she spits out nopal without bothering to identify it, but she does manage to identify enough to beat everyone and win the challenge. Even though it was a measly 4 out of 20 (nowhere near the aficionado she hyped up), this girl's momentum is on a high.
She takes that high into the next challenge when the chefs create street fusion food with one other person. (In her case, mixing Indian and Latin flavors with Miguel Morales.) She promptly lets her ideas run full steam during the challenge (shutting down Miguel's proposition of using canned beans and opting for brown rice instead of regular rice in the process). Even with her preferences, she gets caught in a blunder when judge Tom Colicchio comes to check on the cast and tastes the brown rice in an underdone state.
Though the rice is supposedly cooked by the time they arrive at the Mission District, Tom finds it bland when he and the other judges arrive to taste their dish (curried-chicken and lentil burrito with tamarind punch). Thinking they did well, Andrea is surprised when she finds out that they are not at the top of the challenge. Furthermore, she tries to understand where Miguel is coming from when he puts her creative direction to blame for their short-comings.
In response, Andrea offers to give up the immunity she earned earlier to save Miguel from accepting the fate of not being Top Chef. In her eyes, she sees Miguel desiring this far more than she does to the point of necessity. That doesn't happen, and Andrea remains spared from elimination that day.
Episode 6 (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner)
Andrea is pretty un-phased with Miguel's comments in the previous episode and finds his over-abundance of determination in being Top Chef to ultimately be a hinderance to his performance (predicting that he will go home next in the competition due to such detriment).
Making an appetizer under a small budget becomes the next quickfire for the remaining chefs, and Andrea decides to make a carrot and pear salad. She garners her inspiration for the dish from wanting something light when she's at restaurants as well as appealing to multiple flavor profiles at once...as well as noting it'll help your BM. BM-inducing or not, Andrea doesn't win this quickfire.
During planning for the following elimination challenge where all the chefs had to work together to create a seven-course dinner for guest judge Ted Allen’s event, Andrea takes the third slot and plans on making a dish using john dory. When Tom makes the chefs switch dishes right before they’re getting ready to cook the next day, she ends up with Miguel’s first course of smoked scallops & caviar on a latke and is disheartened over it having a fried component.
Miguel becomes frazzled over the course of the day, and as he tries to re-center, he feels a need to help Andrea help the dish she’s now been assigned. Given that it was his dish, he takes many reigns in executing that fairly (leaving Andrea to acceptingly and ironically only work on the fried latke component). Once presented at the event, Ted and Tom find issue with the latkes being cold, and she lands in the bottom for not really doing much with a rather common dish. When asked what she did to make the dish her own, she talks about her one sole addition of scallion before going on a rave on their nutritional benefit.
Ted shuts all that down and insists this is a food competition that garners on a wow effect. With little to work off of and a perception of having lackluster competitive drive, she ends up getting sent home for a second time. Miguel, who was also on the bottom that week, makes it known how much of a friend she’s been (despite the audience seeing their past blunders). As Andrea packs her knives again, she sees the competition as more reason to do what she loves to do, and proceeds to continue that moving forward.
Episode 10 (Reunion)
Among the various topics discussed during the reunion she attends, Andrea chimes in on a few from noting how she was eliminated twice on the same show to sharing how she could only get a few hours of sleep due to the other castmates’ night partying (despite plans to get more rest). When it came to the more interpersonal topics, she didn't have much to say regarding Miguel’s decision to throw her under the bus during the street food elimination challenge (though did she juxtapose him being a good friend with her looking good in tire tracks), and she did not feel that Tiffani (whose perceived rude behavior was felt by many) was ever a bitch to her. When it came to thoughts on the top 3 being who they were, she noted Dave Martin’s handling of pressure to be a negative thing and also wished for Lee Anne to have made it in that set of parameters instead of being eliminated right before.
Analyzation
Andrea had no business being in this competition. I don’t mean that in a sneer way, but Andrea’s dishes just weren’t up to par with other chefs. That being said, given that it was the first season, Andrea was able to utilize the show’s lack of a firm identity for the better. The term “top chef” did refer to the next up-and-coming person to take over the food scene by storm, but that didn’t have to be someone within the restaurant industry. You had a culinary student, a cooking teacher who’s a stay-at-home mom, and a sommelier as potential lead-ins. Andrea was able to not be shaken by this so-called term (that wasn’t really a thing like that beforehand in all honesty) and simply cook her style of food during the competition regardless of whatever curveballs were being thrown at her. This is a type of trait that chefs on later seasons would have trouble facing with.
It was especially courageous to see her do her health-conscious food at a time when it was dismissed as insignificant and foolish among other things. (They even tried to make fun of that during the reunion when they embedded a clip of her walking in a circle talking about food evolution during a montage of the chefs losing it, but that literally was just show business making fun of something they didn’t know much about in my eyes.)
What sounded absurd back then was certainly not that later on. You got lifestyle gurus (including a very successful one that just so happened to be the same culinary student I aforementioned), foods prepared with alternatives, and even regulations to adhere to people’s dietaries demands. Things sure have changed.
Even with her sentiment on being driven by the ways of the nutrition Gods, she still had a personality that came off more hip than hippie, and I found that to be quite enjoyable. Maybe it had something to do with her being from New York when the show was made, but I managed to catch on to some of her quips. Per examples include her making a comment of Miguel suggesting to get out of the house more when he lusts over fetish host Madam S in episode 2, joking that she didn’t win a spa vacation despite being victorious in episode 4, and the tire tracks comment during the reunion.
Though Andrea ended up losing twice when she competed on season 1, she later came back on season 5 as a challenger for the elimination challenge involving alums from past seasons competing against the chefs currently competing. Winning her round of the battle, it was great to see her not only win but also continue her hip streak by implementing a spicy and flirty comment during the battle. She even took light of her being a “nuts and grains girl" in a confessional.
Not being pressed was something Andrea showed off a lot, and it worked for both better and worse. While it didn't do much for the competition, it did give the viewer a clear understanding of her food. Whether you actually are or aren’t with her sentiments, you do recognize that those are her sentiments, and that's something that is quite finesse if you ask me.
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