Top Chef and I: Brian Hill, Season 1

Some more exploration into season 1 Top Chef contestants is in order! Brian Hill is up next, but don't fret. Despite not making it to the top of the hill, Brian's journey on Top Chef was still momentous in its own right!

If you're a first-time explorer, have a look at the kitchen guidelines before you dive in. It breaks down what to expect when viewing these explorations.

Profile

Brian Hill

Residence: Los Angeles, CA

Position: Private Chef

Synopsis

Episode 1 (Who Deserves to Be Here)

Personal chef to the stars Brian Hill considers himself to hold worth in the world. As someone who has cooked for celebrities, or in other terms “people that can afford him,” Brian has experience in the field of upper echelon, but that doesn’t stop him from advising fellow contestant Ken Lee to stop handling the quaint San Francisco home kitchen with roughness.

Much like competitor Candice Kumai, Brian fails the quickfire of working at Hubert Keller’s restaurant for 30 minutes in accordance to him being too slow. Though Hubert does admit that he was working rather well, he stops Brian after 19 minutes as he was not working fast enough.

Within the second group of chefs to cook during the elimination challenge, which also included competitors Stephen Asprinio, Cynthia Sestito, Harold Dieterle, Tiffani Faison, and Lee Anne Wong, Brian got the chance to taste the first group’s dishes before he cooked. During the critiques, he describes contestant Andrea Beaman’s salad with plum sauce as rocky. (Mind you, as noted by Stephen, it did have sand in it.) On the flip side, he felt both Candice's and Lisa's dishes went well even with the latter's circumstances. (Lisa's a home cook who's mostly self-taught.)

When it’s Brian’s turn to cook, he makes a chargrilled jerk chicken that he describes as succulent. Candice thought it was cute. He lands in the middle. Next episode.

Brian's succulent dish (according to him)

Episode 2 (Food of Love)

Brian doesn’t find the next quickfire of displaying fruit a challenge as this is something he does all the time for clients…only for him to suggest that "being at the buzzer" played a part in him putting a pineapple top on his plate. Guest judge Elizabeth Falkner didn't fall for it as she already dinged Lisa for doing the same thing prior.

Disappointed of his performance, he approaches the sexy dessert challenge with more gusto. What he ends up making is a strawberry apple crisp that grants him top status (though he ends up losing to competitor Miguel Morales for the win).

Brian's plate of fruit (pineapple top included) for the quickfire on the left, Brian's top dish for the elimination challenge on the right

Episode 3 (Nasty Delights)

Rather than being sad about not winning the elimination challenge, Brian diverts those feelings over to the loss of Andrea leaving the competition in a poetic gesture from the heart.

Words of "ass-firmation" aside, when Brian finds out that octopus will be used in the “Nasty Delights” quickfire (which easily could’ve been the title for the last elimination challenge or Brian’s confession toward Andrea), Brian claims he hasn’t worked with octopus in 5 years. Managing to make it through though, he ends up incorporating the octopus into a creamy stew that put him in the middle of the pack. He later falls back from his pack of competitors-turned-teammates Harold, Tiffani, Lee Anne, and Dave Martin in the planning stages of the kid elimination challenge when his thoughts are continuously bounced back by Dave more so than anyone else.

The image speaks for itself

Ultimately, Brian ends up having a suggestion the entire team backs up on: A sweet carrot side dish he’s done plenty of times. From there, he tells this story about how much this challenge means to him that is a complete 180 from all that lusting beforehand. Unlike his firm preference for ass, Brian prefers his carrots for the dish to be soft.

When the time comes to serve the clientele of children, Brian’s carrots are not well received by them for such softness. Determined to not give up since the challenge means so much to him, he puts in additional effort to hype the kids up as they’re having their meal.

Groovin' for the kiddies!

In the end, a sad Brian is bummed to hear that his team lost the challenge (subsequently putting him at risk for elimination).

Among being called out for having mushy carrots, Brian uses the time to vocalize Dave being the leader of the group by bringing up a past conversation between the team and judge Tom Colicchio over who the team leader was (something Dave assuredly doesn't recall going down like that). He also tries to use his encouragement with the kids as a defense for trying to lift the team up toward success. In the end, he goes home because mushy carrots are mushy carrots.

Episode 10 (Reunion)

Returning for the reunion show, Brian isn't heavily featured during the run. His doggin’ ways, however, are featured (prompting Cynthia to playfully shove him over when more footage of him lusting hits center stage). On the contrary, he is shown calling Tiffani a "natural born bitch" in a confessional placed within a montage that centered around Tiffani's attitude during the competition and accuses her of being so competitive driven that she’ll stop at nothing to win.

Analyzation

For someone to have the confidence to womanize on national television, regardless of if it was said during downtime, he must certainly have confidence in his cooking skills. It was pretty apparent throughout the competition.

Though I use this statement loosely, I'd say he tended to shine more in elimination challenges than quickfires as all the issues surrounding his lack of success with them were time related. Maybe it’s that slow and steady approach that gives Brian a different edge over some others. It’s also what caused his carrots to get mushy.

Certainly, working for celebrity clientele requires effort in a way that fine dining doesn’t. As much as it is to deliver great food, it’s also as important to adhere to the wants of the client. Arguably, fine dining also requires a sense of comfortability for diners (which can include celebrities), but I would argue back in the experience not being as customizable since restaurant service also adheres to getting customers in-and-out the spot to avoid overcrowding. With celebrity clientele being more stationary to a location that's theirs, more care can be taken in making the experiences super-duper personable.

In relation to Brian, that mindset for providing a customized experience beyond the food was really evident throughout his time in the competition. (Might I add, he did state he loves to see people smile in the second episode.) Ultimately though, if bad food is bad food, showmanship can’t entirely make up for it. They are here for the food after all.

Now as for the whole situation with Dave: I saw it as bad judgement based on presumption. Considering that Dave was noticeably vocal against Brian’s suggestions, I could see that turning into this idea in his head that Dave took reigns as leader when he never proposed such thing. Others also chimed in on his suggestions. Dave’s were just the loudest.

In Brian’s defense, Dave’s name was brought up when Tom proposed the question of leadership during prep. Though it could only be heard off-screen, it sounded like it was coming from Lee Anne (which would make her "We’re All in This Together" routine she bantered through that entire episode a bunch of mush...like dem carrots).

Speaking of orange, where the hate for Tiffani is coming from is beyond perplexing. Granted, Tiffani is a polarizing person during season 1, but there being a rift between her and Brian specifically is odd to hear as there wasn’t really banter between them in the competition. In the same episode he revealed his ideals, he answered a question from a viewer regarding competitiveness, and this is what he had to say:

We wanna win even if it's at home. If you're at home, and you just wanna impress your friends, your family...it's about winning. It's not so much like 'I got it! It's the best!' But it's just like 'Hey. Don't you love this?' [...] It's all about how you do it. And what's worth doing is worth doing well. - Brian Hill answering a viewer question about competitiveness during the reunion

I guess the ways of looking at competition between him and Tiffani were so out of sync that he felt the need to bring her back to some sort of realization that, even though it is a competition, it doesn’t have to be sacrificial out of respect for the art of cooking. I guess it was more of a display of her character at that time based on his point of view rather than an exposé of counterarguments on stuff she did to him specifically, and with that I say...so be it.