Top Chef and I: Ken Lee, Season 1

You have dived into the world of Top Chef contestants. In this blog post, I will be diving into Ken Lee’s participation on the show as one in season 1 of the cooking reality TV series.

Now, why start a series on Top Chef contestants? In case you haven't noticed, this blog is called "How I Pop Culture," so it's based on how I want to showcase things from the realms of pop culture. I've been intrigued in Top Chef ever since I laid my eyes on it, and after numerous watches and re-watches, I wanted to show my appreciation through in-depth profiles of the contestants (or "cheftestants" as they've been humorously called) that have participated. I've seen many other Top Chef related discussions done from fans, but they're usually episodic recaps that happened in real-time or in retrospective form. Straight-up recaps have never been my thing to do, but I do like analyzing people when I'm able to take the time to develop a sense of reasonable judgement off of the whole picture. Thus "Top Chef and I" was born.

Starting off with a basic synopsis of their time on the show through their perspective followed by an analyzation of their time and how it fits within the show's evolution, "Top Chef and I" aims to be entertaining, riveting, and insightful. Before we move forward though, I want to take a few moments and list off what I like to call the "Kitchen Guidelines." These are a set of standards put in place that I will do my best to uphold so that you guys will understand how these will be formatted when visiting them.

• These profile dives will be treated within the context of seasons 1-20. As such, seasons outside the one currently being focused on might be referenced and incorporated into these dives, but I will strive to make these dives accessible to everyone (regardless of if you’ve watched the show or not).

• Given the nature of reality TV, things tend to be edited to inherit new context that is different from their original intent. While I may point out these discrepancies out of fairness, it’s not going to be a goal of mine to point out every single one (especially if the integrity manages to stay hinged afterward). While it is fun to point out how blatant the editors are with making it seem like what is on the screen is what really happened at that time, there’s so many out there that it just gets exhausting to keep track, so some integrity on describing these people might be lost when doing these dives. Though I don’t really blame them entirely for doing so, I will do my best to steer integrity back in when need be.

• It’s important to note that these events took place eons ago, so obviously people have changed and grown as individuals since then. I’m not gonna hold these old edited artifacts against how they act in real life eons later.

Now with that out of the way, let's begin! The first entry into "Top Chef and I" begins with the first contestant to ever be eliminated from the show: Ken Lee.

Profile

Ken Lee

Residence: Los Angeles, CA

Position: Restaurant Chef

Synopsis

Episode 1 (Who Deserves to Be Here)

Ken Lee walks into the competition as a 34-year-old Irish lad with years of Irish culinary training under his belt and a martial arts skillset on a separate belt. Slamming through the apartment in a rather disingenuous manner, he comments that the complex is akeen to that for a housewife at fellow contestant Cynthia Sesito, to which she replies “Fuck You." (Her words, not mine.)

At the quickfire challenge, Ken attempts to make it through the 30-minute requirement of attending to Hubert Keller’s restaurant when 1 minute in, the unthinkable happens. He dips his finger into one of Hubert’s sauces to taste it, disgracing all culinarians around the globe for doing such a heinous activity and bringing shame to everyone within the industry.

At least, that’s what the goof ass sounds in the background suggest. When Hubert gives out a closing remark at the end of the challenge regarding lessons learned from being on the line, Ken makes it known that he didn't learn anything due to his short time in the kitchen, prompting the two to bicker back and forth until judge Tom Colicchio steps in to call out Ken as rude and obnoxious.

Granted they could've been grouped already when they were going to Fleur de Lys, but man it's funny how they ended up in the same van after all that conflict

Dragging everyone else in to be in support of him, contestant Tiffani Faison is the one who vocally agrees with Tom the most. As a defense, Ken claims that he was just “speaking his mind,” and Tom gives him the benefit of the doubt that his vocal mindset is justifiable under the circumstances that his cooking abilities are top-notch. Shortly after they’re dismissed Ken and Tiffani go at it again, this time over Ken's shallowness after he ate food off a rack without inquiring first. Somehow, they end up next to each other in the van taking them back to the loft, and them, plus fellow contestant Lee Anne Wong, talk about their fun experiences that day. Essentially, despite not learning anything, Ken had just as much fun being there for 1 minute as Tiffani and Lee Anne did for 30.

During the elimination challenge, Ken takes it upon himself to butcher a piece of meat he needs at the grocery store because it’s crucial to his concept of creating a signature dish that represents him, so much so that he’s un-phased by an off-screen employee shouting at him to remove himself from the back of the meat counter. Ken, alongside contestants Dave Martin, Candice Kumai, Andrea Beaman, Miguel Morales, and Lisa Parks, are randomly selected by knife pulling to be the first ones to cook where he also unnervingly chants loudly through everyone’s eardrums and chats with Tom over some “intelligent conversation” in the given time frame.

He serves a pan-seared Alaskan halibut to the judges and fellow peers, and his peers, including Tiffani, don’t have anything positive to say about it. Cynthia ends up saying his dish was the worst out of those that were served to her while Lee Anne pegs the imbalance between his attitude and culinary ability as apparent to her and her dining peers.

rip meat he butchered at the counter

When the tables turn and Ken becomes the diner, he praises Tiffani’s dish and said that he would put it in his restaurant...if he had one. On the contrary, Ken points out that Cynthia’s dish was the worst for him.

Despite this Ken is the one in the bottom as the judges found his food to lack a sense of unity, and at judges’ table, he admits that the dish wasn’t up to the perfection he expected. Shortly after, he gets eliminated. As Ken packs his knives, realizing that he won’t grace the title of "Top Chef," he's still content with the way he acts. According to him, as long as he’s happy and healthy (regardless of wealth), that’s all that matters.

Episode 10 (Reunion)

Ken returns back to the show for its reunion episode, and as the finalists wait for their colleagues to arrive, Tiffani predicts the order of the cast arriving will be from most cracked out to least. Not to say that it didn’t work in her favor as he did end up being the first to show up, but the reality was that the cast came out the order they were booted.

Aside from flinging his water bottle periodically and a mention of being interviewed by Howard Stern on his show, which I find hard to believe given the play-by-play of Howard Stern on MarksFriggin does not suggest any sort of interview happened, Ken’s time is defined mainly with the debacle around his oozing finger. The discussion subsequently leads to Lee Anne talking about how his dish in the elimination challenge was not the worst despite going home.

As Ken tries to explain how ridonkulous it was for him to go home over Andrea’s nature-plate with sand that was also in the bottom, Tom creates dialogue that Ken challenges, all leading to the usually pompously dazed and mild-mannered contestant Stephen Asprinio to go off.

Ken and Stephen later go at it some more when the former laughs throughout the latter's sincere apology to Candice over the whole cookie-cutter debacle that went down in a later episode. All’s to say when asked who would win, he supported Tiffani, citing his liking for her dish in the first episode as justification.

Analyzation

Ken's polarizing personality and bad food was troublesome for a cooking competition. Yet seeing how he had 20 years of “restaurant experience” according to the show (the most out of anyone there at the time) and a disdainful mannerism that rubbed fellow peers the wrong way and got host Katie Lee Joel’s heart pumping out of fear, he was anything but troublesome for a TV cooking competition. Well...almost, given how he apparently suffered through night terrors.

He had night terrors where basically he would go crazy and jump off the bed and fall down on the floor and we had to go to the fucking doctor. It was bad. - Dave Martin during season 3's "Watch What Happens Special"

Strangely enough he mentioned he had martial arts training during the competition, and while I’m not sure what kind it was, I would think such mental endurance would influence him to be a calmer person. I guess the Irish culinary training of plate flipping among other things was a stronger influence though. Sure sounded like it.

Even still, the implication in his attitude being a factor in him going home is rather interesting. His food clearly wasn’t good, but if the judging is supposed to be based on what is presented, and sand is presented on a plate whereas an attitude is unable to be plated in the first place, it only makes Lee Anne’s settlement at the reunion hold valuable weight more so (and this is considering that she herself had been vocal about his skills not matching up to his attitude during the competition only for her to recognize that it wasn’t the worst dish that night). Tom also recognized something that night about Ken’s dish in the elimination challenge. It may not have been that argumentative nature that got him a quick reputation, but rather...the opposite.

We..we got a sense. It's funny because...there were some question as to whether or not he was the worst up there, and there were two others that were pretty bad. Um, but I think the way we judged this. He...one he has experience. The other two who were up there: One of them was a student and the other one was a..a healthy food cook who was really...ya'know...these two were really putting their heart and soul into it, and this other guy with 20 years experience just really didn't care. And to me, I'd rather take the person who..who cares and who maybe has less experience and..and then, ya'know, someone who really just doesn't want to be there. So it was..it was a pretty easy decision I think, and we were given a little latitude to make that kind of decision. - Tom Colicchio during a 2006 interview with The Restaurant Guys

So maybe you can plate an attitude. People do say to put themselves on a plate after all. But if we’re deliberately factoring attitude into this, were they really judging solely on the food this round? Either way his ass got grassed, but what if it hadn’t?

Given his years of experience, had Ken made it through that round, he might’ve fared well and dare I say, go from some unknown scallywag to a known success within the culinary world. What’s even more considerable is that Cynthia bowed out of the show on the third episode to take care of her ailing dad (an issue that kept looming in her mind throughout her time on the show) and Andrea, the most recent eliminee before Cynthia bounced, was brought back to fill in the vacant spot where she was able to prove that she doesn’t cook with sand. Had Cynthia bounced earlier, Ken could’ve proved that he can "walk the walk" in cooking.

Alas, this was a time where the show was testing waters in displaying the aspirations one had for the food world, so the opportunities to show their food on display were fairly limited to make way for other aspects. As for the Irish lad with the singular episode arc...what more can I say? He’s just Ken.