Some of the World’s Greatest Culinary Artists Went to the Getty to Find Inspiration for Dishes on the Latest Episode of ‘Top Chef’

The Getty Center in Los Angeles was on TV last week, serving as
the inspiration for the elimination challenge on Top Chef:
All-Stars LA in an episode appropriately titled “Strokes of Genius.”

Host Padma Lakshmi tasked returning chefs, including Bryan
Voltaggio, Angelo Sosa, and Gregory Gourdet, with “interpreting a
work of art on your plate” and sent them to the Getty in search of
inspiration.

“We had worked with Top Chef Masters
in 2009 at the Getty Villa, so we were comfortable hosting them
again,” Julie Jaskol, the museum’s assistant director of media
relations, told Artnet News in an email.

“Filming was actually quite compressed—about three hours in the
late afternoon. It was a day when the site was open, so some of the
chefs were recognized by fans.”

The Top Chef contestants took a tour of the
museum with paintings curator Anne Woollett and Jeffrey
Weaver, the associate curator of sculpture and decorative art.

The chefs were each assigned one of four different genres, as
selected by the show’s producers: Baroque, Neoclassical, Rococo,
and Renaissance.

“The curators made some suggestions that better fit the Getty
collection, but the producers were pretty clear about the genres
they wanted,” Jaskol said. “The curators focused on works that
illustrated the selected genres and designed a tour that would
cover all the genres in a short time frame.”

Some of the chefs were thrown for a loop.

“I don’t understand any of these different styles of art,”
admitted Brian Malarkey, who opted to create a “halo” of curry
sauce around his filet of halibut in reference to the religious
portraits so common in Renaissance art.

But others were eager to embrace the brief. Stephanie Cmar’s
mortadella tortellini were inspired by the “really beautiful supple
bellies” of the fleshy female figures in Rococo paintings, and
Jennifer Carroll based her seared snapper on Jacques-Louis
David’s Neoclassical masterpiece The Farewell of
Telemachus and Eucharis.

For contestant Melissa King, the episode represented a thrilling
return to the Getty, where she had worked in her very first kitchen
job at age 17.

“This challenge is special to me,” she said, recalling the time
she helped make Julia Child’s birthday cake at the museum. “I
remember piping out the profiteroles and putting them on the
cakes.”

The Getty’s TV appearance comes just two months after the
hilltop museum, known for its collection of pre-20th-century
European art, played a key role on the penultimate episode
of The Good Place.

The post Some of the World’s Greatest Culinary Artists Went
to the Getty to Find Inspiration for Dishes on the Latest Episode
of ‘Top Chef’ appeared first on artnet News.