Last night’s elimination on Top Chef 4 definitely caught me by surprise. Not only had Jennifer Biesty seemed to demonstrate solid skills so far in this season, the change in her edit after her partner’s Zoi Antonitsas’s elimination seemed like it was a building to a bigger story than her mid-season ouster.
Unfortunately, the Orange Turned-On Asparagus she created with partner Stephanie Izard turned out to be her undoing. Jen took some time to speak with us at BuddyTV about her elimination and what she has planned for the future. Read on for the highlights and the full mp3 of the interview.
Here are some highlights of the interview.
Once again on this season of Top Chef, I was felt a little confused by the editing of the elimination discussion, so I asked her to clarify for us what the judges really had said about their decision, but it appears it didn’t really make a lot more sense to those in the room either. While Jen still seems to be a pretty positive person, she is also still very clearly frustrated at her elimination, and wishes she could have continued on in the competition.
She says that she and partner Zoi were reunited not too long after her elimination, so that was at least one bright spot in what was obviously a major bummer of a day.
She says that Antonia Lofaso and Stephanie are two of the women with whom she had good personal rapport and for whom she has a lot of respect for their palates. She thinks that Dale Talde is a great guy with a lot of talent, and that he isn’t quite as jerky as he might be seeming in the show.
I asked Jen if she would be willing to come back and compete in something like last year’s Top Chef holiday show, and she said she would. It was great to see Tre Wilcox – another chef whose departure seemed to come sooner than viewers would have liked – so I think it would also be great if Jen would be included in any future specials like that. While I never necessarily had her pegged for the win, she seemed like a cool person with good talent and it would have been nice to see what she could do with some additional challenges.
She will be leaving her current restaurant in May, and opening a tapas and cocktail restaurant in the Bay area in the summer. Right now, she and her business partner are trying to come to agreement on a name, but fans in the San Francisco area should keep an eye out for a chance to try her Mediterranean fare and catch her shark’s fin hairdo in action in her very own place soon.
– Leslie Seaton, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
(Image courtesy of Bravo)
Staff Columnist, BuddyTV
