Taste

No bloody potatoes

Top Chef” competitor Stephen Hopcraft made it through the first episode… barely

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Chef Hopcraft: This man won’t bloody your potatoes.
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If you haven't watched the premiere of Top Chef DC, which aired Wednesday on Bravo, we'll try not to spoil it for you. If you have seen the season debut, you're probably wondering what happened to Vegas-based chef'testant Stephen Hopcraft, who overheated just a bit in the opening episode.

"For some reason, I envisioned that there were prep people to help us out," admits the Seablue executive chef. Instead, Hopcraft was greeted by a roof full of co-competitors, a pile of potatoes, a bowl of onions, four chickens, Padma and Tom Colicchio. Hopcraft didn't make it past the taters.

Despite the rough start and an equally tough reception in the first elimination challenge, the chef did make it through the first cut. Weekly went straight to the source to find out what went wrong, how he'd rate his competition and the problem with un-bloody potatoes.

On the mise en place Quickfire — the first challenge of Top Chef DC — you didn't make it past the first peeled potatoes. As executive chef you probably don't peel a lot of potatoes at Seablue.

I don't generally peel potatoes here at Seablue at all. I kind of got the wrong idea behind [the challenge]. I thought they were going for perfectly peeled potatoes. I was looking down at Kenny and other people and they had turned potatoes, which means they were taking a lot of the peel off. I kicked myself afterwards, because they had a show before where they had to peel apples, and I remember watching it. People were cutting themselves and they had bloody apples and they were turned and everything, and Tom was like, "Good!' I just wanted to come up with a perfectly peeled potato with no blood on it.

You've been a fan of Top Chef for a while. How was it to compete yourself?

For some reason I envisioned that there were prep people to help us out. You don't really realize how true to exactly how it is on TV that it is. ... If you need garlic you have to peel it from a whole clove. If you need a carrot you have to peel the carrot. It's no easy feat to come up with something that you think represents yourself, is a good idea and that you can present to someone like Padma or Tom. You want to make sure you have something that's worthy. I didn't realize how difficult it was.

Did you do anything special to get ready for the show?

I'm one of those guys who, if you give me a bunch of homework, I might do it on the last day. I always put things off. I had a couple plans of maybe trying to set myself up with a couple of Quickfires. On the other hand, it was something I've kind of been preparing for my entire life. Just by cooking my entire life I've been under pressure, so I figured I was prepared.

What was your first impression of the other competitors when you met them in DC?

You're sizing people up. The culinary world is a small one, so you're kind of saying, Do I know these people?. ... You want to know who these people work for, what restaurant they're at. After that, I assessed that it was a very talented group of people.

Of that talented group, you ended up in the bottom four in the elimination challenge. What's it like to be judged?

Of the other dishes that I saw there, I didn't think I was on the bottom for that one. They had this whole thing about the fact that I fried the steak, but I potato crusted it. I was going for the whole chicken fried steak thing, and they just didn't pick up on that at all. ... I made a dish that I could do pretty simply and I thought it looked great. I was dumbfounded to be there on the bottom. Of course, they took their time to explain exactly why. How does it feel? It's disappointing, it's embarrassing and it sucks.

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