I watch a lot of (bad) reality TV. But with the onslaught of this type of programming, even I have to be selective. So if it’s travel, music, fashion, cooking, or real estate related, it’s recorded so that I can speed-watch it all in one blurred weekend while I’m looking (as opposed to reading) at magazines or tidying up the house or catching up on emails and a million other things. Background noise, I call it. But surely a lot of this stuff must be seeping into my subconscious because these days we make it a point to visit restaurants run by Top Chef or Iron Chef contestants, and as elementary as I am in the kitchen, I love to score restaurants based on taste, plating, and originality. And that just so wasn’t me at all before reality TV came into my life!

Anyway, in today’s ODJ I actually manage to get an action shot on a recent visit to the Technique restaurant run by Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena:

The place is tiny yet lofty and booked solid. We were just lucky to have scored a reservation. We had to share a table with strangers but I was happy to be facing a window to people watch:

Shall we get to the fashion bit first? Let’s start with the runway shots (photos courtesy of Style.com):

ODJ 247: Chanel 07C cotton tweed jumpsuit, Leo flap, belt, and YSL suede/patent slingbacks. Black Tahitian pearls.

And now on to the food:

Then the good stuff:

There’s no reality show based on this cooking school yet, but let’s get down to business, shall we?
Taste: B-
Plating: B
Originality: B-

Let’s just say the concept wasn’t as well executed as it could have been. Maybe we got the first year students cooking our meals this night. But I’ll give them an A+ for friendliness!