Fans of Top Chef don't have to go far to try the show's toques techniques. Just this week two alums—Angelo Sosa and Sam Talbot—have opened up restaurants in town. And while Sosa's Social Eatz is a relatively modest affair serving comfort food takes on Asian standards in midtown, Talbot's Imperial No. 9 in the new Mondrian SoHo is a decidedly more lavish beast. So of course the Times Dining section gives Talbot a lovingly undermining profile today.
The first thing author Julia Chaplin wants you to know is that Sam Talbot, who also sometimes cooks things, is hot. You know this because he wears clothes from labels like Valentino and Rogan (apparently a LOT of clothes by Rogan, actually) but also because he talks nicely to "nonmodel women" and gets listed on "sexy-chef lists." Also? "Whenever his name appears in print, the words 'hot,' 'hottie' or 'hottest' are usually not far behind." Just for good measure Chaplin then describes Talbot in the next sentence as "6-foot-5 and has dark, rugged good looks."
Other things we learn about Talbot? He is prone to "man jewelry," has diabetes, and learned to surf while working at the Surf Lodge in Montauk (go figure). Also, he's had lots of media training: “Chefs are usually the guys in the back, sweaty, covered in food,” Talbot told the Times. “Now they’re on morning talk shows as much as the weather guy is. You aren’t just born with that. You have to go to media training, you have to learn to be engaging, how to speak, and to have mass appeal.”
Luckily he is opening a media-friendly restaurant in a media-friendly hotel in SoHo, so that media-training was not for nothing! But don't think he is just going to be a pretty face in the front of the house. Oh, not at all. First off, Tom Colicchio says he can cook. And Talbot is all over that kitchen, we're told, down to the clothes the 45 members of the kitchen staff wear (more Rogan, naturally). And, if this quote is to be believed, he's going to be obsessing over every last dish: “At the Mondrian, every fish I use, I know the name of the vessel, the captain’s name, the exact time it was caught and the ocean it was caught in.”
