This is mostly really good news. Bravo is coming out with a new Top Chef show, which will "pit internationally famous chefs against each other." Awesome! Except maybe for the host, Kelly Choi. We have problems with her, some of which may or may not be fair.
Kelly Choi is certainly credentialed - she's hosted Eat Out NY on New York's city-government run NYC TV (an episode rundown is here) and supposedly has a book due out in the spring called The 20 Most Delicious Dishes In New York, although a search for this book on Amazon finds nada. What is clear is that the 20 dishes are down from the 25 Choi intended to do a year ago.
Before we state our problems with Kelly Choi, let us state the somewhat obvious. Yes, she's beautiful. Not Padma beautiful, but in the ballpark. Okay, now the issues, gleaned from watching Eat Out NY a lot:
1) She has a bunch of weird tics that she should have gotten rid of before she entered broadcasting - she repeats what people say, often says "uhhhh" when she can't think of anything. Stuff like that. In the clip we'll show you, after someone says an oyster is from British Columbia, she exclaims "B.C.!" for no good reason. Then when he says another oyster is from Prince Edward Island, she says "P.E.I.s!" Not sure what that adds, Kelly.
2) She often wears a long black vinyl coat that looks vaguely S&M -ish, but she totally wouldn't do any S&M, because she seems kind of wholesome, and it'd clearly gross her out. False advertising!
3) Her taste in restaurants, and food for that matter, often leans toward the "pretty" or fancy rather than the gritty or "authentic." This might have something to do with being a beautiful woman, so we'll cut her some slack.
4) She's fake bubbly. You know people like that? We just made her sound worse than she is, like she's some horribly insincere person. She's not. She actually seems really nice, and earnest. But she's the type of person who would exclaim "That's great!" when she means "that's good." You know? The sort of person who sometimes smiles because she's got perfect teeth. Again, that sounded too mean. Honestly, if we met Kelly Choi in a bar we'd probably just spontaneously drool.
Look, why don't you watch this clip from Eat Out NY and judge for yourself? On it, she coins the word "gi-gantuomous"!
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