• Top Chef

    season 12

    enters its home stretch with five shows to decide the duo of finalists.

  • This year again, the chefs and the candidates had to put their emotions and taste experiences into words.

  • 20 Minutes

    has selected and analyzed the recurring expressions of this season.

In

Top Chef

, we cook (a lot), but above all we talk (a lot a lot). By making its culinary competition a sort of reality show of three-star cuisine, M6 has multiplied the tests with tasty rules and especially the loooooong phases and debriefing sentences of said tests. It is therefore necessary to furnish. And when we furnish, the language tics become very visible. We have talked a lot about the “gourmand-crunchy” of

Top Chef's

first seasons

, but recent shows are not left out.

As the game enters its home stretch, with five shows to come to define a duo of finalists, we have compiled a non-exhaustive catalog of the flagship expressions of this edition.

If you have any suggestions to enrich this list, you can do so at the end of the article.

Good tasting.

Twister

Installed for a few seasons already, the dish “twist” is clearly THE dance of the year.

It is about "revisiting" a dish with a more or less unexpected ingredient.

Sometimes the idea is original and daring, sometimes it is to add a spice.

Kind of Sichuan pepper….

The "twist" is also often used to mark the intervention of chefs in the recipe: "What if you put lemon juice to twist your oysters?"

- Great chef idea!

»More seriously, the term is used to point out the touch of originality of the dishes.

The chefs thus insist in an educational way on the elements that can create a surprise.

In a season dedicated to creativity, that's normal.

The shocking sentence: 

"I twisted my mushroom omelet with melted white chocolate!"

"

Laser

The technicality of the candidates or the “execution” of the gestures are at the heart of this season.

But to find another way of saying "watch out for cooking", chefs use the expression "laser" a lot to express the precision of the work.

Here again it is for the chefs to point out the excellence of the work of the candidates who do not necessarily appear on the screen.

Under their stressed airs, the candidates perform gestures with surgical precision, laser therefore ...

The shocking sentence:

“The cooking of your duck breast, it must be laser.

"

Comforting

This year, the candidates talk a lot about their grannies, the cuisine of their childhood and their land.

And to enhance their Proust madeleines, they use the term “comforting” in every way.

Basically, these are flavors that remind them of a dish they love.

Top Chef contestants seem to have a strong incentive to talk about their childhood in front of the camera.

But as they are not in the Marseillais, they are sometimes uncomfortable with this idea and fall a little into clichés.

It's not a big deal and in the end, we are delighted to know that the yellow wine is “comforting” for Matthias.

To each his own madeleine ...

The shocking sentence: 

“I made an asparagus espuma because my grandma loves asparagus and it's comforting.

"

In mouth

This is the useless expression par excellence when it comes to a culinary competition.

After each epithet adjective used to define a dish, chefs and candidates feel obliged to specify that the sensory emotion takes place "in the mouth".

But behind this expression, which seems redundant, there is, again, an educational desire on the part of the chefs, experienced in the televisual exercise.

While viewers must be content with visuals, chefs use this expression to note that these dishes are above all there to provoke taste emotions.

The shocking phrase: 

“Mmmm, it's tasty on the palate.

"

Hot potato

This one is for Pierre.

The nicest (or annoying) candidate this season has decided to go find the chefs in their favorite field: boomer puns and expressions.

Hats off ... We have chosen "hot potato" but the candidate has no taboos when it comes to bringing out an old-fashioned expression from behind the bundles.

The viewers were not mistaken: Pierre is the candidate whose performances are the most commented on social networks.

The shocking sentence: 

"I got eliminated like a big bowl, but since my return I'm hot potato."

"

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