Google's gourmet embarrassed on 'Top Chef'
September 11, 2001, gave many people pause for thought. But how many can say that such a dark day made them want to cook?
That was the interesting claim made by Preeti Mistry, the 33-year-old executive chef with Google's Bon Appetit management company. She made her declaration on the latest episode of Bravo TV's "Top Chef," in which she was a contestant.
Was.
For Mistry was removed by the judges after serving a paltry pasta salad to the brave and hungry airmen and women at Nellis Air Force Base.
You see, the judges, led by the bald, lip-twitching Tom Colicchio (he of New York's Craft restaurant), weren't merely upset that she had prepared something that a bankrupt British public school might offer its pupils during a power outage.
They were distraught that, even when challenged, she thought the dish was good.
When all around her blanched at the blandness, Mistry was unbowed. So for her stubborn myopia, she had to hear the words that lead so many young chefs to tears, recriminations, Xanax and a job at the Outback Steakhouse: "Please pack your knives and go."
Mistry's reactions lay somewhere between blase and Buddhist. But she had already proved that she was incapable of shucking clams. Now here she was shirking criticism.
Regretfully, this was not the finest advertisement for the Google brand. Nor for the Google canteen.
After Woz's demise on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars," the tech world continues its search for a reality TV breakthrough.
It is a troubling situation, one that should surely be discussed at the highest levels.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
What is Google's involvement with a chef? What exactly is the bon apetit company? I'm assuming that most people, myself included, had no idea google was involved with food. This article does nothing to clarify that.
If she was transferred to the Monterey Bay Aquarium restaurant, you wouldn't call her a marine biologist, would you?
Mistry amply demonstrated herself capable of flights of culinary fancy as well as capable skills. However, what brought her down was being *practical*: the people at Nellis liked her dish, and it was appropriate to provide a vegetarian and familiar alternative for that group of customers. If she was working in my corporate cafeteria, I'd be delighted: it's rare to find foodservice that balances culinary excellence with crowd-pleasing diversity.
If there's one thing Mistry could have been dinged for, it was not reading the culture of the judges and the show well enough to swallow her common sense and practical judgment in favor of wowing the judges.
I'm hoping that Google finds that Mistry made the kind of choices that they want with their foodservice, rather than a few curls of frisee surrounding a nearly invisible cube of kobe beef frozen in liquid nitrogen and then seared with a blowtorch, or some such impractical (but occasionally fun) froofroo.
Great Article! Entertaining, funny, and seemingly provoking reaction from Google PR people as evidenced by the string of comments (all around the same time makes it a bit apparent perhaps). Who knew that the Gmen monitor these things so closely!
And like the chef with bland pasta, they too seem incapable of accepting criticism, nay, satirical commentary.
Must be a nice life at the googleplex. Apparently they put secret ingredients in the food so that even the blandest of pasta tastes of ambrosia, and everyone's poo smells like sweet cinnamon rolls.
Second, the ingredients were so disparate because that's what that military kitchen had on hand! Nobody was cooking with select ingredients; it was all frozen, bagged, canned crap.
Pasta salad was the safe and bland dish to make for such a meal, but if you've ever been to mass meal or potluck, someone invariably brings a safe and boring dish to share.
He should read this:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090614_the_american_empire_is_bankrupt/
And this:
Lack of funding haunts (America´s) public school system
http://media.www.jhunewsletter.com/media/storage/paper932/news/2006/09/21/Features/Lack-Of.Funding.Haunts.The.Public.School.System-2304294.shtml
And this
http://www.educationuk.org/pls/hot_bc/page_pls_user_article?d=scholarship
- by fdunn3 September 9, 2009 12:50 PM PDT
- All that matters is whether the folks at Google are satisfied with her cooking.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(30 Comments)They hired her, and they eat her food. I would think by now that something like this would be like water off a ducks back. It should not mean anything to her professional career that someone other than her present employers did not like her cooking.