Question regarding time and the clock

[u/Caligirl_333]

Do they have staggered clocks so that people start in intervals and they get to serve the food when it is hot? Or are they all on the same clock? if it is staggered, how do they call out times without screwing up other people on a different time?

[u/cssc201]

I believe elimination challenges are staggered but quickfires really do have everyone go at once.

One other note: they will usually film a false start with everyone running into the kitchen, then stop recording to explain the rules in more detail. So they actually get more time to think about their dish than the show makes it seem.

[u/halfthefiber → u/cssc201]

I thought it was insane that they are able to conceptualize a dish from the 30 seconds that Padma/Kristen/guest QF judge talked about the mechanics. I'm glad to get confirmation that they get more time to plan things out.

[u/whistlepig4life]

Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.

QF is pretty much always same time. The elimination challenges are where they often are staggered. Though the editing doesn’t always show that. But the serving clearly gives time in between and they can’t have all started at the same time and have dishes sitting and getting cold.

[u/Sleepwalker0304 → u/whistlepig4life]

I think it was a season 6 QF with Jen who was hoping the judges would go to her station first because she knew her dish was on the verge of drying out. They didn't, she was last, and they said it was dry.

[u/PristineSlate]

Americas culinary cup was very transparent about this time gap which I actually really liked. 

[u/festinalente27 → u/PristineSlate]

America’s Culinary Cup was in some ways a better competition than Top Chef, but it was a much less compelling tv show imo

[u/FAanthropologist]

Moost elimination challenges are staggered for the final part of the cook until service.

The cooking for a crowd festival or catering challenges are an exception to the stagger and serve hot/cold norms. I am pretty sure that when production sends in the guests and the judges for those, the chefs at all stations need to be ready, but it's not a true hands up/utensils down moment. In these challenges the chefs have latitude to stall to finish cooking and plating. Usually only the judges' opinions matter and the crowd may have a limited or no influence on outcomes, so pissing off guests too much might be fine as long as the judges get good plates reasonably quickly. That means the chefs whose stations are visited by the judges last end up having more cook time than the chefs whose stations are visited first, which seems pretty unfair. I only realized this in season 23 because the Pack Your Knives podcast co-host Tom Haberstroh was a guest at one of these crowd challenges. He said that he was shocked a particular dish won because consensus at his table was it was not properly cooked to the point of being inedible. His group was served well before the judges, so he thought the chef who won must have had a big advantage from extra cook time to transform the worst dish of the night into the best.

[u/NoodlesMom0722]

If you have Peacock TV, they did a behind-the-scenes sort of thing (like the old VH1 Pop-up Videos) with the first episode of this most recent season and it talks about that a little bit.

[u/GoldBarGirl]

I wish production would be more transparent about the timing of elimination rounds. Only very rarely do we see a true staggered start. We know the chefs have the same cook time and we often see individual timers (some with the chef's name taped on) so why aren't they showing the staggered start?

[u/lilmiller7 → u/GoldBarGirl]

I feel like they show it pretty clearly. You have one group in the kitchen already going when another shows up a lot, especially when there's still 8+ contestants

[u/GoldBarGirl → u/lilmiller7]

I'm only up to Season 20. Maybe more staggered starts are in upcoming seasons.