Post-Top Chef: A Kinder, Gentler John Tesar?

Spoon Bar & Kitchen's John Tesar, aka "The Most Hated Chef in Dallas", was eliminated from Top Chef: Seattle last week for a subpar risotto, and naturally, he's making the media rounds to talk about his reality TV experience.

In a post-elimination interview with Bravo, Tesar says, "I've learned something about myself, it's not about winning. I used to be a really competitive person and this whole process has totally mellowed me out and it's made me find a little more peaceful part of me." (In the same interview, Tesar suggests that fellow contestant/FT33 pastry chef Joshua Valentine is "a passive-aggressive guy", noting that he got along just fine with everyone else on the show, thankyouverymuch.)

[Photo credit: Bravo/tvgasm]

Tesar also spoke to neoconservative mag The Weekly Standard about living in the shadow of former peer/significantly more famous pal Anthony Bourdain and how his newfound Top Chef fame has enabled him to "finally brush an enormous chip off his shoulder—one that he's carried since the publication of Kitchen Confidential." (Tesar, of course, is heavily written about in Bourdain's New York Times best-selling memoir Kitchen Confidential, in which Bourdain assigns him the pseudonym Jimmy Sears.) Some notable tidbits from the piece:

· Tesar "tried out for Top Chef as far back as seasons one, three, and four" before finally making it onto the show in season 10.
· According to Tesar, Bourdain "ratfucked" him out of a job when they worked together in Manhattan during the Kitchen Confidential era.
· Tesar says Bourdain is "very good at vendettas" and feels he "punished [him] by not using [his] real name" in Kitchen Confidential.
· Though they remain friends, Tesar says they speak infrequently; most recently, Tesar texted Bourdain to find out why he wasn't invited to appear on the new ABC show he's co-hosting with Nigella Lawson, Taste.

· A Conversation with Jimmy Sears [Weekly Standard]
· John Tesar: Widely Panned [Bravo]
· More John Tesar coverage on Eater Dallas [-EDFW-]
· More Anthony Bourdain coverage on Eater Dallas [-EDFW-]