The Daily News’ Rachel Wharton dared the fates and sat down with Lisa “The Gorgon” Fernandes for an interview in today’s paper — and the results are predictably frightening. Wharton’s questioning starts off with a few softballs about fellow cheftestants Stephanie and Dale (the former is “an amazing person”; the latter is not a friend, but “we get along”). Then she gets to the heart of the matter: why everyone despises her with a white-hot passion. (Of the 40 comments on our Top Chef chat, the vast majority are screeds against her.) The Gorgon shrugs off all blog hostility: “Oh, no, I don’t read the blogs — you couldn’t pay me to read the blogs. I don’t want to know what people who can’t even afford to eat in my restaurant, let alone know how to cook, have to say about me,” she says, feeding the fires of loathing. Lisa’s gift for inflaming the dislike of blog readers is almost preternatural; only she would think to claim that no one who reads blogs can afford to eat at Mai House, a not especially expensive Asian restaurant well within the range of people who use computers. The result was predictable: The outrage on the Daily News comments board is even more vitriolic than on ours (and, in some cases, simply hateful). But then, our readers only experience the Gorgon’s hostility when it’s directed at other chefs.
Lisa Fernandes is last New Yorker standing on Top Chef [NYDN]
Related: ‘Top Chef’ Tease Fills Adam Platt With Rancor
Grub Street’s Complete Coverage of ‘Top Chef’
