When I was in graduate school reading Derrida on deconstruction, the last thing I would have expected is to hear the terms used by judges in a cooking competition. As is usually the case when popular culture adopts a theoretical construct, the concept has been simplified to the point of becoming almost unrecognizable. Whereas we were taught that deconstruction reveals oppositions and contradictions at the heart of every text, foodies take the term literally. The chef was expected to take apart the components of a dish and reconfigure them in a new way.
Although the Top Chef contestants were not working with the same theories as we grad students were, deconstruction functions in a similar way. It allowed the contestants to present food in a new way just as it allows graduate student to read a classic a new way and even rewrite it. Moreover, just as there were some grad students who couldn't grasp the concept of deconstruction so were there contestants who couldn't understand how or even why you'd take apart a classic.
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