Top Chef Las Vegas Recap
By Jason Lee
October 22, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Meanwhile in the house, Laurine is ready to wipe the slate clean after almost standing on the brink of elimination last week, the men are sad that Ash is gone, and the Voltaggio brothers are arguing almost all the time.
Fun.
We head into the kitchen for our Quickfire and we see Padma standing with Rick Moonen, a seafood chef famous for his commitment to sustainable food as well as a frequent Top Chef judge. The chefs will be partaking in the first ever Tag Team Cook-Off challenge, which will test their ability to work as a synergistic team.
Each chef draws a knife, with almost every knife completely devoid of any writing or imagery. Jennifer and Michael are the lucky ones. Jennifer draws a knife that says "First Choice" and Michael gets "Second Choice." They are each team captains and they get to pick their team members in that order.
I have no doubt that Jennifer will pick Kevin and indeed she does. Michael picks his brother, Bryan. Jen picks Pompous Mike and Michael picks Eli. We have our two women left: Robin and Laurine. Knowing how little respect anyone has for Robin, plus Jennifer's close relationship with Laurine, it's not surprising that she chooses Laurine for her fourth spot and the Voltaggio brothers are stuck with Robin.
Robin candidly admits that all the chefs think that she is the weakest one left. She doesn't mind. She wants to show them all that she deserves to be there.
Good luck, Robin.
Each team will have 40 minutes total to cook their dish. The catch is that each individual chef only has 10 minutes to cook – during that time, their teammates must wear blindfolds so as to not see what they are doing. Oh yeah, and they are NOT allowed to talk about their dish. And this is a high stakes Quickfire with the winning team getting to split $10,000.
This is crazy awesome.
The chefs get 30 seconds to decide on the order. On the Blue team, Jennifer is chosen to go first because she's the fastest and Kevin goes last because he's best at plating. On the Red team, Eli will start out, with the Voltaggio brothers going third and fourth.
The clock starts and the chefs race to the fridge to see what they have to work with. Jennifer immediately decides to do an olive oil poached cod with shrimp and mushrooms in the sauce. She's super detailed. Eli, on the other hand, preps a whole bunch of raw ingredients and leaves it for the rest of his team to figure out what to do.
Next up, Laurine follows Jennifer and has no idea at first what Jennifer was trying to make. She even goes so far as to remove the bay leaf from the oil that Jen had prepared for the poaching of the cod. But eventually, she gets it, puts the bay leaf back in and turns the heat up on the sauce that Jen had been reducing. Meanwhile, Robin is impressed with the amount of prep that Eli has done, and starts making a Caesar Salad-style vinaigrette to go along with all the veggies.
At this point, I realize that Jennifer has smartly chosen a very obvious path for her team's dish, using recognizable preparations to lead them to complete the dish she started. Eli and Robin, however, are not making any decisions, but rather are prepping ingredients so that someone else can decide.
Pompous Mike follows Laurine and continues Jennifer's work. Bryan is flummoxed by the range of prep stuff on his station and just starts to push everything into a more Asian direction.
Finally, Kevin follows Pompous Mike and decides to scrap Jennifer's idea to poach the fish in olive oil, choosing instead to butter roast it instead. Michael likes the foundation of food that he's been given, sticks some beef in an oven and whips some yuzu.
I love this challenge. I hope they use it on every subsequent season. It's so fun to watch everyone's mind try and unravel the work that's been done. It's like a big game of detective.
Rick tastes both dishes and I must say, each team has put out some really fantastic looking food (though Michael really did a great job in pulling his team's dish together). He says that the Red Team had the meat slightly rare but that the components enhanced the meat. Meanwhile the Blue Team had a nice finish with a beautiful stock. In the end he chooses the Blue Team. Laurine is excited to be in the top and Michael is not happy he lost (attributing it to the fact that he didn't have control over the final product).
Of course, with eight cheftestants left, the Elimination Challenge for this week will be RESTAURANT WARS, the one that everyone looks forward to. Rick will be providing his Las Vegas restaurant for them to use, meaning that the chefs will not be responsible for décor (hallelujah). The server, however, will be responsible for front of house as well as one dish. Rick also asks that they respect the spirit on which he founded his restaurant, utilizing sustainable ingredients and techniques when possible.
Finally, the Blue Team is given a choice: they can either keep the $10,000 that they won, or they can gamble it on their Elimination Challenge performance. If they win, they EACH get $10,000. I'm floored. Given the talent level on their team, I fully expect them to go for it and they do. They're going to make this is a high-stakes Elimination Challenge.
Bryan, Michael, Eli and Robin are taking the R and E from Robin and Eli's first names, and pairing it with the "Volt" in the Voltaggio brothers' last names to form the name of their restaurant: Revolt. Robin points out that it's linguistically close to the word "revolting" but no one seems to care. Meanwhile, Jennifer, Kevin, Pompous Mike and Laurine have named their restaurant Mission as an ode to mission architecture and simplicity.
Needless to say, we have the two worst names in the history of Top Chef restaurant wars, topping the awful name "Quatre" that Dale and his team used in Season 3.
The cheftestants shop for ingredients (in which Robin has a mini-meltdown when she feels that Laurine "stole" the idea of buying sparkling water from her) and then get to work in the kitchen. Not too much of note is happening. Michael is totally tinkering with Robin's dessert, Jennifer is totally behind in her preparation, Laurine is taking too long to train her servers (she's working as front of house) and Eli (also working front of house) looks ridiculously fat in his suit.
The judges head to Revolt first. Most of the drama is staying in the kitchen so far, where Michael has criticized Bryan's cooking and tampered with Robin's dish without her consent. On one hand, I understand that he's just trying to put his team in the best position to win, but on the other hand, he hasn't been designated Executive Chef. Without actually establishing his leadership, he's just a contestant messing with another contestant's dish against their wishes.
Unfortunately (since I'm rooting for Mission to win), the food is absolutely excellent at Revolt. Rick loves Michael's chicken and calamari pasta. Their cod dish is melt-in-the-mouth delicious. Robin's pear pithivier dessert is the best thing she's done on the show according to Toby and Bryan's chocolate ganache is silky and wonderful.
The judges pack up to leave and I start to seriously worry about whether or not Mission can pull out a win.
And as we get a glimpse into how things are going at Mission, I have even more reason to worry. Jennifer is ridiculously behind on her dishes and Laurine is not communicating well with the kitchen (leading to some serious lag time between dishes). The first two dishes are both done by Pompous Mike and his fish dish, the arctic char, lacks salt. It lacks so much salt that Padma has to ask Laurine to fetch her some.
Not a good start.
Jennifer's two fish dishes come out next, but because of the stress of having to prepare to uber-complicated fish dishes at the same time, she's incredibly behind. The judges wait an inordinately long time before getting both dishes and they aren't great. Jen's halibut dish is okay but the consumme sauce is not clear. As for her trout dish, her butter sauce was broken when it arrived and no one liked it.
"Her mentor [Eric Ripert] would not have been proud of his protégé," Tom remarks.
Finally, we have two dishes from Kevin – one of which was helped by Laurine. We have a pork belly, which wasn't bad, but the leg of lamb with carrot jam (cooked by Kevin but concept by Laurine) was ridiculously undercooked. Toby calls it "jello lamb."
Okay, so we all know that there's no contest between the two restaurants. The chefs from Mission hang their head in defeat in the Stew Room, lamenting everything that went wrong. "It was probably some of the worst cooking in our careers," notes Kevin. His other three chefs agree.
Indeed, Revolt gets called out first and Tom tells them that not only have they won the competition, but it was the best restaurant in six seasons of Restaurant Wars. Wow. Bryan's mint ice cream dish and short rib dish were delicious, Eli did a good job communicating with the kitchen, Michael's chicken and cod dishes were amazing and Robin's dessert was beautiful.
Tom remarks that Robin's dessert was "homey-er" than the rest of the dishes and wonders if she fought to keep it that way. Michael butts in and says that he helped her put that dish together. EXCUSE ME? Robin, very rightfully, says that there's a fine line between being helped and being dominated. I'm glad she spoke up. Michael was largely responsible for getting his team the win but there was no reason to try and steal any shred of glory from Robin.
What a douchewad.
Michael, the douchewad, ends up winning and as a surprise, also gets the $10,000 chip that team Mission gambled away. Michael offers to split it with his teammates, which was nice - except that in the Stew Room, Bryan turns down his part of the money. "Michael is a control freak in the kitchen and I don't want to reward that," he says to the camera.
Meanwhile, Mission realizes just how badly they did. "Does anyone want to cuddle before I go home?" asks Jenifer, disconsolately. I feel bad for her, but I think she's right. Her fish dishes had serious issues and I think that she's going home.
When they come in front of the judges, Tom asks them if, in hindsight, it was a good idea to serve two cold dishes from Mike, two fish dishes from Jen and two savory dishes from Kevin. He also questions their reasoning behind not serving a dessert. He also wonders why Laurine did front of house.
All in all, it's a pretty bloody session. Pompous Mike's dishes never came together in the perfect bite. Jen's halibut was perfect but her trout was a disaster due to the broken sauce ("I don't know what to say. I feel broken," she says in response), Kevin severely undercooked his lamb and didn't rest it, and Laurine didn't take enough initiative as front of the house. Tom ends his tirade by chiding them for not naming a leader, saying that they failed by trying to lead by committee.
I really think Jennifer is going home, though I am hoping that Laurine might be the sacrificial lamb to keep Jennifer here. After all, it would be a travesty of epic proportions if Robin were to outlast Jennifer in this competition.
Padma says that team Mission knew that they didn't deliver a good meal and Tom chalks that up to overconfidence. Toby says that Pompous Mike didn't have anything seriously wrong in his two dishes and Rick nails Jennifer's trout dish, saying that it had no flavor or personality. Rick also says that his lamb was so rare that he couldn't swallow the meat that Kevin had cooked. Tom also criticizes Laurine for poorly organizing the dining room and "hiding," when the going got tough, leaving service to her wait staff.
The cheftestants come back out and Jennifer looks utterly devastated. She keeps her eyes on the floor and she awaits Padma's invitation to pack her knives and go. I feel so bad for her.
Tom says that viewers always look forward to Restaurant Wars but losing this challenge is tough. He says that Jennifer wasn't able to perform to her ability, with several errors in her dishes. Kevin had a poor lamb dish but a pretty good pork dish. Laurine completely botched service and organization of the dining room. Pompous Mike didn't have anything seriously bad, but also didn't have anything seriously good.
At this point, I hide my face in my boyfriend's shoulder. I know Jennifer is going home and I can't stand it. I hear Padma start her elimination.
"Laurine, please pack your kni–"
WHAT?!?!?"
I had to stop and rewind the scene. Yes, Laurine actually got sent home. Apparently, the judges liked Jennifer's halibut dish enough to only fault her for the trout dish – one big error. Laurine, on the other hand, messed up as front of house and had a bad lamb dish – two errors. And thus, Jennifer was saved.
Laurine looks as shocked as I feel and Jennifer is starting to tear up. She says in her ending confessional that the competition was harder than she had expected. She said that most people think of her as a rock but this time her rock was rocked. Back in the stew room, she gives Jennifer a big hug and says, "You deserve to be here."
I have never loved Laurine as much as I did in that moment.
Laurine takes the time to say goodbye to all of the chefs, remarking to the viewers that she feels a little bit eager to get back to her own life. Jennifer gives her one last, long hug before Laurine walks out the door. It's a heartbreaking end to a really tumultuous episode.
LEADERS AFTER 9 EPISODES:
Kevin: Five times in the top of the Elimination Challenge, three Elimination Challenge wins, two Quickfire Wins
Bryan: Six times in the top of the Elimination Challenge, three Elimination Challenge wins
Michael: Seven times in the top of the Elimination Challenge, two Elimination Challenge wins, one Quickfire Win
Jennifer: Five times in the top of the Elimination Challenge, one Elimination Challenge win, two Quickfire Wins