Top Chef Recap
By Jason Lee
July 1, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The next couple of episodes will go a long way to answering those questions. As we open the third episode, the chefs seem to finally gotten over their starry-eyed, "I'm on Top Chef" amazement and have realized that this is a competition, dammit. Amanda knows how close she was to going home last episode, Kenny is pissed that he hasn't won a challenge yet, Angelo was shocked at how Kenny threw his team under the bus and Arnold can't believe the antagonism emerging after only two Elimination Challenges.
Welcome to Top Chef, bitches.
The cheftestants enter the kitchen and find Johnny Iuzzini (a "god of pastry" according to Tiffany), Gail and Padma. In yet another moment of promotion for the upcoming spin-off, Top Chef: Just Desserts, the two judges from the show will be judging a dessert Quickfire. The cheftestants will have one simple task: cook a great pie.
Kelly and Arnold continue their spat by fighting over their cooking space. Meanwhile, Hot Angelo, who has never cooked a pie before in his life, decides to do a curry yam "pie." I start getting worried; rule #1 on Top Chef is follow the directions of the challenge.
On the other side of the kitchen, Lynne, an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America, works with ease without a recipe (incidentally, is anyone else surprised that a culinary instructor hasn't made more of an impact in these early episodes?). Alex is making a disgusting-sounding tapioca pie with an almond crust. Ed is pairing his banana cream pie with celery.
Eww.
Alex and Ed, indeed, end up on the bottom, along with the Rosie O'Donnell look-alike, Tracy, whose blueberry crumble pie had a crust that was too thin.
On the top, we have Villain of Season 7, Kelly with a beautifully made chocolate ganache pie and Stephen with a strange-but-successful curried apple pie with whiskey. Then, in a very strange move, Johnny ends up announcing that KENNY has won the challenge with a great bananas foster pie. Was he even in the running? I'm confused.
So Kenny has immunity in this Elimination Challenge, which will celebrate another American tradition: the picnic. The cheftestants will be cooking for interns on Capitol Hill at the George Washington Mount Vernon estate. Each person will have their own grill by which to cook their dish.
The cheftestants head to Whole Foods to shop and I can already tell that the gloves are off. Everyone is now hungry to win this thing. It's nice to see them finally amp up the intensity.
Back in the kitchen, Amanda starts fighting with Alex. She had used an oven, labeled it with her name, and then TAKEN HER FOOD OUT. Alex, thinking that the oven wasn't being used, wanted to use it for his dish. But nooooooooo, Amanda had called "mine-sies" and didn't want anyone else to use it. Cause it's hers.
And wouldn't you know it, the minute she starts screaming at Alex, Tom Colicchio walks in. Amanda brushes it off as a "prison rule," that once you use an oven, it's yours for the challenge. Tom says he's never heard of that rule cause he's never been in prison. Amanda quickly confirms that she hasn't either.
The cheftestants make it to Mount Vernon where we're treated to an indulgence in stereotyping. Apparently the gay men and straight women don't know how to fire up a grill; they look to the African-American male chefs for how to do it. I somehow feel like Top Chef has been transported back to the 1960s.
The guest judge here is Jonathan Waxman, who Padma introduces as the Obi-Wan Kenobi of chefs (a joke referencing a nickname given to Waxman by Rick Moonen from Top Chef Masters Season 2).
The judges go around tasting everyone's dishes. I won't bore you with a person-by-person account of what they cooked, except to say that there didn't seem to be any dishes that blew the judges away and there didn't seem to be any out-and-out disasters along the lines of Jacqueline's banana pudding.
Just based on this, seems like Season 7 will be average in terms of talent. Certainly no Season 3, Season 4 or Season 6, that's for sure.
Wait, actually there was one dish that stood out - but not for the judges. After the challenge, Hot Angelo goes over to sample Amanda's BBQ ribs and is blown away. He says that it's the best thing he's eaten in the challenge, and even says that it's better than his own dish. He even encourages his fellow chefs to try it, saying that she "nailed it."
This inspires Tracy to try some of food created by the other cheftestants and she gets worried. There doesn't seem to be any bad food there. She's clearly working amongst some great chefs.
Back to the Stew Room we go until Padma calls out Arnold, Ed, Amanda and Angelo. Based the teams that got called out first in the last episode, no one is sure if these are the top four chefs or the bottom four.
Turns out, they're the top four. Ed gets complimented by Jonathan for using bright and bold flavors, smartly incorporating tuna into his sandwich. Arnold's lamb meatballs were full of flavor and a nice surprise to start off the meal. Jonathan loved Amanda's grilled asparagus and thought her ribs "killed." Tom thought Angelo's Vietnamese lettuce cups were nice with crisp flavors.
And the winner is...ARNOLD. Wow, I was expecting Amanda, but Arnold comes through. He's beaming, totally thrilled to have won a challenge.
He heads back into the Stew Room and gives the sad news that the judges want to see Tim, Stephen, Tracy and Kevin. They head towards Judges Table with the enthusiasm of a parade of prisoners heading in front of a firing squad.
Stephen had done a sea bass wrapped in bacon and Gail found it totally unappealing; the bass was hard to cut and stringy on the inside. Tom hated that the bacon had no char on it, and roundly criticized the couscous for being greasy and flavorless.
Gail didn't care for Tim's vegetables. Tom notes that he had plenty of time to get flavor into his dish but didn't.
Padma calls Kevin's food the "safest Puerto Rican food I've ever had." Kevin retorts by saying that all the Puerto Rican people he knows cook that type of food.
"Are they chefs?" Gail asks.
"No," he admits.
"Exactly," Gail continues. "You ARE. Show us great Puerto Rican food that a a professional chef would make."
Lastly, we have Tracy, who admits that she's not surprised to be there. Jonathan wishes she had crushed the fennel in her Italian-style sausage sliders. Gail's slider was really pink - almost raw. Tom calls the slider insulting to Italians, of which he is one.
"I'm sorry," she says to him. Wow, Tracy really doesn't stand up for herself at al, she just agrees with all the judges' criticisms of her. I feel so bad for the girl.
Tracy walks back into the stew room and asks who will miss her when she's gone. Ouch, she is sure that she's going home.
The judges begin deliberation on who's getting eliminated. Tom says that Stephen made a bad choice, and Jonathan agrees, saying that the fish was inedible and the bacon was raw. Tom says that his couscous was worse.
With Tim, Jonathan points out that his dish was at least edible, and it sounds like he's off the hook.
With Tracy, Jonathan thinks that his 10-year old son could have made a comparable slider, saying that it did not look like a professional chef made that dish.
Finally, with Kevin, he grilled his meat properly. His downfall was the mediocre side dish of beans and rice. They were watered-down versions of Puerto Rican food.
So it sounds like the elimination will either be Tracy or Stephen. With Stephen, we have a good idea that wasn't edible. With Tracy, we have some elementary cooking that makes her look like she never even deserved to be on the show in the first place. Of those two errors, you gotta think Tracy's is worse.
And, indeed, it is. Tracy is going home. When Padma asks her to pack her knives, Tracy looks like she's about to burst into tears. I feel so horrible for her - I had actually begun to root for her since her Quickfire with Hot Angelo.
Tracy says that it's fair that she's going home, saying that she deserves it. She wishes that she had prepared herself better emotionally for the challenge of the show and says she's going home because she had a bad day. It's too bad, because she's a really likable person. But she was never going to be Top Chef.