Top Chef All Stars Recap
By Jason Lee
January 10, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
1) Richard
2) Angelo
Shotgun: Dale got whomped by Tiffani in their head-to-head, but he still boasts an Elimination challenge win and a QF team win. Meanwhile, I’m still wary about Tiffani given how badly she botched up Wylie’s dish in the WD-40 challenge. Antonia’s been looking good so far, and Carla moves up a few categories with her first Elimination win.
3) Dale
4) Carla
5) Antonia
6) Tiffani
Backseat: Fabio got some greatly needed momentum with his gnocchi last week, though we’ll have to see if this is going to catapult him forward or if he loses steam. Marcel, Casey and Mike have avoided elimination . . . . but that’s pretty much it.
7) Fabio
8) Marcel
9) Casey
10) Mike
Trunk: And then we come to the three chefs that could have easily replaced Spike in the “loser” seat last week. Tiffany’s dish was a mess, Tre’s was the worst of the night and Jamie didn’t serve anything. Will one of these chefs go home this week?
11) Tiffany
12) Tre
13) Jamie
The chefs enter the kitchen and are greeted by Padma. She makes a few obvious statements about how a kitchen will fail, no matter how good it is, if it can’t get the food out on time (to which I respond, “duh”). Thus, this week’s challenge will be all about speed. They’ll have a speed test against one of the nation’s best chefs. He’ll make a dish and set a time that they have to beat.
Mike Isabella knows that it’s gonna be some great chef, but even he’s surprised when Tom Colicchio walks through the door. Yep, the chefs will get to watch the head judge in action.
At this point, the cynical side of my personality kicks in. OF COURSE, he’ll have already planned the dish. OF COURSE, he’ll have practiced it many times. OF COURSE, he’ll know exactly what he’ll need to do and in what order he’ll need to do it. This is clearly supposed to be set up as a “let’s see how Tom would fare on Top Chef!” but it’s totally contrived. Give any of these chefs the same circumstances and they’d be able to turn out a great dish, too.
And yes, Tom is fast and well-prepared, but why wouldn’t he be? He’s practiced this dish. The chefs “ooh” and “aah.” Antonia is impressed by how fast he opens clams. Marcel thinks he’s rad. Padma stoops to pick up a bucket of kitchen utensils that Tom has knocked over.
Carla predicts that this will be a 15 minute QF but the cheftestants don’t even get that; Tom is done in eight minutes and 37 seconds. He’s even nice enough to let the chefs taste the dish afterwards (and of course it tastes good - why wouldn’t it?).
Since this is all about speed, I predict that Angelo and Marcel will be on top. They’re crazy fast (I would have loved to see Hung do this challenge). As for who will struggle? I’m thinking Carla should be worried and that Richard will have a hard time shining with this constraint.
Oh, and there’s pressure. The winner not only gets immunity - they get a brand new TOYOTA PRIUS. Holy cow. Best Top Chef prize EVER.
Tom makes one last note before the chefs start: the judges will consider the difficulty of the dish, so he doesn’t want to see any tuna tartare.
The clock starts and chaos ensues. Everyone is running everywhere, getting ingredients and utensils. I wonder if someone will accidentally run into another chef with a knife. Marcel, in a brilliant move, avoids the fridge and snags Tom’s leftover fish.
By the end of eight minutes, there’s a lot of food, but not a lot that I’d want to eat. On the bottom is Dale (who tried to make his own pad thai noodles but finished with yellow glop on Saran Wrap), Jamie (who served up one clam as her entire dish) and Angelo (who made a raw dish - exactly what Tom said not to do).
As for the winners, Tom liked Mike’s dish (as he managed to develop a lot of flavors), Richard (who brilliantly integrated foie gras into his dish) and Marcel (who somehow managed to make dashi in nine minutes). Tom will give the car to the chef who managed to create the most amount of flavors in the time given - I’m thinking that it’ll be Marcel but I’m wrong (just like I was in my prediction of who would shine/struggle) because Mike Isabella is going home with a brand new Prius.
Incidentally, I know the chefestants are not supposed to reveal how they did on the show until the show airs, but how are Mike’s friends supposed to ignore the fact that he’s been driving a new car for the past couple of weeks? Seems like a spoiler to me.
So the QF was about speed and the Elimination Challenge (EC) will be as well. The chefs will be going to New York City’s Chinatown (“it’s essentially like going to China,” Marcel says, revealing for the umpteenth time on the show how immature he is) to cook dim sum during a lunch rush.
“If you thought making a dish in eight and a half minutes was tough, get ready,” Tom warns them. I wonder if the chefs really understand what they’re getting themselves into.
Meanwhile, Dale of the yellow, goopy noodle paste is excited to have the chance to redeem himself.
The chefs prep the night before (which consists of the chefs sitting in a circle and yelling out the dishes they want to do) and then head to the Chinese market to shop (which consists of them complaining that none of the shopkeepers can speak English). Fabio spots some turtles being sold as ingredients and calls it “totally mean.” Apparently he owns a pet turtle and takes her out on walks.
Sorry to break it to you, Fabio, but I know you’ve cooked fish before and some people enjoy keeping those as pets, too. Though they don’t take them out on walks. Or, at least, if they do, the only fishbowl that the fish is headed to afterwards is the big one in the sky.
The chefs start cooking and immediately things are going badly. Everyone is rushing around the place, complaining about the ovens/stoves, etc. Jamie is not happy about the flavor and texture of her dumplings. Casey finds out that she has to cut all of toenails off of each of her chicken feet. The kitchen is too hot for Tre’s orange dessert.
Really, the whole sequence is like a crazy, overlapping-dialogue scene from a Robert movie - an Altman movie in which all the characters are self-pitying complainers, at least.
Mike Isabella, a.k.a. the man with immunity, will be expediting service. Carla and Casey will be serving food, which means that Carla has to finish all her spring rolls ahead of time and Antonia must cook Casey’s chicken feet.
Lunchtime has arrived, the dining room is full, lots of Chinese people are very angry - but somehow the chefs find the time to serve the judges some food. On tap as our guest judge is Susur Lee, the runner-up from Top Chef Masters Season 2. He’s an excellent Chinese chef and I’m eager to hear what he has to say.
The judges try a shrimp and pork spring roll by Angelo and Susur calls it perfectly cooked. Fabio has a soy, honey-glazed spicy pork rib and Susur loves the sweetness. Richard cooked a spring roll, too, but Gail notes the dish has an unpleasant alcohol-taste because not all of it burned off during cooking. Susur likes the vinaigrette on Tiffani’s cabbage sesame salad but all Gail got was sesame. Carla’s spring roll looked beautiful but all Gail could taste was rice noodles.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Richard is frustrated because everyone is being too intricate about their plating - no one is getting any food in the dining room.
The judges (and only the judges, it seems) gets the next round of dishes. Dale made some sweet rice with Chinese bacon in a banana leaf and tom likes the flavors a lot. Jamie and Antonia collaborated on some Chinese longbeans but they’re uber-greasy and overcooked. Tiffany’s spicy pork bun with veggies is totally authentic and is a hit with all. Tre’s orange ginger custard dessert is all watery and runny. Blech.
While the judges are getting fed, carts with food on them are being ransacked by patrons as they go by. People reach in and grab whatever they can, retreating to their table to eat defensively. I’m alternatively reminded of cats fighting over garbage and shoppers on Black Friday.
The judges are embarrassed. Tom goes into the kitchen to yell at the chefs a little bit (“Who’s running the kitchen, here?!?! People are walking out up there!!!”) but the chefs don’t seem to respond with any greater urgency; the dishes are still going out slowly. Casey spies one of her chicken feet dishes which had been cooked by Antonia - she’s aghast at how bad it looks, so she goes down to cook a few of her own.
A few minutes later, the judges are presented with her dish consisting of chicken’s feet on a scallion pancake - not even the starving patrons seem interested in eating it. The judges love Antonia’s shrimp toast, but Susur finds the soy flavor in Mike’s pork and prawn dumplings too strong. Jamie serves up scallop dumplings (yes, she’s cooking scallops AGAIN . . . viewers were treated to a 60 second montage of Jamie’s previous scallop dishes earlier in the episode) and given that she didn’t even like the dish, it’s no wonder that the judges don’t like it either.
By the end of the lunch service, the kitchen finally finds its groove and the food starts flowing. But it’s too late - the meal has been a disaster by all accounts. Dale says that he would be surprised if there was even a winner in this challenge. Jamie thinks that they’re all gonna get yelled at. Tiffani says that there’s nothing more humiliating for a chef than when a roomful of people are hungry after your service. Richard found everything chaotic. Mike says that the meal was worse than his Restaurant Wars episode.
Back in the Stew Room, Padma calls out Casey, Antonia, Carla, Jamie and Tre. I know the producers are going for a “surprise” here, but it’s obvious that the losers are going out first.
Yup, they’re the bottom five. Jamie isn’t surprised that her dumplings got her in the bottom, and Susur points out that she cooked her dumpling wrappers incorrectly. Plus, she cooked the longbeans in her collaboration with Antonia, and they came out oily and overcooked.
As for Antonia’s solo dish, the shrimp toast, that was great.
Casey wanted to do something different, but her chicken feet were not cooked nearly long enough. Susur couldn’t have eaten one, even if he’d been sitting in front of the TV for hours. Tom describes her pancake as “lead.” Casey does mention that Antonia cooked her dish while she had to be upstairs serving, and Antonia (who is getting blamed for the longbean dish and the chicken feet dish) starts to cry. “It’s just so much,” she says.
Meanwhile, Tre’s dish did not stand up to the heat, with Tom calling it “too liquidy.” Gail says that Carla got too caught up in the look of her dish, which left the rice noodles bland. Susur agrees, saying that she cooked with her eyes and not her stomach. Carla seems really hurt by that (accurate) comment.
Padma asks the losers to send back the winners: Tiffany, Angelo, Dale and Fabio. Wow, these four are really picking up some momentum (except for Tiffany, who was on the verge of elimination last week).
Susur loved Fabio’s imagination with regard to Chinese cooking, Gail loved the brightness of Tiffany’s pork bun, Tom loved Dale’s sticky rice, and Gail loved the authenticity of Angelo’s spring roll. I think that either Dale or Tiffany will win - and Dale wins. Wow, good for him.
For those keeping track, only Dale and Angelo have won two Elimination Challenges so far this season.
It’s time for the judges to figure out who’s going home. Jamie had bad dumplings and cooked some bad longbeans. Antonia had some nice toast, so she’s safe. Tre’s dish was a “nightmare,” and Tom compares it to hospital food. Casey’s dish was terrible (Tom), not good at all (Padma), and a disaster (Susur). Carla’s dish was too bland and “not worth the calories,” says Tom.
I thought it was pretty obvious that Casey was gonna be the one going home - but my boyfriend thinks that Jamie will get her long overdue “pack your knives” direction.
Nope. It’s Casey. Poor Casey. As a chef, it must feel horrible for going home because A) you were in the front of the house and not in the kitchen and B) another chef cooked the majority of your dishes. All things considered, this feels like a pretty unfair decision given that Jamie finally cooks SOMETHING and turns out two bad dishes.
Casey admits that she had expected to hear Jamie’s name, and that so did everyone else. Even Jamie admits that she bore the brunt of the judge’s ire at Judges Table. But, as Casey notes, it’s her time to go . . . and that’s the way it is.