Top Chef All Stars Recap
By David Mumpower
February 10, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
1) Richard Blais – Has acquitted himself well despite the fact that all of the judges know who he is and expect more from him than the others
2) Dale Talde – Had his worst performance of the season when he delivered bland food, but he is still one of the three remaining chefs with three combined Quickfire/immunity challenge victories.
3) Carla Hall – Carla is on fire right now, winning two out of the last five elimination challenges and finishing in the top group in two more.
4) Fabio Viviani – We think Fabio is the worst remaining chef in terms of culinary talent, but we have moved him up to the middle of the pack due to his being in the top group in four out of the previous five challenges. Fabio is exceeding our expectations by a goodly amount.
5) Antonia Lofaso – Now that she isn’t stuck in team challenges, Antonia’s individual achievements this season are more readily apparent. She’s had a great All Stars run; it’s just gotten lost in all of the losses.
6) Angelo Sosa – After winning the first two elimination challenges, Angelo was in the top group three out of the next four times. The past two episodes, he’s been toward the bottom. He needs to avoid the same slump he had at the end of last season.
7) Tiffany Derry – Has finished in the top group three out of the last four Elimination Challenges. We have been frustrated by Tiffany’s consistency this season, but she may be peaking at the right moment. She still hasn’t won anything this season, though.
8) Mike Isabella – An Italian chef who fails at the Italian restaurant meal is in trouble.
Tonight’s episode begins at roughly the same point where the last one ended. Antonia is still being taunted by Fabio and Mike. The two Italian men are bitter that the Italian challenge was won by a French dish. Given the way that Antonia has suffered this season through no fault of her own, I am actively aggravated that people continue to spoil her moment. She had to wait eight episodes to win ANYTHING. Let her enjoy it, jerks.
Antonia does offer a clever rejoinder when she asks Mikey how it felt for an Italian to finish on the bottom of an Italian meal challenge. He counters with a query about she felt about winning with a French dish, which is funnier than anything he’s ever said before. Even so, she calls him a sore loser and he readily admits this is the case. This is the third flare-up between the two chefs in recent weeks. I figure they’re about two more arguments away from kissing the night away together. It’s starting to remind me of that movie, No Reservations…but more entertaining than that dreck.
Today’s Quickfire challenge takes a page from Food Network’s Next Iron Chef competition. The contestants are told to take a look around and they’ll see the celebrity judge for this week. After an agonizing amount of time that doesn’t speak well of any of their IQ scores, the chefs deduce that they will be judging one another’s dishes. While Kim and I have never been huge fans of Next Iron Chef, we love that evaluation process and look forward to its inclusion here. The challenge itself is a Fondue test wherein the All Stars are required to use unique ingredients to create a delicious Fondue. This is supposed to hearken back to the 1970s, as the cast seems to consider Fondue parties synonymous with Swinger parties, which is something I’d never heard before. I’m never going to look at a chocolate fountain the same way again.
The Quickfire Fondue judging starts with Richard Blais’s dish. Earlier, Padma had stated that she wanted meals to be better than the bananas and chocolate fondue from the 1970s. So, Richard has chosen to do…bananas and chocolate. He has done it the way that only Richard Blais can, though. Leaning heavily on his vaunted liquid nitrogen skills, Blais creates a Fondue that causes smoke to filter out of the mouth of the person eating, a cool effect that scares the daylights out of Padma. Richard calmly informs her, “Eating should be somewhat dangerous.” He is not going to win.
Padma regretfully informs Tiffany, Fabio and Mike that their Fondue will not make them the life of the Swingers party. She then humorously points out that Dale had Mike on the bottom (so, it’s THAT kind of a Swingers party) and asks him why. Dale cracks up over his being put on the spot like this, but doesn’t say anything nasty at the time, only indicating that the spice and the cheese did not blend well. Then, a clever edit shows Dale’s monologue of “I love Mike, but it was BAD, man. Blech.” Of course, Mike’s monologue is not more polite. “Dale put me at the bottom. Bleeping monkey.”
The top three dishes are Angelo, Dale and Antonia. Angelo’s presence is a true surprise since he tried too many components and had been criticized for it by the others. We can deduce from this that the winner will be either Dale or Antonia and in the end, the selection is Dale for his Pho Fondue, which he calls Phondue. This is noteworthy in that Dale had been tied with Richard with three individual wins each this season. Dale’s victory gives him his fourth victory of Top Chef All Stars, establishing him as the best overall performer thus far. The bad news for Dale is that immunity is no longer given to the Quickfire winner. He does receive a lovely mini-vacation to Napa Valley instead, but he is no safer than anyone else during the elimination challenge.
Rather than reveal the challenge immediately, Padma directs the contestants to NBC Studios. Once they arrive, they are herded to the set of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. All of them are asked to participate in a segment entitled Cellphone Shootout wherein they use a cellphone (natch) to take a picture from a rapidly changing series of images on a monitor. The item they capture in the photograph will be the main ingredient in their elimination challenge meal, which Fallon will judge as part of his birthday dinner celebration. He also reveals that the winner of this event will earn a cooking segment appearance on his show in the near future.
The first two people to play are Fabio and Antonia. He gets the good old fashioned hamburger, which he constantly pronounces as booger throughout the episode. Don’t you just love it when a chef makes his food sound as unsanitary and disgusting as possible? Speaking of disgusting, Antonia’s camera reveals beef tongue, a dish she has never prepared before. The highlight of the proceedings occurs when the always gleeful Carla states that she is hoping for Chicken Pot Pie, a meal she had been debating with Antonia and Tiffany the previous day. Right on cue, the cellphone shows that Carla will be making Chicken Pot Pie. Good things happen to good people. With regards to the other chefs, Angelo is assigned pulled pork, Richard is given Ramen (yikes!), Dale receives Philly Cheese Steak, Tiffany gets Chicken and Dumplings and Mike winds up with sausages and peppers. This should be a fascinating challenge as creative chefs are forced to cook routine dishes for people with unrefined palates.
How great a chef is Richard Blais? He takes time out from his preparations to teach Antonia how to properly prepare beef tongue using a pressure cooker. Apparently, the time frame the chefs have isn’t enough for the four-to-five hour preparation time ordinarily required for the dish. He offers tutelage about how to overcome said time constraints. This causes Antonia to rapturously pant, “Oh, I love Richard Blais.” Mike is humorously shown resenting Blais, ostensibly helping her too much; however, we know the truth. Mike is jealous that someone other than himself is stirring Antonia’s emotions. You could cut the sexual tension with one of those knives Padma makes the chefs pack up when they get eliminated.
Among the attending guests are Jimmy Fallon’s wife, her parents, his parents, the head writer for The Late Show, and a Higgins Boy. This means nothing to you, of course, but I never watch Jimmy Fallon’s show. I had no idea that one third of the Higgins Boys and Gruber comedy troupe is on the show. This pleases me. I love this guy. Here is a classic clip of theirs if you’re interested in seeing why I love them.
The first dishes presented tonight are Antonia’s beef tongue and Fabio’s burger. The latter dish is sampled first with the Higgins Boy quickly stating that it’s a good burger. Tom expresses immediate surprise at this reaction. Gayle follows suit. Given that we know whose opinions matter, this is a bad sign for Fabio. He chose to make a meatloaf-ish burger rather than what people were expecting. He also made the odd decision to put the cheese in a bowl, and something has clearly gone awry in this regard. The cheese is universally disparaged. Meanwhile, Antonia “knocked it out of the park” according to Fallon while his head writer says “she licked the challenge”. So, The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon prioritizes puns. There goes any thought I had of giving it a season pass.
Tiffany’s Chicken and Dumplings and Richard’s Ramen are the next dishes served. Both are met with strong resistance. Richard experiences the same issue I referenced earlier as Fallon laments that the culinary dynamo played it straight here rather than doing something extreme. In the Fever Pitch vernacular Fallon uses, he wanted Blais to swing for the fences rather than try for a bunt single. In this episode, Blais was arbitrarily punished earlier for going to the extreme of dangerous liquid nitrogen dining and is now being arbitrarily punished for demonstrating his skill with basic style and cooking utensils. Had he reversed the two, he may have won both. As it is, this will be a pair of challenges he needs to put behind him quickly. Meanwhile, Tiffany’s dumplings are unsatisfactory to one and all. She delivers a tortilla soup more than anything, and her dumplings don’t have enough dump in them. I would think too much dump would be a larger issue.
Carla is up next and she is still on cloud nine over her ability to cook chicken pot pie. The results reinforce her fortune. Her dish is arguably the best received of the evening. Kim and I had wondered prior to the start of the season whether Carla’s simplicity would prevent her from achieving the prosperity she had during season five. We worried that more would be expected of the All Stars in terms of complexity. This is not proving to be the case. If anything, the simpler her food, the more judges love it. Dale’s Philly Cheese Steak suffers a much different fate. He had used a lot of salt on the roll itself then turned around and salted the meat, creating a vile dish that Fallon describes as “The Salt Monster attacking”. I’m reminded of this exchange from an episode of Futurama when Bender the robot tries to cook:
Amy Wong: Is this salt water?
Bender: It's salt with water in it, if that's what you mean.
Fry: My vision's fading! I think I'm gonna die!
Bender: There was nothing wrong with that food. The salt level was 10% less than a lethal dose.
Dr. Zoidberg: Uh oh. I shouldn't have had seconds.
Angelo’s pulled pork and Mike’s sausage and peppers are the final two dishes. After a few sophomoric pulled pork jokes, everyone confirms that Angelo’s dish is delicious and the Higgins Boy “loves Mike’s sausage”. Beavis and Butthead would laugh so much at the sausage conversation. What is clear is that Angelo will challenge Carla for the win this week while Mike while either be at the top or in the middle. Dale and Fabio are the chefs most likely to go home in what was largely a triumphant meal. Fallon and his loved ones are beside themselves at the overall quality of the meal.
At Judges Table, the top three contestants for the week are revealed to be Carla, Angelo and Antonia. This is great news for Angelo, who had been slumping a bit, as well as Antonia who is getting hot at the right moment in the competition. The winner this week, however, is Carla, who is duplicating her Season 5 performance. She is now tied for second with Richard in overall wins this season with three, one behind Dale. She has won or finished in the top group in five out of the previous six eliminations, meaning she is a legitimate threat to win this competition. An equally happy Antonia also takes this opportunity to unveil the Beef Tongue Song she created the day before. Let’s just say that I’m not expecting it to be performed by the cast of Glee any time soon.
The bottom grouping consists of Dale and Fabio as expected with Tiffany being the other person there. The judges berate her for the dumpling mistake, but their behavior reinforces the fact that she will not be the person going home for the evening. Instead, the decision comes down to a simple choice. Should Dale be punished for a disastrously salty dish that would have turned out okay if not for some forgetful prep work that led to the over-salting or should Fabio be punished for ignoring that his entrée was a hamburger and making meatloaf instead? The fact that Fabio also curdled the cheese appears to be the tiebreaker that settles the discussion as the recently hot chef gets eliminated for not making a hamburger worthy of the average Five Guys.
After finishing in the top group in four out of five challenges, we were reconsidering our evaluation of Fabio as a chef and will continue to do so. He is more than just a ridiculously charismatic personality. He has legitimate skill in the kitchen and proved himself throughout All Stars. We regret to see him go even if we do believe that in terms of pure cooking skill, he is the least talented remaining chef. Being eighth out of this group of eight is far from an indictment. We also realize as the two hug goodbye that a business that features Richard as head chef/creative genius and Fabio as the personality is a big money corporation waiting to happen. Someone needs to bring this to fruition.