Top Chef: Texas Recap
Episode 2
By David Mumpower
November 14, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Last week’s debut also created a numbers crunch. Out of the 19 participants who have cooked thus far (well, 18 who have cooked plus the one pinhead who was eliminated for improperly butchering a meat slab), only four are out of the competition. Eleven have earned chef coats while four are currently on the bubble. With ten chefs yet to cook, only five spots remain for 14 potential cheftestants. Today’s episode will feature a lot more heartbreak than happiness.
We begin today’s episode with a jittery conversation between Grayson and Molly, half of the Purgatory quartet along with Edward and Janine. Out of the group, Molly is the only one who delivered the dish she wanted yet was found wanting. All of the others had snafus that could have easily led to their elimination. Our suspicion is that this trio has underachieved and will be strong contenders for the final spot(s), but that is only a guess given the amount of face time Grayson and Edward have received thus far.
The final ten contestants in Group C arrive at the Top Chef kitchen. A couple of them are from Texas, which means they didn’t have as far to travel. We will see if either of them has a home field advantage. Top Chef’s newest judge, Hugh Acheson, also makes his first appearance here. Those of you who watched Top Chef Masters know him as the dude who was voted off twice in one season. He is probably a nice guy as well as a supremely talented chef, but his recent performance makes him a strange choice for a judge. Wasn’t anyone who, you know, did well on one of the first three seasons available instead?
The heat for Group C is unfair. There is no sugarcoating this. The first two groups competed against one another in a manner where no one had an unfair advantage. This is not the case with the final ten participants. After a brief scramble to select the main ingredient for the dishes, the cheftestants are informed that a surprise in the offing. A giggling redhead named Ashley is asked if she likes the ingredient she had chosen, and the viewer already knows that she is conflicted about it since she had lost a game of Paper, Rock, Scissors for a different one. She happily (?) quips that she does as long as she has enough time to cook it.
Sure enough, the catch with this heat is that some of the chefs have the full hour to compete while others have only 40 minutes and an unlucky few have only 20 minutes. Top Chef drives us nuts when it tries to out-twist itself. Let great chefs prove they are great chefs. We don’t want to know who can make the best dish when they have chosen the wrong ingredient, then lost the time limit lottery. At the very least, tell them in advance that some of them will have only 20 minutes to prepare a dish so that they can plan for it. The first 19 players had no artificial restraints with their cooking. Why are the final 10 arbitrarily punished? It’s nonsense.
The 20 Minutes Club consists of Paul Qui, Kim Calichio (it’s spelled differently than Tom, but we looked it up just to make sure) and Andrew Curren. We suspect that all of them will be given more of an opportunity to make the bubble if their cooking is a bit suspect given that they face the worst handicap of the 29 contestants. The first of the trio on the chopping block, Paul Qui, pleasantly surprises the judges with “the best dish of the group”. He is quickly given the 12th chef coat, leaving the other two to pace nervously, realizing their situation is dire.
Kim (no relation to Tom) does not have a lot of time to worry. She is eliminated before she can take a deep breath. Her lamb is greasy and overcooked with the judges quickly reaching the consensus she is out of her depth. Maybe if she had spelled her name Colicchio. Andrew is quizzed a bit about his performance. He acknowledges he is nervous because he didn’t feel his dish was a best case scenario result. To his relief, Tom and Padma agree to put him on the bubble as the fifth member of Purgatory. This is probably an instance where he was given the benefit of the doubt due to the time constraint. To a larger point, the fact that only one of the first three chefs earns a coat is good news for the remaining dozen competitors. As we speculated last week, there is a chance that as many as 11 of them could have been competing for a single spot.
One of the 40 Minutes Club is Chaz (think about baseball more, dude), an impossibly charming chef from “Fatty Crab Restaurant”. He states that he has been in love with Padma Lakshmi since he was in seventh grade and even though he is happily married, she must be #1 on his Laminated List. Chaz is personality plus. In addition to mooning over the world’s greatest Hardee’s Burger Eater, he describes his professional accomplishments as “nominated by my mother as one of her two favorite sons." We are ready to name Chaz Top Chef right here and now. Bravo, just give us the authority and we’ll make it happen. Alas, we are not given that power and Chaz, whom we adore, is unable to complete his dish in time. He is eliminated before he can talk Padma into a threesome. As far as we know. Chaz, we are going to miss you, buddy. The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
The three chefs who matter much less to us at the moment are Berenice deAraujo, Laurent Quenioux, and Jonathan Baltazar. Laurent is the non-union French equivalent of Tom Colicchio, so if anything ever happens to him, we can important a replacement from Europe. The judges feel the same way about these competitors as I do. There is a void in the wake of Chaz. Jonathan is eliminated before Tom finishes swallowing. I don’t know what is wrong with the dish, but it makes Hugh Acheson’s unibrow elevate several inches on his face. And that is not a pretty sight.
Laurent fares only slightly better. He has created too complicated a dish and while Tom acknowledges his proficiency as a chef, he still appears likely to be eliminated. At the last moment, Padma chooses to put him on the bubble, making him the sixth chef in Purgatory. Tom is clearly against this idea; we do not like Laurent’s chances to advance. Poor Berenice isn’t shown the same courtesy. Hugh quickly says no and Tom equivocates only slightly. He claims to know where she works and that she is a fine chef, but judging by this dish, she has fallen short as a Top Chef contender. There were seven votes rendered in this heat. Five of them were negative and the other two were along the lines of, “I guess you could maybe do better, so you can have one more chance not to suck.”
The final heat for Group C is the flyweight division. Ashley Villaluz, the afore-mentioned sunny redhead, Lindsay Autry and Beverly Kim compete. The largest of them would be a foot shorter and 135 pounds lighter than the author of this column. Fortunately, it’s not the size of the chef in the fight but the fight in the chef. Lindsay, the tallest of the impossibly petite women, knocks her dish out of the park, becoming the 13th contestant to win a coat. Ashley joins Chaz in the “great personality but didn’t win Top Chef club” as her oxtail dish is not cooked properly. Beverly is quickly sent through with the 14th chef’s coat, leaving two up for grabs for the Purgatory group.
Of course, we are too busy focusing on the idea for a buddy chefs reality series starring Chaz and Ashley. We would season pass the daylights out of that. At a minimum, we hope that Bravo brings some of these chefs back for another chance at some point down the line. The sandbagging that involved giving only 16 out of 29 chefs a place in the competition is reason enough for some of their return. What we are left with is six chefs cooking in an elimination round with only two of them earning coats. Then again, these are better odds than we had expected entering the episode. A 33% chance at being a Top Chef contestant is night and day better than the 9% or 10% we had anticipated.
When the half dozen remaining opportunists return to the kitchen, all of the judges are there. The people in Group B and C see Emeril Lagasse for the first time and freak out anew. The great news is that the final challenge is straightforward. The chefs are allowed to pick their dish using any remaining ingredients and have 45 minutes to complete their meal. Right on cue, one of them complains that this sort of challenge is too open-ended. Everybody’s a critic.
We interrupt the 45 minutes of preparation to absorb this revelation from Janine Falvo. “I’m recently single. We had a wonderful commitment ceremony. About a month later, she told me that she didn’t like my vows and she broke up with me over the phone after nine years. A Post-It note would have been more touching than that. “ Janine Falvo just became the new Chaz, our choice for Top Chef this season. Who in the Blue Hell does that? What a heartless bitch.
Janine Falvo was clearly too good for her ex, but her story does have a happy ending. As we found out in the time between completion of this column and its publication, Janine has now left her previous home in San Francisco behind and is working in Atlanta. In fact, she prepared food for the New Orleans Saints/Atlanta Falcons game. You are doing God’s work now, Janine. Next time we’re at a Falcons game, we’re giving you a hug, whether you want it or mace us for it.
Catching up to the competition, there are six chefs remaining. Three of them (Laurent, Molly and Andrew) had nothing catastrophic go wrong yet their dishes were not good enough to earn a coat. The other three (Janine, Edward and Grayson) all had time management/equipment issues that prevented them from putting their best foot forward in the first round. As such, two of those three are the most likely to advance in the competition in our estimation.
Edward makes his situation more dramatic when he cuts his finger in a savage manner. Remember last season when Jamie Lauren needed a couple of stitches and hid out for the body of a challenge? Edward’s cut pumps up about seven million times as much blood. The producers of the show send in a medical official to inspect and treat the wound, but Edward treats the aid as an inconvenience. He does his best Ronnie Lott impersonation by stating that if he had to cut off the finger to guarantee a spot in the competition, he would do that, just as Lott cut off part of his finger in order to play in the playoffs one season. Desire is not an issue with Edward.
The chefs present their dishes at Judges Table. Edward delivers a delicious looking bowl of duck with BBQ sauce and sweet Asian custard. The Kentucky restaurateur describes his dish as a mix of Asian and Southern cuisine. Molly is worried that she overcooked her dish of jumbo stuffed prawn, mousseline of shrimp, soy glazed watermelon and rice. Janine (whose ex is a total bitch, remember?) presents a seared scallop with baby clams, bacon and corn with a watermelon garnish. Grayson, who is very confident that her dish will earn her a coat, offers polenta with bacon wrapped shrimp and a port wine fig sauce.
Zero camera time Laurent makes scallop two ways, a tartare and seared on a bed of fennel with saffron. Texas native Andrew’s dish is the strangest looking as there is a bowl of mussels with cherry and fregula. Underneath the bowl on the side is a charred corn panna cotta with shrimp. It looks like a biscuit stuck to something unbecoming has been taken out of a garbage can and placed on the plate. In our opinion, Grayson and Edward win the aesthetics battle for this challenge.
The judges ask a few key questions of each contestant. Hugh isn’t impressed with Janine’s ostracized watermelon until she points out that it was also a part of her main dish. Emeril tells her it is a well-executed dish. Suck it, Hugh and Janine’s ex! Tom curtly states that Molly’s shrimp is overcooked and Hugh agrees. She will not be moving on. Emeril also loves Edward’s dish, but Hugh states that it isn’t the way he wants to eat duck. Early in the competition, we are noticing that Emeril and Hugh’s palates clash quite a bit. Tom doesn’t understand Grayson’s dish at first until she explains that she wrapped the shrimp in bacon. At this point, Tom cedes that hers is a good dish.
Andrew does not get the reaction he had wanted as everyone agrees that the bowl of mussels stands alone as a great meal. The afore-mentioned garbage biscuit is the lone sticking point. Laurent’s tartare is a complete bust. He will not be moving on, either. Based upon the initial reactions of the judges, our original theory that Janine, Edward and Grayson are the players to beat is well founded. Only Andrew seems to have any chance at a coat out of the remaining three competitors.
The judges debate a bit further and while our inclination is that Grayson is a mortal lock and Edward is the next most likely to earn a chef’s coat, the praise for Janine’s dish makes us reconsider. To our surprise (and his relief), when the results are revealed, Edward is the first one to earn a coat. Laurent and Molly are quickly eliminated for their inferior dishes, leaving Andrew, Janine and Grayson to compete for the final coat. Moments before Andrew is eliminated, Tom all but confirms that if the upstart chef had created only the bowl of mussels, he would move on in the competition. Unfortunately, the totality of his dish is lacking. In the end, our buddy Janine is the unlucky one as Grayson earns the final Top Chef coat and with that, the field of 16 is set.
While we lament the fates of several of the unlucky 13 players who did not earn their way into this competition, this idea to create a competition for the honor of being a Top Chef player is a good one. We hated it when we first heard it, but the first two episodes created a rare amount of early season reality show tension. Ordinarily, a new season begins with an introduction to the participants and a cursory demonstration of who the early victim is. How many of the first people voted off of Top Chef do you even remember? This season, however, we grew to enjoy characters such as Chaz and felt heartbreak for the ill-treated Janine while earning early respect for Grayson and Edward, both of whom rose to meet their first challenge. We hope that this becomes the default start to every season of Top Chef from this point forward. It makes for great television.