Top Chef: Texas Recap
By David Mumpower
November 23, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
This week’s episode begins with an odd revelation from Beverly Kim. She has a well folded piece of printer paper that says the following: “Congratulations, Beverly Kim Clark!!!! You have won Top Chef Season 9 and $125,000!!!!!” She has also signed her first name on the document (is she a notary?). This leads to several questions, most of which involve her mental stability and ego. For now, the one that matters most to me is why there are only four exclamation marks after congratulations but five after $125,000? What do you have against symmetry, future Top Chef champion Beverly Kim Clark?
After a few moments of introspection from James Beard nominee Keith, we skip to the mutual admiration society aspect of the early season. Chris states how impressed he is by the level of competition this season. Top Chef has reached a point where it has become a career aspiration for many of the top young chefs in America and the current season represents this fact
We will find out over the next dozen episodes how this cast stacks up against seasons four and six, the greatest ones to date. Thus far, this appears to be a very strong group, though. The season may as well be sponsored by James Beard.
Today’s Quickfire challenge is not for ophiophobiacs, people like Keith who have a fear of snakes. The chefs are presented a popular local ingredient, rattlesnakes, and asked to create a dish featuring it. Padma is afforded the opportunity to deliver this line: “When time is up, I better see some motherbleeping snakes on some motherbleeping plates.” Bravo is cable television! What’s with the bleeps? Anyway Johnny Hernandez, an expert in wild game cuisine, is the special guest judge for today’s challenge. Also, there is a priceless moment of trepidation as all of the chefs are presented boxes that contain their ingredient. None of them is certain whether their box is *ahem* moving. To the frustration of BOP webmaster Tony Kollath, the snakes are in fact dead, which he maintains drops ratings for the episode by 20%.
Much has been made over the years about the importance of winning the first competitions. The elimination challenge is always more important than the Quickfire, but each one represents the initial opportunity for a chef to establish dominance. You do not want to be on the bottom of the first Quickfire challenge as a rule. Then again, most people do not cook snake often, making this less relevant than most. Still, the bad news crew includes Paul, who did not feature the rattlesnake, Richie, whose punch overwhelmed the snake flavor, and Nyesha, who simply overcooked her protein.
The top tier in the first challenge includes future Top Chef champion Beverly, Dakota, and Sarah. But in a tough competition, the secret ingredient is always beer. This is why Dakota wins the first Top Chef: Texas Quickfire challenge and establishes herself as a top flight contender this season.
As is ordinarily the case in the initial Top Chef elimination challenge, the contestants are divided into two teams, Pink and Green. Their first competition is the Quinceanera for Blanca Flores, a San Antonio resident. The players have a half hour to grill the birthday girl on the type of foods she likes. They find out she is not a fan of spicy foods, but she does like Tres Leche cake and this is fortuitous for the Green team as Heather is the rare competitor with pastry experience. She has confidence about her cake making skill.
The Green group is also lucky to have Chuy on the team as he was raised near the Mexican border and has a lot of life experience with such family events and the expected foods presented at them. They rely upon him early and often in this challenge. The rest of Team Green is Beverly, Chris Jones, Edward, Grayson, Paul and Richie. Team Pink is comprised of Nyesha, Sarah, Ty-Lör, Whitney, Keith, Lindsay, Dakota and Chris Crary. Based upon early impressions, Team Pink is the clear favorite while Team Green includes two players who had to earn their way into the competition in the second round. Right now, Grayson and Edward have the most to prove out of all the contestants.
The seminal moment in the episode occurs at the 20 minute mark. The Pink Team has a conference call conversation between members located at two different grocery stores. Lindsay speaks for one group, relaying the information that the cheapest shrimp at her store is $9.99 a pound, a dollar more than at the other location. Her wording is important. “So you probably want to get it there. Just make sure it’s really nice.” Chris and Ty-Lör quickly consent on the other end, at which points Keith interjects with the following: “”The shrimp are gonna be cooked.” When asked for clarification by Chris, Keith repeats himself. “They’re gonna be cooked shrimp.” Chris dismisses this statement with “Whatever. Get it.” He even waves his hand to express the irrelevance of this choice. Long time viewers of Top Chef know exactly where this is going.
When the Pink Team reassembles and compares notes, Sarah and Lindsay assume command of the entire operation. Sarah is concerned that the shrimp need to be fried; the two women walk over to inspect them. At this point, they are crestfallen to realize that the shrimp are frozen, cooked shrimp. Heather immediately interrogates Chris about the course of action that led to this result. He cavalierly throws a fellow team member under the bus. “That was all Keith.” Yes, it was all Keith if we don’t count the fact that there were four chefs standing by the phone when the discussion ensued and that Keith said they would have to purchase cooked shrimp. Twice. The problem is that pre-cooked food is the biggest no-no on Top Chef. While Lindsay decries Keith for “slight sabotage”, he maintains a level of composure that speaks well of him as a human being. As the situation stands right now, Keith appears likely to go home if the team loses.
“Who would buy pre-cooked shrimp in a cooking competition? The point is to COOK the shrimp.” – Sarah, making the point the judges will reiterate later in the episode. Do people never watch Top Chef re-runs before going on the show?
The ten minutes of video that reveals the cooking preparations of each group paints a clear picture that the Green Team is a finely tuned meal making machine while disharmony drives the Pink Team. Even when Keith provides solid observations about the team’s lack of communication, he is shouted down by Sarah. She and Lindsay have formed a heel tag team whose sole purpose is to counteract each and every move Keith makes for the rest of the episode. This is the reality show demonstration of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. When Keith determines to make enchiladas with wheat instead of corn, his “teammates” do nothing to discourage him. With this action, they go from accusing Keith of “slight sabotage” to performing Complete Sabotage.
The Quinceanera is a triumph overall. Most of the food is well received and even the judges sound satisfied overall. There are a couple criticisms, particularly the fact that both teams use store bought tortillas rather than making their own. And neither of the cakes turns out well. The one made by Heather has a comical lean, and although immune Dakota's is pretty, it is also composed of 80% frosting.
Also amusing is the fact that Blanca makes for a great judge. In fact, Kim and I instantly like her better than Hugh “Impossible to Please” Acheson. Even Tom Colicchio compliments her for her palate and dish evaluations. You have a future in this business in a few years, Blanca. Gail Simmons cannot be everywhere, after all.
Before we get to the judging, let’s take this opportunity to evaluate the mental stability of future Top Chef champion Beverly. Earlier in the episode, she made the rare decision to alienate everyone in an entire grocery store when she jumped the line and started shouting at a butcher. Beverly declared herself the most important customer in the store, stating that they had a lot of orders in the offing and that the butcher had to drop everything for her. It was surreal. Terrell Owens found the display self-aggrandizing. At the Quinceanera, Beverly starts to cry as she watches Blanca enjoy the traditional dance with her father. The future Top Chef champion declares that even though she is a daughter, she wants to prove that she can do as much as a son would have. That’s…messed up. Is she simultaneously auditioning to be a Real Housewife?
The ruling at Judges Table is a foregone conclusion. While neither team performed poorly, everyone expects exactly what happens. The Green Team wins while the Pink Team takes time out from their busy schedule of culinary civil war for Ty-Lör (who will be called Ty from this moment forward because the long version is simply too pretentious), Lindsay, Sarah and Keith to make an argument as to why they should remain in the competition. This is not going to be pretty.
As expected, Sarah immediately turns on Keith. When asked who made what, Sarah goes out of her way to mention that Lindsay was to prepare the shrimp cocktail. Unaware of the trap, Tom Colicchio states that he did not see that dish. Sarah quickly recounts the circumstances through which Keith was 100% in the wrong while she, paragon of virtue, did all she could to save the Pink Team from his various atrocities. Sarah may be a nice person, but her behavior in this sequence is beyond the pale.
Keith had anticipated this behavior (anybody would given Sarah’s behavior thus far) and is ready to honestly defend his actions. “I bought the shrimp. I looked at price, I figured about labor, I was just thinking about a lot under pressure.” Colicchio immediately deduces the source of underlying tension here, so he skips to the last page by asking if Keith was shopping by himself. “No, sir, I had a team with me.” Hugh Acheson picks up on Sarah’s vigorous head-nod denying this and states that while he feels for Keith, he would feel the same way had he been in Lindsay and Sarah’s situation.
To Keith’s credit, he does not name the others who were standing beside him when the ill-fated decision was made. Ty, whose dish sounds less popular, may have been sent home if he had. After all, as Keith explicitly stated his thought process during the purchase, Ty’s exact quote into the cellphone was, “Can you hear me now?” In a perfect world, that alone would be enough to vote him off.
Keith is quizzed about his decision to make a flour enchilada. Johnny Hernandez, who has proven himself as an insightful judge, describes the ways that corn would have brought out the flavors of the dish better than flour. For no apparent reason whatsoever, Sarah jumps into the conversation by announcing that as someone raised in Texas, she knows that a flour tortilla is wrong. At this point, Sarah has officially gone too far.
Padma points out that since this was a team challenge, a savvy contestant should have provided this tidbit of knowledge to Keith. Caught with her hand in the cookie jar, Sarah attempts to blame this on Keith as well, stating that he was not interacting with any of the people who had made it clear that they hated him for the Great Shrimp Mistake of 2011. Go figure. Worst of all, it’s not even true. As I mentioned earlier, Keith was encouraging dialogue among his teammates. They just weren’t having it because they were pissed at him.
Keith finally takes the offensive if only for a moment by saying the following. “If she had an opinion about something, then say that. You love driving the bus, hitting people. We had an army of corn tortillas. Even though this is an individual competition, we worked as a team.” He is then asked if he would have switched to corn had it been suggested. He confirms that he wasn’t married to flour and was open to suggestions, which he was.
The judges are left to marvel at the chaos on the Pink Team. Padma marvels that any dishes were delivered at all, given the chemistry issues in the kitchen. She’s not wrong. The fact that the meals served were quite good on the whole speaks to the natural talent of the various cheftestants. In the end, however, someone has to go home and it’s readily apparent that three of the bottom players have locked in on the fourth as the fall guy. The judges have no choice but to assume that the information they have been given is accurate and the fact that Keith was brutally honest when questioned works against him. In the end, even though Ty deserves to go home for his cooking and Sarah deserves to go home for her behavior, Keith is the first official contestant of Top Chef: Texas to be eliminated.
“Flavor wise, Keith did a nice job.” – Tom Colicchio evaluating a dish for which Keith was sent home over 15 competitors. You got hosed, Keith. You got hosed big time.