Top Chef: Texas Recap
By David Mumpower
December 26, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The person who stood in the line of fire for Heather was Beverly, a woman I have mocked for her selfishness in the kitchen. Still, Beverly was at worst guilty of jaywalking yet the sentence handed down by Heather is the worst since Jean Valjean…and Valjean is a fictional character. Beverly’s obsessive focus on shrimp in a challenge two weeks ago drew Heather’s ire. At some point between the end of the challenge and Judges Table, Heather decided that she would do everything possible to get the much smaller woman eliminated from the competition. Heather berated Beverly in the waiting area, demonstrating obnoxious and wildly misplaced aggression.
In the most recent episode, the two wound up paired together in a fashion that would ordinarily feel like producer meddling. Given the way Heather has been treated on camera the most recent two episodes, however, she has clearly alienated the entire production staff to the point that they are actively seeking to give her enough rope to hang herself. Even so, the accidental pairing of a bully and her victim led to the most voyeuristic episode in the show’s history.
While Beverly desperately scrambled to do something, anything to dial down Heather’s fury, Heather grew angrier and thereby more loathsome as the episode continued. By the end, other contestants also up for elimination wound up defending Beverly to the judges, another novel situation for Top Chef. Had the Top Chef players been allowed to vote for the person kicked out of the competition the way that they were allowed to determine the bottom six players, Heather would have been a unanimous vote, even from Ty. This was not the case, however, and so two of the coolest chicks ever cast on Top Chef, Dakota and Nyesha, went home while Beverly and Heather remain in the competition.
The question heading into this week’s episode is whether there is a buffer placed between the two women. If not, Top Chef will remain wildly uncomfortable to watch until such a time as Heather is eliminated. Let’s be realistic about the fact that if Beverly is eliminated first, Heather will find someone else to castigate. This is who she is and the pressure of a potentially career making competition is bringing out the worst in her.
“Holy crap, that’s an emotional roller coaster.” – Heather
“I’m gonna be alone in my room over there now.” – Beverly
As expected, tonight’s episode begins with the fallout of last week’s meltdown. Beverly rightfully states that she feels Heather crossed the line at Judges Table. She mentions her belief that the universe has karma in it. If she is right, Heather is not only going to be removed from this competition soon, but is also due for a Final Destination-ish dismemberment. Please be right. Please be right.
Rather than let the chefs go home, Padma enters the kitchen and thereby scares the living daylights out of all the emotionally exhausted competitors. Alas, she is only there to inform them that they are changing locations, heading to Austin. The players are shown on their road trip with Paul taking this opportunity to ask personal questions of Heather about the kind of man she would like. My speculation is a deaf one, at least if she wants a keeper. Heather also ponders to the camera where her life would be if she had started a family at 30. The supposition here is happier, more peaceful and more patient. I know Beverly would be happier if Heather were at home with the kids right now.
Grayson takes over for Lindsay in the flirting with Chris C. portion of the episode. She calls him Malibu due to his obsession with his hair and physique. Given how much everyone on the show is obsessed with his looks, I’m guessing that Chris C. means huge ratings for Bravo. The only way it could be better for them is if he were a better chef.
The destination this week is the Driskill Hotel, where the players will be residing while in Austin. After getting situated, they meet in the kitchen for the episode’s Quickfire Challenge. This one plays upon Top Chef’s immense popularity on Twitter. Fans of the show tweet their suggestions, with Tom and Padma picking the best ones. This premise goes beyond defining terms for the competition. A couple of twists are tweeted in the middle of battle. What starts as a 45 minute bacon challenge evolves into one that requires hash (for a #hashtag challenge) where the contestants must pick a random pantry ingredient and hand it to another chef for their dish.
Obviously, the best laid plans of all participants fall apart during this competition. While Lindsay is breathlessly flattered in the moment when Malibu Chris chooses to exchange gifts with her, his offering of Sriracha in nowhere near as thoughtful as her maple syrup (dirty!). Lindsay, you’re five episodes into your relationship and it’s clear he is a selfish lover as well as a philanderer. GET OUT NOW! (Call me.)
What is clear about the challenge is that a few too many twists have set several players. Grayson not only used little bacon (it was an add-on more than anything) but created a puff pastry that Tom and Padma question. Moto Chris prepares delicious bacon but ruins it by making the dish far too salty; worse yet, he lies about how much bacon he used. And Ed burnt his hash. Ed was also stuck with Sriracha thanks (?) to bromance buddy Ty, meaning that both twists proved fatal to him. If this had remained solely a bacon dish, he had a fighting chance.
Cementing her face turn (for the moment), Beverly earns a spot in the top group for this challenge in spite of the fact that she had to use a pressure cooker, something she had never done before. Heather’s sourpuss expression gives me a glorious opportunity to drink her tears. Sarah is the next chosen for her subtle flavors with Paul’s blackberries, asparagus and clams dish (seriously). Once again, Paul separates himself from the pack by winning another Quickfire, winning another $10,000. Paul is primarily focused on the fact that he wanted to win in Austin, the place where he lives, but what stands out to me is the fact that at the halfway point of the competition, he has already won $30,000. If Paul fails to win this season, the official champion will make less than a hundred thousand more than he has already.
After the Quickfire Challenge, the players are asked to hang out at the bar and wait. Drinks are on Tom Colicchio, which means that another competition is probably in the offing. Anyone stupid enough to get drunk is probably going to wind up voted off tonight. As the chefs hang out and socialize, R&B legend Patti Labelle makes a surprise appearance to serenade them with Lady Marmalade. This leads me to expect a marmalade elimination challenge of some sort. Alas, that’s not the case.
Tonight’s challenge is always one of the best each season. The players are asked to recreate a favorite dish of their youth, thereby paying tribute to their families while demonstrating how they fell in love with cooking. The underlying element is to modernize rather than duplicate their childhood comfort food. Challenges like this are a great way to allow the viewer to understand and more easily identify with the participants. In addition, the greatest triumph in the show’s history, the Top Chef All Stars meal where no food was worthy of elimination, provided a similar theme. There are always high expectations for such challenges but the free form nature of them means that dishes rarely go awry.
Emeril Lagasse, Ms. Labelle and two of her musicians are the judges for the evening. The first two chefs to present dishes are Moto Chris and Heather. The inspiration for Chris is his grandmother, Mommy Two, who made steak and potatoes every Friday night. The dish is a lemon-pepper steak with baked potato and vegetables. Heather’s inspiration is her mom, who was “the queen of one pot meals”. I figured that she would take more inspiration from her father by providing a table full of sacrificed virgins bathed in the blood of the unholy, but instead she creates beef stroganoff with herb spaetzle and roasted wild mushrooms.
By the judges’ reactions, I believe that cannibalistic virgin stroganoff would have been more popular. Patti Labelle wins my eternal love by describing the mystery meat Heather used as “Bigfoot." There is quick consent that Chris’ dish is adequate but not much more. Given the reception to Heather’s dish, however, he may as well have won a James Beard Award. While I cannot stand Heather and have made that abundantly clear in these recaps, even if my favorite chef ever (I love you on The Chew, Carla!) had made this dish, I would accept that she was probably going home. Heather needs for someone else to screw up worse if she is to survive this elimination round.
Paul describes the manner in which his grandmother taught him to cook. This makes me wonder if granny is going to get her taste of the $30,000. Then again, given Paul’s revelation earlier in the season that he used to be a drug dealer, if granny hasn’t gotten a cut by now, she’s out of luck. Paul’s quail adobo and ginger rice with green mango salsa would have worked just as well last week during the game challenge.
Meanwhile, Sarah had mentioned during that same challenge that she makes sausage every day and now she explains why. Her grandmother and grandfather made sausage and cabbage each day; Sarah pays tribute with pork sausage stuffed cabbage and spinach with browned butter. The judges like Paul’s dish but they would make love to Sarah’s dish if the state of Texas were not so restrictive about sex acts.
Beverly’s inspiration is his mother, whom I am begging to take out a hit on Heather. Beverly creates Korean braised short rib with edamame scallion puree and hon shimeji mushrooms. Malibu Chris has revealed that his mother was not much of a cook but his uncle taught him how to create delicious fish dishes. Chris makes a sockeye salmon with confit potato and brown sugar carrot puree. One of these dishes is not like the other. Beverly’s second pressure cooker dish of the episode as well as in her entire life is delicious while Chris has albumin leak out of the salmon, a mistake that will annoy any high level judge.
Lindsay mentions that she has two inspirations, one of whom is Greek and one of whom is southern. Because of the unique pairing, she delivers an imaginative dish of trout spanakopita with crispy leeks and rainbow trout roe. Edward notes that his family was poor, which meant that his grandmother did not create a lot of meat dishes. He is the only contestant who creates a vegetarian dish. It is modern bibimbap with lemon-chili sauce. The guests love Lindsay’s dish but Emeril and Tom concur that she has used too much butter, negating the overall quality. Edward’s dish is meatless ambrosia and possibly good enough to win this challenge.
The final presenters are Grayson and Ty. A Wisconsinite, Grayson has decided to go big in hopes of not going home. She throws down an absolutely massive plate of food, one of the largest ever served on Top Chef. Since her parents are meat and potato people (aka My People), she cooks a grilled rib eye steak with German potato salad and grilled vegetables. Proving once and for all that I have the palate of a small child, the judges hate the dish that sings directly to my heart.
Ty has a more interesting story than the others. He explains that he learned to cook from his Japanese nanny, which probably says a lot about his childhood, good and bad. I’m going to blindly speculate that Ty’s favorite movie of 2011 is The Help. Anyway, his love for this woman is unmistakable throughout the episode and he honors her with a dish that is probably too simple to win yet one that the other contestants adore. It is duck fat-fried chicken tender with pickled peaches. You have to possess tons of courage to serve a chicken tender on Top Chef. The judges are complimentary of the dish and seem that much more impressed by the story.
After the meal’s completion, the conclusions I can draw are that Malibu Chris, Grayson and Heather are on the bottom while Edward and Sarah are on the top with maybe one other person, probably Beverly but possibly Ty. Sarah seems certain to win the challenge unless Edward’s inventiveness and daring with a vegetarian dish win due to the dish’s degree of difficulty. And if Chris or Grayson does not say anything wrong at Judges Table, Heather is probably going home. Based on last week’s events, Chris is much more likely to do so than Grayson, whose “everything is fine, always” attitude is serving her well.
Grayson, Heather and Malibu Chris are the first people called back to Judges Table. This causes Ty to fret that the top people are always named first. Top Chef trivia buffs know the fallacy of this statement, but it does create unrest among the others. The judges immediately identify the many flaws with their dishes. There are innumerable problems with Chris’ plate, including poorly seared salmon, poor ingredient choices and improper herb size. Death by a thousand paper cuts is a concern for him. Grayson’s straightforward duplication of an early 1990s dish is simply not creative enough for this stage of the competition. And Heather served Bigfoot on a plate. None of the three seems surprised to be on the bottom.
The top trio are Ed and Sarah as predicted along with Beverly. The fact that Beverly is on the top while Heather is on the bottom is indicative of the fact that the Karma Police are on the case here. The only way that the situation could be better is if Beverly wins tonight while Heather is sent home. The latter seems like a strong possibility, but the judges quickly reveal that the winner tonight is the one whose dish they praised the most. That is unquestionably Sarah. Her Top Chef star is on the rise.
During the grilling of the bottom trio, Tom takes this opportunity to twist the knife a bit in Heather. He points out that unlike Heather, Beverly had the courage to try something new by pressure cooking the meat. He slowly and emphatically uses his eyes and body language to reinforce the point as he says, “And…she’s not here.” Heather has clearly universally pissed off with everyone involved with Top Chef this season. It comes as absolutely no surprise when Padma announces that she should pack her knives and go. A week after demonstrating the least becoming behavior in the show’s history, Heather is eliminated from the competition while the woman she berated, Beverly, has created one of the best three dishes of the challenge. This is the most glorious Top Chef reversal of fortune in recent memory.