Top Chef Recap
By David Mumpower
November 5, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Don’t cry for Janine yet, Australia…and fans of hot women. There is good news for our ditzy heroine. The first round of Last Chance Kitchen involved the five chefs who have been voted out by the judges. That group includes Ramon, Jason, Bret and Aaron plus Janine, the lone female loser thus far. Janine capitalized on her 20% chance of survival by cooking a dish that put a spark in Tom Colicchio’s eyes, thereby defeating runner-up Jason. Janine is the reigning champion of Last Chance Kitchen.
Last season, I wasted a lot of time speculating upon exactly how the winner of Last Chance Kitchen would be re-integrated into the winner’s bracket of the show. I am not going to bother with that much during season 11. Until someone involved with the program specifically states otherwise, I will presume similar behavior this time. In other words, Janine would have to win from now until the final three players remain, and then she would probably have to beat at least one if not two of them in order to earn re-entry. Like everyone else, I like the affable Janine but the odds of her being a factor at the end of Top Chef are remote.
The first segment from tonight’s episode demonstrates the difference in personalities among the losing team from last week. Sara laments her leadership performance. She feels the weight of Janine’s elimination, worrying that her influence had a hand in the lackluster quality of the dish. Travis calls his mother for comfort since his dreams of Top Chef Vietnamese Heroism were crushed. Travis notes that his father has no idea that he is gay. This is one of those overwrought statements that kids make because they think they are so mysterious while their parents are morons. Travis, everyone who has ever met you knows you are gay. And self-absorbed.
Tin foil alert! The proceedings advance to the Quickfire challenge wherein the chefs note that every possible item involved with the process of cooking is wrapped in tin foil. This is a repeat of a challenge from last season that was equal parts entertaining and annoying. The difference this season is that everything is wrapped, not just the foods. Also, Gail Simmons arrives just in time to introduce the players to her mother, Renee. Joining Padma is her mother, Vijaya.
The two mothers have a purpose during this challenge. They will be playing a round of Supermarket Sweep. After five minutes of choosing various tin foil packages, the two women will present them to Team Simmons and Team Lakshmi. The chefs will be required to use every ingredient to craft various meals. Some of it is food that nobody would want to eat. If you don’t believe me, grab five random items from your refrigerator then think about what that meal would taste like. I’d probably wind up with cheese, grapes and ketchup casserole.
The excitement during the Quickfire challenge again involves Sara, whose authoritative nature undid her team in the most recent Elimination shopping trip. Sara grabs lamb that has already been plated in order to cook it a bit further. She does this with exactly one minute to go in the competition. Suffice to say that this maneuver scares the stuffing out of her teammates. They rightfully worry about their ability to plate the dishes in time. Somehow, they manage to beat the buzzer.
During the early portion of the season, I rarely describe individual dishes because the editing doesn’t focusing on them enough. This Quickfire challenge requires it in order for everyone to appreciate the madness of blind ingredient selection. Team Lakshmi starts with a surprisingly understated plate of clams poached in fish sauce with coconut cream. That sounds like a real food. There is also snapper & branzino papillote with mustard vinaigrette. I don’t see that one becoming a hot item on the menu at Cheesecake Factory any time soon. The other dish they present is a soup with beans, carrots, chiles & okra with cherry chutney. There are people who eat out of garbage dumpsters who are more selective about their flavor profiles than this one.
Team Simmons counters with lamb & fonduta with sharp cheddar & roasted mushrooms. They also present red snapper papillote with rice pilaf. They finish with compressed buratta with pickled apples & balsamic sabayon. This entire challenge is like one big game of Mad Libs featuring largely unknown food terms. The real bravery during the Quickfire is not performed by any of the contestants but instead by the judges who serve as guinea pigs during a round of heretofore unknown dish sampling. They manage not to spit out any of the food, so that’s a positive. They eventually declare Team Lakshmi the winners, earning those seven chefs a split of $10,000.
The Elimination challenge is seasonal in nature, albeit not timely at the moment of filming. Glee star Lea Michele, a self-professed superfan of Top Chef, is hosting a Halloween-themed party during what would have been late June or early July in New Orleans. I actually love this idea. Candy acquisition should be a constant goal in life.
Some of the contestants are particularly happy to see TV’s Rachel Berry in person. Stephanie says something that would seem right at home on Glee’s Facebook wall, albeit written by a 13-year-old. “I’m really excited. I love Glee. Lea Michele’s adorable. We can hang out. It won’t be creepy at all.” Even though she says it in jest and is good-natured about the absurdity of the comment, I still get a Single White Female/The Roommate vibe from Stephanie. I half expect her to start styling her hair like Kristen Kish if she struggles at some point during the competition.
Fear not, Stephanie. The overshare prize for the episode will not be yours. A love of teen drama combined with random bursting into song is tame compared to what News Orleans local Michael confesses. “I dressed up as a pregnant nun once. Got laid.” Like 80,000 therapists all wake up screaming during that statement. The obvious two questions are A) Why would a man decide that dressing up like a nun isn’t enough so he adds pregnancy gear? B) What kind of woman (?) would see that guy at a party and think, “I gotta have a piece of the Transvestite in the Fat Suit Who Fictitiously Cuckolded God.”?
The Elimination challenge requires players to cater a “spooky Halloween costume party”. This situation is a reminder that Top Chef’s producers sometimes like to meddle. At this point, there is only one contestant who has stated that they actively dislike one of their peers. That person is Nina and the source of her derision is “faker than Pamela Anderson’s breasts” Michael. Obviously, they’re going to be teammates. And you can use your encyclopedic knowledge of Top Chef to anticipate how well they mesh as a duo.
Nina gets kicked while she is down. As Lea Michele lists her food preferences, she notes that she prefers a vegan lifestyle, making an occasional foray into vegetarian since cheese is her favorite food. Nina wants to cook red meat for everyone, which makes her my personal hero but will not aid her in the challenge.
The other chefs quiz Ms. Michele on her favorite foods. She states that she loves “all vegetables." I call shenanigans on that. She quickly backtracks when pressed upon her enjoyment of beets. She doesn’t like them. FYI for the semi-vegan: beets are a vegetable. The Glee star adds that she is Italian so pasta is aces by her. Carlos asks the most important question he has of any potential customer, “Do you like Mexican food?” The good news is that she does. Sara somehow picks up on a vibe between the singer and Carlos, querying Michele on whether she likes Mexican men as well. She laughs at this, but there is a bit of a blush. Later flirting during the episode reveals that if Carlos ever got a couple of glasses of wine into the Fox star, he would have a real chance at glee himself.
Most of the teams integrate nicely. The lone exception is the obvious one. Nina not only dislikes Michael but does not even respect him enough to be honest about his choice of dishes. She confides to the camera that his arancini idea is an amateur dish. “A five-year-old could make that dish.” I don’t think Nina has a lot of experience with children in the kitchen. To a larger point, she is a bad teammate because she holds her tongue. Since they present as a team, if he struggles, his failures are hers. Nina’s interpersonal conflict has serious ramifications for her Top Chef candidacy.
Michael is not the only person who decides to make the dish of a five-year-old. Three different teams all reach the same conclusion. Fried rice balls are in this Halloween! The explanation for this decision exists beyond the Glee star’s dietary choices. The dishes are to be seasonally themed, which is to say that Top Chef’s producers remember fondly the Charlize Theron challenge. They seek to duplicate it by having another series of macabre dishes that stir the imagination of the chefs. Suffice to say that the producers are disappointed this time.
Carrie and Stephanie present the first dish. They called it Doomed Shrooms, which strikes me as self-fulfilling prophecy. The plate consists of mushrooms with black garlic & radicchio. What makes it festive? Umm… The plate is a gothic color black, maybe? They also have created Freaky Leeky, ash coated vegetables with fontina fonduta. It looks like a spice spill on a plate of vegetables. The judges overlook the lack of imagination because the food is so delicious. As the contestants all note, Lea Michele loves cheese, and the fonduta is exactly what she was craving. Carrie and Stephanie may win this challenge despite doing little to embrace the Halloween theme.
Patty and Nicholas go with an autumnal theme rather than a Halloween specific one, which was not what the judges requested. Still, the two dishes appear divine. The first is butternut squash cannoli with ricotta salata. Patty, like everyone else, plays the arancini game. She delivers lemon arancini with smoked mozzarella. The visual of rice ball is outstanding but again not at all festive. Hugh Acheson grills her on the lack of fear factor. She cannot defend herself against the accusation because… people aren’t idiots.
The most disappointing team in terms of concept is the tandem of Brian and Bene. I just don’t know what they were thinking. Their idea is “spooky spa cuisine”. Err, what? Are spas spooky? I hadn’t heard that. Effectively, Brian and Bene came up with a couple of meals they wanted to prepare for Lea, and they didn’t care whether the food was thematic or not. As good as the Charlize Theron episode of Top Chef was, this episode has been exactly that disappointing on the downside. Brian delivers crispy quinoa salad & mushroom espuma. Bene offers heirloom tomato salad with wilted kale. Tom doesn’t like either dish, which means that these two are a mortal lock to finish on the bottom unless somebody else bombs even worse.
Right on cue, Michael and Nina are next. While Nina was a lousy teammate to the man she dislikes, her dish is impeccable. It is called Candy Corn, and it contains ricotta gnocchetti with kale pesto. Michael is the yin to her yang, delivering a Bloody Eye. The yellow arancini with saffron & tomato jam is every bit as amateurish as Nina had stated. The judges love Nina’s dish but the face Lea Michele makes when she tastes Michael’s food indicates he is the likely loser tonight. I think she’d spit it out if she were at her home.
One team does a better job with the Halloween theme than the rest. Carlos and Travis are not that team. Still, they celebrate Día de Los Muertos by using splashy colors in their dishes. The first bowl is a vegetable ceviche that is very well crafted. The plate by Carlos is a goat cheese fondue with fried zucchini. It looks like a body surrounded by a pool of blood, the closest thing to a real theme out of any of the dishes thus far.
Before Tom can sample the final duo’s food, a buzz has already been created. A few of the masked guests inform him of the “severed thumb." It stands out from the other dishes because, well, Louis and Shirley actually tried to create a spooky plate of food. The result is a braised quinoa & onions with potato purée. It does in fact look like a severed thumb. That alone should be reason enough for this team to avoid the bottom group because there have been some sorry efforts from the competition.
Shirley matches Louis in the creativity department when she presents Worm Salad, hand cut noodles & fresh daikon radish. The food on the plate looks like it’s moving, which is awesome because it’s not really. It’s less awesome when this happens for real, which is something that happened to me at a steakhouse once. Stuff crawled off my date’s burger. But I digress. The judges adore Shirley and Louis’s dishes, and I think they have a real chance to win the challenge right up until Lea Michele states that the dishes were too greasy for her.
The evening ends with an appropriate thud. Justin and Sara present their dishes. Justin explains the ingredients of his dish, Blood Pasta, as beet pasta with green tomatoes. Politely but firmly, the Glee star reminds Justin that she said she doesn’t like beets. He claims that their flavor is very subtle but the bridge is already burned. That was a rookie mistake by a guy I believe has the talent to win this season. Sara offers Evil Eye, another arancini, this one with Moroccan tomato chutney. Lea Michele, perhaps still annoyed by the beets situation, states that she dislikes the arancini. Justin and Sara may wind up on the bottom as well, although there is a ton of competition for those 4-6 spots.
Before the judges begin their broadcast, a hilarious exchange occurs between Nina and Michael. She vents her frustration about having to work with him. She believes that he felt like he could ride Nina’s coattails in order to finish the challenge. He refutes this assertion by stating that she needed him in the beginning more than he needed her. Nina strikes me as a very calm person who is hard to anger. Michael’s reply almost causes her to spontaneously combust. If this were a romantic comedy, they would kiss at the episode, but it’s not and they most assuredly will not.
The divide between the good teams and the failed ones is sizable. Nicholas and Patty join Travis and Carlos at the top. There is no point in the judges pretending like they may be on the bottom. Everybody knows the deal here. The only memorable aspect of the segment is that Lea Michele awkwardly flirts with Carlos a bit more. His team is announced as the winner. “Can you please come back to Los Angeles with me now?” I think that’s a standing offer, Carlos!
The bottom two teams are exactly the ones I had expected. Bene and Brian simply didn’t try hard enough with the concept, while Nina refused to work with Michael as a good partner would. The primary question to be resolved at Judges Table is whether a single player will be eliminated or an entire team will go home. If it’s only one person, that is clearly going to be Michael, who is in way over his head in this competition. If it’s a team, that is a harder choice since Nina’s dish was delicious but the judges hold her responsible for Michael’s failings as well. Bene and Brian had worse composite dishes than their opponents, so there are a few permutations in play for this elimination.
Michael goes to Last Chance Kitchen.
Realistically, that is the best decision by the judges. Nina has the talent to win Top Chef and would have been as high as #2 in my power rankings last week if I had started doing them, something I almost did. Instead, they will begin tomorrow and I will have to be honest about the fact that players need to work well in a team atmosphere to have a shot at the title of Top Chef. Nina gets a demerit for her behavior this week. Meanwhile, Brian and Bene need to show a lot more imagination with their cooking. The judges drill them for delivering an ordinary salad during a Halloween challenge. They are right to do so.
This entire Elimination meal was a bust, which is tragic. It did make me go back and re-watch the Charlize Theron episode, "Fit for an Evil Queen," though. I am of the opinion that the worst dish in that episode would have beaten the best dish this week, and that tells the entire story.