Top Chef Recap Episode 14
By Jason Lee
March 7, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Our guest judge for the Quickfire is acclaimed chef Traci Des Jardins, who has a number of well-respected restaurants in San Francisco. She wants to see the chefs take on a food trend that swept through San Francisco to the rest of the nation: toast. Set before the chefs is a variety of different breads, which they’ll use to put together “the perfect bite” of toast. The winner gets a rational oven (yeah, just Google it. I had to).
Oh yeah, and this is a Sudden Death Quickfire. The two chefs in the bottom will face off for the right to… face off again for the right to… face off in the finale for the title. What a time for the Sudden Death Quickfire to rear its ugly head again. Not only does this episode promise to leave one chef really upset that he or she came “this close” to the finale, only to fall in the Elimination Challenge, yet another will lament his or her failure to make it through the Quickfire.
Oh, Top Chef Gods, how heartless thou art!
After 30 minutes of frantic cooking, Jeremy serves a chicken liver mousse with pickled cherries, white raspberries, and jalapeño on toast. Traci, apparently unable to taste the ciabatta underneath all that fruit, has to ask Jeremy what type of bread he used.
Marjorie, in total San Francisco fashion, uses a sourdough baguette to support her pancetta and fennel marmalade and Dungeness crab salad. Traci loves her incorporation of local flavors.
Amar apparently wants to bring back his uber-rich, uber-fatty, calorie-laden French dish from two episodes ago with a foie gras and duck breast toast with fig marmalade, balsamic truffle glaze and prosciutto. Traci asks about his use of raisin sourdough bread, which looks burnt to me.
Carl pairs burrata cheese with blistered cherry tomatoes and shrimp on grilled sourdough, breaking the unwritten food rule against serving seafood and cheese together. Padma questions this decision.
Finally, Isaac presents a butter-fried ciabatta toast with prosciutto and roasted pepper spread. Traci notes its similarity to romesco sauce.
Having held her cards quite close to her chest, Traci finally reveals what she really thinks about the food. In short, one chef rose above the pack, and that’s Jeremy. Sigh. I’ve kind of had my fill of Taco Dude, with his over-the-top bro-ness. But apparently that didn’t get in the way of his dish, which was well-composed and incorporated textures and flavors that all made sense to this San Francisco chef. “I’m stoked!” Jeremy exclaims.
The two chefs on the bottom of the challenge are Carl and Amar, who’ll have to fight for their culinary lives. Of course, the loser will go on to… fight for his culinary life in Last Chance Kitchen. But enough recursion. Let’s cook! Carl and Amar will have another 30 minutes to cook whatever they want, with no restrictions. The loser packs his knives and goes home. Err, to Last Chance Kitchen.
Carl immediately sets to work making A *#@$ING CRUDO. ANTOHER $#@&ING CRUDO. Jeebus. There was a time where every damn person on Top Chef was cooking scallops, leading to the infamous comment by Fabio that “this is Top Chef, not Top Scallop.” Apparently, this is the year of the crudo.
Amar, on the other hand, is not doing a crudo. He has incorporated Asian flavors in putting together a pan-roasted sea bream with watermelon radish, plum yuzu brown butter, and pickled mushrooms. It’s quite a beautiful plate.
Meanwhile, Carl has his Thai snapper crudo with corn, nectarine, chili, yellow tomato, and rice wine vinegar. “Another crudo, huh?” Padma comments. “I’ve only made one this season!” Carl protests.
The judging panel will feature not only Padma and Traci, but also Tom for this Sudden Death Quickfire. Each judge will get one vote, and the chef with two votes will stay in the competition.
Despite the fact that he cooked a crudo, Padma thinks he cooked a winning one. She loved the heat from the chili and the sheer amount of flavor packed into the dish. Tom, on the other hand, thinks that Amar did a better job making his fish the star of his dish. Carl’s was more about the sauce and vegetables.
It comes down to Traci. She found Amar’s dish well-composed, but wanted more of the watermelon radish, which she found to be the centerpiece of the dish. Carl, she thinks, played it a little safer, though the combination of ingredients was delicious. She goes with Carl.
Oh, thank God! Carl is a welcome, sunny, dorky, and adorkable presence on the show. Not to mention… he’s quite an attractive man. Amar is undeniably talented, but I’m happy Carl will be sticking around.
At least for now, because it’s time for the Elimination Challenge, which will take place in the legendary San Francisco restaurant, Fleur de Lys, from Hubert Keller, which also hosted the very first Top Chef Quickfire Challenge in 2006 (a bit of a trivia: Lee Anne Wong, who just missed out on making the Season 1 finale and who worked as a culinary consultant for Top Chef for many years, won that challenge).
Fleur de Lys closed its doors for good last summer, and our four almost-finalists will deliver one more (hopefully) spectacular dinner for a group of acclaimed restaurateurs and uber-critics.
The chefs settle down and start poring over past Fleur de Lys menus. One dish calls out to Carl: a foie gras torchon. Carl really wants to do his version of the foie gras torchon and starts talking animatedly about it out loud to the other chefs, trying to justify a decision to go that route. The other chefs understand his trepidation. It would require Carl to complete in three hours a dish that typically takes three days to make. And yet Carl is set - it’s foie gras torchon or bust.
It quickly appears that it’s going to be bust, as Carl is instantly in the weeds during the first part of his three hours. There’s no time to cure the foie gras as he typically would, so he’s instead going to do a foie gras en gelée. His fellow chefs look at him with equal parts mad respect and utter bewilderment.
Tom and Hubert enter the kitchen and saunter over to Marjorie’s station. She instantly seizes up. Never a relaxed or amicable chef, she’s even tenser than usual. Instead of chatting about her dish, she babbles about how much pressure this challenge will be given the setting, the diners, the stakes, the competition, the finale, the - oh lord, just put her out of her misery already.
Tom and Hubert head over to Isaac, who’s trying to do his version of a duck ballotine. Tom is surprised and asks whether he’ll have time to finish the dish. Isaac notes the risk but has his eyes on the reward.
Jeremy is next and notes that his old boss, Jean-Georges, would be severely disappointed in Jeremy if he didn’t at least make it to the finale. His former prodigy, Gregory, last season’s runner up, at least made it to the final two.
Carl is last, and Tom cannot believe that he’s attempting a torchon. “A torchon? In three hours?” Tom asks, aghast. Carl explains why he was drawn to the dish and declares that he’s “cautiously optimistic” that it’ll work out.
The diners start arriving. It’s an assortment of amazing chefs like Michael Chiarello, and Top Chef-related chefs old (Harold, winner of Season 1) and new (last year’s finalist, Melissa). What an amazing group of people to cook for.
Their first dish is from Isaac, who has his duck ballotine with beluga lentils, broiled figs, and an aged balsamic cherry gastrique. Hubert and Tom enjoy the flavor, but Emeril notes that the skin on the ballotine didn’t get crispy because it was cooked at too high a temperature. Tom also finds the dish too dry and wishes there were more sauce.
Marjorie is next up, and she’s still freaking out. She paces back and forth, trying to figure out when to start cooking her lamb. She knows that she could cook this dish with her eyes closed back at her own restaurant, but the size of the moment is getting to her. Finally, she serves up a roasted lamb saddle with artichoke purée, an artichoke barigoule, and roasted squash, tomatoes, and olives. Tom criticizes the dish for not having meat roasted on the bone. Hubert agrees that the meat was not cooked correctly. Emeril, who’s also at the judge’s table, says that while the dish could have been perfect with a few tweaks, it wasn’t there.
Taco Dude is next up with a decidedly non-taco dish: a filet de loup de mer, truffled potato purée, pommes soufflé, and heirloom tomatoes. Padma absolutely adores it, declaring that Jeremy “nailed” the dish. Gail agrees that the small details in the dish really take it to the next level. Tom says it’s “technically great.”
Carl should thank his lucky stars that he gets to go last, with the great amount of time possible to finish his insane foie gras dish. He brings out a foie gras en geleé with black pepper, strawberries, and fine herbs. Padma cannot understand why Carl decided to make this dish given the time constraints. Hubert notes that Carl set himself up for failure. Emeril laments the under-cured, raw liver. Harold is dumbfounded by the dish. Gail tries to soften the blow by pointing out that the herbs with strawberries are paired perfectly. “It’s a nice salad with watercress and geleé,” Tom says pointedly.
Jeremy is unquestionably the clear winner of the night (sigh). Hubert says that of all the dishes, it’s the only one that he could imagine putting on his menu. Jeremy is blown away and spouts off all the normal bro-y words and phrases you can imagine. Rock on, dude.
The remaining two spots will be allocated between the last three chefs. The judges make clear pretty quickly that Marjorie is safe. Though she made some mistakes in cooking her lamb, the rest of her components were well done. And she didn’t set herself up for failure the way Carl and Isaac did.
Carl acknowledges that his ego got in the way of the challenge, leading him to pick a dish that he had no right trying to make in three hours. “There’s no substitute for proper process,” Gail chides him. As for Isaac, he didn’t cook with the type of finesse needed to pull off a ballotine.
The judges are thus presented with a tough decision. Carl’s presentation was better, but Isaac’s had more flavor. Carl’s liver was not rendered well, but Isaac’s meat was very dry. When asked which dish the judges would rather eat again, Hubert says that he’d at least dig into the foie gras, while Gail would rather eat overcooked duck than undercured foie gras.
In the end, the foie does Carl in. Marjorie and Isaac join Jeremy in the finale, and Carl is asked to pack his knives. Carl is understandably frustrated - he was doomed from the start, and though he tried to pull it out, it was too Herculean of a task. Carl says that he’s enjoyed the journey beyond belief - from cooking in a vineyard to using solar powered ovens in Death Valley. But who knows? With Last Chance Kitchen beckoning, maybe he’ll be back.