Top Chef Charleston Recap: Episode 12
By Jason Lee
February 21, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Aaaaaaand it’s Brooke. Holy cow. Probably the biggest threat to win the title this entire season, I cannot imagine that the other finalists are excited to see Brooke come back. Things just got real.
Also, can we take a moment to appreciate the caliber of chefs from the Top Chef Seattle season, who now make up 75% of this year’s finale? Wow.
Cooking to win a “big advantage” in the finale, the cheftestants are tasked with cooking a dish in Chivas stadium that “honors” that city’s soccer team . . . by making a dish that features the Chivas mascot - the goat (how that’s an “honor,” I’m not sure). When Top Chef promises a “big advantage,” they’re not usually kidding. With that in mind, the chefs bust their butts for 45 minutes putting together the best goat dish they can.
Knowing that goat can be really chewy, Sheldon smartly goes for the goat cheeks. Shirley has worked with this ingredient in the past, but typically uses a preparation that takes two days. She improvises using a pressure cooker for her goat and a tortilla press to make her noodles. Meanwhile, Brooke decides to use goat ribs in her dish, despite having never cooked goat ribs, and John is struggling to crisp up his goat meat, as the cooking of his protein has come out uneven.
With time up, Shirley presents her dish first to the judges. She has a braised goat breast with a tortilla-pressed noodle. Tom enjoys her use of different textures and the sourness she imparted to the dish. Brooke has goat ribs with chamomile and guijillo chile. This is Padma’s first time eating goat ribs and she loves them. John serves a crispy goat torta, with mounds of bread and a fire-roasted tomato sauce. Padma enjoys the sauce but finds the meat chewy. Finally, Sheldon has a braised goat cheek in ancho chile with avocado. Tom wishes there was a bit more heat, but loves the contrast between the goat cheek and his salsa.
Getting lauds for the way she paired goat and fruit, Brooke goes from elimination, to Last Chance Kitchen winner, to the winner of the first Quickfire in the finale. She’s turned things around and building momentum. For the win, she gets a $10,000 check, plus that aforementioned “big advantage.”
And it’s definitely big. The elimination challenge asks the chefs to provide food and drink for a party of 100 workers at the Patron distillery in the city. As an ode to Mexico’s most famous spirit, the dish should feature each of the flavors that’s present in a good margarita—sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. The chefs will also have to make their own margarita to pair with their dish. They’ll be judged on their dish, margarita, and the pairing of the two.
In typical Top Chef fashion, given the enormity of the task, the chefs will be getting a little help: they’ll each have one of the last four eliminated chefs as a sous chef in the kitchen. And Brooke’s big advantage? She gets to assign the sous chefs.
No surprise, she picks Casey, whom she beat in Last Chance Kitchen to get back into the competition. The next question is who Katsuji is assigned to work with. If Brooke wanted to be mean, she could pair him with John, as the two memorably clashed in Restaurant Wars. The other question is who she assigns to work with Emily, this season’s “how on earth did she make it that far in the competition?” chef.
Showing her Lady Macbeth side, Brooke does indeed assign Katsuji to John, leaving Shirley with Sylva and Sheldon with Emily. Katsuji immediately brings up the Restaurant Wars elimination with John, saying that he “hated him for a little while” because he “$@#@$ threw him under the bus.” This is gonna be ugly.
The cheftestants head to the Patron hacienda to do a tequila tasting as preparation for their dishes and margaritas. After that, they head their separate ways to start planning out their meal. Everyone except for John and Katsuji, though, who are still trying to get past their bad blood.
Next stop is Whole Foods Market, errrr, Fresco, a big, brightly lit supermarket where the chefs will have to forage for ingredients. Brooke is forced to rework her dish after not finding the type of high quality tuna she wanted for her ceviche. Katsuji, ever the clutterer, keeps suggesting different ingredients to add to John’s dish. John eventually accedes and allows Katsuji to make a prickly pear relish that will top the dish. Shirley asks Sylva to grab some agave nectar for her marinade, but he ends up grabbing Mexican vanilla instead.
After shopping, it’s surprisingly quiet in the kitchen during the chef’s prep time. Katsuji, mollified by John’s offer of including his relish, works silently on his portion of the dish. Most other sous chefs are assigned either mise en place duties (Emily) or work on the margaritas (Sylva and Casey).
With 45 minutes before service begins, there’s a bit of last minute adjustment-making taking place. Sheldon worries that his octopus is overcooked, Shirley decides to treat Sylva’s shopping mistake as a serendipitous one, putting some of the vanilla in her marinade, and Brooke muses about whether or not her margarita is strong enough. Meanwhile, Katsuji proposes that he and John do a shot and promptly raises his glass to “John’s last day in the Top Chef kitchen.”
Finally, the diners and judges arrive - it’s time to get down to business. Sheldon has a Filipino kinilaw with octopus paired with a guava and coconut margarita. Both seem okay - Richard wants more salt in his dish, Tom finds it too sweet, and the margarita is a bit too tart, though it balances out the food.
Shirley presents charred beef with a salsa molcajete alongside a cucumber and honeydew margarita. Everyone adores her salsa but nobody likes the use of Mexican vanilla. As for her margarita, the cucumber and melon have left it too chunky, leading the judges to opine that Shirley should have strained it before service.
Brooke is up next, and unlike her competitors, she breezes through with nary a complaint. Her chilled avocado soup with watermelon and coconut salad, presented with a spicy watermelon and hibiscus margarita, gets raves for its refreshing quality. Tom likes the balance between sweetness and acid. He also notes that though the margarita is good on its own, in combination with the dish, it really sings.
Last up is John with a simple caldo verde con pollo paired with a relatively straightforward Patron Silver margarita. There’s not much that’s special about his food, even with Katsuji’s relish, and Tom complains that the strong flavors in John’s margarita overwhelm the subtleness in his food.
With that done, it seems clear that Brooke is the winner of the day, and the judges make it official with little fanfare. What a return… from eliminated to sweeping both challenges in Guadalajara. For the win, she gets a special edition Patron Crystal that’s worth $7,500. Brooke wastes no time in popping the top and taking a swig. She’s thrilled to be back in the final round - matching what she did in Top Chef Seattle.
But who’ll be joining her? None of the remaining chefs made it to the final rounds of their respective seasons, and they’d all love to make it further. John gets criticized for being relatively unambitious with his dish and for the way his margarita dominated the pairing. Sheldon did a nice job cooking his octopus but the dish was overly sweet. Moreover, his flat and sweet cocktail didn’t pair that well with his flat and sweet dish. As for Shirley, the judges loved her salsa but hated her use of Mexican vanilla and the chunkiness of her margarita.
So who’s going forward? In a surprising change from the most recent seasons (at least for me), the final round will feature THREE chefs, meaning that only one chef is going home today. And that person, again unsurprisingly, is John, who is being sent home largely for the pairing of his dish and margarita. He’s pretty devastated, feeling like he didn’t make the worst dish or worst drink, but he vows to accept the decision with grace and dignity.
And he does. John should be proud that he improved on his performance last time on Top Chef in two big ways - he made it to the finale and he was not the biggest a-hole on the show. Props to him.
As for the last three chefs standing, they’ll be taking a trip to the Yucatan peninsula, after only days before arriving in Guadalajara (“But our princess is in another castle!”). Everything will be decided on the next episode in Cancun. Stay tuned.