Watch What We Say: Top Chef

Episode 4

By Jason Lee

December 4, 2008

At least he can plan his wedding now.

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As you can imagine, the bottom three are comprised of Jaime with her raw egg, Melissa with her biological-weapon-shrimp and Alex with his non-existent crème brûlée. On top are hot-mama Ariane, funny Fabio and pretty boy Jeff who, made a middle eastern dish with an incomprehensible name. The overall winner and loser of the challenge, for whatever reason, will be announced tomorrow.

The contestants tromp back to their loft, the winners extremely pleased with themselves and the losers forced to endure a night of pure anxiety as they wonder who will be going home. Jaime cries herself to sleep. Melissa gets some sound advice from Leah ("Fight. Tell them you don't want to go home") and Alex confronts the fact that maybe he doesn't want to stay in the competition because he's getting married in 20 days.

The time is 2:00 a.m. Tom Colicchio is entering the Top Chef loft. This cannot be good. If Tom ever walked into my apartment to wake me up at 2:00 a.m, I think I'd hit him with a spatula. (That's right, I sleep with a spatula beside my bed, you wanna make something of it?)

Our top three chefs awaken and find out that they will be going to Rockerfeller Plaza this morning where the hosts of NBC's Today Show will be tasting each dish and choosing the winner of the competition. Excited but sleepy (who wouldn't be?) the chefs head over to the studio and begin preparing their dishes.




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Meanwhile at the loft, the other non-winning chefs wake up to find that Ariane, Fabio and Jeff are missing. Additionally, there's a mysterious big-screen TV sitting in their common room. With the channel turned to NBC. Ooooh, maybe we should watch!

Back at 30 Rock, I'm not sure what's going on. Initially, I thought that the top three would be cooking their dishes live on TV. Then I thought that maybe only the winner would be cooking their dish on TV. It turns out that the four hosts of the Today Show will try each chef's dish, which was not created under any time constraints, and the winning chef will return to cook their dish live on the Today Show the day after this Top Chef episode airs (meaning, today).

The hosts try Ariane's strategically simple dish (beefsteak tomato salad with watermelon) and they all enjoy it very much (even though Meridith Viera dislikes watermelon for some unexplained reason). Fabio's seared tuna is a mild success. Then comes Jeff's middle eastern dish . . . and after taking a single bite, Kathie Lee Gifford runs off stage where she spits it out. (Score: Padma, 1. Tom, 1. Kathie Lee Giford, 1.)

Jeff is understandably mortified. The judges at Top Chefs are a bit elitist with their culinary tastes – if they spit something out, one still imagines that it would have been a passable for any Joe Six-Pack, Hockey Mom or Vice Presidential candidate. But when a host of the Today Show spits it out? On live TV? When you didn't have a time constraint? When you weren't forced to cook the dish in microwaves or toaster ovens? Wow. Not fun at all.


Continued:       1       2       3       4

     


 
 

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