Top Chef Recap

By Jason Lee

July 9, 2009

Judging by the scores of the bottom two this week, they should also do Taste No Evil.

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As Anita serves it she proclaims it "fugly," but most of the diners seem to love the presentation. Harris says that this dish is his favorite by a mile.

Last comes Douglas with the word "spectacle." In order to achieve a spectacle, he's taken the flammable pink goo from a sterno (a heating device used in outdoor cooking filled with stuff that stays on fire for hours) and rubbed it on coconuts. He aims to set them on fire, bring out his food and then put out the fire. While his food (which includes duck prepared four ways) is beautiful to look at, Harris doesn't think that it was executed well and most diners have trouble to get their fiery coconuts to go out.

This feels like a really tight race at this point – I'm predicting either Anita or Mark to win.

The Masters come before the critics, with Gail once again sitting in for Jay Rayner (who I've always thought looked like a fatter Professor Snape). She's there with Gael Greene, food critic for the NY Times and James Oseland, a food writer.

They start with John and for the most part, they like his food but found the blini far too cold ("it was not pleasant," says Gael). With Anita, Gail loved her presentation, saying that it was like a surrealistic painting. They don't say much about Douglas other than some joking around about his fiery coconuts (insert inappropriate joke here) and complimenting him on his ceviche. With Mark's mystery package (insert second inappropriate joke here), Gail said that the sake hooked them all and was the perfect contrast.




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The Masters leave the judges discuss – it still sounds like a battle between Mark and Anita. Gail compliments her intellectual approach but James says that Mark's mystery bag of food was the best execution of the theme words.

And with that, the scoring begins. John who had a woeful half star from the Quickfire, received two and a half stars from the diners. James criticizes his overly cold, brain-freezing blini, giving him three stars. Three more from Gail and another three from Gael for a total of 12 stars. Very, very sad. I think that's one of the lowest totals I've seen so far on Top Chef: Masters.

Mark is next and I'm expecting him to score well. He had two and a half stars in the Quickfire and gets four from the diners. Gail found his food delicious and gives him four and a half stars. Gael gives him four stars and James gives him three and a half for a total of 18 ½ stars. Again, not a super impressive total.

Douglas had three stars to begin with and gets another three from the diners. Gail says that his spectacle fizzled and gives him two and a half stars. two and a half from Gael along with a mere two stars from James gives him 13 in total. Ughhh, I knew this challenge was going to be hard but wow, these guys are getting LOW scores.

Which leaves us with Anita (who's doing a great impression of Lisa from Season 4 with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face). She, of course, started with five stars and gets four and a half from the diners (the highest of the night). Gail was swept away by her presentation and gives her four and a half stars. James gives her four and Gael gives her four and a half and she gets a HUGE total of 22 ½ stars.

Also, it's interesting to note that out of the four episodes so far, three of the winners (Rick Bayless, Suzanne Tracht and now Anita Lo) have finished with totals of 22 ½ stars. The only one who didn't was Hubert Keller from the first episode, who finished with only 20 ½ stars.

I'm happy for Anita – I think she definitely had the hardest word and the most ambitious dish. Somewhere, Richard Blais is smiling.


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