Top Chef Las Vegas Recap

By Jason Lee

October 22, 2009

She cleans up nice.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
Needless to say, we have the two worst names in the history of Top Chef restaurant wars, topping the awful name "Quatre" that Dale and his team used in Season 3.

The cheftestants shop for ingredients (in which Robin has a mini-meltdown when she feels that Laurine "stole" the idea of buying sparkling water from her) and then get to work in the kitchen. Not too much of note is happening. Michael is totally tinkering with Robin's dessert, Jennifer is totally behind in her preparation, Laurine is taking too long to train her servers (she's working as front of house) and Eli (also working front of house) looks ridiculously fat in his suit.

The judges head to Revolt first. Most of the drama is staying in the kitchen so far, where Michael has criticized Bryan's cooking and tampered with Robin's dish without her consent. On one hand, I understand that he's just trying to put his team in the best position to win, but on the other hand, he hasn't been designated Executive Chef. Without actually establishing his leadership, he's just a contestant messing with another contestant's dish against their wishes.

Unfortunately (since I'm rooting for Mission to win), the food is absolutely excellent at Revolt. Rick loves Michael's chicken and calamari pasta. Their cod dish is melt-in-the-mouth delicious. Robin's pear pithivier dessert is the best thing she's done on the show according to Toby and Bryan's chocolate ganache is silky and wonderful.

The judges pack up to leave and I start to seriously worry about whether or not Mission can pull out a win.




Advertisement



And as we get a glimpse into how things are going at Mission, I have even more reason to worry. Jennifer is ridiculously behind on her dishes and Laurine is not communicating well with the kitchen (leading to some serious lag time between dishes). The first two dishes are both done by Pompous Mike and his fish dish, the arctic char, lacks salt. It lacks so much salt that Padma has to ask Laurine to fetch her some.

Not a good start.

Jennifer's two fish dishes come out next, but because of the stress of having to prepare to uber-complicated fish dishes at the same time, she's incredibly behind. The judges wait an inordinately long time before getting both dishes and they aren't great. Jen's halibut dish is okay but the consumme sauce is not clear. As for her trout dish, her butter sauce was broken when it arrived and no one liked it.

"Her mentor [Eric Ripert] would not have been proud of his protégé," Tom remarks.

Finally, we have two dishes from Kevin – one of which was helped by Laurine. We have a pork belly, which wasn't bad, but the leg of lamb with carrot jam (cooked by Kevin but concept by Laurine) was ridiculously undercooked. Toby calls it "jello lamb."

Okay, so we all know that there's no contest between the two restaurants. The chefs from Mission hang their head in defeat in the Stew Room, lamenting everything that went wrong. "It was probably some of the worst cooking in our careers," notes Kevin. His other three chefs agree.


Continued:       1       2       3       4       5

     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Thursday, March 28, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.