Top Chef Recap

By David Mumpower

November 5, 2013

When I said I wanted you to spank me, I didn't mean in Last Chance Kitchen.

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The Elimination challenge requires players to cater a “spooky Halloween costume party”. This situation is a reminder that Top Chef’s producers sometimes like to meddle. At this point, there is only one contestant who has stated that they actively dislike one of their peers. That person is Nina and the source of her derision is “faker than Pamela Anderson’s breasts” Michael. Obviously, they’re going to be teammates. And you can use your encyclopedic knowledge of Top Chef to anticipate how well they mesh as a duo.

Nina gets kicked while she is down. As Lea Michele lists her food preferences, she notes that she prefers a vegan lifestyle, making an occasional foray into vegetarian since cheese is her favorite food. Nina wants to cook red meat for everyone, which makes her my personal hero but will not aid her in the challenge.

The other chefs quiz Ms. Michele on her favorite foods. She states that she loves “all vegetables." I call shenanigans on that. She quickly backtracks when pressed upon her enjoyment of beets. She doesn’t like them. FYI for the semi-vegan: beets are a vegetable. The Glee star adds that she is Italian so pasta is aces by her. Carlos asks the most important question he has of any potential customer, “Do you like Mexican food?” The good news is that she does. Sara somehow picks up on a vibe between the singer and Carlos, querying Michele on whether she likes Mexican men as well. She laughs at this, but there is a bit of a blush. Later flirting during the episode reveals that if Carlos ever got a couple of glasses of wine into the Fox star, he would have a real chance at glee himself.




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Most of the teams integrate nicely. The lone exception is the obvious one. Nina not only dislikes Michael but does not even respect him enough to be honest about his choice of dishes. She confides to the camera that his arancini idea is an amateur dish. “A five-year-old could make that dish.” I don’t think Nina has a lot of experience with children in the kitchen. To a larger point, she is a bad teammate because she holds her tongue. Since they present as a team, if he struggles, his failures are hers. Nina’s interpersonal conflict has serious ramifications for her Top Chef candidacy.

Michael is not the only person who decides to make the dish of a five-year-old. Three different teams all reach the same conclusion. Fried rice balls are in this Halloween! The explanation for this decision exists beyond the Glee star’s dietary choices. The dishes are to be seasonally themed, which is to say that Top Chef’s producers remember fondly the Charlize Theron challenge. They seek to duplicate it by having another series of macabre dishes that stir the imagination of the chefs. Suffice to say that the producers are disappointed this time.

Carrie and Stephanie present the first dish. They called it Doomed Shrooms, which strikes me as self-fulfilling prophecy. The plate consists of mushrooms with black garlic & radicchio. What makes it festive? Umm… The plate is a gothic color black, maybe? They also have created Freaky Leeky, ash coated vegetables with fontina fonduta. It looks like a spice spill on a plate of vegetables. The judges overlook the lack of imagination because the food is so delicious. As the contestants all note, Lea Michele loves cheese, and the fonduta is exactly what she was craving. Carrie and Stephanie may win this challenge despite doing little to embrace the Halloween theme.


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