Top Chef Recap

By David Mumpower

January 6, 2014

Alas, superstition had no impact this week.

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This challenge involves crawfish, and they are alive at the start of the event. Their nervous scattering indicates that they are aware of their plight and are actively seeking escape. As if to taunt them, Padma Lakshmi for no apparent reason breaks out her Buffalo Stance, a borough accent and challenges the soon-to-be boiled crustaceans.

“Wassup,” says Padma Lakshmi. That is the least likely sentence I have ever written in a Top Chef recap. Yes, the ex-wife of the man who wrote The Satanic Diaries and one of the most elegant models of the past century is in a whimsical mood and chooses to taunt her lunch. The presence of John Besh does strange things to women.

The challenge is locality based. The city of New Orleans is famous for its etouffee dishes featuring crawdaddies (that’s what we call them in the south). John Besh asks that the people deliver a “rustic stew…served over rice." Oddly, only one of the contestants does what is asked. The rest choose to pass on the rice. I suspect they were all too busy daydreaming about Mr. Besh to pay attention to his instructions.




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Stephanie, our heroine, probably will not do well in this challenge. She does have a built in excuse, though. She has a shellfish allergy that is quite specific. Anything that “turns red in water” will force her to take a hit off her EpiPen. Carlos, sensing that he needs to do some good, carefully retrieves a bucket of crawfish for Stephanie. Over time, Nick samples her cuisine to let her know if she is on the right track. I cannot even imagine preparing a dish that cannot be sampled ahead of time. Stephanie places a great deal of trust in Nick. If the dish is screwed up, she should blame her error on Carlos and thereby further the chain of unjustified personal absolution.

There are a couple of fascinating issues with this challenge. The primary one involves Carlos, who does not understand the core concept of the challenge. Apparently, the literal definition of etouffee is “to smother." This aspect of the dish was lost in translation, and so Carlos has failed to follow the basic rules of the challenge. Nick doesn’t do any better with his smothering, and he too finishes on the bottom. He sulks only until he realizes that Carlos has failed, too. At this point, his frown is quite literally turned upside down.

Carrie and Stephanie also finish in the bottom group, which means that over half the remaining chefs have failed in the challenge. Who doesn’t suck? By process of elimination, you can guess that Brian, Nina and Shirley finish on top. Brian has really been on fire ever since his hip tang was noticed. He is not the person who wins, though. That honor is bestowed upon Shirley, who happily notes that she is guaranteed a spot in the top six. Given what transpired with Carrie and Justin last week, immunity truly can be the difference between survival and elimination.


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