‘Top Chef’: The judges get it wrong again

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Is it just me or have the judges gotten it wrong two weeks in a row?

Don’t get me wrong, Ryan was bound for the boot, but last week’s weak effort from Nikki should have earned her a “pack your knives and go.”

This week’s casualty, Jennifer, made some bad croutons and worse, some bad sexual metaphors using cheese and asparagus. But the week’s greatest offenders by far were Antonia and Lisa.

After being challenged to come up with a dish embodying the elements “magenta, drunk, Polish sausage,” the whiny pair produced a plate of Chilean sea bass over crumbled chorizo over some purple mash. Likely tasty, but definitely not Polish sausage (or magenta, for that matter). They threw in some tequila to marinate the fish or something because, you know, the dish is “drunk.”

Bah. Lazy. It amazes me that these two aren’t more intimidated cooking alongside the uber-passionate Andrew and evil geniuses like Dale and Richard, chefs trying to excel rather than simply not get eliminated. What’s more amazing is that the judges gave them a pass when they completely ignored the rules of the challenge. Any of the remaining contestants can cook a good plate of food when they don’t have restrictions.

And not to hate too much on our home(town) girl Antonia, but she’s really rubbing me the wrong way lately. My mouth watered for her dishes early on: scampi, hers with pasta and lobster, and a jerk chicken sandwich that looked sweet and spicy. But in the week she earned immunity, it was her decision to push for an unseasoned (and uninspired) beef carpaccio because she felt carpaccio would be more upscale than Spike’s idea for soup; the judges hated it, and because she was immune ,Zoi went home. (I know, no loss there. But still.)

Her inability to understand the challenges is most mystifying. During film week, she picked “Talk to Her,” Pedro Almodovar’s unpredictable and emotional tale of a dance student and a toreador and the lonely men who become infatuated with them, to inspire her dish. It produced two dainty lamb chops, gremolata and cauliflower puree. Nice, but completely unconnected to the movie, which she and her partner Jennifer described as “really colorful” and “about two strong women.” Hers felt more like a dish inspired by “No Reservations” -- the banal romantic comedy set in the culinary world starring Catherine Zeta Jones, not the Anthony Bourdain series.

Last night again, Antonia chose to “improv” not in the kitchen but with the rules, playing fast and loose with the words “Polish sausage.” You say Polish sausage, Antonia says chorizo. (Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe it’s not.) There was no explanation of how her dish was “drunk,” and the chunk of fish entirely covered any “magenta”-ness given by the purple potato mash.

Rewarding her for making a dish taste good seemed the wrong decision when at least Jennifer and Stephanie addressed the rules of the challenges -- both to use the proper ingredients (asparagus) and embody a state of mind (“turned on.”) Had they tossed that asparagus and, say, whipped up an inventive pesto they could’ve spread on the crouton and dunked in that orange sauce, they might have come up with a better tasting dish.

OK, so obviously, I can’t taste the dishes and maybe Stephanie and Jennifer’s was truly horrific. But I doubt it. The judges said repeatedly last night that at this stage in the competition, the remaining chefs can cook. That is, they all have the skills to prepare food correctly. All that’s left are the confines of the challenge.

To hear Antonia and Lisa whine that they’d rather go home than serve up a plate of Polish sausage was pretty nauseating -- and it should have been that way for the judges too.

-- Denise Martin