'Top Chef All-Stars': Are the judges listening to their own rules?

 
It’s hard to argue that the “Top Chef All-Star” judges properly picked Tiffany for expulsion Wednesday night, leaving the clearly three best chefs over the last several weeks—Mike, Richard and Antonia—to fight it out in the Bahamas finale.

But shouldn’t the competition be judged on some sort of evenhanded curve?

From the opening Quickfire Challenge, it felt like the rules and the judging criteria were two different beasts. The four chefs were given just an hour to prepare a dish for 100, with the tasting plates selected at random.

The team of Richard and Mike in their scant 60 minutes turned out not only a pork Bolognese sauce, but also homemade pasta.

Tiffany and Antonia were far less ambitious with the limited time, serving a filet of beef salad. But when guest judge Lorena Garcia picked the winner, she completely ignored the draconian time limit, instead singling out Antonia and Tiffany’s simple salad—“slice and serve,” as Richard derisively but accurately called the women’s safe strategy—for its “consistency and flavor.”

One hundred bowls of chicken noodle soup can be consistent and flavorful, but that wasn’t the point of the challenge. Even if Tiffany and Antonia’s salad was good on an absolute scale, the whole point of “Top Chef” is a dish’s relative, not absolute, merits.  In other words, given the crummy cards everyone was dealt, who played the best hand?

If Garcia truly had considered what Richard and Mike were able to accomplish in about the time it takes most people to make a grilled cheese sandwich (and even some amateur chefs to create a beef salad), it seems reasonable to think she would have judged differently. It was understandable when Mike complained, “Are you serious? A beef salad wins?”

Tiffany may have made a grave error in combining a cold ceviche with a warm soup in the Elimination Challenge, but it seems that her real mistake was plating the dish two minutes early—in a kitchen with no heat or gas stove or warming lamps. When the soup arrived cold, Tiffany’s fate was sealed—but expecting a piping hot serving of anything on a remote island seems not just optimistic but unrealistic.

If anyone truly failed to embrace the challenge—the instructions were clear: create an elegant meal featuring conch—it was Antonia. Her grouper dish, with a finely minced conch tartare that looked more like a garnish than a dish component, looked like something you might get at Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine.

The judges rightly noted that it was the most conventional offering among the four finalists, but didn’t penalize her minimizing the conch. Mike won for a dish that apparently used the sea snails even less, in a vinaigrette. Sure, it tasted good, but did he follow the rules of the challenge?

Richard didn’t win for his sweet potato linguine, but at least it had conch in it, and Tiffany served conch two ways. Unfortunately for her, the wind was blowing and the soup cooled off. But the judging might have been unnecessarily icy, too.

--John Horn

Photo of Richard, Tiffany, Antonia and Mike in "Top Chef All-Stars": Virginia Sherwood/Bravo 

 

 

 

Comments

[jennifer Haire]

I so agree with this and for some reason the judges have favored Mike all season. I think he is arrogant and would rather eat food cooked with some LOVE (carla) or passion (richard) . I fear Mike will win but so hope to see Richard succeed. He is a tortured artist who creates artful food.....not something everyone can do :)

[zettrane]

I once again loose all faith in the top chef judges and believe that there will never be an African American Top Chef. These judges think that their pallets are worldly, however, they fail to ever appreciate or even recognize the flavor concepts of blacks, people of African decent, around the world. For the second week Tiffany's dishes have been critiqued for being too sweet, however, if you look at their location, the people that they are cooking for, sweetness is necessary and desired in a dish. And where was Antonia's conch? That was the main purpose of the challenge. If she had been on Iron Chef, she would have lost to Tiffany because the "secret ingredient" was not notably featured.

Futhermore, throughout the season chef's have been kicked off time and time again for not executing and cooking consistently. Antonia clearly over cooked one dish and under cooked they other, but she is still in the competition. To Top Chef programers and judges, you need to be more consistent and learn to appreciate other cultures other then asian fusion, Italian, on white american.

[murf]

Um, zettrane, Kevin, an African-American chef, won last season.

[Steph]

@zettrane - kevin, winner of season 7, was African American.

[Rachel]

Kick me for saying it, but I think Mike Isabella is going to take home the title. His game is totally on...

[HS]

"But when guest judge Lorena Garcia picked the winner, she completely ignored the draconian time limit, instead singling out Antonia and Tiffany’s simple salad"

Who said she ignored it? Sure the criteria and difficulty are factors, but in the end it's taste that's the most important. Just because a dish is more complicated doesn't mean anything if it doesn't taste good. Lorena obviously though Antonia and Tiffany's dish tasted better. And just because the beef salad may have been "simpler," I think it's actually a harder task to make sure 100 plates of meat are all consistently seared, than making sure pasta is consistent.

[Concur with zettrane]

I have some concerns about the quality of the Top Chef judges picks and/or decison on who should leave when the competition is close between the African American and non-minority chefs. For example, how can Richard's and Antonia's dish that was unevenly cooked and the conch barely noticable, respectively; beat out Tiffany's dish that was slightly sweet and cool (from the wind) yet taste good and she is sent home. Wow!! Something is wrong with this picure. Guess the Top Chef judges are not ready to take a chance on the idea of an African American chef winning even in 2011. I will not be watching this show again given the blatant unfair judgements they display for for minorties on the show.

[Leila]

John Horn, shouldn't that be "improperly" in your lead sentence? Otherwise the "But" graph that follows makes no sense.

[Ron]

I'm with you, John. Both the Quickfire and Elimination challenges were judged very inconsistently this past week. My only explanation is that Lorena Garcia was determined that a female cook wins TC. That's probably why she gave the win to Antonia/Tiffany over Richard/Mike, who clearly had the better dish. (Since when did salads ever win anything on TC? I've seen finalists, such as Marcel in Season Two, lose because one of his courses was a salad!) And did you notice that Lorena had nothing good to say about Mike and Richard's dishes for the Elimination Challenge, which was strange since Mike wound up winning the competition and Richard most likely came in second place. And she praised Tiffany and Antonia's dishes, which was also strange since Tiffany wound up going home and Antonia probably had the next worst dish. I actually thought Richard should've won the Elimination Challenge. But because Lorena was so adamant that his lobster was undercooked (how can anyone undercook lobster???), I think that's why Mike won it. Lorena Garcia was one of the worst guest judges that TC ever had and I hope she does not get invited back--especially at an important stage of the competition.

[jen]

FULLY disagree with your characterization of the quickfire. In fact, given the rules of the challenge, it's even more natural that the girls won. The boys made something that could just as easily have been called "Spoon 'n' Serve." Making pasta in an hour might be ambitious, but that wasn't the challenge. The girls' dish was much more complicated. The challenge was to put out 100 FULL dishes, that looked and tasted the same. For god's sake, I could have made what the boys made. Far harder to have 100 plates of beef all done the same amount and cut into proper portions.