'Top Chef: Texas': Diners are all hat, no cattle

The hook of Wednesday’s “Top Chef: Texas” was catering a progressive dinner party, but given the flat-as-a-pancake palettes of its Dallas diners, it should have been called a regressive night out.

If any more proof was needed that money can’t buy you taste, the well-heeled hosts for the cooking competition’s three-stop dinner party (appetizers, main courses, desserts) proved at every stop that they might be happier eating at a local Black Angus. One host, who considers herself an expert in entertaining, admitted she doesn’t like to try anything new. Another said his favorite dessert involved gummy bears. Another disparaged a beautiful dessert by saying it looked like Elmo. And another mistook a red wine reduction for blood. They then capped the dinner party with a classic after-dinner drink — margaritas!

When Padma remarked of Ty-Lör’s poor pork tenderloin, “so much and nothing at all,” she could have been talking about the diners themselves, and we can’t blame the remaining 14 chefs for mostly struggling to figure out what the heck the three couples really liked or wanted.

Fortunately, the Dallas dilettantes weren’t judging the finished food, because they might have given the top prize to Chris C.’s cupcakes, which the real “Top Chef” judges detested. Paul won for his roasted brussel sprouts (we cooked the same thing for Thanksgiving, although not nearly as nicely), and while we were relieved to see that Chris J. wasn’t eliminated a week after his colleague Richie was dispatched, it did feel like Chuy was properly expunged for a disastrous salmon dish that he admitted he cooks in his own restaurant.

Texas may have a rich food tradition, but let’s hope “Top Chef” can find diners in its upcoming episodes just a bit more adventurous than 5-year-olds.

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-- John Horn

Photo: Lindsay, Sarah, Chris J. and Whitney in "Top Chef: Texas." Credit: Vivian Zink / Bravo
 

'Top Chef: Texas': Fixin' to get interesting

It's only the second real episode of "Top Chef: Texas," with the first two installments cutting the herd of cooks from 29 to 16, yet even at this early juncture a number of storylines are emerging.

Although it’s far too soon to identify safely who might last well into the competition, it’s safe to say who we will be rooting for and against. At the same time, the remaining 14 contestants after this week's cut might remember some potential lessons based not only on what’s happened in this ninth season but in previous “Top Chef” seasons.

Who and what stands out?

1. Even with so many chilies, enough with the “Padma is hot” remarks. There’s been only one episode so far in which a chef hasn’t commented on host Padma Lakshmi’s pulchritude. Last season, “Top Chef” wrapped things up with lingering shots of her in a bikini. On Wednesday, she rode a horse like Lady Godiva in chaps, as if she were sauntering down a fashion show runway in the middle of a rodeo. It’s a show about cooking, not curves, and anyone with eyes already gets that she’s attractive.

2. Chris C. has the most reality show smarts. He noted of the duplicitous Sarah over some grocery store ploy, “There’s just something about Sarah that’s rubbing me the wrong way.” Us, too. Chuy’s self-aggrandizing act, which started funny and is getting tiresome, was spotted early by Chris C., who remarked of Chuy ironically, “I’ve dubbed him the most interesting man in the world.”

3. Go big or go home. Paul won the Quickfire Challenge as the only chef willing to cook with the ghost chili, which is so hot you can degrease most Caterpillar tractors with three of them chopped with a teaspoon of warm water. In the elimination challenge, which called for teams to make chili, the white team almost went home for plating chili that wasn’t spicy.

4. There’s no crying in cooking. Nyesha made this remark when Beverly started crying a gully washer of tears at the rodeo, not over the cruelty to the animals but because she missed her husband. We’re not sure Nyesha’s right -- anyone who’s slaved over a soufflé only to have it come out of the oven the height and density of a Frisbee, is allowed to weep -- but it’s probably good reality show advice.

5. Chris J. is now our new favorite. We like Heather’s personality, and are intrigued by Ty-Lor’s sense of humor, but Chris J. might have the biggest heart. Although the double glasses seems more affected than practical -- outside of flash fires, when do you really need sunglasses in the kitchen? -- it was impossible not to be touched by the compassion and concern he showed for Richie, with whom he works alongside in Chicago’s Moto restaurant. We didn’t get that much affection in a whole season from the brothers Voltaggio.

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'Top Chef: Texas': Make your own tortillas, or else

--John Horn

Photo: Beverly Kim, Nyesha Arrington and Richie Farina in “Top Chef: Texas.”

Credit:  Virginia Sherwood / Bravo

 

'Top Chef: Texas': Make your own tortillas, or else

Ty-Lör said it best: “Nothing was great, and a lot of things sucked.”

The first real episode in “Top Chef: Texas,” after the initial field of 29 was trimmed to 16 finalists over the last two weeks, pitted two teams against each other in a quinceanera cook-off.

While the food wasn’t inspired, and some (like Ty-Lor’s golf-ball sized fritters) appeared inedible, most of the drama came down to tortillas.

First of all, in a misstep that called to mind John Somerville’s epic fail in season seven when he was immediately dispatched for using frozen, store-bought puff pastry in a dessert, neither the pink nor the green teams made their own tortillas, a critical misstep for a meal designed to showcase “elegant Mexican cuisine.” When you’re asked to do the same for Italian cooking, would you immediately run for Ronzoni, De Cecco or Barilla pasta? 

But the real issue was that even when the cooks grabbed the ready-made kind, Keith chose flour over corn, turning his would-be enchilada into a soggy mess of a burrito. We can understand why the judges didn’t like his choice, but more confounding was that none of his teammates staged a culinary intervention. And we’re calling you out by name, Sarah.

'Top Chef: Texas': A last-chance kitchen that has many problems

Is it a second chance? Or one more shot at being humiliated? And does the math even work?

Outside of the bake-off to trim the final roster for “Top Chef: Texas” from 29 contestants to 16 finalists, one of the key inventions of the ninth season in Bravo’s cooking competition is “Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen.”

The idea is to give popular cooks one more opportunity to get back into the match after being eliminated. But having seen its debut in Wednesday’s second “Top Chef” episode, I can say the invention appears to be creating as many potential problems as solving them and presents a mathematical obstacle that might worry Ben Bernanke.

Head judge Tom Colicchio said the Internet-only “Last Chance Kitchen” was partly inspired by last season’s dispatch of Tre, who stumbled in the series’ restaurant wars showdown. But in its premiere, in which Andrew was able to make a better pizza than Janine, the actual logistics of “Last Chance Kitchen” came into focus, and it’s not a pretty picture.

First of all, because it resides on Bravo’s website, you can’t TiVo the thing, meaning you have to get up from the TV, start up your laptop and (of all the indignities!) be forced to watch the commercials. As Colicchio explained it, though, there will be a “Last Chance Kitchen” every week, meaning that Andrew isn’t back in the show at all, but must repeat the whole exercise next week against whoever else has to pack their knives.

If you start crunching the numbers, whoever finally prevails in the “Last Chance Kitchen” might have to win a dozen or more head-to-head challenges. While that’s still a lot easier than working in a coal mine, it does require a remarkable run of execution and luck, and ultimately subverts one of the underlying (yet not always visible) tenets of “Top Chef” -- namely, that you can make it very far into the show having never won anything.

Last season, in “Top Chef: Masters,” Tiffany made it to the final four without winning a single elimination challenge. A season earlier, in the regular “Top Chef,” Amanda made it to the final six also without taking one elimination challenge prize. The loser’s bracket, in other words, is materially harder than the winner’s bracket. Whoever triumphs through the parallel “Last Chance Kitchen” contest could very easily win more direct matches than any of the finalists. And did I mention you have to get up from the TV to see it?

“I think it would almost be cooler,” Andrew said, “to win it from the ‘Last Chance Kitchen.’ ”
We have to agree.

-- John Horn

Photo: Lindsay in "Top Chef: Texas." Credit: Virginia Sherwood/Bravo

 

 

'Top Chef: Texas': Don't mess with Tom Colicchio

The theme of Wednesday's "Top Chef" premiere was that "everything's bigger in Texas." Yet there's also something noticeably smaller in the Lone Star State -- Tom Colicchio's patience.

In what had to be the fastest sendoff in "Top Chef" history, the series' lead judge dispatched the cocky but otherwise clueless Tyler Stone to the showers before the Sacramento personal chef even cooked one thing. We can't disagree with the decision -- Stone was butchering a cut of pork the way Daniel Boone might have slaughtered a grizzly with a machete -- and hope that the cooking show's ninth season won't shy away from similarly unapologetic dismissals.

Given that 29 contestants must rapidly be reduced to 16 finalists this year, there's a real necessity for "Top Chef's" arbiters to be judge, jury and executioner in one fell swoop.

Bravo's popular cooking show prides itself on the courtesy it extends its contestants, even as they're shown the door. While we're not asking that "Top Chef" adopt heartless, "Survivor"-style exits, the show in recent years has been mighty slow to separate some obvious chaff from the tastier wheat. It took eight episodes, for instance, in the last regular season of "Top Chef" finally to be rid of Stephen Hopcraft.

Anyone who bothered (and we did) to watch some of the audition videos for "Top Chef: Texas" could have spotted Tyler's fate immediately. As in many reality shows, a "Top Chef" contestant's longevity is   inversely related to how long he or she predicts he or she will stick around. In his tryout video, Tyler said, "this little dummy is going to cook you under the bus" -- a strangely tortured metaphor -- while also boasting, "I have great knife skills," and, "I know I can hold my own."

When he started butchering his pork, Tyler quickly retracted his audition hubris, telling Colicchio, "I'm not a butcher," preferring to have his proteins sent in nicely prepared by some unseen hand. "I know," Colicchio said. "But you're a chef. And that's a basic skill."

It's too early to say who the favorites might be, but given his looks, I'm betting that more than a few women (my wife included) are hoping that Chris Crary, who calls himself "a culinary artist," is around for more than a few weeks.

But if one of your favorites is sent the way of Tyler, don't despair. For the first time, the exiled will have a chance to cook their way back into the competition in a future, Web-only segment called "Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen." It's similar to the kind of pardon that allowed Hugh Acheson, who was booted at the start of the last "Top Chef: Masters," to come back into the kitchen. And now Acheson will be a judge on "Top Chef: Texas."

Let's hope he's not too kind.

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Photo: Emeril Lagasse, Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio in "Top Chef: Texas." Credit: Virginia Sherwood / Bravo

'Top Chef: Texas': Swift punishment -- but also a second chance

Tom Colicchio been studying Gov. Rick Perry?

The new season of “Top Chef: Texas” premieres Wednesday on Bravo, and based on the opening episode in the Emmy-winning cooking competition, Colicchio and his fellow judges seem to have a fondness for Perry and his state’s tough stance on final justice. While the “Top Chef” adjudicators aren’t sending any cooks off to death row, they are dispatching several lacking contestants remarkably and unapologetically swiftly, including Colicchio’s axing of one chef in the first episode before he even turned on his stove.

If the judging in the premiere hour seems unduly speedy, it’s a consequence of this season’s opening conceit, where 29 chefs initially fight for the final 16 spots in the season’s real contest (that first wave of weeding continues next week). In another new twist for the show, now in its ninth season, one of the chefs eliminated from the shortlisted bunch of 16 will have a chance to cook himself or herself back into the competition well after being booted. Commuting the sentence, in other words.

“It addresses the person whom the viewer thinks got a raw deal, or maybe they were more talented and they were kicked off too soon,” Colicchio said in a conference call about the on- time chance at redemption, where Colicchio will be the sole judge in an episode shown only on the Internet. The move was partially inspired by the elimination of Tre Wilcox last year, after he made several blunders in “Top Chef’s” restaurant wars episode.

“Everybody thought that we should have given him a break because he had competed and done well earlier. And so what it does though, it gives that person the opportunity to get back in," Colicchio said.

Host Padma Lakshmi and Colicchio said the idea of expanding the show’s initial contestant pool was meant to let people cook their way onto the show, rather than making the cut based on their resume and audition. “I never thought of it as a mass killing,” Lakshmi said of the first, drastic cut. Added Colicchio: “There were some people who we were led to believe would have been great contestants, really strong cooks, and they weren’t good at all.”

As for the season’s more intriguing storylines, audiences could have a strong rooting interest in North Carolina’s Keith Rhodes, who taught himself how to cook while in prison on a narcotics charge, and Richie Farina and Chris Jones, who work alongside each other in Chicago’s Moto restaurant.

For people who have grown weary of the contestants’ ever-expanding body art, two women — Los Angeles’ Dakota Weiss (NineThirty restaurant) and Georgia’s Whitney Otawka — definitively prove that tattoos are not the sole domain of male chefs. There's more ink on the two women than in a barrel of squid.

“We’re coming off an Emmy win; we’re coming off of people knowing and loving the show and being very familiar with the format,” Lakshmi said of keeping "Top Chef" interesting. “We have to top ourselves. I think it’s a challenge we face every day in doing the show, just to make it better.”

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Photo:  Gail Simmons, Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio in "Top Chef: Texas." Credit: Scott McDermott/Bravo

'Top Chef' takes on a Texas-sized group of contestants

Too many cooks in the kitchen? It sure looks as if that could be the case in Bravo’s new season of “Top Chef,” where a record 29 contestants will try to sauté, braise and grill their way to the top of the food preparation chain.

Premiering Nov. 2, the ninth season in the highly rated cooking competition will be set in Texas. Only 16 of the chefs, several of whom currently work in Southern California restaurants, will advance to the cook-offs in the Lone Star State.

Last season, 18 contestants competed in “Top Chef All-Stars,” with Richard Blais taking the top toque. Hugh Acheson, the colorful cook from the last “Top Chef Masters,” will join Emeril Lagasse as a regular “Top Chef” judge. The guest judges will include Charlize Theron, Pee-wee Herman and Patti LaBelle.

The local chefs are Nyesha Arrington, 28, of Santa Monica’s Wilshire Restaurant; Jonathan Baltazar, 36, from Long Beach’s Heights Cuisine; Chris Crary, 29, of Santa Monica’s Whist Restaurant; Laurent Quenioux, 51, of Pasadena’s Vertical Wine Bistro; and Dakota Weiss, 35, from Westwood’s NineThirty.

“Just like Texas, this will be our biggest season ever,” head judge Tom Colicchio said in a statement.

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-- John Horn

Photo: Gail Simmons, Padma Lakshmi  and Tom Colicchio from “Top Chef: Texas.” Credit: Scott McDermott / Bravo

'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 

 

 

 

'Top Chef All-Stars': The pressure is cooking the chefs

Cooks are using to cracking things—eggs, pepper corns, chicken bones, the occasional mixing bowl. But as the first installment in the “Top Chef All-Stars” finale proved, they are prone to cracking up themselves.

There’s no doubt the remaining five chefs must feel like a veal chop hammered into scaloppini.  Even though it takes Bravo months to show all of the episodes, the series is actually filmed in a matter of weeks, and by the time the season winds down so, too, have the chefs’ stamina—not to mention their mental health.
As past finales have dramatized, the winning chefs don’t always triumph just by cooking the best dishes.

They prevail because their rivals panic, outthink themselves, and start pulling out kitchen tools they’ve never used before, the case in Season 5 when Casey disastrously persuaded Carla to cook sous vide for the first time in her life.

The victors, like marathoners focused only on maintaining a steady pace all the way to the finish line, don’t alter their course, confident in their culinary skills.

All of which makes us very worried about Richard.
Mike, especially after topping superstar Michael Voltaggio in Wednesday’s Quickfire challenge, might believe otherwise, but Richard has been and still is the best cook in this season’s “Top Chef.” But he’s starting to become unhinged, a troubling development. 

“Honestly, I hate everything I do,” Richard said after serving a lamb dish the judges mostly loved. He looks like a guy convinced his airplane is going to crash, his wife is going to leave him for George Clooney, his child is going to join a permanent Santa Cruz drum circle. He’s not quite ready for a culinary intervention, but if he doesn’t relax—recall that he lost in the fourth season when he “choked,” as he put it, in the finals—Richard won’t be around much longer.

Meanwhile, the season’s totemic tower of positive thinking, Carla, was sent home for serving up pork so rare it looked like an invitation to an upcoming trichinosis convention—stay cool in the sun!—in the Bahamas.

Anyone who has been near those cooking schools that seem to be popping up on every corner has seen the student chefs milling about—with their checked pants, their clogs, and their stupid pocket thermometers.

Pork is done but still pink around 150 degrees, and can be served a few degrees cooler. Carla’s meat looked like the same temperature of melted ice cream, and even if Tiffany or Antonia could have been sent home for their uninspired food, some of Carla’s pork was inedible—not a great attribute when everything is on the line.

Carla’s inexorable grace and liveliness will be missed as much by viewers as it might be by Richard. Without a steadying, supportive influence in the kitchen—and that certainly won’t be Mike—Richard could very well fall apart as fast as an overcooked pot roast. We hope he pulls it together, fast.

--John Horn

Photo of Richard Blais in “Top Chef”: Virginia Sherwood/Bravo

 

'Top Chef All-Stars' reaches fork in road, takes it

 

I would have punted, too.

Faced with five remarkable dishes and one impossible decision, the judges for “Top Chef All-Stars” reached the unexpected but wholly defensible decision of eliminating no one Wednesday night, setting up a finale with an extra contestant. But they delivered the news as dramatically (or cynically) as possible, scaring countless viewers just a little less than Richard.

Rarely has a “Top Chef” episode forced viewers to struggle so hard to spot the shortcomings in any of the chef’s dishes. When at the dinner inspired by the cooks’ family histories Antonia’s mother suggested to Padma, Gail, Tom and guest judge Dan Barber that they take all five chefs to the Bahamas, it sounded like nothing more than a protective parent looking after a child. 

After all five plates came out, you started thinking that maybe she was on to something.
“We couldn’t decide,” Padma told the two chefs left in the lurch the longest, Tiffany and Carla, moments after Padma nearly sent Richard into ventricular fibrillation by telling him to pack his knives—for the finale.  “It was just too tough,” Tom said of finding a chef to cast out. “We just couldn’t say goodbye to either of you.”

Given professionally researched genealogies to help guide their culinary choices, the chefs remained remarkably true to the rules of conduct, with some (Carla and Antonia, in particular) daring to prepare food they knew could go off the rails in an instant.

Tre was sent home in the eighth episode for his grilled vegetable risotto, but Antonia didn’t back away from the dish, winning the Elimination Challenge for her braised veal risotto.

Tiffany knows that Tom is repelled by okra’s inherent sliminess, yet nevertheless served him braised short ribs, mustard greens and, yes, okra.

Carla, a stranger to molecular gastronomy, pulled out a bottled of liquid nitrogen to help set her grits before frying. If any chef played it safe, it was Mike, who made gnocchi, but anyone who has eaten good and bad gnocchi knows the difference between the two is as distinct as “The King’s Speech” and “Piranha 3D.”

Mike and Tiffany have yet to win a single challenge this season, and their dishes in the cooking-from-the-snack-bar Quickfire challenge—Mike made a soup that looked like wet cardboard, and Tiffany served nachos, which showed no ambition or creativity—suggest they enter the last two episodes as underdogs.

But there was no denying that all of their dinners looked good enough to jump on a plane, fly to New York and gulp down.  “I want their job to be hard,” Carla said. And she wasn’t kidding.
“This was an incredible dinner filled with impressive dishes,” guest judge Barber said. Added Tom: “I don’t know even where to begin….I hate to see any of you go home for this.”

As it turned out, he didn’t. Call it chicken (free range, please). Call it a Solomonic decision. Whatever the name, it was the right thing to do.
--John Horn

Photo of Richard, Mike, Tiffany, Antonia and Carla in "Top Chef All-Stars": Bravo TV.

 

'Top Chef': Mike thinks cook and crook are the same thing

 

Catfish? More like catfight.
The personality clashes in this season’s “Top Chef  All-Stars” have been as fleeting as a cloud of steam—they vanish immediately.  But when Richard accused Mike of stealing a winning recipe Wednesday night—a charge that Mike didn’t exactly deny—it looked as if the show had its first real feud.

The dispute began in the episode’s Quickfire challenge, when guest judge Paula Deen (whose own cooking is so pedestrian she was a controversial pick as this year’s Rose Parade grand marshal), asked the remaining six chefs to deep fry something yummy.

Richard, as is his habit, went all molecular gastronomic and froze some mayonnaise, which he  then submerged in boiling duck fat. Mike made a chicken “oyster” dish that, at the very least, was inspired by a drawing Richard had showed Mike earlier, and at worst was pilfered.

“That’s my dish,” Richard said coldly. Mike said he “had seen it done before,” which given the dish’s distinctive presentation (Richard’s sketch included serving the chicken in an empty oyster shell) strained credulity. 

Like a good thief, Mike then shifted the blame—to Richard. If it was such a good idea, Mike said, Richard “should have done it himself,” which is a bit like a bank robber saying the tellers would have emptied the registers if he hadn’t.

When Richard and Mike were shortlisted for the win (Antonia, with the best dish of fried avocados, was bizarrely disqualified because she didn’t make a separate tasting plate for Padma),  Richard realized the cruel irony of Mike’s theft. “He stole my dish,” Richard said. “I’m competing against myself.”

Adding insult to injury, Mike won the challenge, pocketing the $5,000 prize. Hardly contrite, Mike turned the slow roast on his bad behavior to high broil.  “It’s not your dish,” Mike explained. “It’s my dish, because I won the 5 Gs.” Said Richard: “This sucks.”

The remaining women—Antonia, Tiffany and Carla—convened their own culinary court hearing. “This is bad chef etiquette,” Antonia said. “There is man law,” Carla said, “and there is chef law. You don’t take another chef’s idea. That’s a no-no.”

Because there is some justice not only in the world but also in reality television, Richard’s fried fish and pulled pork won the elimination challenge, which was judged by John Besh (whose New Orleans restaurant August is among the best places I’ve eaten) and Deen (whose crab martini recipe calls for 1 cup of mayonnaise).  “Sorry, Mikey,” Richard said. “This one is mine.”

But because there is injustice not only in the world but also in reality television, it was Dale—not Mike—who was dispatched from the competition. Unlike his angry demeanor in Season 4, Dale has matured greatly as a person and a chef, and his tearful farewell was actually moving.

Too bad the same can’t be said of Mike. Perhaps if Mike gets jammed up next week, he can steal someone's pea puree, as Alex did from Ed last season. After all, as Mike appears to know too well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

--John Horn

Photo of Richard Blais in “Top Chef All-Stars”: David Giesbrecht/Bravo

 

'Top Chef': Finally, a shocking exit

 

The surprises in the eighth season of “Top Chef” have been few and far between. But Wednesday night the judges blew the lid off the pressure cooker, sending finals favorite Angelo out the door for a potato soup that even Tom Colicchio, who has a seemingly spiritual connection to sodium chloride, found too salty.

You can’t say it was the wrong call, although Tiffany (a mushy jambalaya) and Carla (an insipid apple soup) must have assumed it was really their turn to exit. In a challenge that felt far less gimmicky than some of this all-star season’s sillier tests (having to make stuffing with neither cutlery nor utensils comes to mind), the remaining seven cooks had three hours to assemble a kitchen, shop for and prepare a meal inside a Target for 100 store employees. In the middle of the night, with no apparent sink and ingredients—let’s be honest about Target’s groceries for a minute—that don’t exactly include baby asparagus, heirloom tomatoes or organic celery root. And good luck finding a chinois on Target’s shelves. 

Given that professional chefs typically cook at incredibly high heat on both the cook top and in the oven, the lack of searing flames compelled several contestants to run for cover and make soup, which seems both safe and stupid. The food the judges deemed the most enjoyable came from chefs who somehow found a way to cook pork two ways (Richard), grill cheese sandwiches (Dale, who brilliantly used a steam iron, perhaps set to “linen,” to brown the top half of his bread) and poach eggs (Antonia, or did she fry them?).

Dale won the elimination challenge (and a $25,000 prize), a nice double after taking the Quickfire for his pretzel and potato chip shortbread cookie.

Angelo decided to make a deconstructed baked potato, or as he called it when served to the judges, baked potato soup with bacon, onions, sour cream, potato skins, scallions and grated cheddar cheese. It looked good enough, but apparently tasted like salty Spackle.

Angelo claimed that his palate was so fatigued he couldn’t detect how thick and off the concoction was, but what was Mike’s excuse? He was working incredibly closely with his bff, and while he counseled Angelo that the soup was a bit thick, Mike didn’t stage the necessary culinary intervention.

The happiest guy at the end of the night? Richard. We assumed they would keep Angelo around, if only because he’s been strong all season, with two wins (two more than Tiffany) and several top finishes. With Angelo knocked out, it’s a bit like losing Duke in your NCAA pool in the Sweet 16. Who can beat Richard now?

It’s hard to make a really strong case for any of the other remaining chefs.

Carla always seems thisclose to serving nothing but air on a plate, Dale’s lack of range is sooner or later going to be a problem, Tiffany has more bottom finishes than any of the remaining chefs and Mike — well, we can’t quite figure out why he’s even still around. Maybe it falls to Antonia, then, to beat out Richard. With Angelo gone, we have no idea who else might be able to.

--John Horn

Photo of Angelo Sosa in "Top Chef":  David Giesbrecht/Bravo