“Top Chef” — Restaurant Wars
Whenever the contestants gather at the beginning of the episode for the Quickfire Challenge there’s always the same reaction to the presence of the guest judge: unrivaled awe. While there is no doubt that the presence of these titans of the kitchen should elicit such thunderous praise, I sometimes question whether everyone immediately recognizes the chef, or if they need to be told who it is by producers. The thing is a chef, even a great one, is not a movie star. They are an invisible force behind the metal doors preparing your meal. Sure, if they have a food network show or an endless line of cookbooks the face suddenly becomes recognizable (it also marks the point at which the chef becomes a brand). Then again, maybe it’s because I don’t hang with a lot of top-tier kitchen talent. Still, if I walked into a room and P.T. Anderson were there, I wonder if I’d immediately know it was him.
Whatever. Let’s get to the goods.
Right off the bat, the preposterously attractive Padma Lakshmi tells our fine cast that the winner of the Quickfire will no longer be given immunity. Cue: lightening, thunder and organ music. More after the jump…
The challenge (which was a good one) was to create a new and exiting burger (“Just like the burgers that fine restaurant chain Red Robin!†says Padma holding a paper sack full of cash). Awesome. They all had 30 minutes to get the job done, the typical Quickfire time limit. Though as I watched and thought about it, 30 minutes seems shockingly quick — hence the name, I suppose. I mean, honestly, unless you’re Rachel Ray* what can you possibly cook from start to finish in 30 minutes? I’m not saying it can’t be done, but just think about the prep needed to make a burger: find your ingredients, chop the vegetables, grind the meat, cook the damn thing so no one gets salmonella, — that alone should take… umm… like thirty minutes or something. I have no sense of time. Please strike this paragraph from the record.
CJ wins! I don’t remember what kind of burger he made, but I do remember that it had a slice of tangerine on it and looked pretty awesome. While he was still at risk for being kicked off, he did a pretty sweet prize: having the luxury of picking his team for the elimination round, and given the dynamic among some of the contestants, is a total blessing. CJ picks Tre, Brian and Casey. If not the best team, they’re certainly the tallest.
As for the elimination challenge, it was the Top Chef staple: RESTAURANT WARS. Here, the group divides into two teams, each given a ton of cash, and then asked to design a restaurant (complete with decor) in about a day. Fun stuff.
CJ’s team came up with “Restaurant April” because CJ’s sister is named April. Dave Thomas would have been proud. The team of Sara, Howie, Dale and Hung named their restaurant “The Garage” which sounds like the type of place you’d want to eat if you were really into horrible food, and lawn-maintenance equipment.
Here is where things started to fall apart. The Garage was decked out in all black making it look like Henry Hill’s bedroom from Goodfellas. It was also packed to the gills with vanilla scented candles, courtesy of Dale. Now, I’m no restaurateur, but scented candles and food? What the hell was he thinking? We want to smell the food. Food, generally speaking, smells incredible. The whole point of scented candles is to make your house smell like food when you aren’t cooking… or to cover up the smell of previous cooking mistakes. Huge mistake, and a “pack your knives and go†offense.
On the food side, the only dish anyone spoke highly of (between both restaurants) was Hung’s tuna tartare. Hung, shockingly, didn’t come off as even the slightest bit of the pretentious maniac that he normally is. In fact, I’d say had they named a winner last night, it probably should have been Hung. He understood the theme of the restaurant, and more importantly understood the type of food people want to eat while sitting in a sweltering work-space in the middle of a Miami summer.
Howie, on the other hand, is out of control. I love how he keeps telling us that he’s “tweaked” all of these classic dishes, none of which have impressed the judges. The only things he’s done and had been successful with are those dishes that are the simplest (i.e. the pork and apples from a month or so back). As far as I’m concerned, Howie is on his way out. The same can be said for Sara who has continued to prove she has no idea what the hell she’s doing on this show. She takes a leadership position and then doesn’t lead. It’s one thing to aim for the middle and coast by until the later rounds, it’s something completely different to put your neck out without having the skill to back it up.
Over at Restaurant April, things weren’t much better. Brian, after really showing it charm last week by hocking food to drunk, Miami party people, completely failed at running the front of the house. He was a sweaty, unorganized, panicky mess, and took full responsibility for his awfulness. In a way, it seems unfair to heap all of the blame on both Brian and Dale who were the faces of the restaurant. This is, as Chef Tom frequently says, a cooking show. How can one really be fired for not waiting tables well enough, or for being a horrible interior designer? If you were really starting your own restaurant, don’t you think you’d hire professionals to do this for you?
That was reason enough for Tre to panic a bit as his smoked potatoes were a tad too smoky (wayyyyy too smoky) and stuck out as being the worst thing on the menu at Restaurant April.
Aside from Hung’s tuna, there weren’t a lot of kind words for anyone at the judges table. So when the bottom two were finally called in (Brian and Dale), it was of no surprise to this viewer that no one was going home this week. Usually, I’d say this would be cop-out, but in the case of opening a restaurant, you never really know what you’re doing on that first week. The good news was both teams will have to do it all over again for the next episode – hopefully with an added twist we have yet to hear about. But in the meantime… to be continued…
