“Top Chef” — Second Helping
You know you’re going to be in for a hell of an episode when you start with CJ saying to the camera, “I only have one testicle, but I have more balls than those other guys have combined.” Way to spell it out, CJ. You’re a champion in my book. Immediately after the teams find two letters that had been slipped under the door of the loft (a reality show staple as time tested as “tonight, we’re eliminated TWO people”). The letters were the full critiques written by that blogger from the restaurant previews the previous night. Ooooooh, the blogger! Everybody run! Actually, we’d later learn that her criticisms would play a key role in both restaurants’ futures: The Garage took the advice and made the appropriate changes. Restaurant April figured since they had already succeeded that would be enough to get them through the next night’s service. (Spoiler: it didn’t). More after the break…
The Quickfire Challenge this week was the chef equivalent of flip-cup, but with significantly more knife-work and significantly less spilled beer. Both teams had to complete a series of mise-en -place excercises in a relay format. The first person had to shuck 15 oysters, the second needed to fill a bowl with diced onion, then someone had to separate some whole chicken with the final person needing to whip egg whites in a bowl until they could stick to said bowl upside down (just to show how little I know about food preparation, I didn’t know this was even something that is possible… then again the first time I made homemade whip cream I was shocked that so few ingredients could create something so wonderful with just a little elbow grease… or the fact that if you whip it too much your whipped cream turns to butter… SCIENCE!).
The Garage won the challenge easily. Casey, who was Restaurant April’s onion dicer was shockingly slow. I thought anyone who purported to cook for a living could hack up a vegetable in seconds. She looked like she was trying to carve a tableau in relief, not hacking the sh*t out of some onions.
Winning, the challenge granted The Garage (who would later change its name to the very ugly “Quatre”) use of a wine expert and some extra cash to buy wine for the restaurants opening. The wine “expert” turned out to be Steve from season one. I didn’t watch season one, but I can tell you that I’d probably have hated Steve. He does seem to know his wine, however. I kind of like that the show has built up something of its own repertory company over these three seasons as we’re starting to see a lot of the same faces come through every few weeks.
As for the Elimination Challenge the only new rule was that each of the four courses needed to have two options for the customer. Simple enough. Quatre, whose performance was abysmal last week, did a top-down redesign with the help of Madonna’s brother (!!!), as well as completely overhauling the menu (Dale described their new decor as “looking like Valentine’s Day threw up all over it). Things seemed to work quite well as there was hardly a complaint made about anything on their side of the competition from the food to the front of house service. So by the time they were finally named as the winner (and shocker of all shockers Sara was crowned the individual winner) we had already started to guess which member of Restaurant April was going to get the boot.
But before I get to RA, I have to say that Padma (who is preposterously attractive) really needs to cut with the “sorrowful congratulations.” When in the show’s three season run has the loser been named before the winner? Never. And it’s never going to happen, because that wouldn’t make any god damn sense. So enough with the sullen victory announcement and ominous call-overs.
Back to Restaurant April. They dropped the ball. No. The ball was in their possession from the previous night but they just put it on the ground and then sat on it. Sitting on the ball is not how you win a cooking competition. The man who felt the brunt of the criticism was the very likable Tre. Tre was named the executive chef for the restaurant and so the buck stops with him. If anything he suffered from trying to do too much and not doling out enough responsibility to his teammates. CJ made one dish which was too salty and Casey made this halibut dish that caused guest judge Geoffrey Zakarian to say, “When you go to the fish market to buy the fish… the fish is dead. You don’t want to kill it again.” (Brilliant) Tre had three dishes, and only one of them succeeded. (One was so bad it caused Ted Allen to go into near convulsions).
By the time the moment came, it had to have been no surprise to anyone that Tre was asked to pack his knives and go. Still, this was the first elimination of the season where I was truly sad to see a character make his or her exit. There weren’t tears (Tre is a tough guy, and not, say, an emotional wreck like Joey), or long goodbyes (in fact, he even got in a slight dig at CJ during his final interview), but it was sad to see him leave. Of all the contestants, he’s one who should have made it much further and who never just skated by in the middle of the pack… like, say, Sara (until this week).
August 27th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Did I mishear or did Tre lie during the inquisition? I thought, earlier in the episode, he said he could “make bread pudding in my sleep.” But when the executioners asked him about it, he claimed he wasn’t that familiar with the dish. Malarkey, I say!