| 1 |
Stephanie |
|
Quickfires |
0
|
1
|
2
|
| Last Week: 1 |
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Eliminations |
2
|
5
|
1
|
Lest you forget, and lest Tom's little comment didn't clue you in, Stephanie has now been on top of the elimination challenge for five out of six weeks. Five out of six. Second place in that category? A three-way tie between Antonia, Dale and Lisa with three top elimination appearances apiece. Two solid dishes earning double props solidify her hold on the top spot this week. Her steamed mussels with cilantro vinaigrette and grilled bread were not only a refreshing way to handle mussels, and perfect for the challenge. The orange pairs with both the fennel and the beer, and I can see the cilantro vinaigrette, which she made using jalapenos and honey, giving it a nice little tart, spicy-sweet accent. This is a recipe I'd like to try at some point. Her elimination dish wasn't quite as exciting, putting pork with pears and potatoes, but it sounds like the rosemary vinaigrette both delighted and surprised. Anytime you can get the judges to enjoy something that originally inspired suspicion, you're doing the right thing.
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|
| 2 |
Richard |
|
Quickfires |
2
|
4
|
1
|
| Last Week: 2 |
|
Eliminations |
1
|
2
|
1
|
Both of his dishes actually struck me as more interesting than Stephanie's, and that's yet another thing I find encouraging going forward. He keeps putting out unconventional dishes and (mostly) pulling them off, and when you're an experienced diner who's had a dish or two, there are few things more exciting than trying something that's genuinely new to you. If he keeps surprising, the judges won't be able to help but give him the prize. The flipside being, of course, that if you bomb, you bomb. But Richard bounces back from his near-disaster, and actually looks pretty strong in a challenge that I thought might give him some trouble. Gail seems to imply that if it were her voting instead of the tailgaters, she would have put him in the top three for the elimination. So to my mind, he's unofficially getting credit for two top finishes. His grilled tuna quickfire sandwich is vaguely reminiscent of banh mi, but kind of pulls it back further towards the French end of the spectrum, pickling the vegetables with tarragon, basil and mustard seed. And for those wondering what his burger had to do with pate, it was made with veal and pork, seasoned with pate spice, and topped with cucumbers, fennel and curry mayonnaise. That's how you do a creative burger.
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| 3 |
Dale |
|
Quickfires |
1
|
2
|
1
|
| Last Week: 3 |
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Eliminations |
1
|
3
|
0
|
Dale, meanwhile, continues to show strong since his week four coming out party. Yeah, he's cocky, but cocky and capable are a great combination for this show. I'm disinclined to hammer him too hard for the quickfire. His pork, sauced with a miso honey mustard and crusted with crushed pretzels, was headed in the right direction, I think. He just blew the execution, by his own admission, which is a rarity for him. And his tandoori ribs were both creative and universally loved. The seasoning for the pork is a huge grocery list, and the ability to keep that many flavors balanced says something. And Lee Anne blogs that she polished off an entire quart of his potato salad in one sitting after bringing home some leftovers. The guy feeds Gale Sayers, Richard Dent and Refrigerator Perry and wins his first elimination. For a Chicago boy, that's a pretty damn good day. Between the botched quickfire and his more recent ascension, he's not passing Richard this week despite the win. But he's threatening.
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|
| 4 |
Antonia |
|
Quickfires |
1
|
2
|
0
|
| Last Week: 5 |
|
Eliminations |
0
|
3
|
2
|
Antonia gets a little bump this week, due to a strong elimination and Mark's less than stellar performance (more on that shortly). But I still think this week's showing is less impressive than it might seem at first blush. For starters, miso glazed cod? C'mon. Yeah, it's a great dish, and I'll always love it, but it was already trite by the time season ONE of Top Chef aired. Nevermind that her version was sort of a half-assed variant that slapped a little miso on the fish and lacked all the refinement of Nobu's version (which popularized the dish in the States). And her jerk chicken sandwich? I'll give her credit for what sounds like a nice combination of flavors, with jerk chicken, pineapple, bananas, maple syrup and bacon mayonnaise. But first of all, she made her bacon mayonnaise by blending chopped bacon with mayo. Please, Antonia. This is how you make bacon mayonnaise. And secondly? Cinnamon, allspice, soy sauce and scotch bonnet peppers is a pretty lame jerk. I say do it or don't. More and more, Antonia shows that she can handle herself, but that the range isn't there. I'm keeping her near the top because I can't find a compelling reason to leapfrog anybody past her and because I think she's one of the favorites to either sneak in or narrowly miss the fourth spot in the finals, but let's just say there's now a very clear break between three and four.
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| 5 |
Lisa |
|
Quickfires |
0
|
0
|
3
|
| Last Week: 6 |
|
Eliminations |
1
|
3
|
0
|
Lisa had a pretty quiet week, but she's been hot lately and nobody else did much to distinguish themselves this week, so she gets her little bump due to Mark and we'll let her continue to hang out near the top of the middle for a while. My first thought upon seeing her bacon cheeseburger in the quickfire was, "Come on, you have to do something interesting." But checking out the recipe, it was a little deeper than it seemed. Nothing crazy special, but made with a little pork and spiked with things like oregano, mustard, garlic, sriracha and beer. A little uninspiring, perhaps, but not totally ridiculous. Her skirt steak relied entirely on the salsa verde, which was, again, just a little interesting and almost Italian, with capers, anchovies and basil. But we heard almost nothing about her dishes on the show, and Lee Anne (who had a rare opportunity to taste everything this week) didn't seem overly impressed by either. One thing I can't quite wrap my head around is the fact that she constantly talks about how she makes upscale Asian cuisine, and while she's used a couple of Asian ingredients, we haven't seen an Asian disn from her since week two. Is there suddenly going to be a major shift in her cooking style? At any rate, I think it still remains to be seen if those two golden weeks were courtesy of Stephanie.
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| 6 |
Jennifer |
|
Quickfires |
1
|
3
|
0
|
| Last Week: 8 |
|
Eliminations |
0
|
1
|
0
|
Anger pays off! The wallflower finally makes her presence known by busting out a rather inspired quickfire. I'm feeling a little vindicated since I've felt for a while now that once she broke out, she'd break up before breaking down. Although, come to think of it, she did kind of seem like she was oddly on the verge of breaking down in the first part of the show. As Lee Anne put it, "Dude, she’s not dying. She just gets to go home earlier. She can water the plants and feed the cat." That's nice that you want to "do it for Zoi", Jenn, but it's okay -- you don't have to take yourself so seriously. But okay, you get mad, channel it -- and she did. Even more impressive than the beignet recipe itself, which tossed shrimp, scallops and grapefruit in a ginger and beer batter before frying, was the fact that everybody marveled at how well it stood up. Not only were they still a winning dish after sitting and waiting through ten other tastings, but Lee Anne said they were still awesome and fresh-tasting a full hour later. Plus, how is she (other than Nikki, but we'll get to that -- ugh) the only one to do fried food with beer? Seems like kind of a no-brainer. Her elimination dish wasn't quite as inspiring, even if it was her ode to her dearly departed sweetheart (not to mention a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma for Richard Dent), but the awkwardness of quinoa tabouleh at a tailgate party aside, at least she had chicken skewers and creamy sauce part right. It'll be interesting to see now if she takes off a bit or fades back into obscurity. I think my ladylove has written her off exclusively on the basis of the shark fin, but me, I'm kinda pulling for her. Purely from a likeability standpoint, she's one of the two I'd kind of like to see sneaking into the fourth spot in the finals -- as long as she gets over this newfound weepiness.
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| 7 |
Andrew |
|
Quickfires |
0
|
1
|
1
|
| Last Week: 7 |
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Eliminations |
1
|
2
|
1
|
Keep moving, Mark. We'll get to you in a moment. We're as shocked as you, but apparently Andrew can make something other than faux caviar. And he appears to be making up for lost time, because I think he actually prepared seven dishes this week. Let's review: Rainbow trout with raspberry gastrique, hento salad, pomegranate miso vinaigrette and peaches for the quickfire, and grilled shrimp with beer-mustard-honey sauce, potato-parsnip whip, chimichurri, apple-scallion chutney and crispy bacon for the elimination. He clearly has the energy to turn out some interesting, complex elements, even if I question his ability to pull them together cohesively. That's a LOT of stuff going on, and it didn't seem to quite come together for the judges, either. He seems to do better when he exercises a little restraint (or, perhaps more accurately, when his teammates exercise it for him), but he's getting more and more tweaked as the competition goes on, so I suspect he'll be dragged out by security sooner rather than later. Oh, and Andrew? It's a lot easier to remove a football helmet if you undo the chin strap.
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| 8 |
Mark |
|
Quickfires |
2
|
2
|
0
|
| Last Week: 4 |
|
Eliminations |
0
|
1
|
3
|
And so we come to this week's big mover, which should come as no surprise. I realize that four spots is an awfully big fall for one week at this stage of the competition, but that's because it's long overdue. Since that strong week two, Mark's been headed steadily downward, and it shows -- not only in his cooking, but on his face for cryin' out loud. Is it just me, or does he look more and more stoned with each passing week? Every time they cut to his solo interviews, I keep waiting for him to reach down and pick up a king-sized bag of Fritos. It looks like next week's elimination is two-man teams, and I want him to be paired with Andrew SO BADLY. I'm not sure if their energy levels will cancel each other out and they'll become the ultimate focused superchef, or if it'll be more along the lines of matter and antimatter colliding, bringing the competition to an abrupt and tragic end on week seven. Anyway, both Koren and Lee Anne seemed to like his lamb with juniper and honey just fine, but what was that train wreck of an elimination challenge? Corn chowder and yakitori-style chicken skewers? He's been getting less and less coherent, and I think his brain is on the verge of completely disengaging. If they get a two week vacation in between episodes six and seven, he might be okay. Otherwise, this guy looks like he just doesn't have anything left in the tank.
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|
| 9 |
Spike |
|
Quickfires |
0
|
2
|
2
|
| Last Week: 9 |
|
Eliminations |
0
|
0
|
2
|
He sure hasn't shown it much lately, but I still feel like Spike is a sleeper. It's just that the guy's his own worst enemy. He could get away with being self-absorbed, but his stubbornness is going to bite him in the ass at some point. His clam tapas and charcuterie plate is a perfect example. He throws up his hands and says, "What? I'd like a nice charcuterie plate to go with beer", stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that sautéing a few clams and slicing some meats isn't exactly a good way to express his cooking skill -- which he does have, even if he exhibits it rather selectively. More likely, the beer just wasn't doing it for him so he blew off the challenge. It's not the first time he's done it, and it's not the first time he's gotten away with it, but that's a trend that won't continue indefinitely. Lee Anne says his wings were great, so he demonstrates yet again that he can cook something good when he cares to. There's just no knowing if he's going to decide to show up from challenge to challenge.
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|
| 10 |
Nikki |
|
Quickfires |
0
|
0
|
3
|
| Last Week: 11 |
|
Eliminations |
0
|
1
|
2
|
Ladies and gentlemen, season four's Michael Midgley! Except less funny. Nikki needs to hang in there a few more weeks to overstay her welcome in the same epic fashion, but she's demonstrating the same kind of dumb luck and ability to suck just a little bit less than one other person needed to hang around way, way, way past her time. Much as with Michael, I'm starting to wonder what the hell she has to do to get eliminated. I mean, is this really the best she can do? Over-breaded fried shrimp with an Asian slaw? Is there a sports bar in the nation that isn't serving this exact dish? You let the shrimp soak in a little citrus before cooking them. Whee. And the elimination? Come ON. My MOM can do store-bought sausage and peppers, and she won't run out! The "recipe" on the website, oddly enough, doesn't say anything about the sauce. So maybe there was some stroke of creative genius going on there, but I think that's about as likely as Midgley himself making the finals this season. She's the last of the totally hopeless scrubs, and she needs to be gone three weeks ago.
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|
| 11 |
Ryan |
|
Quickfires |
0
|
3
|
1
|
| Last Week: 10 |
|
Eliminations |
0
|
0
|
3
|
Repeat after me, chefs. "Do not ignore the challenge. Do NOT ignore the challenge." We're three and a half seasons in, and so many chefs still just don't get this. Stop, think about what the challenge is calling for, and adjust. If you go off and do your own thing, you might get away with it if your dish is awesome, but if you slip just a little, you're a goner. The judges don't like it when you ignore what they tell you to do. Is it such a hard concept? Even though Nikki did her best to do nothing, and Mark nearly got himself axed by inspiring pure disgust, Ryan hit the trifecta by producing a dish that was totally inappropriate for the challenge, doing a lousy job of it, and then standing on the chopping block and demonstrating that he had absolutely no idea what he did wrong. It's like the guy just never bothered to engage his brain (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and presume he has one). A lot of people feel it should have been Mark or Nikki (including me), but it's interesting to note that in his interview on the website, Kahan insisted that the decision wasn't a close one. Oddly enough, despite displaying a remarkable penchant for douchebaggery throughout the course of the season (did anybody self-identify as metrosexual, even when the term WAS popular?), I found myself respecting his exit. Yes, Ryan, we all know you're not "the shit", but it's nice to see that you've come to this realization. All snarkiness aside, though, he really did have a pretty classy exit interview, even if he misidentified what did him in (it's not because you went "too big", Ryan), and the more I watch him the more I wonder if his schtick isn't totally self-aware. In any case, he had to go soon, and now was as good a time as any.
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speaking of top 2, this Top Chef game closes Wednesday.
http://www.last2left.com/whatsinplay/top-chef-4
Posted by: Paula | April 21, 2008 at 10:11 AM
At first I resisted the Mike/Nikki comparison, because I felt like Mike at least had a few good dishes. But then, Nikki makes good pasta.
I still resist it because Mike was hysterical and Nikki is like nails on a chalkboard, but I have to admit it's accurate. I cannot WAIT for her to get the boot.
I think Stephanie has been amazing so far and would love to see her win it all- a mix of hometown pride and really wanting to see a woman take it all (in the interest of fully disclosing my bias), but her nerves worry me. She reminds me a lot of Amy from the first season of the Apprentice- she kicked butt until the end, when she wasn't being treated like the best one out there, and then she just crumbled. I really hope I'm wrong, I think her cooking style and her attitude in the kitchen are outstanding. I haven't liked a contestant this much since Lee Ann.
Posted by: sweetsalty | April 21, 2008 at 10:17 AM
Sweetsalty...
I understand the reluctance to embrace the comparison given how irritating Nikki is and how charmingly inept Mikey could be, but if memory serves, Mikey had precisely ONE good week, when he made a great dish for the Seven Deadly Sins dinner, surprised the hell out of everybody, and was promptly eliminated the next week. And as bad as Nikki's been, she has yet to stick a ball of chocolate on the end of a Cheetoh. Of course, she hasn't been asked to cook out of a vending machine, either.
I'm with you in that I'd love to see a female winner, but I can't root for her on that basis. My suspicion is that the difference between us is that you really hope a woman wins, and I really hope a woman is the best contestant. I think the worst possible outcome would be if Stephanie isn't quite as strong as Richard or Dale, but gets the win because everybody -- judges included -- would just love to see it happen. For that reason, I find myself hoping she either trounces them or totally blows it and is eliminated early, just beacuse the conspiracy theories if it's a close one are going to be really, really irritating.
Posted by: Skillet Doux | April 21, 2008 at 11:28 AM
No, that isn't totally true- I also hope a woman is the best contestant. That is why her nerves worry me so much. Sure, she could pull it off, if Bravo/producers put the pressure on them to give it to a woman, but what I want is for her to WIN. And while I think she's the strongest contestant so far, that could change- my point is that I hope it doesn't. Similarly, I wanted Dale to win last year (again, home town pride), but after the final I had to admit he'd been beat. I really wanted him to be the best, I didn't want him to win either way.
it's more accurate to say that I root for her to be the best because of the Chicago connection and because she's a woman. if she biffs, she should lose. Absolutely. I just would hate to see that more than I'd hate to see Richard or Dale biff (though, truth be told, i'd like to have EVERYONE at the top of their game, because it's more interesting that way). Anyway, I'm rambling. am I making any sense?
Posted by: sweetsalty | April 21, 2008 at 12:58 PM
No, I completely understand. Once you get down to the cream of the crop, you want everybody to be at their best so it's a true contest. Stephanie's had enough success at this point that I think she'll be fine. It's not like Dave in season one where he was constantly flirting with disaster (not that Dave had a snowball's chance anyway).
Posted by: Skillet Doux | April 21, 2008 at 01:11 PM
Can I add one to "Do not ignore the challenge"? That would be thinking that winning the challenge has something to do with "working the crowd." That's OK to do, but it's not the point of the challenge. Who have been the big proponents of working the crowd (see: Block Party and Tailgaiting challenges): Spike, Ryan and Andrew. Where are they in the rankings? I rest my case.
Oh, and your power rankings are great! You're my go-to site for TC commentary.
Posted by: darylt | April 23, 2008 at 06:42 PM
I agree with you that individual challenges should happen more frequently...WAY too many team challenges. I also think that Nikki has overstayed her welcome, every week she bothers me. Someone else that bothers me is Antonia, few people agree with me but I just find her decisions off most of the time and her personality petty. I do commentary on Top Chef each week too, check it out: http://chewonthatblog.com/top-chef-chicago-watch/
Posted by: Hillary | April 24, 2008 at 12:41 PM