Top Chef - S5E2 Power Rankings

Who are these people and what have they done with my Top Chef cast?!?

Fighting over who gets to do dessert? Did I miss something? For a couple of years now, we've been chiding the contestants for not having a dessert recipe or two up their sleeves. Now it's like they all studied up and when the first opportunity presented itself, they fell all over themselves trying to show they were prepared. Odd.

Odd week in general, really. One of the first things we learned is that the editors have finally figured out how plainly they've been telegraphing the results. Used to be you had a pretty good idea who was getting the axe within the first five minutes of the show. Nervous about how the number of chefs is dwindling? You should be. Feeling like you're finally hitting your stride and looking forward to today's challenge? Yeah, not so much. Thrilled to be bonding with this other chef who's totally making the competition tolerable? She's so gone. But did we hear anything from or about Jill this week? Not a peep.

This marked the second consecutive week we've seen a challenge that totally should have been in Chicago last season, and I was gratified to see nary a chef acting as though the hot dog was beneath him. To be fair, though, nobody actually presented a hot dog except for Jill, and she got hammered for not making her own. But even if the challenge was judged rather loosely and framed with a little superfluous window dressing, it was still a good one. Then we got another very free and open elimination challenge, though some chefs seemed to have issues working even within the context of New American, and Tom seemed to take their efforts rather personally. But his response to Fabio and Jill's dishes served to hammer home and old point. Fabio's Italian carpaccio wins while Jill's quiche is, according to his blog, too French for a New American challenge? Despite the dubious claim in his blog that carpaccio has been absorbed into American cuisine (in a substantively different manner than quiche?), this nicely demonstrates the old Top Chef truism that if you make great food, you can get away with stretching the very same rules that will be used to hammer you if you don't. To be clear, I have no issue with this approach to judging nor with their decisions this week. But it's instructive.

I'd like to briefly address one sentiment I see coming from a lot of bloggers/commenters this week. Between Fabio's carpaccio and Arianne's cherry surprise, we had a couple of very plain admissions from chefs that they were cooking dishes they serve in their restaurants. This seems to be rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, and I just don't understand why. First off, if you don't think every single chef on the show has done the same, sending out dishes -- primarily, even -- that are at least close variations on their tried and true, you're kidding yourself. Second, so what? When these chefs walk through the doors of Top Chef kitchen, are they supposed to forget every great idea they've ever had? Yeah, it's exciting when they come up with something totally on the fly, and sometimes they're forced to do so whether they want to or not. But this isn't Iron Chef. Their mandate is to express themselves through food and articulate their culinary style, not reinvent themselves the moment the competition starts. And to expect them to leave behind everything they've done and created is to ask them to abandon the very thing it is the purpose of the competition to discover. To best determine who is Top Chef, I want to see how these guys improvise and adapt and create, sure. And the challenges ensure that happens. But you can't deny them who they are, and their go-to and signature dishes are a large part of that equation. Don't deny them that.

Tough week to get a handle on the rankings. As is frequently the case this early in the season, we're left with more questions than answers. Aside from Stefan's quickfire stumble, last week's top three went into hiding, our number four had a Jekyll and Hyde week, a couple of contestants who previously looked weak made some noise, and the heart of the pack still failed to distinguish themselves in any meaningful manner. Plus, Lee Anne had the audacity not to post her blog by Sunday night, even after all of the nice things I said about her last week. Thankfully, I don't mind a little rankings volatility in the early part of the season. A couple more weeks and we should have a clearer picture of where everybody belongs.

The power rankings are not purely a prediction of who is most likely to win, or an assessment of last episode's dishes, or a reflection of the contestants' historical performance, but rather a nebulous amalgam of all three, combined with a little bit of gut feeling, to provide a relative measure of current awesomeness.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Stefan Quickfires 1 1 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 1 1 0 Tough call here, but I'm going to leave Stefan at the top for the time being. Admittedly, that quickfire seemed totally out of left field. I can't say I've tasted thyme sausage, cheddar cheese and tartar sauce together, and combinations that looked stranger on paper have turned out beautifully, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that one. On the other hand, his seared halibut with celery root tortellini, champagne sauce and dill oil is a sophisticated little dish that looks great on paper. It seemed to get an awful lot of love in the dining room -- including a direct contrast with Jill's quiche on the merits of cream sauces -- and I was surprised he missed top three. Donatella's assessment of his sausage notwithstanding, he still has two of the four wins out there, I like what I see of his recipes, and I have some minor misgivings about Fabio's performance this week, so I'm going to let him hang onto number one.

2 Fabio Quickfires 0 2 0 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 1 1 0 Fabio is one of the week's big movers, winning both the elimination and my respect with his impassioned declaration of love for hot dogs. We also learn that Stefan considers Fabio his strongest competition, though whether this is a matter of dispassionate assessment or man crush remains unknown. Fabio was on top of both challenges, and I've no doubt his dishes deserved the praise, but the fact that they were both built on others' work kept me from getting overly excited about them. First, you have his Mediterranean dog, which was essentially premade andouille sausage blended up and cut with a little extra pork. He did take the time to smoke the resultant Frankensausage, and the zucchini, goat cheese and sun dried tomato seemed like it could be a tasty if uninspiring angle, but still, that was basically somebody else's sausage. As for his elimination dish, I actually had less of a problem with it than many seem to. Yeah, it was a mostly conventional carpaccio, but the grilled lemon angle was a nice one that Gail loved, and a touch as simple as the spherical olives, if it's the right one, can make all the difference between rehashing a standard and giving it a fresh face. Of course, the spherical olive technique isn't nearly as new as Fabio would lead us to believe (nor is it his), which is fine. Chefs, like other artists, borrow all the time and even if they weren't new to the universe they appeared to be new to the bulk of the panel, which is all that matters for the purposes of this competition (see: Ilan Hall). But again, I'm a little concerned that what makes him stand out isn't his own creation. No foul here -- just mild concern about what this means for his future chances.

3 Jamie Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 1 0 My preseason favorite makes a little move in episode two and looks strong. Her quickfire dish, a bacon-wrapped hot dog with sherried onions and hot and sweet peppers, looks nice to me even if it escaped attention on the show, and then she demonstrates that she can work magic with simple ingredients by wowing the judges with a chilled corn soup. Of course, she then has to talk about how she "just want[s] to celebrate the season" (the culinary equivalent of "we just have to take it one game at a time"), but clichéd chefspeak aside, this is a great Top Chef dish. It's technically sound, a perfect choice for the challenge, evocative of a pure flavor that everybody loves, and yet with the touch of mint and drizzle of chile oil, she adds a couple of subtly creative touches that elevate it just a bit and make it hers. My conviction that we're going to see her in the finals remains firm.

4 Leah Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 0 1 0 Leah might as well have sat out this week. The only thing we learned about her -- that she prefers to be in relationships and is apparently going to cling to Hosea for the rest of the season and provide us with a painful plotline -- was totally unrelated to the food and kinda creepy to boot. But there's some interest to be found in her recipes, even if it isn't enough to have any substantial impact on the rankings. Her dog was pretty simple, beef and bacon with onion powder, garlic powder and paprika, but she gets the big thumbs up from me for busting out sriracha mayo -- one of my most beloved secret weapons, even on hot dogs -- with a little lime and fresh herbs as a topping. I see why it didn't earn praise, but I know and love this combination. It works. Her elimination is a little harder to get a handle on. While I'm not a big fan of the plating (it'd be right at home in some contexts, but stuck out like a sore thumb at Craft), I'm not so sure about Padma's '80s characterization. As to the food itself, she's taking seared scallops and Yukon potatoes, then dressing them with almost completely pure grapefruit and orange flavors, combined only with a little crème fraîche, lemon zest, pink peppercorn and chives. It's the kind of minimal ingredient approach that I've no doubt could be stunning in the right hands, I'm just not sure those hands are hers. We'll let her tread water this week.

5 Gene Quickfires 0 0 0 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 0 1 0 Gene also maintains a low profile, but I'm dropping him below my other wallflower because of some reservations I have about his recipes this week. Last week's struck me as creative, but these strike me as maybe a touch gimmicky. His sausage (not his own) was stuffed with boursin, panko coated and deep fried, then wrapped in pita and dressed with a horseradish/soy ketchup and a bourbon/honey mustard. His elimination meatloaf, meanwhile, was done as a roulade and served with a mushroom ragout and creamy gouda sauce. I'm guessing the latter had some flavor appeal (search me on the first), but both just seem kind of unfocused to me. He's doing things, and I'm not sure why, and that makes me worry that there isn't really a good reason. But he's pushing unusual pairings, he's trying to stand out, he's already met with some success and he's a driven family man who worked his way up from the bottom and is giving every indication he's going to keep his head down and stay focused, so he has some things going for him.

6 Jeff Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 0 0 Two weeks in and we've barely heard a peep from Jeff (aside from a little bit of take charge this week that may or may not be meaningful down the road), but my gut is telling me this is a good thing. His dog was a lamb sausage seasoned with fennel, paprika, caraway, coriander and cumin, topped with champagne pickled cucumbers, sweet pickled hot peppers and onions, croutons, harissa ketchup and lemon mustard (not doctored prepared mustard -- dude made mustard). His elimination dish looked like a simple grilled chicken, but it was marinated with mustard and herbs, the corn bread was done with cheddar, scallions, sour cream and chorizo, and he worked in fried okra, an heirloom tomato chow chow and a buttery honey mustard chicken jus. If nothing else, the guy is humping. My gut tells me he isn't being bold enough to stand out in a massive crowd, but that this complexity and attention to detail will mean more when the numbers dwindle a bit and the judges can focus in more closely on the finer details of what every chef is doing. For now, he's stalking the pack.

7 Hosea Quickfires 0 2 0 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 0 0 1 Hosea takes a hit this week, and now I'm feeling unsure of what to make of him. On one hand, you have the executive chef of a successful Boulder restaurant who made a nice splash last week and followed it up with a top dog (sorry) that seemed to set the stage for more success. It wasn't the wildest one out there by any means, but his pork and bacon sausage with smoked paprika, garlic, poblanos, serranos and vinegar looked solid and earned him a top mention. And then he bumbles his way through the elimination, tanking a dish that should be squarely in his wheelhouse and narrowly avoiding the axe. It's just puzzling, really. What makes a seafood guy think canned crab will be okay? How does he miss basic seasoning issues that seem obvious to everybody else in the room? Having looked at his restaurant menu, I mentioned in the preseason rankings that I had concerns he might have a bit of a heavy handed approach to seafood that wouldn't play well in New York. The love thrown at last week's smoked fish and latkes temporarily allayed those concerns, but hearing this week's commentary and seeing his recipe, I'm back to my first gut reaction. Tom's right, those flavors should all work together. But even setting aside the canned crab issue, you have a crab salad that looks like it's half mango, it works in egg yolks and a lot of honey, and the citrus and vanilla are delivered in the form of a sugary syrup. Am I the only one who thinks that sounds less like he's dressing his crabmeat and more like he's smothering it?

8 Radhika Quickfires 1 1 1 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 0 0 Radhika's another one who started out strong and then stumbled her way through the finish -- the difference being that she had immunity and escaped pointed abuse. Her dog did, indeed, look really tasty. It was a lamb/pork/beef mixture with garlic and tandoori masala, topped with pickled cucumbers and capers, and dressed with a tomato jam made with tomato paste, cumin, mayonnaise and cream. To me, that definitely has winner written all over it. But her dessert is clumsy at best and bizarre at worst. Avocadoes whipped with butter, limes and a ton of powdered sugar? "Sweet guacamole" just about covers it. I did a little poking around to see if this dish might have had some Indian progenitor and couldn't find anything but, y'know, India's a big place, so I'd be curious to hear if I missed something. Setting aside the avocado, however, you have a chocolate wonton and chocolate milk with kahlua? I'm betting that immunity was the only thing keeping her out of the line of fire. The dog was a winner and I'll consider the possibility she consciously slacked on immunity, giving her a little bump, but I wonder if the lesson here is that no matter how much she wants to avoid being pigeon-holed as the "Indian contestant", it might be in her best interests to bleed that angle dry.

9 Carla Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 13 Eliminations 0 1 0 Some have said I'm being a little hard on Carla, and that may be true. I still haven't seen anything from her that I can get excited about, but she's starting to look a little stronger than the average caterer. One of last week's commenters pointed out that despite her bio, she does have some executive chef experience (his Google-Fu was stronger than mine, apparently). And she got a top mention in the elimination and some nice words from Donatella in the quickfire. And while I'm starting to think she might stick around for a little while, I'm not giving her any more of a bump than this. Her dog seemed like it was well-crafted, and the sausage worked in lamb and a couple of different chiles, but the toppings were basically sautéed onions and a quick sauerkraut. As for her dessert, I've no doubt that pastry was nice, but it was a textbook apple tart and it's hard to believe she couldn't come up with some way to work that cheese in. I don't see anything that leads me to believe she can go deep, but at the very least she's looking conventionally competent which goes a long way in the early stages, so I'm pulling her out of the basement.

10 Alex Quickfires 0 0 0 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 0 0 Alex has been kind of a non-factor so far, and while I want to think he can bring more to the table than Carla and maybe even Radhika, he has yet to show it and his lackluster elimination dish didn't help. We didn't get to see Donatella's reaction to his dog, which was a basic pork and veal affair with poblanos and jalapenos. It's topped as well, but the recipe doesn't list them nor did we get to see them, so it's basically a mystery. He also chose to pair the dog with tortilla chips and a basic black bean dip, which strikes me as a poor choice. A completely separate chip and dip for a quickfire? If you want black beans in there, integrate them, man. Top the dog with them or stick them in the sausage itself! His elimination dish looks interesting, at least. He grills pork tenderloin and sauces it with a honey-sweetened roasted beet demi-glace. Too bad the judges seemed to think it sucked.

11 Richard Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 11 Eliminations 0 0 0 Richard continues to hold steady at 11 which, this far down the list, isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. For those who didn't catch it, if I recall the lingo from my days in SoCal, the "TJ" in his "TJ Dog" is referring to Tijuana, Mexico, a brisk walk from his home in San Diego. In that sense, his dog represents Mexico about as well as Tijuana does -- eschewing the depth of authentic Mexican cuisine and instead riffing on the booze tourist's Mexico through the judicious use of tequila and canned chipotles. I've no doubt it was munchable, but it strikes me as a missed opportunity. His dessert was similarly snacky, though I suspect less edible, growing more out of nostalgia than good sense. Chefs have successfully done creative things with PB&J (see: Grant Achatz' take), but when it comes to this version, I couldn't have put it better than "after school snack". His "grape gelato"? Store-bought vanilla blended with jars of concord grape jelly. No joke. Richard is rapidly emerging as the Top Chef Season Five Stoners' Choice. But the judges seemed to like the seasoning on his sliders last week, and satisfying the munchies can get you to the midpoint of the season, so I won't drop him just yet. One final note: while it was really an individual challenge despite the app/entree/dessert divisions, our cuddly West Coaster with dreamy blue eyes has already thrown his first teammate under the bus. Not that Ariane didn't deserve it.

12 Melissa Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 12 Eliminations 0 0 0 Melissa continues to play wallflower, getting almost no play of any kind, and traditionally speaking this can be read one of two ways. She's going to make a late move and the editors are waiting so she can suddenly make a big dramatic splash, or she just isn't doing anything particularly interesting. Looking at her recipes, I'm inclined to believe the latter. You'd think a Latin specialist would take a more sophisticated angle than a chicken "Tacodog". Powdered chiles in the sausage, candied red onions and basic tomato/avocado salsa look perfectly edible, but... yeah. And her grilled avocado and stone fruit salad just looks messy to me. She gets points for trying to do something interesting by grilling the avocado and caramelizing the fruit, but it's still avocado and fruit in a balsamic vinaigrette, and there's an awful lot of sugar going on, both granulated and brown. She's not screwing up, but she's not inspiring or working clean. I haven't seen anything to make me believe she's going to turn that trend around.

13 Danny Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 15 Eliminations 0 0 0 Yeah, he put together a good dessert, but I still haven't forgiven him for the Chinese chicken salad, so he stays in the basement for at least one more week. His pound cake actually looks kind of nice, done with ricotta, amaretto and pistachio dust. The strawberry "compote" is just simple syrup blended with strawberries and a little lemon juice, but it seemed to go over well, so it's difficult to criticize. I found his dog a little odd in that the sausage was primarily seasoned with his "sweet smoke" sauce, which is a nice way of saying he walked down the condiment table and mixed ketchup, mayo, mustard and sweet relish. The dog was topped with frizzled onions, and I'm trying to respect his claim that he wanted to stick with authentic NY dog flavors, but he's still in my doghouse. I'll get over it next week if he shows something.

14 Ariane Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 14 Eliminations 0 0 2 When somebody has a hard time getting her head in the right place and she narrowly avoids elimination, you wonder if it'll help her get her ass in gear, or if it'll further erode her confidence and destroy her. When it happens two weeks in a row, you wonder twice as much. But without a dramatic turnaround, she's gone gone gone, and probably should be already. If dessert isn't your thing, why did you choose it? If you're going to ask advice, why do you ignore it? And seriously, can we get over the self-pity? Last week, she at least was working creatively. But between a straightforward chicken and bacon sausage with spicy onion relish and a dessert that -- setting sweetness issues aside -- was plain cherries and plain lemon curd topped with plain meringue and plain Nilla Wafers, you have to think she's either scared to take any chances or just paralyzed. Either way, she's hanging on by a thread and I don't care what the universe says, Carla... she doesn't deserve to still be here.

15 Jill Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 0 1 That said, Jill didn't exactly make a strong case for sticking around. Her hot dog was a non-denominational generic Asian summer roll that substituted a tube steak for a traditional filling which, frankly (sorry), sounds like a disservice to both summer rolls and hot dogs. And I say this as an enthusiastic devotee of dogs that have been dragged through the garden! The ostrich thing, however, is just irritating. Egg size aside, it's quiche. Rice and pecan crust, okay, but it's still mushrooms, asparagus, gruyere and fontina. At a New American lunch. But between the show and her exit interview, it's clear Jill felt she was making a bold, creative move by using an ostrich egg. But really, Jill, big F-ing deal. I'm all for bold and creative (and Blais appreciated what he considered to be her moxie), but there's nothing more frustrating -- especially in the MG era -- than chefs who go out on a limb without a purpose in mind. Don't just feed us something crazy for the sake of feeding us something crazy. Do that on your own time. Save the wild and crazy ideas that work -- the ones that contribute to the dish rather than confusing or distracting from it -- for when you're feeding the public. I'm not saying you don't audible and run with something on the spur of the moment, I'm just saying you should at least know what you hope to accomplish by doing so other than being able to say you did. Jill essentially admitted that she used an ostrich egg to be able to say she used an ostrich egg. But did it have any implications whatsoever for her dish? I've never had an ostrich egg, and I've heard from different sources both that they're exactly the same as chicken eggs only bigger, and that they have a slightly different but very similar flavor. Jill, we know, had never tasted one. So depending on which story she heard, she was either buying an unusual ingredient that was exactly the same as the ingredient it was filling in for in every way but size and calling it a bold and creative move, or she was attempting to do something genuinely creative by adapting a classic to suit a core ingredient with a slightly different flavor, but was doing so without any clue as to what that flavor might be. Do either of those sound particularly smart to you? I think the judges came to the same conclusion, and I think that's why she got the axe over Ariane. Fortunately for Jill, this early exit is unlikely to have a negative impact on her career. As she explains in her exit interview, she doesn't particularly want to be a chef. She'd rather be either a food writer or a food stylist, the latter of which would allow her to prepare food exclusively for its ooh and aah factor and with total disregard for its flavor. Though that last bit may have been my words and not hers.

MINOR EPISODE THREE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Speaking of chefs who do crazy things with a purpose in mind, ladies and gentlemen, Grant Achatz! It's truly a shame that he couldn't make it on the show last season where he really belonged, but the guy obviously had more important things to deal with and it's a gift that he's here, working, and we're able to see him on the show, period. For those who haven't seen the preview, the chefs draw quickfire knives with seemingly random numbers, from the low 40s to the mid 160s. My guess? That's the temperature at which their dish must be served. If so, I love this challenge already, less for its utility than for its philosophy. Ingredients taste different at different temperatures. Hot is not always best, and there are a whole range of temperatures between "hot" and "cold" at which food can be served. And even though this'll probably just devolve into a hot dish / cold dish challenge, it will be very telling to see which chefs get it. Also, they'd better be careful. If they think they're going to impress Grant Achatz with some funky technique, they'd better know what they're doing. I've eaten at Alinea, and Achatz isn't just doing crazy for crazy's sake. He's one of the wackiest guys out there, but his wild techniques and presentations have real thought and purpose behind them. He won't be buffaloed because something's "cool". There's also some total curveball that's thrown at the contestants about 15 minutes into their prep time, but I have absolutely no idea what it could be.

The elimination challenge has all of the earmarks of something that's going to irritate me. Thrown outside at the last minute, cooking in terrible conditions? I understand the whole "you have to roll with the punches" thing, but c'mon. Somebody's going home who probably doesn't deserve it. At least not for what they did that day. Interestingly, the teaser seemed to clearly show who the bottom three are. I won't name them, but it'll be interesting to see if that's how it actually shakes out, or if this is more misdirection.

As always, looking forward to Wednesday.

Comments

[Mary]

Really good observations about bending the rules and how it relates to judging, as well as the issue of chefs cooking what they know. I agree on both points!

[David M.]

Bizarre how so many chefs were clamouring to do dessert. Even if you HAVE a few desserts up your sleeve, why not save them till later in the competition when you're FORCED to do so? And then Ariane PICKING a dessert and then complaining that she's not a baker?? Please!

But I still want to know if the divisions HAD to be 5 apps, 5 mains, 5 desserts... I got the sense the chefs just kind of fell into those groups. If that's the case - man, pretty weird.

Carla getting top 3 was kind of a joke. There was nothing special about her apple pastry. Padma's ringing endorsement of "one of my favorite desserts" at the time of tasting hardly hammers home "winner" - and that little slice of cheddar on the side looked very amateurish. I guess Tom really liked the crust. But seriously - Stefan's halibut with the ravioli got much higher praise, had a higher degree of difficulty and was a million times more innovative.

I kind of like Fabio in this competition, and his win was big for me because he's on my TC Fantasy team. BUT - seriously, what's New American about traditional carpaccio. There was no twist whatsoever in this dish (except for the gimmicky olive trick and even THAT, flavor wise, is completely traditional). He didn't cook anything and the presentation looked sloppy and uninspired.

I'm rooting for him going forward - but I'm concerned about hype over substance.

[anon man]

If this is the 15 minute challenge, maybe the 15 minute Sous Vide, or a microwave challenge. Who wants to recreate Alinea's "Butterschotch, Bacon" with microwave bacon and a candy....

[JH]

One thing I was confused about in this episode was what the purpose of the hot dog lady in the quickfire challenge? To ad lib, Padma touted it as "for the first time in Top Chef history the chefs were going to compete against an industry standard." However, from my point of view, her role was nothing more than another bite of food for Padma to eat and free advertising for the lady's hot dogs. There was still a top and bottom for the quickfire, which I feel there still would have been regardless of the hot dog lady. Am I missing something here?

[Nikki D]

Thanks for the nice recap and rankings. I'm always a little overwhelmed when there are this many chefs left, so it's nice to have some order in all the chaos.

Just a side note, I was pleasantly surprised by all the willing pastry chefs, but I agree that if Ariane didn't want to do a dessert she shouldn't have. There were a ton of others who wanted to bust one out, including the winner Fabio and the loser Jill (she claims that if she had done a dessert she would still be there! See the blogs on the Bravo website for more).

And I'm really pulling for Jeff. Sure, it's mostly because he's pretty, but I'm hoping that he'll actually get some attention for his food soon.

[David]

David M.--interesting comments.

I don't know if it was odd that a number of people wanted to do desserts. Given the pathetic performance of people with desserts previously, maybe some where thinking "I can shine here." You have an interesting point about keeping that powder dry until later. The only hitch in the logic is that SOMEONE had to make dessert. According to accounts I've read, Jill, Jeff, and some others also wanted to do desserts but there were too many people. I got the sense that many of the chefs were scrambling to do different things. Undoubtedly Fabio wanted to do his carpaccio. Jamie clearly wanted to make that soup. She said from the beginning that she tought it would win or at least be in the top three. It appeared that a lot of the restaurant chefs went with dishes from the menus. No real issue from me on that--as long as it's good.

As for the three divisions of five chefs. I would easily chalk that up to a number and division created by the producers. Probably because of editing, what we don't see is the straws drawn for each grop.

I don't know if Carla making the top 3 was a joke. That seems pretty harsh. Now, Carla my have risen above the rest because of the weak performers in her group, but if you recall, none of the entres made it to the top 3. There were two appetizers and a dessert. So, perhaps your comments are driven by your fantasy team picks, but every season on Top Chef, people flub pastries. There was no "guessing" if Tom liked Carla's pastry. He said it was excellent. There is not disagreement about the plating of the cheese. Without a doubt, that was a bad move on Carla's part to leave that wedge standing alone. Stefan's dish did get some good comments, but I wouldn't call halibut and ravioli innovative or difficult by any stretch, let venture to say it was a million times moreso. Talk about hyperbole. If not by direct knowledge, watching the show should reveal to you that making a good pastry is not automatic or easy.

[David]

Somehow I left off the most important reaction to this post. EXCELLENT! I think you probably have the most objective and thoughtful recaps and ratings out there.

Kudos!

[Bill]

Agree that there was nothing wrong with Carla being in the top three with her pastry. She seems goofy but that doesn't mean she can't cook, she may surprise some people.
I'm feeling good about my fantasy teamer Jamie. She seems to be on an even keel and we've seen in the past what can happen with volatile personalities (like Dale). It appears she's done her homework and is cooking for Tom.
Stefan and Fabio are pretty cool while they're doing well but how they handle their first major blunder will be telling.
Gene seems like he could blow at any given moment but I like his tenacity.
If I was betting the farm I might go with Jeff. He seems to have the talent and the demeanor but he might play it too safe.

[Skillet Doux]

"Stefan's halibut with the ravioli got much higher praise, had a higher degree of difficulty and was a million times more innovative."

I agree with David, David M (that isn't confusing), I think you're overstating the case a wee bit here :-) Though I do agree that Stefan's dish was more interesting than Carla's.

I think you definitely don't give her enough credit on difficulty, though. Good pastry is tough. Looking at the list of dishes, if you gave me the recipes and told me I had to pick one that I absolutely wouldn't screw up, that may be the one that would scare me the most. Maybe it's just because of that whole cooking/baking divide and the fact that I'm one of those who's wired for cooking, but still... tortellini, seared scallops, quiche and grilled avocado don't scare me, but pastry sure does.

[riry]

A human interest article about Gene ran in one of the local papers yesterday. I didn't recall seeing anywhere else that listed places he's worked at, so I thought you might be interested?

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008811250302

[canasian]

Radhika's dessert was actually founded in Brazilian classics, not Indian, but it did have some ethnic roots and wasn't just out of the blue.

http://www.maria-brazil.org/creme_de_abacate.htm

[DOZERSMOM]

JAMIE IS AWESOME...WHEN SHE SAID THAT SHE COULD MAKE SOUPS F0R THE REST OF HER LIFE MADE ME REALLY DIG HER AS I FEEL THE SAME !!! SHE SHOULD WRITE A COOKBOOK ON JUST SOUPS SHE TRULY HAS A GIFT !! I AM ROOTING FOR YOU TO WIN. GOOD LUCK GIRL !!