Top Chef - S9E4 Postmortem

Well, that was totally heartbreaking.

Not that Richie is gone. He's quite confident that he should have lasted much longer, and he could be right. With early eliminations, you never know if somebody just had trouble getting their footing out of the gate. But few have looked that crushed on the way out the door. Ouch.

Sorry, Mary Sue! Didn't see you in the previews, and didn't mean to leave you out in the shout-out to Susan!

Also, we interrupt this postmortem for an important public service announcement. There's no tilde in habanero. You can lose the "nyuh" in the third syllable. It's okay, I was embarrassed when I found out I'd been mispronouncing it for years, too. And this is one mispronunciation that will probably never be widely corrected. But we must fight the good fight. Thank you for your attention.

Great episode. Great challenge concepts, great-looking food, great twists. One annoyance, but I'll save that for the Power Rankings.

Discuss!

Comments

[attheapollo]

I don't know about the rest of you because it seems like it would be a polarizing element, but I really, REALLY enjoyed the twist. So sad for Richie, though. You can tell he just wanted to improve and it just didn't happen for him :(

[EGKate]

I thought the twist was great. I was wondering how they were going to send home one member of a three person team that produced one dish. There's really no way for the judges to know who was really responsible for what, so I like that they made it an individual challenge. I liked Richie, but it seemed like the judges' decision was a fairly easy one.

[Nikki L]

I think what bugged me most about Richie going home is that they loved his cornbread and that was the one stand out thing he did for the group.

[DF]

I was going to post what Nikki just did. I still think it was important to do a crime scene investigation to etermine who might have been most to blame for the substandard chili. But the twist was great.

[Duffy]

I'm not sure it was a "bad" dish -- wasn't this team just the least of the best?? Wasn't the judges' differential comment just that the mole sauce wasn't really a chili? Hard to tell from the edits, but not sure the judges "disliked" it -- but had to find a differential somewhere.

The twist at the end really gave the judges a chance to select "the" least of the lot -- not necessarily a bad chef, just not quite as good as the other two -- on that dish. I think this is better than trying to do an autopsy on the team dish.

But then -- what difference does it make, anyway -- after all, doesn't this thing wind up with a winner and a 15-way tie for last place?

[bfish]

Duffy, I read Gail's blog on EW and she confirmed your point -- all versions of chili were enjoyed, but the judges enjoyed the mole chili the least. They had to differentiate.

Is anyone else finding the Bravo website extra screwy? For several days, when I've tried to go to Top Chef on the "shows" pull-down box, what comes up is Shear Genius. I did get to the Last Chance Kitchen from the main page --

[Dave]

I'm a lifelong South Texan and a San Antonio resident for 15 years now and I had never heard of this Tejas Rodeo thingamabob. Had to Google it. Definitely not any kind of local favorite. Wonder how they come up with these venues ... there are dude ranches all over the place within 30 miles of the city limits where they could have had a much more authentic setting.

Then again, San Antonio is in the earliest stages of becoming a food town (beyond Tex-Mex, that is), so surely presented a much bigger challenge to the elves that have previous host cities whose food scenes were long-lived and highly developed.

[nm]

Two weeks with no winner? That's pretty dismaying. I got the feeling that the TC judges disagreed with the crowd picks and didn't want to name a winner from a team they considered not the best, but this season seems to be all about lavishing attention on the chefs at the bottom. We're getting more focus on LCK and less on the best. Or is this to remind us that just getting into that group of 16 is better than we'll ever cook?

[Peter Merholz]

I'm fine with no winner. Both challenges have been team challenges, and it can be hard to call out exactly who deserves to "win." It's not even clear what "winning" means. Look at other shows, like SURVIVOR. The only thing that matters is who is not sticking around.

[Alamos Road]

Poor Richie. These guys really put themselves out there and it has to be hard to get bumped out so soon. And he ended up doing two cook-offs after a 24-hour chili stint.

I'm thinking Keith has a great advantage in Last Chance competitions, if only because he knows what's coming.

[Kathy from Austin]

I'm going to have to go with:

1. Paul (go Austin!)
2. Chris
3. Heather

Also, planning on heading back over to Uchi Saturday night. Surely one of my all time favorite restaurants. If you guys ever make it down this way, Uchi/Uchiko are superb restaurants and well worth a visit.

Richie's elimination was one of the saddest I remember, particularly so early in the season.

Happy Thanksgiving, all! I am grateful for this website and all the work Dom puts in to host us.

[Independent George]

Aaaah! I spoiled myself - I didn't think there was an episode this week. Oh, well...

[Independent George]

Further public service announcement: Habanero is not to be confused with Habanera.

[Skillet Doux]

IG... Both are delightfully spicy, however, so... you know... understandable mistake.

(Bonus awesome points for Muppets rendition, BTW.)

[Nigel from Cameroon]

My gosh, have some pride Ritchie! His sniffling "It's me" after elimination was the most pitiful I've seen. And the bro-to-bro forehead touch and rub. Ugh. Just go.

[Anon Man]

Dom, can we agree that you can no longer claim Heather as a Chicagoan after going all Texan last week?

George, you made my week with that clip.

[*susan*]

Heather is on Nick Stefano and Friends, CREATE channel right now doing a fish with bbq sauce. Always fascinating to see the chefs when they are the expert vs trying to please the Top Chef judges.

[JCS]

Where is everyone? Is it just Thanksgiving, or are people tired of Top Chef? I thought I was, but this sesason looks very strong, and it was good to have real food/cooking challenges at the beginning (though I don't like no-sleep competitions, as in last week). Anyway, thanks, Dom, for all the analyses and hard work (both here and on skilletdoux).

[nomnomnom]

I just got around to watching it yesterday as I figure many will. The buzz on this season is very low, but ratings aren't off a cliff bad. S8 ran about 1.5MM viewers. This one is running about 1.4MM. I still think the hangover from the poor all-star season followed by wall to wall top chef pastry/master/etc. on a virtually continuous basis for 30 months is fatiguing some.

I also like not wasting time naming winners this early. Makes the quickfires more important and if they continue with bits like this will actually have more cooking and less judges table.

I'm really lol at this "rodeo" site. In San Antonio you have lots of tourist traps for out of town convention goers. This just looks like a standard tourist trap setup to me for a corporate outing. It does seem like they do a public show every Saturday, but that's about it.

[Skillet Doux]

To be fair, a smaller, private, off-the-radar rodeo makes perfect sense for a reality show shoot. More manageable, less for the crew to cover, easier to control the crowd, and less exposure that might get spoilers circulating.

As far as viewership goes, I can't speak to ratings, but other than this weekend traffic has been on par with the early weeks of other recent seasons. Thanksgiving lull, I suspect.

[rab01]

"I still think the hangover from the poor all-star season followed by wall to wall top chef pastry/master/etc. on a virtually continuous basis for 30 months is fatiguing some."

I can understand their being quite a bit of Top Chef fatigue -- this was the first season that I didn't finish watching TC Masters -- but I'm not sure what you mean by a "poor all-star season". I really liked that season; the critical reception seemed pretty positive, and the ratings I can find look similar to how TC always does these days ...

To the show itself, I've really liked the first 2 challenges. I just hope they don't burn their better challenges early (which I feel happened in TC All-Stars).

2 Questions -- (1) Why did most of the chefs stay up all night? Couldn't they have slept in shifts while a team-mate watched the chili? (2) Do you tink that some of the chefs guessed there'd be a cook-off for elimination? The only other fair option would've been a triple elimination - and that would have been announced beforehand. I feel like living in that environment, some contestants must have had a good guess what was coming and either kept it to themselves or Bravo edited out the speculation.

[Skillet Doux]

"(1) Why did most of the chefs stay up all night? Couldn't they have slept in shifts while a team-mate watched the chili? (2) Do you tink that some of the chefs guessed there'd be a cook-off for elimination?"

I think the first question answers the second. If there's going to be a traditional JT postmortem in which the judges try to assign blame as best they can, do you want to be the one who was off sleeping rather than fixing or making the chili better? Whether or not it would be fair, historically the judges have done that all the time. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE that they did the cookoff. But that was an unexpected bonus, not the norm.

[Sara]

Nyesha lost quite a few points with me for her "demographic" comment. I'd been expecting it, any second now, for some chef to start being snide about not being in the sort of rarified atmosphere they might be used to, so props, I suppose, for it taking this long.

Richie's Quickfire dish looked and sounded outstanding -- do canned tomatoes really overwhelm dishes any more than cooked fresh? Or was it probably the smoking over the fire that did him in?

All three chefs staying up all night makes sense, but wasn't probably the smartest way to do it: someone needs to stay up, chefs either want to be team players or don't 100% trust their teammates to do a good job, it happens.

[nomnomnom]

A few random follow-up comments/responses

-My main beef with all star was the string of challenges they picked mid-season. It was a run designed to either frustrate, or embarrass the chefs due to constraints of all types. Most of it did nothing to enhance the competition and it left the finale full of the types that played it safe. I think the contestants also did not prepare much for that season, and it showed. I still have a hard time recalling a single memorable event past restaurant wars.

-The casting is in a word. Odd. They seem on first glance to have gone heavy for *feisty* females and somewhat *meek* males for lack of a thesaurus. (a few obvious deviations exist) This could, of course, be primarily due to the editing.

-Again with the mole. Mole is not something Texans or really even Mexicans eat regularly. There is one very small portion of Mexico which uses it. It is exceptionally rare to see it as part of a menu and is certainly an acquired taste depending on how heavy the non-savory elements are played. It is absolutely not something you want to cook on a whim like that. Corn relish also needs to be on a counter. I think there have been 3 moles and 5 corn relishes so far.

-As far as selection of shooting sites. We know later they go to one in Austin that is as far away from concealed as you could pick.

-The sleep thing is crazy because many could have been up close to 48 hours.

-Why did they air that bit with Gail and her non functioning thumb?