Top Chef Power Rankings

Oops

So it's 9:00 on a Tuesday night. You're sitting on your living room sofa, computer in front of you, DVR playing last week's Top Chef, getting ready to write the rankings.

Next thing you know, you're waking up, it's about 4:30 Wednesday morning, you're still on the sofa, and nothing's written. Which I guess is my way of telling you that this accidental hiatus was brought to you courtesy of sleep deprivation.

It's a lame, lame excuse, but it's the only one I've got. I'm really sorry, folks. Wasn't on purpose. No more waiting until Tuesday night.

Postmortem tonight as usual.

Top Chef - S7E9 Postmortem

There it is... routinely one of the best episodes every season.

First off, I'm not shocked by Kenny's ouster, though it could be only because I accidentally saw the result before I saw the show, so there was no JT surprise for me. I definitely don't buy that he was jobbed, whether or not I agree with sending him home rather than Amanda (I'm more interested than usual in the judges' blogs this week). But while all of these other things -- FOH, organization, leadership, etc. -- are important, they've still always treated it primarily as a food competition, so I think it's a little hard to claim that somebody who botched two dishes got screwed.

You know what else? I don't feel the competition is lessened by his departure. Not because I don't think he was a strong contender, but because this incredibly evenly-matched field means that excellence can come from anywhere at any time. At this point, I'm not especially invested in seeing anybody in particular make the finale. I'm just very, very curious to see how it all shakes out.

Don't want to dwell on it too much, but I share others' disgust with the pile-on that's happening with Alex. His own team taking the food out of his hands is weak, but understandable. The blue team lashing out at him, however, just struck me as horribly classless. Almost all of your dishes had significant problems. Take responsibility for that.

Lots to break down this week. Hopefully the supplementary materials will add a little more daylight.

Top Chef - S7E8 Power Rankings

Thank god for little blessings.

Just as quickly, peagate fizzles out, as Ed isn't even sure whether or not he packed it. And now we can officially move on. Until the reunion show, at least.

This was a tricky little episode, and one that really had the potential to send somebody home early. No matter how much you know in the kitchen, you can't know everything. You just can't. And a bad draw here could've really sunk somebody. Of course, then Kevin and Tiffany go and disprove that theory, but we'll get to that.

Though it sure would have been nice to see a bit of the city itself (sadly, I think those days are long gone on Top Chef -- too high profile), I was thrilled to see an ode to the local Ethiopian scene. There is a huge Ethiopian community in DC. 200,000 is a number you see thrown around a lot. And though I didn't get to try nearly as much of it as I would have liked while living in the area (well, Baltimore), what little passed my lips was a revelation. Eating Ethiopian in DC was one of those, "So THAT'S what the fuss is all about!" moments for me. But it's a brutal challenge if you have no experience with the cuisine. Ditto all of the ethnic cuisines represented in the elimination challenge. But there, an elimination is on the line. Harsh. Not sure whether I think it was a little too harsh. But everything seems to have worked out just fine.

So here's the real take-home message from this week. Remember how we said it's anybody's game? It wasn't. NOW it's anybody's game. I mean, really, can this get any tighter? I keep saying that week in and week out, and then those on the top stumble and those on the bottom shine and everybody runs hot and cold and you couldn't pick a favorite to save your life. Which isn't to say I won't try.

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 Angelo Quickfires 3 6 0 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 1 2 0 I'm still leaving Angelo at number one, but much like Kelly in the third position last week, I'm now calling this a very tentative hold. Though he picked up another win last week, has been consistently good and has stayed out of trouble, the pack has basically caught up to him. One thing we learn is that he isn't limited to Asian (as if that palette isn't broad enough). And despite having significant experience with Ethiopian, he couldn't quite pull down that quickfire win.

2 Tiffany Quickfires 1 1 1 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 1 5 0 THAT'S what we were looking for. It's time. I still feel better about the peaks of some of those below her, but remarkable consistency, building momentum and a sudden explosion into the winner's circle puts Tiffany just barely off the pace in a tight field. In particular, I love that she won over Samuelsson despite apparently having no experience with Ethiopian. The challenge isn't in your comfort zone? Make it your comfort zone. If you can do that, it bodes very, very well for your chances. This placement isn't without reservations. But who can we really place without reservations at this point?

3 Kelly Quickfires 1 2 3 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 2 3 1 Nice to see Kelly backing up the faith I put in her last week. Bounceback achieved. I thought her elimination dish looked solid, and I'm a puzzled by the fact that Colicchio seemed to take a bit of shine off it by insisting that she'd done something very traditional. Bearing in mind that "traditional" is relative, this was only traditional by a rather liberal definition of the term. Carpaccio is one of those rare dishes with origins that are, for the most part, universally accepted. It was created in 1950 in Harry's Bar in Venice, and to this day is served in its original form -- thinly sliced raw beef drizzled with an olive oil-based mayonnaise sauce that's flavored with mustard and Worcestershire. That's it. There's no parmesan cheese, no arugula and certainly no balsamic vinegar, to say nothing of other common toppings. But okay, we'll throw Tom a bone and acknowledge that as the country of Italy has embraced the dish, forms which more closely resemble what we typically think of as carpaccio in the States have become widely popular. But still... Kelly first seared the beef with dried spices, and she topped it with asparagus, snow peas, seared maitake mushrooms, anchovy and truffle... how is that any more traditional than Kevin's riff on Indian flavors? The soul of the dish -- its more widely popular if not original version -- is there, but that's about it. Nicely done. Plus, it inspires one of the best Top Chef lines of all time. For those who missed it, coming from Giuseppe Manzo, from the Italian embassy: "Oh, I think that today's carpaccio represents Italy better than I do." Brilliant bit of self-deprecating humor from a fellow whose last name even translates to "beef."

4 Good Kevin Quickfires 0 2 3 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 1 4 3 Good Kevin makes good food. He does cool things with meats, respects his ingredients, and brings them together in creative and technically sound ways. Good Kevin weaves a top mentioned dish out of broccoli and lemon when his cauliflower takes a dive. Good Kevin creates a beautiful new take on vitello tonnato and executes it perfectly. Good Kevin takes an ethnic challenge with which he's completely unfamiliar, makes it his own, creates a dish that's inspired by the flavors of Indian cuisine, toasts and blends his own curry mix and brings home a win. Good Kevin is a serious contender for the Top Chef title.

5 Kenny Quickfires 2 5 0 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 1 2 3 The placement makes it look like Kenny's taking a dive, but that's not at all the case. It's just that everybody is right on top of one another and he's being narrowly outpaced. He'd be a strong number two if he could reclaim the early season mojo, but now he hasn't been on top of anything for three straight episodes, and the duos and trios are really getting old. I'm starting to wonder if Kenny's responding all the wrong way to the inevitable setbacks that all Top Chef contestants endure. He seems to be doing more, more, more when he should be doing less, less, less. We've seen that his busy style can rock the house when he pulls it all together, but he hasn't done that for a while now and the more he pushes, the more likely he is to trip, I think. And for someone who "knows" Thai food, his Thai recipe would make any Thai purist cringe. It's more of a spicy-sweet Asian hodgepodge, where the base of the green curry is panang curry paste, which is the equivalent of slipping alfredo sauce into your tomato sauce. Of course, if it's tasty, it's all well and good. But playing so loosely with the conventions of a cuisine means that you'll be brutalized by the judges if something doesn't work.

6 Ed Quickfires 1 2 2 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 2 2 I'll ask it again, why do some hold Ed in such high regard? I agree that he's a talented chef and he's made some good food -- everybody has at this point -- but for the life of me I can't figure out what he's done to stand out from the crowd. Though it doesn't really have any bearing on the competition, I'm particularly annoyed by his Chinese dish. For somebody who is "very familiar with the culture and the food," he sure doesn't show it on the plate. His potsticker was ostensibly served with a Sichuan jus, I'm looking at this recipe and I sure can't see it. It's like the name was just thrown in there because it's trendy and sounds good. It's enough to make something that's inspired by Chinese flavors. There's no reason to throw darts at the wall to determine which region you're going to name your dish after.

7 Alex Quickfires 0 0 5 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 1 2 1 I want to give him more respect for the borscht and the salmon, but I just can't. The guy just has a nose for the bottom. Particularly odd is the fact that the guy can't buy quickfire success to save his life. Look at that quickfire record. How do you bottom out more than 50% of the time? And while cooking Spanish for Jose Andres is an absolutely brutal, brutal bit of luck, it sure doesn't sound like they needed a Spanish luminary to point out the problems with his dish. Like Ed, he was confident. Heck, he was excited. But Spanish is like Italian in that those flavors are simple and they pop. Perhaps even moreso for Spanish. He's spent time in Spain, he knows that. But instead, he apparently made a big, bland mess. I don't mean to oversimplify, but if you're cooking a Spanish dish for Jose Andres and you look at your mental recipe and see 41 ingredient lines, that should be your clue-in that it's time to edit... drastically.

8 Amanda Quickfires 0 2 2 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 2 2 I might've actually moved Amanda out of the basement a bit this week, except for the fact that she took what should have been her home run pitch and popped it up (I really need to quit with the sports analogies... sorry). She got exactly the cuisine she wanted, she did a straight-up traditional dish, and she still managed to blow it. And for those who say she deserves to be higher, that's why. She's just... green. She doesn't seem to have the confidence or the comfort to string some good dishes together. She also has some high peaks and could easily make the final three. But those peaks aren't as peak-y as Alex's, and she's been in a lot more trouble at times. If she lives beyond the next few weeks, it'll be because she pulled out the right dishes at the right times. Of course, the fact that I'm even saying this about the person now inhabiting the basement is remarkable. Well... sort of...

9 Bad Kevin Quickfires 0 2 3 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 4 3 Bad Kevin makes amateurish choices and blows their execution. Bad Kevin makes the most boring Puerto Rican dish you've ever seen. Bad Kevin screws up baby food. Bad Kevin makes dishes with no flavor balance. Bad Kevin seems lost up there, unable to bring his ideas together into a coherent plan. Bad Kevin is a goner, it's just a question of how soon.

10 Stephen Quickfires 0 2 4 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 1 3 Was drawing Brazil a matter of the cosmic forces letting Stephen know that it was time? Perhaps they didn't get footage of it, but it sounds like we missed what must've been one of the more amusing moments in Top Chef antics: Stephen roaming the aisles of Whole Foods shouting out, "Does anybody know anything about Brazilian food?" Best part? He found somebody who did. But yeah, you blow rice and it's hard to recover at JT. I'm sure he would have been forgiven for co-opting chimichurri for Brazilian purposes, except for the fact that it looks like kind of a flat chimichurri (aside from the abundance of garlic, that is). It sounds like it was actually a tough call, and that he nearly survived to see another day. But still... that rice.

Not sure there's much to sum up, so we can move right on to:

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE NINE SPOILERS AHEAD

Restaurant Wars! We'll see if it's a matter of some deceptive elven editing, but this one looks like it's going to be interesting. I like to see the chefs succeed. I don't like to see a lot of failure. But Restaurant Wars may be the one exception, when watching how things can break down is far more illuminating than watching them run smoothly. Also, the blindfold relay! The edit has Alex looking like he botches both. And for all of her issues, I bet Amanda can hold down the line, which would make Alex the prime pick for elimination. But when the elves are at work, I assume nothing.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S7E8 Postmortem

Awwwwwwww.

In truth, this was a challenge that really could have tripped somebody up in cheap fashion, so I'm actually quite glad it knocked off the guy who, much as I like him, was well overdue. Spares us all from feeling that somebody got hosed.

And Tiffany! That's what we were looking for! Picking up steam, picking up steam, and then BAM... double win.

I'm feeling it... the rankings are... almost... sort of... maybe ready to take shape? Could it be?

Gotta ponder this for a while... discuss!

Top Chef - S7E7 Power Rankings

You're not helping, guys. Would all chefs kindly decide how good they are and display that amount of skill with at least some amount of consistency? Because that would really help me out. Thanks.

One quick note before we get started. I've seen Gail take a beating from time to time over the run of the show. Tom's knowledge is rarely questioned (more often his palate, though I don't believe it), but I've always been surprised by how many people feel Gail's a weak link judge. Anybody who questions why she's here needs to re-watch this episode. Tom's back in the kitchen and not dominating camera time, so Gail steps right up and absolutely nails it. Mark it down. Any time anybody complains about Gail, send them to Season 7, Episode 7.

Now then, let's get this out of the way up front so we can move on. Here's my take on peagate in bullet point fashion:

• Sad to say, much as I love the show, I don't trust the elves' editing on much, and certainly not on this. Not on whether Alex was making his own puree, not on whether it was obvious that he heard Kenny mention Ed's puree, not on the degree of suspicion that the other chefs may or may not have had, and not even to the degree Ed appeared to think Alex had swiped his peas. Obviously there was some question there or they wouldn't have had any footage to work with in the first place, but this has edited for maximum controversy written all over it.
• On the other hand, I don't buy the argument that the elves must know and they're wronging Alex or Ed by hiding it. They could. But no, the cameras do not catch everything. The cameras don't catch everything on a football field where there isn't a kitchenful of equipment to get in the way and there are three or four times as many cameras pointed on the proceedings from every conceivable angle. Look at the amount of room in the kitchen at the Palm, and how narrow those galleys were. I'd be curious to know, but I doubt there were more than two cameras working the kitchen. They see a lot. But they don't see everything.
• The night before, Alex talked about the fact that he had some peas to work with, and at one point he's seen taking bags of a very bright green something out of a cooler, so the worst case scenario, if you're the suspicious type, is that it's plausible he made his own.
• So we're left with a question of motivation. If you buy that Alex might have done it, what could have possibly been his motivation for swiping Ed's pea puree? Why steal somebody else's work and take the risk of getting nailed on camera for it when you can simply make your own? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
• Regardless, it will likely remain an unresolved mystery, so I'm with Tom. There's only one thing to do, and that's to give Alex the complete benefit of the doubt that he deserves and move on. It might not be as exciting as Polish Sausage sleuthing, but I think that's all we're going to get out of this one.

And with that, hopefully we don't hear any more about peagate.

Otherwise, good episode. Despite the dubious suggestion that a tiny sharpened twig is what stands between us and rampant government corruption, I dug the quickfire. Particularly because it's interesting to me to see who tries to get more flavor onto the toothpick and who tries to simply cram more stuff into the toothpick. I think it says a lot about them. But much as I liked it, I just can't give too much weight to a QF judged by a congressional representative. Hey, for all I know, the guy really knows his stuff. But he could also have no palate whatsoever, so I'm disinclined to read too much into the results of the quickfire.

I'm also pretty excited about them working the line in the elimination, even if I'm not too excited about the results. Not that I was particularly elated or disappointed to see anybody succeed or fail. Just because it didn't do a damn thing to lend clarity to what is still the most muddled field I can remember. Oy.

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 Angelo Quickfires 3 5 0 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 1 2 0 I'm awfully puzzled by those who don't put Angelo at the top. I try, even in a season like this, not to get too hung up in the numbers, but still... the guy has the most wins, is tied for the most top appearances and is the only contestant never to be named on the bottom. I'm even more puzzled by complaints about his style. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Asia's a big place. You'd never hear somebody who incorporated Spanish, Italian, French, German and Polish criticized for always doing the same thing, and those cuisines are no more diverse. And to describe it all as "Chinese food" is particularly lunkheaded, Kevin. Sheesh.

2 Kenny Quickfires 2 5 0 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 1 2 3 First off, I'd like to take this opportunity to say I hate you, season seven cast, for making this so difficult. Cripes. I've been staring at names and stats and recipes for hours. I've made the case in my head for why six of the contestants should be in the number two spot, and they're all compelling. So that's what I'm going to try to share now. Though I'll probably change my mind seven times before I post this, my feeling these ten seconds is that the case for Kenny is the strongest (and yes, I've changed the name in that sentence at least four times). Even though he kind of backs his way into the number two spot, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that he's not far removed from a couple of strong consecutive weeks. Though I found it amusing at first, the alpha male thing is starting to wear thin when he can't accept that his dish was the weakest, but in some ways that kind of confidence can be a boon. Rather than get flustered by a setback, he's still going to come charging right out of the gate week in and week out. And I can see his style, heavily worked and busy yet somehow harmonious (when it works), operating as a good counterpoint to Angelo's clean and simple Asian. I'm a week away from moving half of the middle of the pack past him if he doesn't get it back in gear, but I'll put Kenny back in second. Consider it a very tenuous hold.

3 Kelly Quickfires 1 2 3 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 2 2 1 Not as tenuous as Kelly, however, who probably doesn't deserve this spot, but who remains largely on my hunch that she's going to bounce right back and partly due to my reluctance to yo-yo people too much. If she doesn't quickly recover, however, it could be a steep drop next week. As mentioned, I'm unwilling to read much into the results of the quickfire because of the judge. Though I couldn't taste it, obviously, I like the style of the scallop with watermelon rinds that had been pickled in champagne vinegar, sriracha and honey, and a simple vinaigrette made by blending watermelon, olive oil and lime juice. Of course, this all presumes that scallop and watermelon are a good pair, which I confess I'm having trouble putting together in my head. But I like the approach. I'm less enthused by her approach the elimination, however, and it almost caused me to bust her down a lot further. Oversalting is a dumb mistake, but when it's a single occurrence rather than a habit, I disagree with the assessment that it's indicative of a bad palate, particularly if the contestant is getting a little lost in the head games of the competition. Some fine contestants over the years have had a salting problem or two. I can look past that as a blip. What bothers me is that a grilled porterhouse with shallot jus, sherry vinaigrette, crispy potatoes and arugula, no matter how appropriate to the setting, isn't a Top Chef dish. It just isn't. That gets you through to next week provided you do it well, but steak and potatoes doesn't win this thing. In any case, as mentioned, I'm going a lot on gut here. There's one camp that thinks she's getting flustered, but my hunch is that this serves as a wake-up call and she goes back to doing her thing, because her thing has been both interesting and successful at times. I stress again, however... she's on the precipice.

4 Tiffany Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 4 0 Let me tell you how close I was to putting Tiffany at number two. About the only thing that stopped me was that I like it when moves are the result of a little momentum rather than quick knee-jerk reactions to every episode. But momentum is what Tiffany seems to be building, and she picks up a couple more spots this week. This season is a war of attrition. I mean, every season is a war of attrition. That's, y'know, kind of how the whole show is set up. But with so much wild inconsistency from... well... almost everybody, you have to figure that the strong and steady will survive and make it to the finals. And strong and steady is exactly what Tiffany has been. She hasn't won a single challenge, elimination or quickfire. And it's absurd that I can make the case for her at number two given that. But she's also been on the bottom just once, and never on the chopping block. She's not flashy, but her dishes have some nice personal twists. This week, it's a pork roulade done with prosciutto, dates, almonds and Wensleydale (Wallace would be proud), topped with a red pepper coulis done with shallot, garlic, honey, sriracha, balsamic and basil. She's been on top the past couple of weeks, so she's got a hot hand, and she just seems remarkably cool and even-tempered. One more week like the past two and that number two spot will most likely be hers. I really just want to see her push through and get that first win.

5 Alex Quickfires 0 0 4 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 1 2 0 What can I say? I said it and he did it. I said Alex was going to have to show he didn't run out of bullets in the first episode for me to move him up, and then he went right ahead and did it. How could I not bump him? And I love the look of his elimination dish. He lightly smokes salmon with applewood before marinating it with garlic, shallots and parsley. He then does the forbidden rice risotto-style with veal stock and shallots, adds a simple creamed pea puree (which doesn't take very long... what was that about, Kenny?), adds lightly pickled fennel, pears and red onions, and glazed the seared fish with champagne vinegar and a touch of maple syrup. That's a Top Chef dish, right there. That's the kind of inventiveness that the judges reward in the later rounds (provided it's executed, of course). The lack of consistency is Alex's problem (along with most everybody else), and I still don't know what to make of the fact that he's been in the bottom of four quickfires but not a single elimination, but you can't be eliminated during the quickfire (well, there were those two times...), so as long as he keeps this up, he's made two of the season's more memorable dishes and he should have the chance to shine in the late stages. Say what you will about Alex, he's standing out, and that's something that's in short supply this season.

6 Ed Quickfires 1 2 2 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 2 1 I'm just not as impressed with Ed as many others. He's done some good-looking stuff, but unlike Tiffany where it seems like she's routinely just off the pace, I'm still not impressed by Ed's one win, and a lot of his dishes look rather uninteresting to me. I'm a little puzzled and frustrated by his quickfire dish. He marinated all of the tuna the same way, with soy, sesame oil, ginger, garlic and cilantro. But then he panko-coated and fried half of them, and grilled the other half, putting both on the toothpick. Why? Pick the one that works better and roll with that, I say. It just smacks of "I'm going to cram as much on this tiny skewer as I can," which isn't a good thing. He obviously did a solid job with the elimination dish -- the guy spent enough time in Boston that he'd better nail lobster -- but I have a hard time getting a handle on it because some elements are obviously missing from the recipe. Bottom line, I want to put Ed higher. I have a sense that there's much more he can do, though I can't explain why. But when I go back and look at what he's done, I have a hard time getting excited about what I see. I'm genuinely curious, since he seems to be getting a lot of popular support... what is it about Ed that makes some of you guys place him so high?

7 Kevin Quickfires 0 2 1 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 1 3 3 I've believed in Kevin's successes, which is why I've generally had him fairly high, but I've been burned too often by his failures, which is why he takes a pretty big dive this week. He alternates between looking really good and looking completely tone deaf, but unlike Alex, who has a bunch of quiet between his successes, Kevin likes to spend his time away from the winner's circle on the chopping block. This simply can't be good for his longevity, and though I wanted to look past one or two of them as blips, there comes a point where the blips are the norm rather than the exception. But, you know... two solid weeks and with this field, I'll have to send him right back to the top of the MOTP again. Frustrating.

8 Amanda Quickfires 0 1 2 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 2 2 Amanda moves up a spot due to attrition. I almost pulled her out of the near-basement, and she probably deserves better than Kevin at this point. But like Kevin, she shows the same kind of tone deafness with her failures, except she doesn't have the win or as many top appearances under her belt. Despite the fact that she's been languishing near the bottom for most of the season, those flashes are enough that I don't discount the potential for a sudden and meteoric rise. At first my reaction to her elimination dish was the same as Kelly's. Bone out a porterhouse and it's not a porterhouse anymore. It's a strip and a filet. But though I'm still a little leery, given the way it was served I suppose I can kind of get behind it as a creative deconstructed way of approaching a porterhouse. I really do like the look of some of her stuff. But she still seems like one of the most likely candidates for a flameout in the next couple of weeks.

9 Stephen Quickfires 0 2 3 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 1 2 Screw extended judges' table. I want the uncensored, uncut footage of Stephen's seminar. Stephen is my hero, and I hate making him the punching bag week in and week out. But dude, he did exactly what I hoped they wouldn't do with the quickfire. He did a simple beef, scallop and potato with béarnaise affair, and he tried to cram as much weight onto the toothpick as possible. Why not cut down the volume and intensify the flavor? His salmon with warmed vegetable salad and Worcestershire vinaigrette was actually one of his better-looking dishes, which unfortunately just means that he got a break from the chopping block for a week. Actually, Stephen's been on the block less than you probably think. But he's looked like he's hanging by a thread since episode one, and he hasn't done anything to change that perception. Sorry, Stephen.

10 Andrea Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 1 2 1 The theme through all of the supplemental materials this week is that Andrea blew it and she knew it, and that's really all there is to say about that. At extended Judges' Table, Gail raised the question, if everything with Andrea's dish went wrong, what went right with Kevin's dish? Padma responded that at least Kevin's was edible. Ouch. And that pretty much sums up why Andrea went home. It's a shame, because she actually had one of the more distinctive styles remaining. But there it is.

Ah, geez... maybe I should move-- NO, NO... we're done for this week. Ugh.

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE EIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD

Ethnic cuisine for everybody! Which is where people can REALLY get tripped up depending on what they draw and where they have experience. Everybody gets Moroccan for the QF, and it sounds like Angelo has some significant experience there. Incidentally, this is a great choice for DC. I always thought it was okay, but I never really GOT Ethiopian until I had it in DC. I had a spectacular meal at Queen Makeda that I never got around to writing up, and now the memories are long gone. At any rate, it's a wonderful and distinctive ethnic cuisine, and hopefully we get a little local flavor along with it. As for the elimination, some have done their homework on determining which chef draws which cuisine. I haven't. I actually hate the previews. I like a little mystery and suspense. But I'm incredibly amused that Kevin, who just reduced everything Angelo does to "Chinese food," apparently gets stuck with Indian. This should be fun. And by fun I mean brutal.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S7E7 Postmortem

Okay... the politicians are out in full force. Keep it clean, keep it friendly, keep it on the food... you've been warned!

I'll check in late tonight...

UPDATE : Wow, lots to digest here.

Picked the right time to address parity, apparently. After this week, what previously looked kind of like a top three and a bottom two with a mess of five in the middle now looks like a top one and a bottom one with a mess of seven in the middle. Seriously, has there been a point this season where you got the sense that somebody was going to break away without that person either going silent or crashing down shortly thereafter? This really is anybody's game.

We're at the midpoint of the season, so heroes and villains are starting to emerge. Stephen is now my hero. Won't save him from the basement, but he's still my hero.

I'll figure out what I can on peagate, but my hunch is we're never going to know. Unless something new comes to light, there's only one person who knows for sure, and he certainly won't be motivated to tell the truth. Either he got away with murder or he's been unfairly fingered and you feel horrible for the guy. The judges obviously have no idea. And if the elves know that he did steal the puree, they'd have no motivation to hold onto that information, so I have to conclude they don't know either.

Unless you're a conspiracy theorist and you think the elves stole the puree to manufacture the controversy :-)

(I'm joking, and yet I just know I'm going to regret having written that at some point.)

Rankings next week. In the meantime, discuss!

Top Chef - S7E6 Power Rankings

We're back!

Well, that wasn't the most enjoyable week. Thanks for not giving me a hard time, folks. Viral meningitis, while not its terrifying cousin bacterial meningitis, is still a nasty little condition. My ladylove's been in and out of the hospital since last Monday (mostly in), and though she's back home and on her way to kicking it, I understand people are sometimes hospitalized for a month. The lesson? Don't get viral meningitis. Y'know, in case you were considering it.

So at this point, I'm a little out of the loop. I've been watching, of course, but I'm not quite as on top of all of the supplemental information as I ordinarily am. Plus, with a two week gap, there isn't really any continuity in the rankings. So while I'm getting caught up, this edition will be a bit of a pause as we gear up for the second half of the season.

And frankly, now seems as good a time as any to address the season as a whole. Popular sentiment certainly seems to be that season seven is a clunker. I'll happily concede that it isn't a shining paragon of all that Top Chef can be, but I think that's a little harsh. These guys are mostly putting out good food, which is more than I can say for most of the field in a few seasons. I started thinking a couple of weeks ago that the problem may be rooted in the fact that so few of the contestants have easily distinguishable styles. Last season, perhaps even when we had as many as ten contestants left, you could look at their dishes blind and know whose was whose with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Now look at the dishes put out this week. Think you could do the same this season? It makes it harder to follow because the dishes all run together. Though it seems the food is generally very good, nobody's standing out, either in terms of quality or style.

Which got me thinking about how coming up with a good Top Chef cast is basically an impossible task. First off, we don't want to see people who can't cook, so they all have to be good. But not too good, or it doesn't feel like a competition between up-and-comers anymore. And other than a few throwaways, they need to all be of roughly equivalent skill level, or a couple will dominate and ruin any sense of suspense. They have to have personality or we're bored. But not too much personality. That's distracting. And a little negative is okay, but not too negative. Nobody wants to watch a bunch of nasty people. Unless there are also some really likeable people. Then we can get that good guy / bad guy thing going. And their styles have to be disparate, or we can't tell their dishes apart. Make sure they all have very different, easily definable styles. And we need to have an even gender split, and some level of diversity. And they have to be articulate on camera. And we need seventeen of them.

Got all that?

Seriously, I think it's a miracle most of these casts turn out as well as they do. No cast is perfect (well, you might be able to make a case for season four), so it becomes a question of strengths and weaknesses and which are more important to you. For me, the biggest one is the food, which is what made last season so much fun. Incredible talent, wild and recognizable styles. Makes for fun food TV. But many complained that four of them were just too good, and it took all of the suspense out of the bulk of the season. So what do we have this season? Parity.

And this is really what I'm holding onto as the thing that could make the second half of this season really interesting. Am I alone in thinking that this thing is totally up for grabs? The ones at the top have done well, but they aren't worldbeaters. The ones at the bottom have had a lot of problems, but even Amanda has turned out some really good food. And the middle of the pack... anybody care to put odds on who out of Andrea, Alex, Ed, Tiffany and Kevin make the finals, or should I set up the dartboard? There have been seasons where you could walk away from the show at this point, come back for the finals and make a pretty good guess as to who would be left. But unless the final four includes both Stephen and Amanda, is there really any final four that would completely shock you?

It also makes the rankings hell. Especially when I've been so out of touch for the past couple of weeks. But here goes.

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 Angelo Quickfires 2 4 0 Last Week: -- Eliminations 1 2 0 Two weeks gone, and I only had to change one number in the stats for him. Everybody notice that since winning the first three challenges, Angelo hasn't won a thing? He has all of the hallmarks of a Top Chef winner -- technical skill, creativity, a definable style -- and despite a few minor gaffes, he's managed to completely stay out of trouble. So the top spot is still his. But it's not by the wide margin it once was. It'll be interesting to see if he regains that early dominance, or if some of the pack start to challenge him. And some of them are making some noise.

2 Kelly Quickfires 1 2 2 Last Week: -- Eliminations 2 2 0 Kelly, for example, who seems to be finding her footing, has strung together some nice looking dishes including a couple of winners, and I think has earned the second spot. What's more, though she went to the final round of the hotel elimination challenge, she's never been on the chopping block. Her dishes aren't always the flashiest or most distinctive, but they're creative and mostly well-executed, she's on a bit of a roll and I have a hunch she's going to come on even stronger moving towards the finals. A flameout's always possible, but right now I feel comfortable predicting her for the top four.

3 Kenny Quickfires 2 5 0 Last Week: -- Eliminations 1 2 3 Kenny gave up the number two position as much as Kelly seized it. He's been one of the most successful contestants, but unlike Kelly he's also had a nose for the chopping block. Had I been doing the rankings this whole time, I probably would have kept him in the number two spot until this week, where Kelly's win coupled with Kenny looking completely flabbergasted at Judges Table tipped the balance. I still think Kenny's going to pull it together and make the finals. He's the last of the three for whom I'm comfortable making that prediction. And his style is distinctive enough that I think he'll do well there and have a shot at the win. But his flameout quotient is higher than Kelly's and he's coming off a rough week, so down to number three he goes.

4 ??? Quickfires 0 0 0 Last Week: -- Eliminations 0 0 0 No, Hubert Keller has not swooped in to join the Top Chef season seven field. And I don't mean to imply a huge break between the top three and the middle of the pack. It's just that no matter which of the MOTPers I put in the fourth slot, I don't feel good about it. Solution? Nobody's going there this week. It's up for grabs. Here's the thing. At this point, short of going with simple gut instinct, I think it's nearly impossible to find daylight between the next five contestants. They're different, but it's nearly impossible to say one is stronger than the others. You have two who have yo-yoed between the top and the bottom. You have two who, six episodes in, have still barely made a splash. And you have one whose reception has been pretty lukewarm except that he happened to bust out what seems to be one of the most beloved dishes of the entire competition thus far. In short, I pity the poor bastard who has to figure out how to sort out that mess... oh... right.

5 Kevin Quickfires 0 1 2 Last Week: -- Eliminations 1 3 2 And the winner of the pick who will give me indigestion this week is... Kevin! Here's the line of thinking. I'm putting those who have showed some fire -- even if it has also come with some failure -- ahead of those who are quietly plodding along. The Power Rankings are a measure of awesomeness, and while a legitimate strategy and potentially a great route to the finals, quietly surviving is less than awesome. Two weeks ago? No way this is Kevin. But he seems to be coming out of his funk, and this week he basically made a creative reimagining of Vitello Tonnato, which I only just identified as one of my all-time favorites. So the guy has good taste. And he's coming off a win. And that's good enough for me. But in all seriousness, the guy has made noise and his winners have been distinctive. And even though I would not be the least bit surprised to see him go down in flames tomorrow night, I'm going to put him here anyway. And before you chide, remember that somebody has to go here.

6 Andrea Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: -- Eliminations 1 2 0 Andrea is kind of like Kevin lite. Not in terms of cooking style, of course. I'm talking about record. Her results have that same up and down sine wave pattern, just with less frequency and amplitude. Fewer appearances top and bottom, and less triumphant or tragic. And while it'd be easy to simply say that's why she's here, the truth is that her recipes have a lot to do with it as well. Of the MOTPers, hers just strike me as a little more interesting and distinctive. So if everybody keeps performing as they are (not that I actually expect that to happen), she seems more likely to stand out than some of the other MOTPers.

7 Tiffany Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: -- Eliminations 0 3 0 In the little aggregate rankings you guys have been running (glad you're keeping busy in my absence, BTW), Tiffany seems to be ranking pretty high. I understand why. I have a good feeling about her too. But you want to know why I'm not putting her any higher? ... Quick, name one dish Tiffany's made other than this week's tuna and gazpacho! ... That's why. Okay, maybe a few of you thought of that sweet potato with chocolate sherbet. Can you name another? Exactly. Still, I like the cut of her jib. Though I wasn't around to go on record with it, I've thought for the past couple of weeks that she was due to make a move. And she started to this week. It won't take much more noise for me to shoot her right to the top of the MOTP. We'll see what happens.

8 Ed Quickfires 1 2 1 Last Week: -- Eliminations 0 1 1 Ed was a little up and down the first few episodes, but since then he's been much like Tiffany, which is to say quiet as a mouse. Except when speaking to camera, that is. But when it comes to food, he's one of the two that are just quietly surviving. I put him below Tiffany simply because his dishes lately don't sound the least bit distinctive. He has talent, but he needs to start standing out. Like any of the MOTPers, I believe he can. It's just a question of will he or won't he until it's too late.

9 Alex Quickfires 0 0 3 Last Week: -- Eliminations 0 1 0 Alex seems to be one of the more controversial figures, and again, I understand why. He's one of the few chefs who has made a dish we can remember for cryin' out loud. But here's the thing. That was five episodes ago. The judges loved it! It was delicious, creative, distinctive, evocative of a very personal style... it was the perfect Top Chef dish! Alex demonstrated right out the gate that he can do it. And then he proceeded not to do it for ten straight challenges. If he were just making that dish now, if we'd gotten five episodes of mediocrity followed by that deconstructed borscht, we'd be calling it the same thing we call Stephen's curried apple and date pie: a fluke. Again, he's part of this exceptionally tight MOTP that might as well be 4a through 4e, as far as I'm concerned. But for him to get much higher, he's going to have to show that he didn't run out of bullets in the very first episode.

10 Amanda Quickfires 0 1 2 Last Week: -- Eliminations 0 2 2 Amanda, in many ways, is a lot like Kevin. Big highs, big lows, big potential, big inconsistency. So why is he at five and she at ten? Gut. Really, that's pretty much it. Both could easily bust out a great dish and win this week. Both could just as easily bomb and pack their knives. But Kevin seems to be getting his act together while Amanda shows no signs of doing so. And that's all the difference in this field. If I have to guess, I say Amanda hangs around two or three more episodes, busts out one of the best dishes of the competition, and promptly botches her next dish and goes home. Any success, I suspect, will be fleeting.

11 Stephen Quickfires 0 1 3 Last Week: -- Eliminations 0 1 2 With every passing week, I'm not sure if Stephen's survival is making my number two preseason pick look better because he's inching closer to that mark by attrition, or if he's making it look worse because we all get to watch how bad that pick was for another week. Poor guy. Almost as painful as watching him being eviscerated week in and week out is the look on his face that says he's mentally slapping his palm to his forehead and thinking, "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" It's like he's cursed with the ability to see his failings with perfect clarity, only after he's made them. Every challenge, it's "My dish rocks!!! ... What?!? ... Oh, man, you're right!" as he stands there, completely crestfallen. Never have I found the chronically about to be eliminated so pitiable and sympathetic. But we all know it's just a matter of time.

12 Tamesha Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: -- Eliminations 0 0 1 Y'know, that rhubarb scallop dish looks really interesting. And I can see how it might work. I'm betting there's a good dish in there. But there doesn't seem much question that it didn't come out on this particular occasion. I feel like Tamesha's no great loss. She put out some interesting stuff, and that will be missed, but she just never gave me the sense that she was going deep. Might as well cut her loose now and let the others fight it out.

13 Timothy Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: -- Eliminations 0 1 2 Timothy's Top Chef legacy ends up sounding a lot like his reputation back in Baltimore. He never quite lived up to expectations. And when the DC/Maryland boy can't bring home at least a top mention in the blue crab challenge, you know it's all over.

14 Arnold Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: -- Eliminations 1 2 1 With his elimination now a couple of weeks in the rearview mirror, it really is a shame that Arnold bit it when he did. If nothing else, he brought some interest to the proceedings. The guy's dishes were unquestionably distinctive, and sort of an odd, wilder and less refined counterpoint to Angelo's creative Asian. But I think the most we could have expected from him would have been a spoiler for the finals, so I'm not overly sad to see him go. Or maybe, like me, he didn't want to live in a world where squid ink pasta is a wacky and challenging menu item that will scare people off. Goodbye, cruel world.

15 Lynne Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: -- Eliminations 0 1 1 I've been wanting to get this off my chest for over two weeks now, but though she deserved to go, I feel compelled to back Lynne up on one item. Dropping fresh pasta twelve minutes out IS crazy. One minute is hyperbole (unless it's really thin fresh pasta), but it's a very, very short cooking time, and to cook, sauce and plate eight(?) servings of pasta shouldn't take more than five minutes. That leaves it sitting there languishing for seven, which is waaaaaaaaaaay too long. No one disputes that Lynne undercooked the pasta, herself included (even if the show edit kind of made it seem that way). But that was an error that was independent of her call not to start cooking it so far away from the buzzer. I'm saying that by waiting to drop the pasta, she was right and Arnold was wrong... and THEN she blew it.

So there it is! More of a State of the Union than the typical hyper-obsessive analysis, but we'll try to get back to the latter this coming week now that things are mostly back to normal for us over here. I have a hunch this season is going to start looking up shortly. Hope I'm right.

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE SEVEN SPOILERS AHEAD

Every time I watch a clip on Hulu and hear the official ad pronounce Buitoni as "byoo-toni" I want to stick a fork in my eye. Why I care about how packaged "fresh" pasta is sold, I don't know. But if you're going to play the snooty Italian card, at least pronounce the name the way an Italian would.

That notwithstanding, I'm actually really looking forward to this episode. The quickfire is essentially an amuse bouche challenge that's structured in such a way that the chefs will be forced to keep their dishes to one bite. I love it. See who can pack the flavor in there. And for the elimination, an actual restaurant challenge, the exact nature of which remains a mystery. They're really cooking, folks, and it looks like they're cooking their own dishes. I suspect this'll be a good one.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S7E6 Postmortem

Annoyance.

I was kind of taken aback by how many people didn't like last week's episode. Straight-up cooking challenge with an exciting local ingredient in season, and a mostly straight-up challenge with great local farm products, the only angle being that they had to cook outdoors (with pretty decent facilities, it seemed) and work on the fly. Contrast the EC with analogues from previous seasons, where they had mystery facilities but were supposed to plan and shop beforehand. These were two true tests of creativity and skill with great ingredients. What's not to like about that?

This week, however, could easily have been a total train wreck, and the only thing that kept it from becoming so was luck. Sounds like Kenny and Tamesha did, indeed, have very weak dishes, but with that format you could have easily lost a top contestant for no other reason than the rest of the field wanted him gone. Lame. And for the quickfire, why not just randomly assign the proteins and take five minutes off the clock? Same challenge, no BS.

Good look at the chefs' styles in the EC, though. With the time off, I think I finally have something to work with.

Thanks for all of the healthy thoughts, guys. By the end of the day, we anticipate having everybody home and if not 100%, then well on their way.

Top Chef - S7E5 Postmortem

Can't watch at the moment... busy checking out The Girl and The Goat. Hopefully the hotel has Bravo.

 

UPDATE : Attention, hotel management... despite what your channel lineup card may say, this is not Bravo, and unless Jessica Fletcher is the guest judge tonight and Colicchio just turned up dead, I'm pretty sure this isn't Top Chef.

I'll check in tomorrow.

UPDATE II : Man, I hate this whole watching the episode after everybody else thing.

Timothy bites it in episode five, finishing 12th, which raises the bar three positions for the next Charm City contestant. Sorry, Baltimore (and I mean that sincerely). But when the hometown boy can't ace blue crab, it isn't a good sign. More on that Monday, I'm sure.

Side note... if I may be so bold as to challenge somebody whose culinary stature could squash mine like a gnat... you know I love you and your snooty French accent, Eric, but you're wrong. Make it without pasta and it's still minestrone. Lots and lots of Italians do, often with rice and just as often (if note moreso) without either. And this is why I try not to speak in absolutes unless I really, really, REALLY know what I'm talking about. When it comes to food, no matter how much you know, you can't know everything, and somebody will call you on it. To be fair, I'm surprised these kinds of gaffes don't happen more often. It speaks to just how much these judges DO know. But you gotta call the slip-ups when you see 'em.

Reactions seem to be all over the map, but I kinda dug this episode. You guys are a tough crowd this season.

More Monday, when the rankings return... thanks for giving me the week off. Got lots of other non-TC goodies to start slinging in your direction. Let me get home, get this week's rankings out the door, and we're off to the races... Woo!

Top Chef - S7E4 Postmortem

Hey, all...

Staying on top of the rankings while traveling has been -- as you might have surmised from the fact that it's Monday and I only just now got the postmortem banner up -- a little trickier than anticipated. So I think now's the best time for me to cash in my once-per-season get out of the rankings free card. With apologies, I'm going to skip the rankings this week, and then I'll be back home and ready for the episode five rankings next Monday.

Thanks for your understanding, and I'll still have the postmortem thread for episode five up on Wednesday.