Top Chef - S9E9 Postmortem
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Getting ready for the plane and furiously downloading files to refer to while high above the Pacific. Saving my thoughts for the Power Rankings, which are on this coming Monday, off the following Monday.
Discuss!
January 4, 2012
January 3, 2012
Top Chef - S9E8 Power Rankings
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Well, that was a much needed break!
Unfortunately, I'm going crazy now trying to get ready for this trip, so I'm kind of phoning it in tonight. Which means I'll probably end up writing 4000 words as usual, I'll just spend an hour obsessing over it rather than seven.
I won't say that quickfire was a throwaway. We got to see some good food from the chefs. But random changes midstream dictated by Twitter isn't terribly interesting to me. The elimination, however, may be the most notable we've had yet, if only because it had them working solo, cooking for small numbers with no real constraints. And what we saw was telling.
Incidentally, Patti's friend Nadine seemed like a sweet lady, and I hope she's okay. Even if she managed to remove all of the fried egg from Edward's dish, the egg mixed into Sarah's cabbage rolls, Heather's spaetzle and Ty-Lör's chicken coating could've sent her into anaphylaxis... but all snark aside, we really need to stop using the word "allergy" when we mean "aversion." All it does is make life more difficult for those who have actual food allergies.
Rankings, ho! With the week off, I'm rebooting a little bit, though as it turns out I didn't need to make as many large moves as I'd feared. The cream has started to rise, though the bottom half of the standings is still a big mess. In any case, here they are, with a little more gutcheck than previous weeks.
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.
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It's nice to see that somebody's finally challenging Paul, but not enough to knock him out of the top spot. And his quickfire dish is another great example why. Bacon, asparagus, chorizo, blackberries, fennel, maitake mushrooms and clams. And somehow he finds a way to make it work. He's wildly creative, a killer technician, and he has a strikingly distinctive personal style. That's old-school TCPR trinity right there, for you newcomers. |
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But how awesome is it that somebody's finally nipping at his heels? She's had a couple of stumbles, most notably the whole cochinita pibil debacle from E3, but her successes have looked great and she seems to be picking up steam. Both dishes from this episode were exercises in restraint. Neither of them were flashy, but neither were they dull. There were nice creative touches around the edges of both, she nailed them from a technical standpoint, and she's putting out dishes that look like her food. There's that trinity again. |
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Edward's been a little less consistent than the two above, but in a season that's marked by inconsistency not only is it easier to stand out, but he's also been on a roll since his Judges' Table smackdown. He took that lesson to heart. But here's what I find really impressive. He worked some kind of voodoo on his elimination dish, because man, there is nothing exciting about that recipe. It reads like a bare bones bibimbap recipe, and yet he somehow managed to coax awesome out of next to nothing. His elimination dish was all finesse, and that speaks very well for him. |
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She's one of only two who are still winless (Chris J. being the other), but this is one of my reboot hunches. No longer teamed with her kryptonite, she seems to have recaptured her early season mojo, the spring's back in her step, and with Heather now gone entirely things are looking up for Beverly. Tom seemed really impressed with both of her dishes, and again... creativity, execution (Heather collaboration aside), distinctive personal style... there's that formula again. Incidentally, anybody sensing any Asian fatigue on the judging panel? Yeah, me neither. |
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Season nine's reclamation project seems to have avoided the letdown and done well by himself since bouncing back strong. The recipe for his quickfire dish isn't even an outline, so there's not much to read there, but his elimination looks like a really nice twist on a childhood dish and it was well-received. Frying chicken tenders in duck fat is an obvious but effective way to elevate them a little bit, and pairing them with pickled peaches and honeycomb is to put a decidedly adult spin on them. I still don't know what kind of food this guy makes, but what he's been making recently has been good and that's good enough for the middle of the pack. |
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Here's where things start to go off the rails a bit. I've decided to plunk Lindsay roughly in the middle because she hasn't done much that's particularly good, nor has she done much that's particularly bad. Her recipes look interesting at least, and maybe Emeril's comment about the butter overpowering her trout suggests that she's small errors away from hitting on some of these. She's also had a number of dishes ignored by the cameras, which makes it even tougher to get a bead on her. What I find interesting is that in the online interviews, when the chefs are asked who they think has a shot at winning, Lindsay's name comes up a lot. Are they seeing something about her food that we're not? Are the editors setting her up for a midseason charge? Curious. |
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THANK YOU. Every time I do the preseason rankings and there's a duplicate name, the first thing I do is pick which one I'm going to root for so I can hope the other is eliminated as quickly as possible. Chris C., I dub thee Malibu, and so shall you be until you or Chris -- now the one and only Chris -- is eliminated. Anyway, from here on down, it's pretty much a pick 'em scenario. They've all had some success, they've all had a lot of failure, and I don't have particularly high hopes for any of them. But at the moment, Malibu seems the least troubled of the three, this week's elimination notwithstanding. Though I don't expect him to contend, he seems like he might be a little editing away from putting out more good food than he has been. But even if he does, he still seems like a consummate middle-of-the-packer. |
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Since this is a reboot week, I'm refraining from moving Chris above Malibu because of Malibu's JT encounter. That said, though I have Chris lower, I actually think he's more capable of turning it around and making a run. But as I said last week, I'm done with the couldawouldashoulda. The guy has some fabulous ideas. Problem is he can't seem to separate them from the bad ones, and now you throw execution mishaps into the mix. He badly oversalts his quickfire dish and then competently executes a dumb idea for his elimination. At least it isn't the dry cigar that's hard to eat, but a simple steak and vegetable dinner in miniature? I mean, really, who the f**k cares? Unless there's something that didn't come across in the edit (there's no recipe), he made a vanilla steak dinner, but small. Ho ho! |
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Glad I am that Grayson has given me the excuse I needed to drop her back to the bottom. It was killing me to put her a little higher every week. I let myself get too hung up on the scorecard and ignored everything I was looking at, but this week seems to have brought it sharply into focus. Those were two awful-looking dishes, the first because it just looked awful, and the second because of how embarrassingly inappropriate it was. I like Grayson, but top mentions and well-timed moves aside, she's made precisely one dish that looked like something I'd be in a hurry to eat, and she's on a three bottom streak. Pending turnaround, it's time to put her back in the basement, and the reboot combined with the Flintstones chop gives me all the excuse I need. Now watch her get a double win next week. |
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"I want to be on the bottom because it's my own stuff, that I did it, that I had control of everything on that plate. That's when I want to get sent home if it's not good enough." Be careful what you wish for! Though to be fair, Heather's said all the right things about her elimination. She screwed up, her dish was bad, she went home. No argument. At extended Judges' Table, they questioned her story about starting with a sear and shifting to a braise when that wasn't working, but no matter... the one point on which everybody's in agreement is that it was a bad dish. And since everybody who's left seems to be amiable, perhaps we can close the book on interpersonal drama for this season. Here's hoping. |
WARNING : MINOR EPISODE NINE SPOILERS AHEAD
The quickfire is all about MG, which means if Chris doesn't shine you can stick a fork in him. Though I suppose it wouldn't surprise me to see him do too much. But this is a long topic I'm sure I'll have opportunity to get into next week. And then a 'cue challenge! I'm curious to see how this is going to play out. Real BBQ isn't something the uninitiated can just wade into. Having Sarah and Edward (Kentucky) on the same team hardly seems fair, but then down goes Sarah with heat exhaustion. Sounds like an anything could happen kind of episode.
Discuss!
December 23, 2011
Top Chef - S9E8 Last Chance Kitchen
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And with that, we have our second Last Chance Kitchen win streak!
I've got to say, however her food turns out, it's a lot of fun to watch Nyesha work. She's intense, but there's a kind of controlled economy in her movements. All business, and then *bam*... enormous grin.
I love these simple challenges! What's more interesting? Three random challenge parameters thrown out on Twitter, or three basic techniques employed in one dish? Since I know some of you don't have access to the online videos (greetings to our international friends!), this week's challenge was for Nyesha and Heather to create dishes that employed (deep) frying, injecting and foaming. Heather did a fried prawn over a chanterelle and corn ragout, the head of which had been injected with a foam made from a quick shrimp stock with porcini powder and pimenton. Head sucking ensued (hooray!). Nyesha did a beignet injected with caramel and paired with a brown butter foam. Heather's dish worked in goat cheese somewhere, and we discover -- surprise -- that Tom's is apparently really against seafood and cheese.
Interesting little side note. The whole Heather/Beverly debacle has, in some corners, once again raised the issue of editing and to what degree the editors may at times misrepresent the chefs' conduct. I'm often less curious about their video selection, and more curious about their audio selection. Give this a listen (it's a short mp3 audio clip). Now, quite often these lines are edited simply to compress a bit for time, make them more concise, remove ums and uhs and that kind of thing. But when you have a line this inflammatory that's almost comical in how poorly it flows, it makes you wonder how often we're subjected to completely manufactured frankenclips. Nyesha said a lot, and this may have been a completely fair representation of her remarks. It may even have been her exact remarks that just happened to sound really bad after editing to remove dead space. But if you listen for them, you'll hear lines like this. A lot. And it makes you wonder how often and to what degree they might misrepresent those who are "saying" them.
Anyway, Nyesha advances, and I find myself hoping she goes on a nice, long run. Well... depending on who's eliminated next episode, of course :-)
Discuss!
December 21, 2011
Top Chef - S9E8 Postmortem
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All right, that's it. If the chefs are going back to their roots, so am I. Screw the numbers. It's time to go with the gut and the good old three ingredient recipe to Top Chef success. Time for a reboot.
I can't say it was one of my favorite episodes, but one of the better ones this season and a satisfying end. And... wait... is that... *squint*... a small leader pack starting to separate a bit? It's still a mess at the bottom. But some favorites are starting to emerge. Other than Paul, of course.
A couple of quick housekeeping issues. First, unless I'm mistaken, it looks like there's no episode next week. So the E8 rankings will show up... sometime before the 4th. Second, I'm not going to be able to do the rankings for E10 due to some travel coming up, so let's have a little fun with this. Anybody want to do the rankings for a week? If you're interested, once E9 airs, drop me a little snippet of what you would have written. No need to do the whole thing... maybe an intro and a chef or two. Whatever. I'll pick one I like and turn over the keys for the following week.
Discuss!
Top Chef - S9E7 Power Rankings
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Sorry for the late posting, folks. It's 40% a function of craziness at work, 30% preparations for the little fella's birthday festivities, and only 30% because the drama of this episode was sucking my will to live. Tequila pairing with Tim Love, blah blah blah, let's get to meat of this episode which, unfortunately, includes some ugliness.
First off, I'm totally okay with a team of two going home. I know there's some gnashing of teeth over the fact that Nyesha took the fall for Dakota's mistake, but just because it isn't part of the official construct of the challenge doesn't mean that that doesn't happen in team challenges all the time. We've seen chefs go down because one of their teammates let them down before. It's early enough and there are enough teams that even if your teammate is having trouble, you should be able to step in and help out and do well enough to survive. What I really LIKE about this format is that it forces actual teamwork, not "we're on the same team but I'm really looking out for myself" work. There are no fake not-really-teams, there's no deciding who's more to blame for the failure of a dish... if it were later in the season it would bother me, but at this point, I kind of like what is essentially the first TRUE team challenge I can remember (somebody correct me if I'm forgetting something). If the dish is bad, everybody who worked on it goes home. Clean, simple, elegant.
As for Heather and Beverly, I'll get into that more below. This is the stuff I loathe.
Compiling this week's rankings turned out to be... messy. I'm just not really happy with where anybody is. What I really want is to just start fresh, but even then, it would still be messy. I expect with the holidays coming up that we'll probably get a week off (I don't know this for a fact), and the plan is to push through, get a little more data and reboot then. In the meantime... well... 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.
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That Paul can have a quiet week and I still don't particularly feel comfortable putting anybody else at number two says it all, I think. It's not that I don't think there are plenty of chefs here who can challenge him. I think it's just that they're all for one reason or another really having trouble finding their footing. Usually at this point in the season, you have a few people who are working confidently and standing out. This season, there's only one person who seems really focused and confident, and that's Paul. |
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See? This is what I'm talking about. Sarah's the best I can come up with at number two? But I still feel like she deserves this spot over the rest so far. She's had some success, clearly has some skill and finesse, and I kind of like that even when she had trouble with the sausage, she regrouped, made some adjustments, and even though she seemed to feel that she'd completely screwed everything up, her team did just fine. The emotions started to fly after the fact, but when it mattered she stayed cool and made it work. That's a good sign, I think. Incidentally, whether or not the flavors worked, when it comes to risotto technique, I'm prepared to take Sarah's opinion over Tim Love's. |
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Aaaaaaagh!!! How can Grayson have a mediocre week, end up on the block and still manage to fall backwards up to three?!? I guess that's what happens when folks on top who are on thin ice come crashing through. Grayson's quickfire dish looked... fine... though I'm having a hard time putting tequila and sesame together in my head. Even though Chris was the one on the hot seat, her contribution to the elimination dish wasn't terribly well-received, and it isn't hard to see why. Citrus salad and blackberry compote? So much focus was on Chris that it's hard to tell, but this seemed like the return of hotel food Grayson. Still, this challenge notwithstanding, she's had some sustained success, and though I always worry that it sounds condescending to say it (I just love the word so much), she's got moxie. If she can cook, she can play. So with those above her crashing and those below her just starting to wake up, somehow Grayson ends up at number three. |
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THERE'S the Edward I've been looking for. It seems like he took last week's lesson to heart, and he and Ty-Lör come out swinging, putting out the clear favorite of the evening. It's a really cool-looking dish. A curried quail farce with quail and curry jus, sunchoke puree, pickled cherries, roasted mushrooms and eggplant, finished with sorghum? Asia meets Kentucky, baby. Before Ty-Lör suddenly displayed an affinity for Southeast Asian this episode, I would've assumed that concept was all Edward. Now I don't want to assume it, but it sure seems like he was driving. In any case, more of this please, Ed. |
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Here's the one people are going to hate. And I hate it too. But not because she's making a play for the inevitable Top Chef Villains spin-off (though she's doing a bang up job of that). There's much to explain, so first let me get the drama out of the way. I'd be more sympathetic to the notion that she's simply a straight talker who's now getting the full brunt of the villain edit if she weren't doubling down on her Twitter feed (which has now been protected), and retweeting classy gems like this the day after the episode aired:
Still, as bad as it looks, not only am I loathe to assume that a reality show gives me a fair glimpse at somebody's personality, as far as the rankings go I'm also only concerned with it to the extent that it affects her ability to compete. Problem is, I suspect that will prove to be a lot. It's red flags gone wild in the Heather Terhune camp. Don't play well with others? That's not going to serve you well when somebody has the chance to throw you under the bus. Want to be judged just on your work and not on your team's work? Yeah, that'd be great, but that's not how the show works. Express indignation that your problematic dish is on the chopping block? Keep it up. The judges love that. There are sooooo many reasons I want her to be significantly lower than five right now. But she's a pro, she's had some success, Padma implied in her video blog that Heather's shown much better than this week's quickfire... heck, she's just coming off an elimination win, even if it was cake. So what I want even more is for those beneath her who are just starting to wake up to do it one more time so I can avoid catapulting somebody from the bottom to the top on what might turn out to be a fluke. So let's just say that I'm going to let Heather hang at number five for a week -- with massive reservations -- and that a stiff breeze could knock her down to the bottom if anybody currently sitting at 6-10 shows even the faintest signs of life next week. |
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Wahey, where the heck did that come from? Ordinarily I don't like to take somebody who's been on the chopping block for 75% of the episodes and give him a six position bump, but... you know... look at the field. So is Asian what we're going to see from him going forward? What a weird and sudden change of tack (his E4 quickfire dish that was never shown notwithstanding). Let's see if he has more in the tank, or if this is the infamous sudden blip of success immediately before crushing elimination. You guys know the tropes by now. |
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From last week's rankings: "Still, this is the first time Chris had made any solo noise, and the memories of last week's double bottom finish and cupcake smorgasbord are far too recent. Do it again, Chris." Well, okay then! Between Chris this week and Grayson last week, I feel like I should be wishing for more. ("Top Chef season nine, you've been okaaaaaay, but I'd really like to see you be completely awesome before I bump you above some other seasons.") Anyway, I wish there was a recipe for Chris' quickfire dish, because I liked the look of it. Creatively dressed oysters are a dime a dozen, and most are overdone, but this one looked really smart, as though it might have played very, very fresh and light. Two consecutive weeks with signs of life from Chris. Is there a breakout coming? |
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And thus ends my patience with Chris J. I'd hoped he wouldn't embody everything that's always bugged me about Moto, and that first episode fooled me into believing it wasn't going to be a problem for him, but first the cigar and now an even more puzzling sweet potato chain... cripes, man, just make the food taste good. I gave him the benefit of the doubt the first time around, thinking he might learn from his mistake. But contrast him with Edward. Ed got called out for playing it safe, and he comes back with a beautiful blast of creativity. Chris is warned not to put high concept before flavor, and the first chance he gets he's spending all of his time on lame presentation elements that would have been ill-advised even if they did work. Maybe it'll take two close calls to shake him of the notion that he can put style before substance and get away with it. But until he shows it, he's going to hang out down here. |
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Okay, now that's an interesting quickfire dish. She seared off some salmon with butter and bay leaf and plated it with a creamy fennel puree, a sauce that was a sweet shallot and tequila reduction mounted with butter, sautéed white peaches and some fresh basil and fennel fronds. I say to her what I said to Chris C. last week. Do it again. |
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For somebody who started off with a lot of promise, Beverly has really fallen off a cliff. Her two top finishes in E3 were her last, and more than anything she just seems done. I was struck by how fatigued she looked at the start of the episode, and that was even before the ugliness with Heather. We know she can impress the judges. The question is will she return to that early energy and form, and what's keeping her from doing so? Is she not cut out for the rigors of the competition? Is it the constant clashing with Heather? The first certainly isn't getting any easier, and the second could very well get worse. I could see Beverly roaring back, but right now she just looks beaten. Of course, I said that about Ty-Lör last week. |
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Yes, this sucked. Yes, Nyesha should have gone further. Yes, she had a calm, assured temperament and a pedigree that suggested she knows how to execute. But if I may play contrarian for a moment, since the legend of how strong a competitor she was before her elimination has slowly grown over the course of the week, let's please recall that at the moment before she was eliminated, she was one of only three remaining contestants who were winless, and across ten challenges she had collected just one top finish against four bottom finishes. I agree that she was better than those numbers indicate, and had she stuck around she may very well have been a contender at the end. But let's not let the context in which she went home turn this into an early surprise legend. That said, this was one of the times when I wished the judges applied different standards than they do. It's frequently come up that in the end, the question they often fall back on is which dish they'd least like to eat again. And though the other two dishes on the block clearly had problems, it's hard to say you'd rather go back for a second helping of raw venison chop no matter how much you liked everything else on the plate (and check the tape... no matter how diplomatically it may have been phrased at times, those chops were RAW). What hurts is that it seems like they really loved the rest of the dish. But it doesn't matter how much they love your concept. If that core ingredient is botched, by way of undercooking, oversalting or any other singular oops that kills the dish, you're done. And to their credit, over the years they've been quite consistent with that standard (last week being a notable exception, but c'mon... six hours for raw gratin). Still... it's times like these when I wish they'd give a little leeway to a dish that, though spoiled, was a single mistake away from being great. |
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Wild swings, indeed. And humorous that, again, her result was on the opposite end of the spectrum from her confidence level. But even though it's a big drop from six to eliminated at twelve, I can't say this one surprises me at all. Dakota seemed flameout prone from the get go. I actually feel almost as bad for Dakota as I do for Nyesha. Some people can just shrug it off, but knowing that I took down somebody else with my mistake in so meaningful a situation is something that would make me feel awful for a long, long time. |
WARNING : MINOR EPISODE EIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD
Austin ho! Anybody remember when they asked for challenge ingredient suggestions via Twitter? It wasn't so they could select one. Apparently it was so they could use them all. It's a twist on the fly quickfire, which can sometimes get lame, but it's a quickfire... we'll see how it goes. There's nothing about the elimination online, and we only get a glimpse in the aired preview. It looks -- I stress looks -- like it's an individual elimination, so hopefully this will give some folks a chance to shine. And Patti LaBelle.
Discuss!
December 17, 2011
Top Chef - S9E7 Last Chance Kitchen
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Well, it's still early enough that I don't think anybody has a prayer of making it through the gantlet, But is there anybody (other than Whitney) who didn't want Nyesha to win that one? The moment she and Dakota were eliminated, I envisioned an LCK where Dakota either bowed out or helped Nyesha with hers and plated nothing. It was, perhaps, too much to hope for. And I'm not entirely sure what kind of reaction an offer of help from Dakota would have elicited at that point anyway. But all's well that ends well.
This post was entirely coincidental. I didn't watch LCK until this morning, and I'd actually done the stir fry a couple of days earlier. I am a little disappointed by the wok cookery on display. It's hard to tell from the split second cuts, but it seems as though Whitney was the only one who didn't just use it as a big, round pan. But hey, you've got 30 minutes... get a good dish out however you can. I've never worked with nopales myself, and it's an ingredient that always trips people up, so it's nice to see all three apparently doing a respectable job with it. Though Chuy's response when asked how they handled it was priceless.
Regarding the spoiler blackout on LCK, let's do this... if I can't get my act together to have it posted by noon PST on Friday, go crazy. That'll prod me to get it done on time as well. Having comments in the wrong thread makes me... antsy.
Discuss!
December 14, 2011
Top Chef - S9E7 Postmortem
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That squawking you just heard was Heather killing the golden goose.
Wow. Y'know, we like to talk about the villain edit around these parts, but I'm... um... willing to believe that one wasn't the edit.
That I'm going to hang myself is a given. The question is whether I'll do it because the drama factor just exploded, or because we just had a 2-4 on the bottom, 10-12 on the top quickfire and a double win from the guy in the basement.
I get one free pass every season, right? Maaaaaaan, is it tempting...
Discuss!
December 13, 2011
Top Chef - S9E6 Power Rankings
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Oy... I don't know that I'm willing to call two consecutive episodes a tailspin, but whatever it is, here's hoping we pull out of it soon.
And it got off to such a nice start! With one (very) notable exception, the quickfires have been way more interesting than the eliminations this season, and the mother sauce challenge is no exception. It's culinary history, a skills challenge and a test of individual creativity all in one. Then, turn around and cook beef for 200 people. Is it really any surprise that the food coming out of the quickfire looked so much better than what came out of the elimination?
Many seem to feel that the caliber of chefs this season is way down, but I need to stand up for this crowd. I'm sometimes surprised by how perception in the comments is so different from mine. Is it because I'm reading the recipes? I don't know. But to anybody who thinks this cast lacks talent, go to the Bravo site, check out some quickfire recipes, and see if you still feel the same way. That's not a challenge. I'm curious to see if that changes anybody's mind.
No, the problem, I think, is that this crowd is playing it very, very safe when up for elimination. We've had two consecutive eliminations with embarrassingly timid food. The question, as I see it, is whether the judges start getting pissed enough to send people home for playing it safe. Whitney was too easy. Here's hoping they throw somebody off the island for doing a decent rendition of a really boring dish. They're starting to send the message. Here's hoping it gets through, otherwise this could be a very boring first half of the season. If the chefs start bringing that quickfire creativity to the big challenges, though? It could turn around in a hurry. Here's hoping.
In the meantime, what am I supposed to do with this field? Unimpressive wins, some noise from the bottom half of the standings, but little that seems to merit moving anybody anywhere. I wish I could punt on the entire episode. 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.
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I'm sure you're all shocked -- shocked -- that Paul retains number one. Some of these guys are going to come on strong. There's too much talent for that not to happen. But at the moment, it looks like Paul vs. The Field. For those unfamiliar with the fuss over a roux, the five mother sauces as codified by Escoffier, with the exception of hollandaise, are thickened with a roux, a cooked mixture of flour and butter or an alternate fat. This has largely gone out of fashion. Today, these sauces are usually thickened simply by reducing them, which serves to thicken them but also condenses the flavors and makes them more intense. It's not a question of right or wrong so much as a question of style, and it's unclear whether Fearing was probing out of curiosity, or to dock points if the sauces weren't prepared in the traditional manner. If the latter, it didn't stop Paul, whose Espagnole was scented with ginger, lemongrass and Thai chiles. Crisp quail, lightly pickled honshimeji mushrooms, sautéed okra and garlic scapes... his dishes continue to look fabulous. |
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Sarah had a quiet week, but she's coming off a couple of strong performances, so she's going to hang out here. Though it didn't get any screen time, her quickfire dish had a nice look to it, shrimp poached in a ginger and saffron scented shrimp velouté, plated with sautéed fennel, leeks and toasted breadcrumbs. And her work on the gazpacho was regarded as safe but solid, which frankly put her ahead of the curve on this one. Plus, she's managed to completely stay out of trouble thus far, which is not a small thing. Treading water. |
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I should probably bump Heather over Sarah for the win, but I just can't. Frankly, I have a hard time giving anybody a whole lot of credit for that elimination. The fact that she was using Ed's génoise recipe doesn't bother me. First, she has to execute it. Second, here's the cake recipe, abbreviated: Whip six egg yolks with six ounces of sugar, sift and fold in the flour, add vanilla extract and salt, bake at 350 until golden brown.This isn't the Coke formula we're talking about here. Still, with all due respect to Heather, that has to be the cheapest big prize win we've seen on the show. I can't bring myself to put her at number two for working on a portion of that cake. Incidentally, I don't particularly want to delve into the whole question of whether or not her attitude is appropriate. One heavily edited challenge hardly seems like the basis to draw any conclusions in that arena. But whether or not her response was proportionate, I'm not sure her annoyance with Beverly was unwarranted. I know the snide comments about Beverly always doing Asian definitely are NOT. It's been suggested that she's just pointing out the truth... the judges may tire of that. It's true, they might. But it's all in tone. That wasn't concern, that was condescension. More below. |
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Chris also falls into the "Yeah, he got top mention, but I'm loathe to bump anybody for succeeding in this dog of a challenge" category. I do not, in any way, mean to diminish the accomplishment of sending out 200 plates of beautifully cooked meat. But it's a bit of a niche accomplishment. Plus, I felt like I had him a little high last week after the cigar debacle. So I feel pretty comfortable letting him stay put. |
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From last week's Power Rankings: "I'd feel a whole lot better if I'd seen her produce one savory dish with some finesse."Well, okay then! Charred corn ravioli plated with seared scallops and topped with a corn hollandaise and blueberry gastrique. I'd say that qualifies. I've been skeptical about Grayson given the look of her food in the first two episodes, but that dish is exactly what I was looking for before giving her a big bump, so there it is. Incidentally, can somebody explain why the judges are continually amazed by chefs who make pasta in small amounts of time, to say nothing of ninety minutes? Fearing seemed shocked that she'd made ravioli. One plate of ravioli? I could do it in 30, and I'm a rank amateur. Sarah must've been quietly chewing her tongue off. Not to take anything at all away from Grayson's plate, but while fresh pasta takes skill, it really doesn't take all that much time. |
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Dakota's all over the map. I realize we're only a few episodes into this thing, but while we've seen plenty of her, I still have no idea what to expect from her. A quickfire win and two quickfire bottom appearances? A top dessert and another that might have sent her home if her team hadn't won? Even odder is that the less confident she is in her dish, the better it seems to go over with the judges. Wild swings just means that you might win a prize or two before you flame out. We'll see which Dakota shows up next week. In the meantime, a small ding for the quickfire bottom. |
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Ditto Beverly, though it sounds like she simply took too many liberties with her mother sauce for Fearing's tastes. I'm heading into broken record territory, but this issue of a contestant "always doing Asian" really needs to be addressed. Does anybody think Heather would have said that about a French or Italian chef? Yet, in hitting Korean, Chinese and Japanese, Beverly's already covered ground more diverse. Heck, you could stay entirely within China and cover ground more diverse (it's... um... a really big country). It's sad how for so many, Asian cuisine is one big yellow lump that comes from... you know... East. Though I may be proven wrong, in sporting that attitude (which is thankfully becoming outdated), I suspect Heather's speaking only for herself and not for the judges. I think she may have a point about the shrimp, though. Beverly cleaned 400 shrimp. It's hard to say based on the edit, but it appears she went well into the second day working only on cleaning shrimp. It was two three hour chunks, so let's say four hours. 36 seconds per shrimp to peel and devein? That's not acceptable in any professional kitchen I'm familiar with. The question, of course, is whether Beverly took that time because she could, or because she had to. We'll see. |
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I want to ding Edward more for that bottom appearance, but a few things give me pause. First, who other than Grayson should launch past him? You could make a case for one or two of those below him, and I really tried, but couldn't quite convince myself of it. Second, even if raw potato gratin and medium-well ribeyes didn't already tell you all you needed to know, extended Judges' Table made it clear that Ed was in zero danger of elimination. My suspicion is that Ed was a surrogate used to send a message to the rest of the field. Playing it safe will put on the chopping block. And you can bet Ed won't do that again. Hopefully everybody else gets the message as well. None of this is to say that Ed isn't on thin ice at number eight, however. Reality hasn't lived up to expectations. The moment somebody below him gives me something to go on, he could drop like a stone. But I have a hunch that isn't going to happen. |
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Nyesha could've made a bigger jump if not for the quickfire failure. I'm not going to undersell the finesse that can come through in a really good compound butter and jus. For the butter, she actually roasted it with bone marrow, onions, wine, sugar, vinegar, garlic, thyme and bay leaves. This isn't just "take some soft butter and mix in a few herbs." Still, this is the first time she's made any noise, and top mention notwithstanding, I can't bump her more than this. |
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Well, that's something. His quickfire dish looks nice, though sadly there's no recipe to examine. Still, this is the first time Chris had made any solo noise, and the memories of last week's double bottom finish and cupcake smorgasbord are far too recent. Do it again, Chris. |
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Lindsay's supposed to be better than this. Her fellow chefs seem to think she's better than this. But she got off to a bad start, and she managed to rack up another black mark this week. Again, it's hard to say these things definitively, but it appears that she was the one who made the call to fire the steaks prematurely. That combined with Chris and Nyesha putting together some good food are enough to knock her further down. Although I will say that I really liked the look of her quickfire dish, which didn't get any screentime. She put a soft-cooked whole egg over polenta, then sauced it with a slightly vinegary hollandaise (not really a béarnaise) and a chorizo, celery and oregano salad. It looks great and I wish we'd seen a reaction to it. Still, with no coverage, it's anybody's guess how it turned out. |
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Let me say that I really like Ty-Lör. I like that he took what was probably the most difficult task head-on. I like that he did so while standing over a grill the size of a Buick in 112 degree heat. I like that this was despite having spent the night in the hospital. I like that he made no excuses. I like that he still saw the failure of execution as his, and I like that he didn't for a moment appear to consider throwing somebody else under the bus, even though he could have easily made a very good case that the failure wasn't his. But as much as this episode made me respect him, it didn't make me think he's in any better position to win this thing. Some chefs just seem to have a nose for the chopping block, and this season that chef is Ty-Lör. We're only four regular episodes in, and already there's a sense of inevitability about him. And this is only compounded by the fact that his food, even when he's not on the block, just doesn't look all that exciting for the most part. I like Ty-Lör. But I can't imagine putting anybody else in the basement. |
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Yeah, that pretty much defines the term "no doubter." Six hours to make a raw gratin is an immediate ticket to the sequester house. Extended Judges' Table lends the impression that when it came to making the call between Whitney's botched dish and Ty-Lör's botched dish, what saved Ty-Lör was the fact that he'd taken on a difficult task while Whitney's should have been a breeze. And I'm really just flabbergasted by Whitney's choice to begin with. The fact that the cheese is a mix of gruyere, comté and parmesan is all you have to hang your hat on? If that's the extent of your creative expression, you're in trouble even if you do a flawless routine AND stick the landing. In her exit interview, Whitney talks about how the hardest thing for her was to think on the spur of the moment. And Acheson certainly had faith in her abilities. Some extremely talented chefs just need time to create and can't generate dishes on the spur of the moment. Perhaps Whitney's one of them. |
WARNING : MINOR EPISODE SEVEN SPOILERS AHEAD
Time for spirits! A tequila pairing is on deck, and... what's this? Ty-Lör calls out Southeast Asian as "[his] style"? Is this a Lisa Fernandes "No, no, really, this is my specialty even though I never bothered to cook it until the finale" scenario? Ty-Lör had one SE Asian quickfire dish that didn't get any screentime (Prawns in a caramel sauce, E4), but are we about to see a sudden shift in his food? It's unclear from the previews what's going on in the elimination (hunting game with Tim Love... thanks for filling in for my DVR, nomx3) except that it's a small number of plates and the chefs are paired off. Oh, and Heather and Beverly are together, so that should work out great.
Discuss!
December 10, 2011
Top Chef - S9E6 Last Chance Kitchen
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Love the peanut gallery!
Whitney faces off against Chuy in an exotic protein burger challenge, elk vs. ostrich. Both burgers look simple, smart and tasty and Whitney takes it by a nose.
What I love, however, is the inclusion of the eliminated chefs! As the contestants cook, Andrew, Keith and Richie hang out, making observations, cheering them on, asking them questions, reminding them to get pans going... it's great! There's a little added insight from those who have recently been on the inside, and if helpful words from the sidelines end up conferring a slight advantage upon chefs who are more beloved/respected, that's kind of cool too. Here's hoping this isn't the last time we see this particular little wrinkle.
Also, that's Challengers 3, Incumbents 1 for those keeping score.
I've gotta say, this addition to the show has been a fun little diversion.
Discuss!
December 7, 2011
Top Chef - S9E6 Postmortem
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Anybody think playing it safe is going to be a good strategy going forward?
It seems clear that this season's field had two modes -- quickfire mode and elimination mode. One of them is starting to make Tom angry. You wouldn't like Tom when he's angry.
More on Monday... discuss!
