The good news: Padma’s second suitcase finally arrived, so the long national nightmare is over and she’s wearing normal clothes again. Her QF outfit screamed Anthony to me.
The bad news: everything else about this episode, from the guest judge to the challenges to the winner to the loser. Except Edward. He was my life raft this week.
Prelude:
Grayson misses MotoChris. Edward gets out of bed wearing a suit jacket and white shirt over long black shorts. Who sleeps in a suit jacket and shirt? I guess if you stumble home drunk after a Happy Hour gone long, but seriously, how can anyone sleep in something so restrictive, not to mention hot? Does the air conditioning need to be turned down? Lindsay and Paul make fun of him: “All business from the waist up.” Lindsay interviews that her family wasn’t too happy that she’d chosen to be a chef (yeah, I’m not that happy about it either, Lindsay) but they’ve always supported her.
Quickfire:
They enter the kitchen to find: Padma and pancakes. Stacks of pancakes. Hugh points out in his blog that someone on the TC staff had to make those pancakes, which is something I hadn’t thought of. “Hey, you, make 1200 pancakes.” “Who, me?” “Yeah, you, and glue them together in stacks five feet high.”
And just when you thought this could turn out to be a good episode… Pee Wee Herman rides his bike into the kitchen. Go ahead, make your own jokes. It used to be when the star of a children’s show got arrested for… oh, never mind. Given that President Clinton was impeached for lying about a blow job from his mistress in a Congressional hearing; G. Gordon Liddy is out of prison and now peddling gold; Newt Gingrich was run out of Congress for ethics violations and dumps his wives at the first sign of illness and now is running for President; the Governor of South Carolina has given a whole new meaning to “hiking the Appalachian trail”; the liberal Democrats lost one of their most effective Voices of Outrage to sexting; and the Governor of New York had frequent flier miles with hookers; given all that, Pee Wee Herman isn’t exactly the biggest outrage against the public’s sense of decency.
The chefs have twenty minutes to make pancakes. They are advised to let their imaginations run wild, to be creative, to make them exciting, happy, funny, and most of all, delicious. See, this is the problem: it’s too vague. These are tired people. They’re trying to win $5000. And they have twenty minutes. Tell them to make a pancake for an Evil Queen or Pornographic Pancakes or pancakes for Oktoberfest or something specific (Oktoberfest? Where did that come from?). Saying “be creative” means nothing. These are not creative people. They should be, they claim to be, but they’re not. Give them something more concrete to work with.
Edward: his favorite part of the pancake is the crispy edge (oooh, me too!) so he plays off that. He makes Pancake Bits with a berry mix, bacon and torched marshmallows. He wins.
Grayson: she remembers her mom making pancakes while she watched Pee-Wee. Oh, you do not, you’re just pandering. She makes ricotta buttermilk pancakes in Minnie Mouse shapes with peach compote, blackberries and basil.
Sarah: she hasn’t won any money yet; her fiance will be disappointed, she was supposed to bring home money for the wedding. She makes confetti pancakes (with sprinkles) with cocoa nibs, blackberry sauce and vanilla whipped cream. She’s worried because the pancakes turned pink from the sprinkles. But Pee-Wee doesn’t notice since he’s too busy getting sprinkles stuck in his teeth.
Lindsay: she also had pancakes while watching Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Oh, so shut up, you guys. She makes ricotta pancakes (that seems to be popular, I’ll have to try it some time) with crème fraiche and some almond anise cookies. Cookies with pancakes?
Paul: Though he claims it’s his first time making pancakes (oh, sure), he takes this seriously, and brings out the nitro to make champagne dippin’ dots. I had to look that up (and discovered Dippin’ Dots went bankrupt in November), I had no idea what he was saying. I try not to hang out in the ice cream aisle; once in a while when I give in, I just grab my Cherry Garcia and get out before I see something else I’ll want. He makes rolled pancakes with berries, black pepper, and champagne dippin’ dots. Ok, I’m a Paul fan, and a nitro geek, but that sounds cool. And it’s not even the champagne – it’s the black pepper that puts it over the top. At least on paper.
Elimination Challenge:
Pee-Wee recounts his Big Adventure with the bicycle in the non-existent basement of the Alamo, which is why he gets to be here, I guess. They really had to reach to find someone willing to come to Texas in the summer. He lays out the Top Chef Amazing Race challenge: each chef has three hours, a bicycle and a hundred bucks. They have to scavenge for food, find a restaurant to cook in, and bring their dishes back to the Alamo to serve him and the judges family style lunch. Except, if you check out the details, it’s not quite that exotic. They scavenge at the Farmer’s Market and the restaurants which have been pre-selected and marked on helpfully provided maps.
So it’s pretty much a matter of, let’s kill the chefs.
Seriously, think about it. First they plan all these outdoor challenges for summer in Texas. What, no one thought it might be hot? Add in bees. Now riding bicycles in traffic. Was a requirement of this season that the chefs be able to ride bikes? What if someone never rode a bike? What if someone has hemorrhoids? Beverly can’t even walk through a supermarket without crashing into shelves, can you imagine her on a bike? Maybe that’s why she was eliminated, come to think of it. And at one point Grayson is riding a bike through traffic with a foil container of hot chicken in one hand.
It’s not Top Chef, it’s Kill Chef.
There’s an excellent online literary magazine titled kill author in honor of the Roland Barthes quote “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.” They specify, however, that they are not advocating violence against authors. I think Top Chef has decided that halfway attitude is too wimpy, so they’re out to kill the chefs. Swimming for conch wasn’t good enough.
Don’t they remember they took the Emmy from The Amazing Race with great cooking and highly respected guest judges?
Ok, with a heavy heart, back to this crap. Pee-Wee likes chicken, egg salad, healthy stuff, spicy stuff, not-spicy stuff, ethnic food, American food (which is non-ethnic), pretty much anything. Which is again so vague as to be meaningless. They’re off to the Farmer’s Market. Paul recounts a bicycle accident he had, where he hit a manhole cover (voice over to his bicycle approaching a manhole) and hit his head, resulting in permanent damage: when he drinks, the side of his face gets red. Wow. Paul, honey, when I drink (and I’m about to start right now) my eyes get red, but it has nothing to do with a bike accident. This isn’t even as interesting as Gail’s bagel accident.
Grayson talks about game night with her family. No, not cooking game, playing games, like I thought it would be when they had Top Chef Game Night and it turned out to be about cooking game meats. Seems someone at the Schmidt house always breaks down and cries over Monopoly.
Edward ends up in the huge and magnificent kitchen of a B&B; ok, he has to cook a breakfast plate for one of the guests, but it’s still a nice place to cook, even if they don’t have shrimp. Grayson’s at a Mexican restaurant, which has no shallots. Lindsay goes to one restaurant, then leaves looking for ingredients; when she returns, Sarah is there, and since the rules say one chef at a time per restaurant, she has to go find something else. What she finds is a biker-themed burger joint. It’s a long way from the B&B.
Service:
Everyone gets back to the Alamo safely for their last stand. Hey, I don’t get it. The Alamo is almost 300 years old, isn’t it? It’s a historic landmark? How is it there’s a kitchen and dining room? I assume this isn’t in the Alamo itself.
Gail has finally returned to the judging panel. It seems as though the chefs serve all their dishes at once, then leave so the judges can eat and complain.
Sarah made different kind of egg salad. Summer vegetable egg salad, to be exact – more like hard-boiled eggs mixed in with veggies – with chicken skin vinaigrette. That sounds disgusting until you see how she made it, then it seems really yummy. She includes chicken skin cracklings, which sound likewise yummy. Gail says the eggs are cooked beautifully, and she liked the vinaigrette. Tom wanted salt for the eggs themselves.
Edward went southern: Chicken (poached in beef tallow) and grits with red-eye gravy, raw corn and kale salad. Pee-Wee loves the corn and the gravy, though he can’t identify the flavor (probably coffee if it’s real red-eye gravy). He thinks the chicken is slightly odd, and Tom agrees, the texture is weird like it’s just on the edge of undercooked. Pee-Wee says, “I bet you never thought you’d agree with Pee-Wee today” which is probably the only thing he’s said that makes sense.
Grayson got her chicken back safely. I kept waiting for her to drop it, or to fall off the bike she was riding one-handed. It’s a spinach, gorgonzola, and egg yolk-stuffed chicken breast with roasted butternut squash salad, and she really wanted the egg yolk to run out when cut, not before, so she treated it as fragile. Gail thinks the yolk is smart, though Pee-Wee has childhood issues with runny yolks (“I’d have to lie down to talk about them” which means… I don’t know what). Tom wishes she’d left out the tomatoes, which don’t go with the squash.
Lindsay had to deal with frozen beef cheeks and a switch to the burger joint kitchen, but she still produces zucchini stuffed with braised beef cheeks, rice, and goat cheese and salad with vinaigrette. Gail likes the use of the zucchini as a vessel; so does Pee-Wee, he thinks it looks like little boats, and he loves the gorgonzola though he can’t identify what kind of meat is used. Great guest judge, can’t identify coffee or beef. Padma likes the flavor of the vinaigrette but there’s way too much on the salad.
Paul worries his dish is too sweet, so he adds more pickled cucumbers; he feels he’s ruining it. Nevertheless, he serves thai roasted chicken salad with red curry gastrique and a summer salad with basil blossom oil. Gail loves it. Padma wanted more heat – doesn’t she always – and thought it was a touch too sweet. Tom thought the elements worked together.
Tom asks Pee-Wee, “Now what will you think about when you think about the Alamo?” And he answers, “Chicken!” Hey, you asked for chicken, you jackass. You also got egg salad. And beef cheeks. You also got Thai food. You got plenty. Go ask Charlize Theron how to be a gracious guest (and you can hear Charlize screaming, “NO NO DON’T!”).
Interstitial: Edward demonstrates how to hide under a chair. “I’m totally invisible – when the judges come back, they’ll say, where’s Edward?” Not so much, no.
Judges’ Table
Padma calls everyone to Judges’ Table. Pee-Wee manages to thank them. Tom says everything looked amazing and overall they did a good job. The chefs describe their adventures in kitchens all over town. Pee-Wee tells Paul his Thai chicken salad was great, he loved the option of skin or no skin (of course he would), and he doesn’t eat summer squash but he loved it, so he’s learned to like a new thing. Gail liked the chicken skin also, but she found she had to eat everything together or it was too sweet. Padma wished for another crunchy element. Edward explains how he cooked his chicken, and is sorry to hear it was undercooked and rubbery. They ask Grayson why she took the skin off her chicken, and she says it was because Pee-Wee tries to eat healthy, so they point out that she then stuffed that healthy skinless breast with bacon and gorgonzola and maybe it would’ve been better to have left the skin on. Tom repeats the fall squash and the summer tomatoes didn’t go together. Pee-Wee says it was a really huge dish. Sounds familiar, Grayson. She’s used to Midwestern appetites.
Padma loved Sarah‘s egg salad, and Tom loves that it was a different take, but the eggs were underseasoned; Gail agrees a sprinkle of coarse salt would’ve been great. Tom tells Lindsay the first thing he ever cooked, at age 13, was stuffed zucchini. She looks like she isn’t sure how to take that. Pee-Wee loved the little boat, and Gail thought it was delicious except for the overdressing of the salad. Lindsay talks about taking out the baby spinach to make the salad more substantial, which doesn’t really address the issue, but she seems to think it’s important.
Pee-Wee announces the winner: Lindsay. It’s her first individual win. Congratulations, Lindsay, you win the Pee-Wee challenge with a dish Tom made when he was thirteen. Paul is also safe, so it’s Edward, Grayson, and Sarah who are up for the elimination. They go back to the stew room and the judges rehash the same issues. On the ridiculous Andy Cohen show after this show (why do I have to watch two shows and an internet video to watch Top Chef now?) Tom says that when he was watching the episode, he thought maybe he remembered wrong, and it was Edward who went home, since it seemed like his undercooked chicken would be the obvious choice. Yeah, Tom, that’s what viewers have been saying all along. Stop editing things to create suspense. I want suspense, I’ll watch Hitchcock. Just show us what happened.
Anyway, Grayson is out because her breasts were too big. Or something. I didn’t expect Sarah to get cut for underseasoned eggs (though underseasoning is a major reason people get cut), but I did think Edward was on his way out. They say goodbye to Grayson.
And Padma calls them back. They think it’s a Final Four ego stroke or something. Not exactly: they learn about Last Chance Kitchen. They don’t learn yet who is coming back, but they know someone is. Minds are racing. Ugly thoughts are brewing. Cut to black.
One more comment about Watch What Happens Live: Tom Colicchio was asked: If your wife gave you a temporary pass, which contestant would you choose? Now, if there was ever a time to Plead the Fifth, this would be it. It puts Tom in a whole other light, and not a flattering one. He picks… Camille. And I’m left (along with the rest of Top Chef fandom) thinking, Who the hell is Camille? I do remember her, but I remember her from the credits. The Miami season. Casey got all the attention for her boobs, but in the credits, it was Camille who did the sexy striptease, taking off her chef jacket and dropping it on the floor. I don’t remember anything about what she cooked. Was she the one who cooked with teas? No, I looked her up, she went home first for rubbery pineapple upside down cake. Still don’t remember her. But she can’t be a slacker – she and Lee Ann Wong collaborated on a China-Latina pop-up. At least Tom had the sense to choose someone who went home first, so he can’t be accused of favoritism. He did take the fifth when asked “Padma or Gail?”
Moving on to Last Chance Kitchen, this was the last straw in an evening full of crap. I sat through eleven minutes watching Grayson cook scallops and Beverly cook fish in coconut broth to learn… the winner will be revealed next week. Some four letter words were flying around here, let me tell you. I repeat: When I want suspense, I’ll watch Hitchcock. No Emmy for you, Bravo.
I have to say that from a clip I saw somewhere – maybe I didn’t even see it, it wasn’t on the repeat of the episode – Sarah didn’t look pissed when the returning chef walked through the door (she kind of doubled over laughing), so I’m thinking it’s Grayson. Tom’s description of the dishes back that up – he seemed almost dismissive of Beverly and her “Asian flavors” and thought her mango salsa was a little sweet, then told Grayson her butter was a little burned, but both proteins were perfectly cooked and they were both good dishes. He went on to talk about “heart” and “soul” and when that happens, it’s usually an Asian who takes it in the ass. But knowing the penchant for misleading editing, maybe not. We’ll find out next week.
A Just Recompense 
I don’t understand why the judges can’t just use salt shakers. Everybody likes a different amount of salt. My mother likes no salt and my mother-in-law likes way too much salt. Why does there have to be some *chef* ideal amount of salt?
Hi Teri – don’t know, but I’ll speculate. From what I understand (and I don’t do much fine dining, neither am I a chef), there is seasoning, and there is salt. The job of a chef is to produce a dish that is properly seasoned – that is, has enough salt added in cooking to allow the food to taste the best it can. It’s considered a high insult to add salt (or ketchup or soy sauce or anything else) to served food at really classy restaurants like Le Cirque or Le Bernadin. But, as you say, some people like more salt. That’s their option, in most restaurants. But in high end places, too bad. Chef knows best. And people who have health concerns that require low-sodium, well, they’re just out of luck, I guess – I’d love to see what happens if they ask Tom Colicchio to make their steak without salt.
There was a cool scene in the movie version of “The Joy Luck Club” in which one of the girls’ boyfriends added soy sauce to a dish the mother was apologizing for. Turned out it was part of her cultural upbringing to apologize for the dish, which was always prepared and served perfectly as far as she was concerned. So she was horrified that the boyfriend actually modified the dish.
For some reason, it’s ok to order steak rare or medium (though you’ll get sneers if you go more than medium) but properly cooked steak is medium-rare. There’s a not-that-classy restaurant near me where they advise you that your salmon will be cooked medium rare, and you have the chance to ask them to bump it up to medium, probably because they got so many orders sent back. But the chef still wanted people to know he is aware that salmon “should” be cooked medium rare.
I think at Top Chef level, the judges should know what’s properly seasoned, even if they prefer more or less salt, and judge on that basis. And sometimes you’ll see them disagree – one will think something’s salty, the others won’t. So it’s not an exact science. But what is?
I guess that makes sense.
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