Previously on “Top Chef”: The Quickfire involved
cooking for Dana Cowin and convincing her that trends are not all evil. Shirley
won by making rice porridge with a shirred egg, which I would totally order if
I saw it in a restaurant. Aaron’s dish ended up too salty so he was sent home.
Then everyone went to Commander’s Palace to recreate classic dishes just from
taste. They told them before they ate, though, which was nice. Justin made
perfect beignets and won. Bret didn’t get grill space, so his chops were not
cooked well and he was eliminated. (click for more)
Louis is relieved he didn’t get eliminated. He
talks about getting better from his first negative review. Back at the house
Nick gets today’s phone call home. He and his wife got married fast.
Emeril comes to their house with Eddie Huang.
It’s really entertaining how Eddie saunters in with his Mario Batali-approved
orange crocs and is like “Hey, ‘sup?” to everyone. No Quickfire today. Instead
they will be working in groups of 5 to create a Vietnamese menu. Served to
Vietnamese people. Carlos has never had Vietnamese. One of the dishes must
highlight shrimp. Emeril divides them into teams based on how they’re standing.
Travis seems confident. The rest of today is a “crash course” on the cuisine.
Travis gets really cocky and says he could teach Emeril something about that.
The party bus is insane. Shirley starts throwing
out ideas, although she interviews that “the group” is working. She’s the only
one talking though. Michael shouts about bakeries and asking Emeril random
things to show off. Nina says he’s “faker than Pamela Anderson’s breasts”. Ha!
They arrive at a Vietnamese bakery to take notes and eat. This food looks so
good. It’s like, bread stuffed with sausage and coconut pastries and stuff. On
the way to the next place Travis wants to use romaine in lettuce wraps and he
kind of intimidates Sara into agreeing. You know when someone is supposed to be
the expert so they just insist they
know. I wonder if this will come back to bite him in the ass.
The bus arrives at the docks so they can watch the
shrimp boats being offloaded. Eddie tells them to ask the fishermen for recipes,
which Shirley has no trouble doing. Everyone eats fresh shrimp which sounds
great. Someone tells Michael to make a stew. Janine says she knows about
Vietnamese food…because she’s worked in a Thai restaurant. Sigh. I mean, I
guess it’s better than nothing. Travis says there is some dish with spicy
tomato sauce and lime and Thai chili and salt. Janine interviews that she’s
never had a Vietnamese dish with tomatoes (Travis of course is saying it’s
traditional) but as long as their team listens to Travis and Sara they’ll be
fine. Uh oh. Carlos is nervous which is making his whole team nervous.
The last stop is a noodle house for lunch. It
looks so good. Shirley interviews that she wants Patty to eat as much as she
can. Because it will help her? I’m not sure. Shirley is bossy. Travis is still
talking about how much he knows. Like, they toast and say “cheers” and he WAITS
until everyone puts their glasses back down to tell them all how to say
“cheers” in Vietnamese. Sara calls him “Captain Vietnam” and tells him to bring
it.
Bene does not know anything about Vietnamese food
either. But we’ve heard about Carlos already more than once and this is the
first Bene’s talked all episode. Each team gets $200 to shop at an Asian
market. Lots of frantic shopping. Travis says Sara has grabbed things he’s
already got and she doesn’t trust him and he’s not sure what is happening.
Maybe you’re annoying. It’s not clear what exactly happened but they’ll
probably end up missing something.
Cooking time. Two hours, looks like. The Red
team’s menu: Vietnamese BBQ shrimp, beef pho with rice noodles and lettuce, raw
beef salad with pickled vegetables, and lemon custard with caramelized banh mi.
Banh mi is the name for the bread that the sandwiches are served on. The red
team is Shirley’s team. Looks like Shirley, Justin, Patty, Carrie, and Nina.
Green team is Janine, Bene, Sara, Travis, and Stephanie. Their menu is fresh
gulf shrimp in spicy tomato sauce, grilled pork sausage wraps, dim sum “duo”
pork and shrimp, and coconut coffee macaroon. Bene is making the tomato sauce.
The third team is the Orange team because with only three teams they couldn’t
pick three colors that stand out from each other. Jerks. Anyway, Orange team is
Michael, Carlos, Brian, Nick, and Louis. Michael says he’s responsible for
“supporting the team” and not for an actual dish. Black pepper squid with
cabbage, fish head soup with pineapple and tamarind, pork belly spring rolls
and dipping sauce, and beef pho. So no dessert.
Brian says he’s Korean, not Vietnamese, so he
doesn’t automatically know everything, plus he cooks Peruvian mostly. The green
team can’t find their lemongrass, because when they showed them arguing about shopping
five minutes ago, you knew it would be important. They even show a clip about
it, where it looks like they’re trying to blame it on Sara. Like, Travis said
one bunch was enough and then Sara tries to say something like “take all that
out”. But we don’t know what she was talking about. Justin says he has more
than enough lemongrass if they would just ask for some. Offer it to them or
shut up. Either you’re going to be a nice person and help them, or you’re
competing and you refuse. Either way is fine just pick one.
Justin notices both he and Louis are making beef
soup. Emeril and Eddie show up to do the investigating part that Tom usually
does, where they bug everyone about what they’re doing. Eddie tells Bene if he
needs more Vietnamese flavor in his sauce one of the owners can come put their
foot in it. Hee. Then Eddie calls Travis “Captain Vietnam” which is also funny.
Travis spins some BS about how the lemongrass was “lost in translation”. Sara
curses at him, because why tell the judges you lost the lemongrass? Just
pretend you weren’t going to use lemongrass. Travis digs himself further in the
hole by saying “They don’t use it in everything” while Eddie and Emeril make
faces to mock him behind his back. Eddie is like, OK, expert, and makes more
faces. Can Eddie Huang come back a lot? I like him. Then Travis interviews that
Eddie is Taiwanese-Chinese and only “knows a little bit of what he knows”. Also
that Eddie is a douchebag. Ass. 1. You’re WHITE, and 2. It doesn’t matter what
Eddie knows, what matters is your stupid cocky self bragging that you know
everything and then getting called out because you don’t know everything.
Emeril and Eddie tell Carlos to push his soup. But not what that means.
Carrie is feeling confident, unlike Janine, who
is thinking she’s made a poor decision on how to cook the shrimp. She puts them
in the deep fryer for a minute to crisp them up. Then she covered them in sauce
so Justin thinks they’ll be soggy. He’s firmly in the “I’m letting everyone
else fail now” camp. The judges are here, Gail and Emeril and Eddie.
Nick comes out to talk about the Orange team’s
dishes. He makes sure to pair up chefs with dishes, so it will be clear Michael
didn’t do a dish. I mean, he has to tell them though. The spring rolls are
great; those are Brian’s. Carlos’s fish head soup has gotten worse since Emeril
and Eddie were back there. It’s not sour enough. Nick’s squid is unseasoned.
Louis didn’t serve all the herbs and aromatics you usually get served with pho
and they miss it. Tom says this meal is making him want to go out for real
Vietnamese food later.
Shirley doesn’t want to go home on the Asian food
challenge. Red team time. Shirley’s BBQ shrimp has lots of sauce and bread to
soak it up. Justin’s pho is way better than Louis’s. They love the BBQ shrimp,
authentic or not. The beef salad tastes good, but the texture is weird. Custard
presentation sucks but it tastes OK.
Eddie is busy telling the other judges about
Travis and his “lost in translation” babbling and basically making sure they
all know he’s full of crap. I love it. Sara gets to introduce things. The dim
sum “duo” is two different fillings wrapped in rice wraps. The coconut macaroon
is supposed to be a play on Vietnamese iced coffee which is a delicious thing.
Travis’s pork sausage wraps are good but the sauce is terrible. Gail says you
get smacked in the face by shrimp paste, to which Padma replies that she was
happy to be smacked in the face by something. They discuss if lemongrass would
have helped, and I think the verdict is “not enough to matter”. One of the dim
sum fillings is bland. The shrimp is battered and then doused in sauce, which
is cooked down like Italian tomato sauce. But it should be lighter. Also the
rice sucks, which may be Sara’s fault. She was micromanaging. The macaroon is
actually really nice. Gail says she’s glad she’s not on the actual Judges’
Table today.
Commercial interlude: everyone does a
“plank-off”, which seems to be when everyone gets on the floor and lies on
their stomach. Then you lift yourself on your elbows and toes like a pushup and
you hold it there until you fail. Shirley wins.
Time to watch the judges slam people. You know, I
realized another reason I don’t like it, because remember when people would
come out and not know if they were top or bottom? I liked that. Louis gets
slammed and the judges say the team should have made dessert instead of Carlos’s
soup. Shirley and Justin did well. Stephanie did OK, but Travis screwed up the
sauce, and Bene screwed up his sauce.
Also the rice was bad. They show a shot of Sara after that so I guess we’re
blaming her for that. Travis says they didn’t “get” his food.
The Red team is the top! Shirley’s dish had a ton
of butter, because everyone on the docks said they put butter in their shrimp
dishes and it worked. Nina and Carrie didn’t have a good texture on their
tartar but the flavors were great. Justin gets lots of praise for his pho. I
guess Patty wasn’t that great because they don’t show the judges saying
anything to her. Eddie says the winner is Shirley. She hopes she’s rising
again.
Green team is the bottom. Clearly. This should be
good. Sara says they were excited they were going to cook “our food” and she starts
crying. Already? They haven’t even said anything to you yet. Tom wonders how
they could be so excited and then end up with Italian tomato sauce and shrimp.
Travis says he’s had that dish in central Vietnam three times. Good for you.
Tom gets offended and says if they went to Paris and said to cook Parisian
food, technically you could find a McDonald’s and say you found it in Paris but
seriously. Yes. Janine admits she was not confident because she has no
experience. Eddie says he feels sorry for Bene and Janine because it’s like
Travis saw a UFO and then told them to draw it. Hee. Bene was happy with the
sauce, but it was too sweet and heavy. Janine admits she fried the shrimp
again, but it meant they were overcooked. Sara says she’ll “take the bullet” for
the rice, but then blames it on the rice cooker. She says they were just stupid
for serving it. Stephanie’s “double-O macaroon” was in line with “the tradition
of kind of janky, ratchet, Asian desserts”, according to Eddie. Oh, he needs to
be on this show a lot. Tom says it’s still not that exciting. When Padma kicks
them out, they all hug or whatever and she mutters “they’re all hugs now.” Heh.
Tom (and everyone probably) is convinced that
Travis found an Italian dish in Vietnam and decided it was authentic. Padma
thinks the rice sucked worse. Sara shouldn’t have served it. Tom argues the
shrimp may have been a bigger disaster. They sort of slam the dessert but I
don’t remember hearing anything from Stephanie until service so I’m guessing
she’s safe.
Everyone is holding hands which makes me
irritated. Janine is sent home. OK…I’m mostly OK with that. She should have
been able to cook shrimp. It’s not like Bene who was listening to Travis. It
wasn’t a flavor thing. Still dumb, and Travis should be out but whatever.
Janine says any fry cook at Hooter’s can cook shrimp so it just wasn’t her day.
Next week: everyone’s moms? Lea Michele
(whatever), Michael is sexist, costumes. I believe Hugh is dressed as Prince
William. Or possibly a Disney prince.
Last Chance Kitchen: Sigh. You know, I was
comparing this show to other shows I watch (*coughPROJECTRUNWAY) and I was
thinking how nice it was that I couldn’t tell if the producers were fixing the
outcomes. I mean, if someone says the shrimp are overcooked, I don’t know.
Whereas when someone is tacky and then everyone is like “it’s so chic” then
clearly that’s a problem. But as soon as they do something like this, where
eliminated contestants get to compete and Tom is the only judge? The conspiracy
part of my brain starts working.
We are reminded how everyone sucks. Jason, Ramon,
Aaron, Bret, and Janine. Jason of course interviews that he was eliminated too
soon. We remember how Kristen was eliminated for not throwing Josie under the
bus, and then she won the whole thing. Tom says they are always saying “I want
to cook my own food”. So they can make whatever they want in 30 minutes. One
coat. Janine really wanted her shrimp to be hot, even though this overcooked
them. Tom gives her crap about it. Aaron has rabbit. Jason is embarrassed to go
home so early but he’s convinced he can win. Tom is just really giving everyone
crap about what sent them home. Janine is having serious problems shucking
oysters.
Janine: fried oysters with southern vegetables
and creole mustard aioli. Bret: seared bass with ratatouille and mascarpone
polenta. Ramon: grilled lemongrass prawns with kale, nori, and peach salad.
Aaron: balsamic marinated rabbit leg with corn fricassee and creole tomatoes.
That sounds so good. Jason: Suzuki crudo with corn, white chocolate, and yuzu
nectarine. Doesn’t that just sound like something he would make? Corn and white
chocolate. Tom is like, what, and he says he didn’t want to add sugar so he put
white chocolate instead?
Tom says one person hit it out of the park.
Bret’s polenta is gummy, because he didn’t cook it enough. Half an hour. He is
kicked out. Ramon’s food is beat up so he is also out. Aaron overcorrected and
this dish was bland. Out. Aaron says Top Chef has taught him he doesn’t know
what he is doing. He doesn’t have his own style. In the end, Jason’s dumbass
white chocolate kills him and Janine wins. Ha! Jason sulks and says he doesn’t
lose ever or something. She’s got redemption and she’s ready to go.
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