Top Chef:All Stars 4/9/20--"You're So Fresh" summary

Previously on “Top Chef”: the Quickfire asked everyone to make fried rice with odd ingredients. It wasn't that weird, but it's a fun challenge. Kevin won, for making fried rice with hot dogs and hot Cheetos. He had immunity, which was great, because the Elimination challenge was to be inspired by art movements. No one really did a stellar job, because art movements are complicated. But there were some pretty dishes. Melissa won, with a gorgeous dish of lobster wontons. Karen was in the bottom, and she was salty because Kevin's dish was worse, but he had immunity. Forgetting the part where if Kevin hadn't been in her group, she still would have been up for elimination. However, Jamie's overcooked chicken and missing jus sent him home. (click for more)

On Last Chance Kitchen, Hipster Joe and Jamie had to make chicken. They did that thing where you brag about how you need less time than your opponent to do stuff, and ended up with 20 minutes and 7 ingredients (that includes the chicken). Jamie's flavors were too muddled so Hipster Joe survived another round.

I hope all of you are doing OK. My school just canceled the rest of the school year. Online only. We only go until Memorial Day in a normal year, so it's not as long as it was where I grew up (mid-June), but it really upset me. Just—stay home as much as you can, and hang in there. I'm glad to keep writing recaps as if everything is normal.

Kevin gives Nini shit about her coveralls. It is a little “oil change technician”. Nini says that the boys are far more cocky, and the women have a “quiet confidence”. Karen is not “quiet” but sure. Karen, Nini, and Stephanie get a joint confessional where they say they are “Padma's Angels”. I guess so.

For the Quickfire there is a very colorful display and also those stupid troll dolls from the new movie. Guest judge for whatever this is will be Kelly Clarkson. Everyone shrieks a lot. Hilariously Kelly says that she always worries when she's a surprise, like she'll walk out and no one will know her. Karen kisses up and says she's seen her so many times, and then interviews that “Since You've Been Gone” is “like, such a huge lesbian anthem song for me”. Whatever. Now we have a plug for this movie, which I have zero intention of ever seeing but at least they immediately put it on streaming platforms instead of theaters. OK. So there are six troll “worlds” and each has a color. You need to use at least one ingredient from each color to make your dish. Winner gets immunity and also you get to attend the movie premiere. Assuming it happened. Malarkey wants to win for his daughter.

30 minutes. There's a lot of garbage up there, candy and stuff. I think Lisa is melting cotton candy on a steak. Gregory is making soup with different fruits. Stephanie has spring rolls, and somehow rock candy is involved. Eric wants to make a salad to highlight the colors, but he's also using liquid nitrogen to freeze some fruit for dust. Nini has decided to make gnocchi with purple potatoes. Malarkey tells us he's had maybe the greatest idea of all time: curry ice cream. Oh, Malarkey. It feels like when Chopped contestants use the ice cream machine. Now it's leaking on the floor, so good job. He grabs the liquid nitrogen but who knows.

Karen: beef and pomegranate tartare with saffron, carrot, plum, and blue cheese. Melissa: seared salmon with strawberry, raspberry, pineapple, blueberry, and plum sweet and sour sauce. Bravo has decided to color code the chyrons, so each word is colored according to group. You'd think it'd be easier to read than the all white on a white background, but it's still obnoxious. Eric: shrimp and prosciutto salad, frozen strawberry, blueberry, and blackberry dust with a bell pepper and chili pepper vinaigrette. Bryan: shrimp ceviche with uni, orange, blackberry, blueberry, and raspberry vinegar. Kevin: citrus poached shrimp with mandarin orange, turmeric coconut milk, purple and blue potatoes, Fresno chili. Lee Anne: pineapple plantain curry, summer salsita, brown butter salmon, raspberry, tomatoes, potato and cabbage. Lisa: citrus brown butter ribeye, roasted potatoes, plums, apricots, passionfruit and cotton candy with chilis. Gregory: butternut squash and plantain soup with pickled apple, figs, blueberry, Fresno chilis. Stephanie: rainbow rice roll with shrimp, carrots, mango, purple potato, peppers, and rock candy dipping sauce. Nini: purple potato gnocchi with shrimp, pickled blueberries, mandarin orange, chilies, and coconut yellow curry broth. Jen: banana curry with crispy prosciutto, grape, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and peppercorn. Malarkey: curry pumpkin ice cream with a blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry caramel with cotton candy. Padma asks if he wanted the ice cream to be in curds and Malarkey pauses for a split second before saying “Yes, totally” while everyone laughs at him.

Nini's gnocchi were not good, Stephanie's rice paper rolls were too sweet and they fell apart, and Bryan's shrimp were mushy. Bryan looks shocked. Gregory had a great dish, Lisa's was well done (huh), and Karen is also in the top. Gregory wins. Karen looks pissed again. He promised Nini he'd take her to the movie premiere during the Quickfire, because he borrowed her can opener. Hee.

Elimination Challenge. This will involve the Santa Monica Farmer's Market. Everyone has to draw knives, which divides them into two teams. Of course this is just for drama, because everyone is responsible for one course. The Blue Team is Karen, Kevin, Eric, Melissa, Jen, and Gregory. Red Team is Stephanie, Malarkey, Lisa, Lee Anne, Nini, and Bryan. Padma says it will be a “progressive” menu, including dessert. I guess “progressive” means everything has to go together. Also it must be vegetarian. Nice. No one is overly pissed about that. 45 minutes to shop, but you can't really menu plan until you get there. They will be serving in a vegetarian restaurant, for someone who won awards for his vegetarian cuisine.

So you can't really plan your menu, because it's going to depend on what you can get at the market. But they're all going to talk about it anyway. Blue team seems to be getting along, and they divide up courses. Red team tries to actually plan dishes and ingredients.

Back at the mansion there is a big gift basket of troll merchandise. Karen gets a phone call home to talk to her spouse. She says she needs the reassurance but then most of the footage is of her bragging about meeting Kelly Clarkson. Only she won't come right out and say her name, she's all smugly coy about it, like, oh I don't think I can tell you, but SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONE, I CAN'T BREATHE. Either tell your spouse or shut up about it.

Shopping time. Lee Anne is making...hummus and crudites. It's a veggie platter. I love Lee Anne but...she has not been doing very well this season. Bryan asks about “the mushroom guy” and he's told he is not coming. Of course he planned to make something with mushrooms, so now he has to pivot. This is why you don't plan ahead. He settles on legumes and beets. Nini has dessert. Sounds like a cream puff. I don't know who the other dessert person is.

I'm not sure how much time they have for cooking today. Here's the gist of the Red Team menu: Malarkey with tomato and burrata (very fresh runny mozzarella), Lee Anne with hummus and crudites, Lisa with Brussels sprouts and apples, Stephanie with charred cauliflower and grains, Bryan with smoked beets, and Nini with “peaches and cream”. Lisa tells Nini she needs some sugar for her apples. I think she's trying to be polite and not just boss Nini around, maybe. Lisa knows her dish won't be as refined but she doesn't seem like she's going to try to fix that.

Kevin yells at the Red Team for hogging all the clocks and then asks for the time. Malarkey immediately says “Time for you to get a watch” which is the proper response. Here's the gist of the Blue Team menu: Kevin with heirloom tomato and melon salad, Melissa with coconut corn soup, Gregory with grilled carrots and charred scallions, Karen with pasta with mint pistachio pesto, Jen with jerk cauliflower, and Eric with butternut squash pudding. I'm not sure why there's more detail here (like what's a soup, or a salad, or pasta) and the Red team just has ingredients. Gregory interviews how he has a very healthy lifestyle. It sounds like he eats like this all the time. Melissa is obsessed with corn. There's a lot of working and people shouting what they're doing. The producers must have asked them to do it. Jen curses at the stove. She had a cashew butter on a burner on low, and the burner got turned up so now the whole thing is ruined. She asks Eric if he turned it up, and he says he turned it off. Not sure if someone else touched it or if Eric was confused by an unfamiliar stove. The judges of course arrive now, and it's an open kitchen and the judges are at the counter, so everyone has to behave. The plan is to use cashews that were going to be a garnish, and hope it gets done in time. As everyone is plating it seems remarkably calm.

Malarkey: tomato and burrata with sherry and champagne vinaigrette. Kevin: heirloom tomato and melon salad with avocado tofu, fresh dates and California togarashi. Togarashi is a blend of chili peppers. Tom is irritated with Malarkey, because it's too boring and everyone's seen it. Kevin's dish is far more interesting, plus he described how he saw the fresh dates, and he wanted something sweet and crunchy so he used them. That's what they wanted from the farmer's market, was to change plans based on what was there.

Lee Anne is once again behind, and she asks Malarkey to grab olive oil and sea salt and finish her dishes. Now, I will note here that not only can the judges see the kitchen, they actually comment on how Melissa is working alone. So they can see that Lee Anne is not plating alone. Melissa: coconut corn soup, pickled garlic chives and puffed rice. Lee Anne: butternut squash hummus, goat feta and market crudites. The soup is very flavorful. Tom has issues with two raw vegetable dishes in a row from the Red team. Gail wants more salt. So I guess they are going to make them have a progressive tasting menu, if they are annoyed at the order of dishes.

Lisa says that if any of the Brussels sprouts are not cooked perfectly, to not use them. There isn't any footage of anyone helping her, so I'm not sure who she's talking to. But we're talking, take the sprouts out of the hotel pan and inspect each piece, which will take too much time so I'm not sure why she thought that would happen. At least she seems to understand it probably won't happen. Karen: trofie pasta with mint pistachio pesto, fava greens, pea shoots, and asparagus. Trofie pasta is short and looks like you just roll bits of dough into short noodles. Lisa: chili soy Brussels sprouts with apples and pistachios. The Brussels sprouts are dried out, and the whole dish is sort of lukewarm, which is not great. Karen's pasta is almost in the background, which is good because the vegetables are forward.

I think Stephanie tells someone not to put that much salt. Stephanie: cauliflower a la plancha with quinoa and piri piri sauce. “A la plancha” I think just means grilled on the flattop. Gregory: grilled carrots, charred scallion coconut yogurt, and charred oil. Both of these dishes are very good. I think Padma is surprised Stephanie's dish is good. Blue team is doing a better job of the progression.

Bryan: smoked beet, sprouted legumes and grains, vegetable demi-glace, pea tendrils, watercress. Jen: jerk cauliflower with cashew sauce, broccoli flowers and grapes. Both successful, but those both sound great actually.

Eric: butternut squash and goat milk pudding, chocolate hazelnut “soil”, with ginger granita. Nini: “peaches and cream” cream puff with peach sorbet. Successful desserts! You don't always see that. Overall everyone really did a pretty good job. Even the Red team, who started slow, finished strong. Some rando in the restaurant wonders if Lee Anne and Malarkey talked to each other. I guess someone would be able to see that flaw in the menu? Someone who isn't a foodie? Then again I'm not sure where they found these people.

Judges' Table. The Blue team wins, which no one is shocked at. Kevin's dish was very summery, and it was a very Californian dish. The raw dates were delicious. Melissa put plenty of texture into her dish. Gregory grilled the carrots really well, and he says he loves to grill. Karen says a bunch of stuff about her pasta, but that was well composed. Dessert was organic. Jen balanced her spices and flavors. The winner is Melissa. Tom tells her she's won 50% of the challenges so far. With soups!

The Red team goes up, and Tom immediately says they shouldn't have had two raw dishes in a row to start. He asks everyone if they talked about that at all, and Bryan says “Well it certainly sounds like there was not enough discussion.” Heh. Malarkey could have used a roasted tomato, which would have set it apart. He claims when he talked to Lee Anne, her dish sounded super robust, so he kept his simple. Gail tells Malarkey his dish was beautiful but they've seen it a thousand times. Lisa's sprouts were uneven and a little greasy. She says she deep fried them (?) but they were raw in the middle. It was clunky. Lisa says that's how she is. Tom gives her actual concrete advice: so she had raw apple, that she folded into an applesauce, or cooked apples or something. She could have just kept that on top, julienned or something, so it would basically be the same dish but the raw apple wouldn't get lost. That's useful advice. Lee Anne needed more salt and olive oil, or acid or something. She tells the judges that it was crazy near the end, and unfortunately she didn't put the finishing touches on the dishes. Someone else put the salt and oil on. Malarkey makes a huge face, which is dumb because she never said who it was. He then pipes up and says he's the one who put the salt on, and he'd hate for Lee Anne to get penalized for that, “but I am hearing that the hummus was needing seasoning too, is that correct?” OK that was unnecessary. Malarkey tries to apologize and claim he put lots of salt on, and Tom (who clearly loves this, by the way) interrupts him to say it doesn't matter, it's Lee Anne's dish. I mean, you could argue that she should have taken responsibility and not said anything, but it's not like she named Malarkey, and he didn't need to come back and basically say “well the finishing wouldn't have mattered if she'd salted the hummus properly in the first place”.

Malarkey walks into the Stew Room apologizing and announcing to someone that Lee Anne's mad at him, as if they weren't all there just now. Lisa didn't execute her dish properly, and it was clunky. Rustic doesn't automatically mean it has to be clunky. Malarkey wasn't very creative. Tomatoes and burrata is not impressive. Lee Anne had a beautiful dish, but it needed seasoning. Tom isn't impressed with excuses, because as you'll remember, the judges watched all this go down. She could have stopped the dishes from going out and told Malarkey to put more salt.

In the end Lisa is sent home. I thought it might be the end for Lee Anne. Like I said, I love her, but she's been in the bottom in every single episode, hasn't she? Or nearly. Lisa kind of brags that she's never been sent home, because she made the finale her season. It's not easy.

Next week: loved one visit, that challenge where one person tells the other one what's in a dish and you have to recreate it, make your own product, I think Lee Anne's mom gets sick.

Last Chance Kitchen: Lisa walks in with the smuggest look on her face. That's the Lisa I remember. Both she and Joe made it about the same distance their season. Angelo and Jamie roll in, both in black V-necks, and joke that they're on Team Joe. Lisa's dish was not cooked properly. Fried food should be hot, and she didn't want her fried sprouts to be hot. Lisa just agrees because she knows better than to disagree with Tom.

Tom says he wants some fried food. Lisa celebrates and brags that she can deep fry anything, this is her food, meat, vegetables, you name it (except Brussels sprouts, I guess). However, the deep fryer is the only cooking element you can use. Hipster Joe is the pasta guy, and he doesn't use the deep fryer that much. Don't make fries.

30 minutes. Lisa is making pork chops, and of course she wants Brussels sprouts to redeem herself. She wastes a lot of time looking but there aren't any. Joe's going to fry cheese. He knows it needs to not be greasy, because it could be heavy. Lisa's going to make applesauce, I guess raw. Joe wants to make sweet potato puree. The peanut gallery tries to do the wave with two people like idiots. That's why I love the peanut gallery. Lisa describes her pork chop dish as a riff on a Jewish holiday. Joe asks how Lisa went home, and when she says Brussels sprouts he casually mentions that there's some sprouts back there. So of course she's using them. Joe has put a saucepan of cream in the deep fryer, to use the hot oil to heat up the cream. Huh. The peanut gallery is really impressed with this creativity, but Tom is all, come on, everyone knows that.

Tom Time! He doesn't have a lot of commentary for Joe, and all he has to say to Lisa is to ask if her pork chops are already cooked with 11 minutes still to go. She says they'll be double fried. She keeps chirping “Jewish holidays!” and I am remembering how I didn't really like Lisa when she was on. Jamie asks Tom if he'll do the wave with them and he flat out refuses. Joe's sweet potato puree is terrible. It just tastes like oil, so he's going to make a tomato jam relish thing. Lisa swears her pork isn't dry, but everyone is making faces. Angelo is making smart comments about Lisa's plating and her organization. Has he been on Food Network judging things?

Lisa: fried pork chop with potato latkes, apple sauce and fried Brussels sprouts. She won't shut up while Tom is eating, just talking about how she wanted to make sure everything was nicely sauced and how glad she was that there were sprouts in the pantry so she could be sure to make the things that “displeased him” and got her eliminated. Joe: fried goat cheese and mozzarella with tomato and corn jam. Both dishes were nicely fried. Lisa didn't actually overcook her pork (her face right here is just so obnoxious) and she did manage to get the sprouts in there. Joe had a nice bright relish. Lisa wins, which sucks. This whole season she's been saying she's a different person, and it seemed that way, but the instant she was eliminated the old Lisa showed up and now I dislike her as much as I did when she was originally on. Joe's glad he did this show again.

They did actually have another episode of “What Would Tom Do?” where they had him make something vegetarian. I don't know why they haven't made episodes for every challenge. Also it took like four tries to get the video to load, so maybe get your shit together Bravo. Tom says everything he does he starts with vegetables. Agnolotti with delecata squash, roasted in the wood oven. He makes the host peel leaves off the Brussels sprouts and clean squash. Brown butter to put the sprouts in, plus leeks and chantrelle mushrooms. Agnolotti are filled pasta, very small but not folded as much as tortellini. It actually looks good, even if technically the contestants didn't have access to mushrooms because the mushroom guy didn't show up.