Previously on “Top Chef”: the Quickfire was a blind taste test to get ingredients for dessert. The more things you guessed correctly, the more possible ingredients, and the more time you had. Melissa won with olive oil cake. Then everyone had to make a kaiseki progressive meal for Olympic athletes. Kaiseki is usually very traditional, we're talking tea ceremony traditional. But this was less traditional. I mean everyone I think tried to make something Japanese but keep to the idea of delicate flavors and presentation. Stephanie won for making panna cotta, presented in lemon rinds. Karen was eliminated (for the second time) for not cooking her duck properly, and not cutting the slices properly either. (click for more)
On Last Chance Kitchen, Kevin and Karen had to make dishes with tea. Kevin won, which pissed off Karen a lot, but she threw some tea in randomly last minute and Tom said the flavors were muddled.
Then we had Kevin battle some of the remaining contestants. If my suspicions are correct, they're going to show a bunch of it on this episode and I'm not recapping again. So here's a summary: first battle is Malarkey, making risotto with shellfish. Well, things with shells, anyway. Kevin won that, because Malarkey is not the best at Quickfires. Second battle was Bryan, soup with “stinky” ingredients. For some reason Kevin decided to put every stinky ingredient on the table into his soup, so Bryan won. Last battle was Gregory, dessert with fruits and nuts. Despite Gregory's several Quickfire wins, Kevin managed to eek out a victory. So Kevin is back in the competition (no one had to be eliminated, they just added a person).
Hmm. So we're just going to show a very short recap of LCK. I guess they really want you to go to their garbage website and hope the video works. If it's not working for you, they have it on their YouTube.
So they act like everyone walked into the Top Chef Kitchen and found Padma and Jonathan Waxman sitting in a weird booth. But I know from the end of LCK that Padma showed up and kicked Tom out, then brought up the lights. So I guess they kicked the contestants out, set up the booth, then told them to walk in again and pretend they hadn't just been there for several hours. I think it's not so much a booth as it is part of a first class airline seat. The kind you see on long flights where it folds into a bed and there's a little door so you can shut yourself into a pod for privacy. They both have seats and their own tables in front of them. Anyway, Padma seems tipsy. This is the last Quickfire before the finale. Make an airline meal. It must have two courses, you have to pretend it's going to be served on an airline (so it has to fit properly in the dish so you can fit it in the microwave on board), and the ingredients must be available year round. Winner gets an advantage.
30 minutes. Bryan is obsessing about never having won a Quickfire. Kevin always flies first class because his grandfather worked for one of the airlines. 30 minutes doesn't seem like a long time but I think they're allowed to make a salad so that's not so bad. Stephanie is making fish en papillote, which means steamed in parchment paper. This way it won't dry out. Melissa is doing a curry, because it definitely will fit in the dish. Padma and Jonathan walk around with their drinks and bother people. Gregory is making broccolini which makes me think of CJ. Kevin is deep frying meatballs and he says you can smush a meatball. Hmm. I think Melissa forgot to make the appetizer? Malarkey's pork chops are too tall so he's slicing the tops off, which means he loses the sear on one side and they're drying out. Bryan's lentils aren't cooked through. There's a lot of frantic working.
Gregory: grilled broccolini with sherry dressing, and garam masala chicken with mushrooms and potatoes. Kevin: roasted carrot salad with yogurt and dukkah, and Moroccan spiced lamb meatballs with vadouvan. Dukkah and vadouvan are spice blends. He gets in trouble for the meatballs being too tall. I think. Bryan: green goddess salad, and braised chicken thighs with olives and lentils. Stephanie: potato salad with radicchio and delicata squash, and rockfish en papillote with lemon, leek, and rosemary. Malarkey: pancetta and sherry mushrooms with brie, and rosemary pork chop with chile mostarda and kale. Melissa: tofu salad with yuzu and chile, and beef curry with mushrooms and coconut rice.
Airline food is difficult to do well. Stephanie had a good idea, but the paper is too hard to deal with. Malarkey is of course entertaining, but they couldn't cut the pork with the garbage butter knives you get on planes. Kevin did well, but he did violate the height rule. Melissa's dish was flavorful and held up well. Melissa wins. Aww, Bryan. Whatever, he undercooked his lentils. Also I know people are upset about Kevin being here, and he should have gotten penalized more for not following the height requirement, but coming in second in a Quickfire is meaningless so whatever. Padma tells everyone the finale will be in Tuscany, but only five of them are going.
Time for the Elimination challenge. You will make a dish inspired by Michael's Santa Monica. This restaurant is owned by Michael McCarty, who is apparently a pioneer of California cuisine, even though I have never heard of him and when you google his name you get an actor. There is nothing. But his restaurant produced Jonathan, and also people like Nancy Silverton and Mark Peel and even Brooke from Top Chef, who I have heard of. They'll go to the restaurant and have some dishes, which will inspire them, then tomorrow they'll serve a bunch of big names. It sounds like the Eric Ripert challenge with the fish that time.
They go to the restaurant and Michael McCarty says they've been there 40 years, and the chef has prepared a meal of their classics from the 70s and 80s. Maybe also the 90s. You know what, they did this at Canlis too. Right? Everyone had to reinterpret a signature dish from the restaurant, and someone had to guess the ingredients in their famous salad dressing? Anyway, the point of “California cuisine” is fresh ingredients, which you probably already knew. It's things like angel hair pasta with chardonnay cream sauce and scallops. Then they serve a dish from last year? So could you get a dish that is extremely modern? Someone gets a dish from 2019 and the next youngest dish is 1998? I'm not sure who has the easier time but that bothers me. Quail with shishito peppers. Brooke's dish is monkfish in prosciutto with beet risotto. Veal sweetbreads. Lamb saddle. A duo of duck (ha a duo). Kevin says these dishes are what he thinks of when he thinks of California cuisine, but then he also says they have big flavors and fatty meat, which is not really what I think of.
Time for the knife block. Melissa gets to pick her dish because she won the quickfire, and she takes the quail. I have all the details for the dishes, I'm going to list them when the contestants serve their final dishes. The quail dish is also the one that was from last year. Kevin takes duck, Stephanie takes scallops, Bryan take lamb. Gregory is upset because everyone took the things he wanted, so he takes monkfish, which is what Malarkey had gotten excited about. But Gregory doesn't even really want monkfish anyway. So Malarkey has veal, but he acts excited. Maybe he is excited.
Shopping time. Gregory wants to be simple, but he also has risotto. Malarkey says something I'm sure was hilarious, but my cable is blinking in and out. Back at the house, Bryan tells Kevin he is actually glad to have him back. Malarkey calls home to wish his kids happy birthday. For some reason he's outside, holding the phone up like he's taking a picture of the moon or something.
I'm not sure how much time they have to cook today. The kitchen is very small. Stephanie wants to go to Italy very badly. Malarkey knows duos are deadly on this show, but he's bought so much stuff that he thinks he might have to do one. Why be conservative now? That's fair. Melissa is going more Asian with her quail. She acts like her not doing a direct replication of the original dish is this big risk, but isn't that what they asked everyone to do?
Tom Time! And Jonathan. Malarkey is babbling about fruits and truffles. Who knows. Stephanie has made filled pasta, which looks great. Jonathan tells her she has the best corner of the kitchen, where the cashier used to be. I'm pretty sure they say cashier? Gregory has similar ingredients. Everyone talks about how many iconic chefs have cooked here. Kevin wants to put the wild rice and duck confit together in a croquette.
The judges arrive, and the restaurant seems actually full with other people. But the producers managed to get all the chefs whose dishes were used. I wonder if that's why they have all 20+ year old dishes, and then the current one. Maybe someone couldn't come? Maybe there's someone that would have fit in the gap that couldn't make it? Everyone is plating on top of each other in the back, and then the servers show up, so it's very crowded. Gregory loses track of his prosciutto and the plates don't have it. Uh oh.
Stephanie: seared scallop with caviar, asparagus caramelle, and shellfish chardonnay beurre blanc. Bravo. Stop putting white text on a white background. It is 2020. you have other colors. Caramelle is a filled pasta that looks like wrapped hard candy. The original dish is angel hair pasta with chardonnay cream sauce, grilled diver scallops, caviar, and chives (Jonathan Waxman, 1980). Gregory: beet juice risotto, roasted monkfish, simple salad with beets and pickled onions. Original is monkfish wrapped in crispy prosciutto, red beet risotto, beurre rouge (Brooke Williamson, 1998). Beurre rouge is a sauce with butter and red wine. Jonathan calls him out on the prosciutto so he has to admit it was supposed to be there. Stephanie did a great job, and Jonathan is proud. I think it helps his dish was almost 40 years old and he knows it's dated. But it tastes right. Michael says he always tells everyone to put greens on the dishes. Sadly Gregory's risotto is kind of one note and really needed that prosciutto. To be fair, Gregory did know that.
Bryan: roasted lamb, cab cassis currant puree and fondant potato. Original is grilled lamb saddle with potato galette, red currant cab cassis (Roy Yamaguchi, 1981). Cab cassis is (I think) sauce made with cabernet and cassis liqueur, so red wine and currants. Kevin: roasted duck breast with orange and heirloom onion marmalade, topped with salsa verde, and a wild rice croquette. Original dish is grilled duck breast and confit duck thigh, wild rice with blood orange sauce (Mark Peel, 1979). Bryan's dish would fit in at this restaurant, and all the sauces work together. But the lamb lacked a wow factor. Brooke shares that she had nightmares about this lamb dish, because on days like Valentine's Day, everyone would order lamb and all at different temperatures. Ugh. Kevin's dish was fantastic, and they love the croquette.
Melissa and Malarkey are up together, but when they get to the table to explain their dishes, half of the table is missing Malarkey's dish. One dish, or maybe even two, I'd say he miscounted, but not half a dozen. Michael says that it must have gone to another table. After two rounds the servers fucked that up? Graciously the judges promise Malarkey it won't reflect on him. Yeah, I think someone sees other tables with the dishes, and judges were supposed to be served first. Malarkey: duo of sweetbreads with hollandaise and champagne gastrique, and veal loin with truffle butternut squash, mushrooms and warm leek and potato salad. Everyone mixes everything so Malarkey says in confessional that it won't taste good if you eat it like that. Original dish was “ris de veau”: sweetbread, veal loin, chanterelle mushrooms, white truffle (Michael McCarty, 1981). Melissa: grilled quail with lime and hot plum glaze, and ninja radishes. Original is grilled quail, roasted jalapeno and lime salsa, Jimmy Nardello and shishito peppers (Brian Bornemann, 2019). Jimmy Nardellos are a type of pepper. Melissa's quail highlights the bird, and everyone loves it. She had the confidence to leave it alone. Malarkey's food is actually not bad, but the duo is too random. The two parts don't go together. Michael comes back to the kitchen and tells everyone they did a great job. He brings all the contestants back out for applause.
Judges' Table. Everyone did a good job, and made them proud, but they already know the winner and it's Melissa. Jonathan tells Stephanie that she was right there, and he's thrilled she did such a great job with his dish. So Melissa and Stephanie are both in, and then Padma tells Bryan and Kevin they are also in. Bryan's proportions were spot on, and Kevin's dish was very well rounded.
So it's between Gregory and Malarkey. Gregory wanted to put vegetables in the dish, and pickles to put some of himself in. The fish kind of got lost. Gregory admits he couldn't get the prosciutto on the dish, and the dish really needed it for seasoning. Padma asks how Malarkey did, and he starts babbling about being exhausted and being pointed in the wrong direction by some little issues. Gail tells him he did some great cooking today, “you know that, right?” and then Malarkey tells the judges that he has some great stuff going on in his life and at this point he's had a great time with his friends. Padma straight up asks if he's quitting. Gregory steps in and tells Malarkey to let them judge, and that if he (Gregory) goes home today, he's fine with it because he knows how he cooked. Gail promises him again that they don't hold the servers' fuckups against him. Malarkey is just in a weird space where he's very upset but mostly because of the servers. The sweetbreads were perfectly cooked, but the two sauces didn't go together. Malarkey replies that you were supposed to eat the two dishes separately and then complains that no one was doing that. But when the food leaves your hands, you can't control what anyone does with it. But you can't put the dishes together, they'll be terrible! Gail and Tom remind Malarkey that he's the one who put the two dishes on the same plate.
Gregory says that he wants to go to Italy because he deserves it, not because Malarkey quits. Malarkey did cook his dish well, and individually everything was good. But the two dishes together didn't go at all, and it didn't invoke the spirit of the original. Gregory's dish was perfectly fine but “perfectly fine” is not good enough for the last episode before the finale. Plus it really needed prosciutto.
Tom knows the competition is tough, but it comes down to what is on the plate. Malarkey is eliminated. Yeah, I think that's the right move. He's still in a weird spot where he's babbling about learning things and how he's got things happening outside of here.
Next week: so they were able to film the finale. I wasn't sure when they'd planned to be there. Truffle hunting, then cooking with truffles. That's about all they show us.
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