Previously on “Top Chef”: Buddha won a generally good season. Sometimes seasons are excellent and sometimes they are just boring, you know? Anyway, this is season 20 and it is subtitled “World All-Stars”. It's basically All-Stars but now we're acknowledging that other countries have their own version of this show and their own winners. Let's hope this cuts way down on the American judges “just not getting” people's regional cuisines. (click for more)
Buddha says that he couldn't refuse this opportunity. I guess we're going to have blurbs from each person. There are a lot of spin-offs of this show. It's all winners or “finalists”. 11 different locations, 16 total contestants. I am noticing the selective subtitles, based on if Bravo thinks people are understandable or not. I kind of want someone to not speak English at all. Amar is here. Was Amar that great? I guess? Whatever.
Everyone meets Padma outside by the Thames. This season is going to be in London, which is cool and hopefully more interesting than like, California again. And the finale will be in Paris, unlike last season where the finale was in Arizona. OK Sara Bradley was a finalist on Kentucky and I don't really remember her. I guess that's good because she wasn't drama, but also not interesting? She seems to be the only one who hasn't been to Paris.
Time for the first Quickfire. Go to the Top Chef Kitchen and you will get three minutes to shop for a total of five ingredients. We transport them on a very stereotypical red double decker bus. Luciana, who won Top Chef: Brazil, actually lives here. She thinks London has the best international food. Sara also has not been to London. Oh, Dawn is here. How many plates do you think she will leave stuff off of? There are some jokes about shopping at Herrod's food hall, and Padma says “that's why the fuck we're here” which is hilarious.
Vaguely British music plays just before the chefs all tear into the kitchen to shop. Someone discovers there are no proteins. Nicole (Canada) says she needs to find five ingredients that go together. Like blue cheese and zucchini. Sure...? Tom (Germany) is making a red cabbage steak. Gabri (Mexico) can't find any chili for aguachile. Buddha is finding cream and eggs, since you can make those ingredients into multiple things. Padma makes them gather round and mocks them for having trouble finding proteins. Then Tom and Gail show up with a big table of various fish. Dale (Canada) has been waiting to meet Tom. Then he says something about his Canadian accent and how Gail can translate, and then they subtitle him, but come on. Even when he's pretending to “have a thick accent” his accent doesn't change at all. I've heard thicker accents in St. Paul. Everyone is going to cook with seafood. Already people are freaking out. Of course there is another twist on top of making people get ingredients without knowing they have to go with seafood. Everyone has to pair up and combine their ingredients. Use at least one seafood item, and no more shopping. Pairing up is whatever, because I don't know these people. I think there is a little bit of “oh hey we're from near each other so this should work.” Winners get immunity.
30 minutes to cook. Of course the first thing to happen is a mad rush to the table and fighting over fish. Buddha has ended up with Sylwia (Poland) who says she thought Buddha was kind of a snob on his season, but now he is very nice and professional. Samuel (France) says that the minimum time for challenges on Top Chef: France is 90 minutes? I don't speak French so I don't know if I can research that properly, but it does look like the caliber of that series is high so I wonder if they give them lots of time so the food is high quality as well. Dawn is paired with Charbel (Middle East and North Africa) because she wanted to make mackerel with tomatoes and he had tomatoes. I am really hoping to see some cool regional dishes we would never see on the American version. This is why they need to come to St. Louis and have a Bosnian challenge. Victoire (Italy) tells Nicole they're making risotto. In half an hour. Look if anyone can do it, it'll be her. Luciana is opening scallops with her chef's knife and she's going to chip it or ruin it somehow. May (Thailand) was the first runner up on her season and it's not good enough. Tom is poaching salmon in red cabbage...juice...but Samuel is also torching it. I think. Buddha and Sylwia didn't grab butter, so they are churning some from the cream Buddha has. The risotto is “al dente” according to Victoire and “raw” according to Nicole. But they don't have time. The usual frantic plating.
Buddha and Sylwia: pan fried turbot with potato, leeks, and dill. OK I know my usual complaint about the chyrons is that they're white on white, but also, whoever writes them hates the Oxford comma. Amar and Ali: pan roasted sea bass with kimchi emulsion and roasted eggplant baba ganoush. They say they paired up because they both had feta cheese, but I don't see that anywhere. Luciana and Gabri: scallop aguachili with raw chayote and lobster water shot. Begoña and May: pan seared monkfish wrapped in zucchini with Spanish sauce. Samuel and Tom: red cabbage poached salmon with red cabbage puree, cabbage ash, and pickled blueberries. Charbel and Dawn: grilled mackerel with zucchini and sauce vierge. Sauce vierge is olive oil, lemon juice, chopped tomato, and basil. Sara and Dale: langoustine with seafood broth and gremolata. Nicole and Victoire: cacio e pepe risotto with poached oysters and mint.
There was a lot of praise for most of the dishes while the judges were eating. Charbel and Dawn's mackerel was not exciting and the zucchini was underseasoned. Samuel and Tom cooked the salmon very well, but the cabbage emulsion was gritty. And the risotto was indeed undercooked. Victoire doesn't react. On the good side, Luciana and Gabri had a beautiful clean dish, Sylwia and Buddha made their own butter and had a great old-school dish. Dale and Sara balanced their flavors. The winners are Dale and Sara.
Padma says they want the contestants to do well, so let's do something easy. Make a vegetable-forward dish. Proteins should be an accent. Begoña already does this in her restaurant. (PS she has a Spanish accent which means Spanish words get a lisp and yet no subtitles). Everyone gets £250 at Whole Foods (of course) and then two hours to prep and cook a the Royal Botanic Gardens. It's an individual challenge, but I think they are dividing them into groups for service. Guest judge is Angela Hartnett, who is a Michelin-starred British chef. I haven't heard of her but everyone seems to know who she is.
Oh, we get shopping again. I love it. Everyone is of course crowding the produce section. Samuel says his show has a pantry that the guest judge stocks so he's never been shopping. Gabri can't find the exact ingredients for his mextlapique (like a tamale) so he's trying to substitute. My excitement over international cuisine is subsiding into a realization I'm going to have to look up so many words. Dawn immediately is in the weeds. She's back to her strategy from her season of “buy whatever and like, hope you can change it on the fly”. Charbel is worried about the caliber of chefs he saw in the Quickfire.
I think everyone has their own hotel room? I miss the terrible dorm rooms with bunk beds and the kitchen table where everyone drinks.
Oof, outdoor makeshift kitchen. Sara is using cover crops, which is what you plant in the off-season to keep your fields healthy. She tells the room she and her husband fell in love over a conversation about kohlrabi. Heh. Dawn decided to make some vegetable patties from a recipe she knows works. Tom is making carrots that don't look like carrots? I'm not sure. The tent is very hot. Ali has cauliflower steak and licorice. Charbel is cooking onions and chicken broth. Begoña I think is doing squash noodles. Samuel is really running frantically. Gabri is also frantic, but he says he's known for working quickly. I think he might have picked an avocado half up off the floor. Tom's carrot mousse is way too hot because the tent is too hot. The stove is full of pots, and Dawn says something about moving a pot if Gabri moves something, and then there is a lot of cursing and what looks like a lot of beet water all over the floor. Gabri says he spilled water into Dawn's dish. Dawn freaks out, but honestly it's understandable. I think it was a pot of vegetables, and so the water has washed away whatever flavor there was. That sucks. She gets it back but now it's so hot in the tent that she can't get her pastry to work right.
The judges arrive to the greenhouse for dinner. Sara (pretty sure it's her) shrieks with her tongue out about season 20 which is obnoxious. The carrot mousse did set, and it looks weird but tastes good apparently.
Sara: cover crops with pot liquor, smoked pork, and cornbread. Sylwia: beetroot with goat cheese and kohlrabi sandwich. I...am not sure how this is a sandwich? There is a little macaron-looking thing on the plate, I guess. Amar: glazed and pickled vegetables, romesco sauce, seared scallop, and herb oil. Tom: blistered carrot, carrot chutney, carrot ginger mousse, and bone marrow dust. Tom's dish has sweet and bitter bites, and they really enjoy it. Sylwia cooked everything well but the sandwich wasn't that great. Sara's dish doesn't look good, because pot liquor and cornbread aren't that pretty. Amar focused too much on the scallop.
These dishes are beautiful. Ali: sea bass with cauliflower puree, pickled cauliflower and cauliflower couscous. Charbel: roasted onion, onion puree, chicken jus, and sumac tuile. Dale: roasted and pureed eggplant with tomato relish, stewed peppers, and lamb. Buddha: eggplant with shrimp and shiitake, silken tofu, pickled kohlrabi, and ginger miso dashi. Ali's dish didn't need the sea bass, and it was kind of safe. They like Charbel's onion much more. Dale also didn't need his protein, but I find it very funny that the person speaking says “aubergine” instead of “eggplant” and the producers feel the need to explain how those are the same thing. But they don't explain baba ganoush. Buddha made a very subtle dish.
Begoña: pumpkin noodles with duxelles and raw milk cream. She calls them “tallarines”. May: garden salad, cured English sea bass, Thai green emulsion. Samuel: tiger prawn carpaccio, prawn head emulsion, vegetables, and prawn cracker. Dawn: West Indian onion and squash patty with coconut broth, lobster and mushroom salad. Begoña's dish is amazing. May had a vibrant dish with the right amount of heat. Samuel sadly ended up with slimy seafood. Padma does that thing people do now where she says “it ate slimy”. Just say it was slimy. “The dish ate ____” is such an obnoxious phrasing. Also they prawns aren't deveined! Dawn's dish is about pastry and not vegetables.
Gabri: mextlapique--charcoal vegetables, confit corn, black truffle beans, pickled mushrooms, red rainbow chard. Gail asks about the protein, and he curses and says he forgot to put his chicken emulsion on the plate. Nicole: “summer bass” with garden vegetables, onion soubise, and fondant potato. Victoire: cassava with cocoa butter, scallop, confit carrots, and gazpacho. Luciana: cassava bisque, cassava pilaf, and cassava tapioca with prawns. She has brought a cassava root as a prop to give a lesson. Sigh. Gabri's puree is delicious, but the charred leaf or whatever on top is too weird. Nicole's dish is old fashioned and the fish is just there. Same with the scallop Victoire used and the shrimp Luciana used. The usual praise from the judges about how amazing this season will be if this is the food on the first episode.
The Stew Room is very nice, with a whole bar and some champagne. But no champagne flutes for some reason. They chat about how the other series are different, and then Padma appears to collect only certain people! She would like Charbel, Begoña, and Tom and we don't know if they're the top or the bottom! I didn't realize how much I loved that setup until they stopped doing it and just had everyone standing around the whole time.
Judges' Table. Charbel, Begoña, and Tom are the top three. Tom made some great chutneys and elevated carrots. Charbel was very confident in serving onions, but it was justified. They loved that he put soubise in between the onion layers. Begoña had the most beautiful dish and the flavors really melded together. Tom says “it ate well together” so shut up Tom. The winner is Charbel. It was an attention to detail. He only won his season six months ago.
Samuel, Gabri, and Dawn are the bottom. And they have the winners send them in. Whee! I love the return to the classics. Samuel thought he had too many techniques, but the vegetables were fine, it was the prawns that weren't cleaned. He just forgot to clean them. Also there should have been less prawns and more vegetables. Gabri didn't find the vegetables he wanted, but he couldn't get out of his head and pivot. The char was very strong, and the sauce would really have brought the dish together. Dawn starts off by saying the day was difficult, and then she pats Gabri on the shoulder, like, it was an accident, but you could at least wait until he's apologizing or acting like he's going to take the blame, or something. Right now it looks like she's immediately throwing him under the bus to save herself. Without seeing if that was the problem. And it wasn't, because the problem was the pastry was the star of the dish. It wasn't that the vegetables were ruined.
Dawn didn't showcase the vegetables but it seems like the judges liked her dish the best out of the three. Gabri's dish needs a lot of work, but you can forgive that. Can you forgive not cleaning prawns? Samuel's vegetables were great, though, and none of Gabri's vegetables were seasoned properly or flavorful.
Tom says there are a lot of talented chefs here, and every challenge is going to come down to details. They couldn't overlook Samuel's prawns. Hmm. Of course there is Last Chance Kitchen, so that'll be fine. Starting next week I assume. Samuel accepts his consequences because he knows he just forgot to clean the prawns.
This season: pubs, judges from all the spin-offs, high tea of course, very famous people (who I've never heard of but everyone freaks out so I assume they're famous), they finally don't make them cook in an tent for Restaurant Wars! You get an existing restaurant with a trained waitstaff! No decorating!
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