Top Chef 3/27/24--"Living the High Life" summary

 

Previously on “Top Chef”: We began the new season in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with Kristen Kish as host and Tom and Gail showing up right away. No immunity awarded for Quickfire wins, only for Elimination challenge wins. Also no Quickfire for this first episode. Chefs were divided into three teams and given a different challenge, based on which judge's name they pulled. Kristen asked her group to make soup, Tom wanted roast chicken, and Gail asked for stuffed pasta. In my opinion Gail's group got shafted. Anyway, Manny won with a great pozole soup that no one could stop eating. The bottom three, Kenny, Amanda, and David, have to have a LCK-style battle immediately using whatever's left in the kitchen to make anything they want. David (a very cocky person who insulted Tom's hats) dumped a ton of salt into his broth and then put two green sauces together in a bowl so he was eliminated. (click for more)

Last Chance Kitchen begins tonight, with a “secret” 16^th contestant. Not a previous contestant, someone new. I saw some speculation that this person maybe failed a Covid test or had some emergency that prevented them from being present on set right away, and this is a consolation so they can still be involved. I'd buy it, because otherwise why screw this new person over by making them start in LCK?

Michelle and Manny walk around and discuss how they were in the top last week and how great that is. They all drive out to the kitchen and Joe Flamm is there. They recognize him but I do not. The table behind him and Kristen is full of hops. He also won LCK and then won the whole thing. They shittalk each other about how Joe actually had a harder time because it was at high altitude. Joe knows Dan and also Alisha already. He encouraged Alisha not to go to culinary school.

The Quickfire today is about hops (and also beer by proxy). Only Amanda admits to having cooked with hops before, since she worked in a brewery. She says hops are “oregano on steroids”. Also they smell like weed (this is accompanied with a lot of giggling). No immunity but the winner will get $5000. 30 minutes to cook. Some people try to jump the gun, but Kristen makes them get back in line until she officially says “now”.

Kevin says hops are very bitter. He ladles hot oil out of the deep fryers to infuse with hops. Danny is trying to navigate the kitchen. He says his OCD in the kitchen is next level. His wife hates it. Laura is making rice pudding in the short time. She just opened a restaurant. Kenny already had a Quickfire, at the end of the last episode. Valentine says something about being competitive, using Uno as an example. There is a lot of flailing and a ton of dishes on stoves, on the grill, in the wood-burning oven. Danny discovers his sauce is too bitter, so he is adding pepper to maybe balance it out. Kristen walks in, yells that they have five minutes, then walks back out. Kenny's farro isn't done enough but he's determined to serve everything.

Amanda: cured rainbow trout with hop dashi, grapefruit and blood orange. Laura: hop-infused rice pudding with berries. Danny: grilled rack of lamb with hops au poivre. Michelle: grilled flank steak, strawberry and shallot salad, with strawberry and hops vinaigrette. Alisha: grilled peaches, whipped goat cheese with hops and Aleppo chili honey. Dan: charred cabbage salad with citrus, herbs, hops and alpine cheddar cheese. Kevin: roasted blackberries and raspberries with fleur de sel crumble, whipped cream, and hops-infused oil. Charly: lambic hop-braised Haitian fried chicken with pikliz and plantains. Manny: roasted pork loin with sweet potatoes and shishito-hops chimichurri. Savannah: crab salad with hops-infused corn puree. Kenny: hops and kombu broth with farro, maitake mushrooms, and buratta. He says he needed to “twerk” his dish instead of “tweak” and everyone laughs at him. Rasika: hops-infused green chermoula crab salad and watermelon ponzu. Kaleena: hop-cured tuna with hop-infused dashi and raw hops. Valentine: hop-smoked duck breast with berbere spice and tomato nage.

That was too many “hop-” words and phrases. Kenny did not cook his farro, but he knew that. Danny's sauce was too peppery. Valentine didn't render his duck fat enough, so it didn't taste the way he probably wanted. In the top is Laura (rice was a good way to infuse the hops), Michelle (great sauce), and Kevin (made the oil first and then worked backwards). The winner is Laura. She jokes that maybe she'll take the money home and buy herself dinner at her own restaurant. Joe says it's “tradition” that the first person to win money now has to buy everyone a drink.

Elimination Challenge. Kristen says there's only one thing they are going to drink, and that's a Miller. Of course. Specifically, Miller High Life, “the champagne of beers”. Elevate bar snacks to fine dining. Oh also a team challenge. No one is happy about this, even though no one is having conflict right now. Two teams, each team will make a progressive seven course meal highlighting bar snacks. Specifically these seven snacks: popcorn, pickles, pretzels, mixed nuts, potato chips, olives, and “toasted corn kernels” which I assume are Corn Nuts. They draw knives for “random” team selection. Yellow Team: Rasika, Michelle, Dan, Alisha, Kenny, Savannah, Manny. Red Team: Kevin, Danny, Valentine, Laura, Amanda, Kaleena, Charly. Alisha thinks the Red team is full of all the fine dining people. 10 minutes to menu plan now and $500 for the whole team at Whole Foods. Tomorrow they'll serve 10 people in the Miller Caves which is where they used to store the beer. Kristen does not say how long they have to cook. The best dish from the winning team tomorrow will get immunity and $10,000 from Miller.

Menu planning starts out smoothly until Dan says he'll do dessert, and then Rasika says that she calls dessert because she wants to do a pretzel cake with honey mustard sabayon. Dan folds pretty much immediately. I think he just picked popcorn and dessert because it would be easy, not because he was really wedded to it. Yellow team all agrees pretty easily on who is doing what, even though Kenny has potato chips and isn't sure what to do with them. I think they also have an order? Only because they put up a graphic of who has what and Rasika is last. Alisha (I think) has promised Kenny they'll all help him come up with something.

The Red team is running smoothly also. Kevin has immediately taken charge and is saying he will take olives, and do first, then do like three rounds of tapas with salty things, and then maybe soup, and so forth. People are slotting into spots and matching planned dishes with snacks pretty well. Amanda says she had an idea for pretzels but it's a dessert, so Laura says they can do two desserts, pretzels and then popcorn. Kevin says something about a palate cleanser, but is key lime pie with pretzels a palate cleanser?

In the car Manny talks about potato dauphinoise, since you can slice potatoes and make them crispy and that's like potato chips right? I mean sure? I am not sure how particular the judges are going to be about this. Danny says that Red team are each shopping for their own dishes, and then figure it out at the register. Yellow team has split people up based on sections of the store, so they don't overlap. This is a great strategy because they get everything and end up with $498.19. Red team is quickly over, so they have to do things like take off one red pepper, and one of the packages of butter, or whatever.

Everyone goes home to the “Chefs' Loft” to cook and drink, and hang out. Dan says some BS about how he loves their team will come together as a group or whatever. He says that he was diagnosed with Kennedy's disease, which is similar to ALS. It causes you to lose motor control and muscle, and eventually he may not be able to walk or speak. He knows he has to tell everyone eventually, since it's already caused him to lose some basic motor function, but he doesn't want them to think of him differently. I mean, that's fair, but also this just sets up the situation where someone will get mad at him for screwing up knife cuts or something, and then he'll reveal his illness, and then you've set that person up to look like a jerk. Everyone toasts at dinner but only one person has a Miller High Life.

The next day they have set up those shitty outdoor kitchens, where it's just a tent roof and metal tables and shit. 90 minutes until the first course. Alisha demands a call and response of “Win” “Consin” and immediately I dislike her. Kenny lists off all of Yellow Team's dishes, which sound decent. Michelle is using Miller High Life in her dish.. Rasika takes over narrating the team's dishes, resulting in her talking about herself in third person.

Red team menu starts with Kevin's olive trio, and Valentine yells “Can we get a 'hon hon hon' for Kevin?” which is hilarious. Making fun of French people. The plan is a big punch of olives, then move back a little bit, a soup, fish, a “beer and pretzel pre-dessert”. What in the hell is a “pre-dessert”? Amanda has a weird story about her DnD group. I think her DM calls things “beer and pretzels” when people aren't serious about DnD? Honestly non-serious DnD can be very entertaining, but sure. Valentine says fresh corn is a gamble, because it might be starchy. He tells Dan that his team is doing great and also Red team is the more attractive team. Heh.

Kenny likes that he's making a complicated French dish that he's going to slap French onion dip on top of. He dropped out of culinary school because he forgot to register for the next semester. Points for honesty. Charly has spent the last 40 minutes carefully placing individual potato chip shards onto parchment paper, to make a crust for his fish. I think he's also roped Amanda into helping. Is this the best use of anyone's time? Everyone else is helping Kevin since he has a trio of canapes.

The judges arrive and the caves are really cool. Just a big room with a hanging cutout of the beer logo and a mural, and a long table. PS to Project Runway contestants: the next time the challenge is for “androgynous” please dress your model like Kristen and not in a giant boxy coat. Get a suit or a sleeveless vest and pants that are tailored. I am begging you, no more huge coats. And don't just slap a skirt on a male model and call it a day, either. Anyway, of course they are drinking Miller High Life out of champagne coupes (those are the wide flat glasses like you see in The Great Gatsby and stuff). Normally I don't care about the other diners at a thing like this but one of these diners has a chyron that says “Charlie Berens, The Champagne of Comedians” which is great. He thinks this challenge is a low bar, but they did say fine dining. Joe says you must go into this assuming everything is a fucking trap. Tom is like, no an opportunity, and Joe is all “sure Tom”. Heh. Savannah is already freaking out that she is inferior to Kevin.

Savannah: cucumber and melon salad, shredded pickles and cream cheese. Kevin: olive tapenade and toast, tempura olive stuffed with bell pepper, green olives with Parmesan cracker. Kristen asks Kevin if he tamed the salt at all, and he says that's why the olives are first, so they can “continue the dinner with layering”. Savannah didn't have a ton of pickle flavor, but it was fine. I thought it was pretty, since she used the melon baller. Kristen doesn't like starting a meal like this with dairy, but something lighter. But it's Wisconsin and Joe fakes being offended. Kevin's dish is very salty, and also was three bites. But they did say all they tasted was olives.

Danny: cured salmon with yogurt and dill sauce. Alisha: smoked salmon rillette with lavash, and olive chimichurri. Both salmon dishes, but Danny had pickles and Alisha had olives (clearly). Someone says that Danny's dish was refined and “ate clean” which is a sentence structure I hate with a passion. Stop saying dishes “ate clean” or “ate salty” or whatever the fuck. No one can taste any curing on his salmon. The comedian makes a joke I can't make out but everyone laughs. Alisha's chimichurri isn't refined enough. Tom thinks they're all taking snacks and making snacks, instead of dishes.

Laura: badrijani nigvzit: Georgian eggplant rolls stuffed with nuts. Michelle: toasted corn kernel and crab biscuit with spicy High Life honey butter. Michelle's dish was delicious, even though Joe has no idea what's going on. Maybe it needs more Corn Nuts. Laura's dish is heavy. Red team's progression is weirding everyone out; an aggressively flavored dish, a subtle dish (maybe too subtle?), another aggressive dish.

As Dan plates, he makes a comment out loud about how he's plating popcorn with tweezers because his hands are shaking. They really are shaking. In confessional he says it's maybe 30% nerves and 70% the Kennedy's disease. Out loud, in the kitchen, he keeps blaming it on being old, but he is 46. Apparently he wore braces and supports while competing, and used a cane sometimes. I found several quotes about how he wants to show people with disabilities they can succeed, etc., pretty standard stuff. But he also has said he hopes his being on TV will encourage people with disabilities to “push a little harder, do a little more” and it reads like he is telling other people with disabilities that they are not trying hard enough.

Dan: popcorn mousse with clams, roasted corn and basil. It looks like a little pile of popcorn. Valentine: beer and corn soup, pickled Fresno peppers, and toasted corn kernels. Dan's dish somehow works, even though it's weird. Tom is making faces, and he says that Valentine's soup is so thick it's basically a sauce. It maybe doesn't taste like corn, or enough like Corn Nuts to fulfill the challenge.

Manny: guajillo and mixed nut mole with roasted chicken. Charly: potato chip crusted Spanish mackerel, black bean puree, and beurre blanc. Manny's dish is composed and has nut flavor everywhere. Charly didn't season all his components and then someone says his mackerel is raw. Uh oh. Also they show a glamour shot of the mackerel, and it just looks like any other dish that is crusted in potato chips. It does not look like he spent an hour with tweezers placing each piece of potato, in which case, why do all that at all?

Tom bitches that he hates palate cleansers. Joe shittalks a chef that would come to the second challenge and just make a palate cleanser, but Gail says it might be amazing. Tom looks skeptical. Amanda: “beer and pretzels”: pretzel beer foam and miso, with beer and lime granita. Kenny: potato chip pave with togarashi yogurt and beer braised short rib. Amanda does call her course “pre-dessert”. Kenny did get his dish to taste like sour cream and onion chips. The comedian says “Man Kenny brings this dish to the potluck it won't last long. And he will be invited back. Those are my thoughts.” OK that was funny. Gail says Amanda's dish was better than a lot of other dishes today. It's very balanced.

Rasika's granita isn't setting up in the freezer. So she has to use the liquid nitrogen, which she isn't familiar with. There is frantic plating but everyone is helping. Rasika: barley pretzel cake with pretzel granita and honey mustard sabayon. Kaleena: buttered popcorn budino and salted caramel sauce, with chocolate and caramel popcorn. Budino is a type of pudding. Kaleena's dish was good but safe. Rasika took a huge risk but it paid off. Tom thinks Kaleena's budino was not good. Overall everyone embraced the challenge but there were cooking issues.

The Stew Room looks very nice and has steins for everyone and like, real furniture. Dan announces to the room that if he's slow, it's not because he's old like he's been saying every chance he gets, it's because of the Kennedy's disease. He says they inspire him to keep fighting and “just do the shit”. See this is what I am saying. I'm glad he has motivation to keep trying and that everyone is willing to help him. I really am. But not everyone can “just do the shit”. There's “you can do anything” and “you should do anything” and sometimes his “motivational” quotes lean towards the second one.

Judges' Table. The winning team is the Yellow team. They all flip out and yell. They are very surprised. Savannah tells Red team their food was gorgeous, and Tom is all “their food?” like I get that it didn't taste good or go in the right order but it did look pretty, Tom. Yellow team got creative and used their ingredients really well. They loved Rasika's dish, because it was crazy but it delivered. Manny's mole was also delicious and had a deep flavor. Kenny's pave was fried and crispy, and Tom says that when you tell someone what the dish is supposed to be or taste like, and then it comes through, that means you're cooking with confidence. The winner is Rasika! She's relieved to have immunity. I mean...she put mustard in a dessert and everyone loved it.

Time for Red team. Kevin, Charly, and Valentine had the worst dishes. Tom straight up asks Kevin if that's the best thing he can do with olives. He says no, and it wasn't unique. Plus they were all salty. Kristen tells Charly one of his plates was undercooked, and then he claims the components were seasoned how he wanted. Joe brings up the Quickfire to say they thought it would be bold flavors after Haitian fried chicken, and it was flat. Valentine made a really thick soup, and Gail points out that corn and Corn Nuts are not the same thing. Joe promises none of them are bad chefs, they just have bad days.

In the Stew Room, Kevin is disappointed but also says that he made 30 canapes in 90 minutes, as if that should be enough to move him along. Nothing about his dish was exciting; anyone could have done it. Plus it was too salty. Charly was supposed to make a dish about potato chips but it was unfocused and underseasoned. Plus he just put them on the fish and didn't do anything else with them. Valentine's soup was like when you make mashed potatoes in a blender, which is a very bad thing. Not looking good.

So everyone has to stand around for judging but the bottom three come back out alone. Tom says negative things again (nothing new, it's never new info) and then Kristen sends Valentine home. It's tough, but he stands behind what he put out. He is going to fight in LCK.

Next week: cranberries, some weird setup with doors, cheese. Plenty of cheese, and Carla Hall. Dan trips, or loses footing, and now there is food on the floor. Serving outside.

Last Chance Kitchen: So this LCK is labeled as “Season 21, Episode 2” which is the episode it goes with. I think? It's not that this is episode 2 of LCK for this season? Unless they are counting that David, Kenny, and Amanda cookoff last episode as the first episode? No it's probably because this goes with episode 2.

So Valentine is really motivated to do well, to show his daughter you should always try again. He's ready. He arrives to find...just Tom. Where is David? I'm not mad, he was annoying, but where is he? Tom is all, someone is missing right? There are two tables, after all. No one mentions David's name. Tom calls someone out...and it's a completely new person. Not David. This is this season's 16^th competitor, Soo Ahn. The people want answers, Tom. Why this extra person and did David tell you guys to get bent and quit? Soo has to win five challenges to get on the show. So that's the timeline of when the first person can get back in.

Valentine says the team felt positive. Tom tells them no budget today. They bring out a table with like, truffles, caviar, etc. You must use at least one of these items, but you must also make something comforting. He's going to drink beer so make sure your dish pairs with beer. OK so dumb down your fancy dish.

30 minutes. Soo is unfamiliar with the kitchen, so Valentine has a slight advantage. Valentine is making a clam bake, but with lobster. A lobster bake? Yeah that could be comforting. Soo is making fish and chips with lobster and champagne in the batter. He says he's very creative. Valentine has made another corn puree. He runs the blender without putting a lid on it so it sprays him. Soo is feeling the time limit, so instead of chips he's just fried some bean threads.

Tom Time! Soo is pretty good at cooking and talking to Tom. He seasons by pouring salt into his hand and then sprinkling it, showing that at least someone knows how that works. Valentine says lobster bake and Tom seems skeptical. Valentine freaks out because he's forgotten about his lobster, but then magically it's perfect. Soo rolls his lobster in rice pearls, which stay crispy when you fry them. Then he gets some caviar for his tartar sauce. Tom yells that he feels great about his time. Heh.

Valentine: New England lobster bake: poached lobster, andouille sausage, corn and turmeric puree. Soo: fish and chips: fried lobster, rice chips, and caviar tartar sauce. When Tom takes a bite the crunch comes in over his mike. Both dishes are comfort food. They do both look good. Valentine is out. The corn is too thick again. He's disappointed but he put himself out there. Soo had great flavors and seasoning. Tom gives him his chef's coat.