Previously on “Top Chef”: the contestants had to shop at the farmer's market without knowing what their Quickfire would be. Turned out they had to draw cards for a sauce recipe to pair with whatever they bought at the market. Charly got creole sauce so he won easily. The Elimination challenge was to divide into two teams and cook for a supper club. Sadly I learned that the “40 supper club enthusiasts” were a lot of journalists and not regular people. Dan won this challenge, of course, and it's implied that it's because he's the local but I think it was just because he didn't screw up. The budget screwed a lot of people over, especially Danny since Laura spent almost double her share. But also no one told her to put things back, they all just kind of stood there. Sadly no one involved in this drama was sent home. Instead, Charly cooked his fish nearly a half hour before service, so it was ruined, and he was sent home. (click for more)
Last Chance Kitchen: so we had two episodes, because there are three people left and it's time to let someone back in. Charly, Kaleena, and Soo all had to make breakfast club sandwiches with at least five layers. Kaleena made eggs Benedict. Not a club sandwich. Even though Tom called it a Benedict he gave her the win. Then he also decided Charly and Soo were too good so no one was eliminated. Do your job, Tom. The final challenge was to make one bite of food, which could be anything. Charly tried to make fresh pasta and it simply didn't work. You can't really do that in half an hour. Because we couldn't eliminate Soo or else this whole dumb gimmick was for nothing, or possibly because Amanda is actually really sick and quit, Tom decided both Kaleena and Soo would get into the regular competition.
Kevin and Manny work out so we can have some eye candy. Kevin came to the US six years ago to chase the American Dream. As everyone hangs out together, Kaleena knocks on the door and everyone shrieks and hugs her. Eventually they notice Soo. Not sure why they think he's just helping Kaleena with her luggage but sure. But Dan knows him, actually, which is hilarious. Kaleena explains to everyone that Soo is a competitor, so we have to listen to people be confused. I do see Amanda in the group so that theory gone. Whatever, let's just get going.
Kristen greets the chefs in the Top Chef Kitchen, and then says since they have an extra person, the judges have “the ability” to get rid of two people. So she's not announcing a double elimination, but saying if they feel like having one, they can. Then Christina Tosi comes in with a big table full of desserts. The Quickfire is about dairy-based desserts. Kristen mentions she's been out trying frozen custard, and Dan immediately tries to find out where she thinks is the best, and honestly she's like “I have been eating so much frozen custard no Dan I can't tell you where the best place is”. She feels there will be a social media riot if she voices an opinion on that. Anyway, $7500 if you win.
45 minutes. Kristen must get in “legen-DAIRY” and Kevin says that was cheesy. Amanda has cheddar and bananas. Rasika I think says “choux pastry frozen custard” or something. Amanda quotes the Pokemon theme song. Soo tells everyone “bread ice cream” and then he's like “dude, Kristen Kish said my name”. Heh. Manny is making maple whipped cream. Dan has a chocolate pudding recipe, but it's vegan. Somehow he's adapted it, but I hope he remembered which things are supposed to replace the milk and took them all out. Michelle has basil cream and grilled corn. Danny's wife is a pastry chef so the pressure is on. Dan's used cream cheese for some reason, and of course his pudding still has tang to it. He looks for more dark chocolate, and there are several shots of him asking where it is, and looking for it, and then it's on Laura's station. Producers she better eat a baby with how much you want her to be a villain. When Dan asks if he can use it she immediately says no problem, so if she was trying to hide it from him she did a terrible job. More likely she just wasn't paying attention, which isn't a crime. Dan interviews that Laura is a competitor and in her own world. The producers do not allow Laura a rebuttal. Kaleena says to let her caramel just cook on the stove. Several people are unhappy with what they end up with.
Kaleena: salted caramel and rum custard, rum caramel, mascarpone and crème fraiche whip. Manny: fried churro with orange blossom and lemon whipped cream, and strawberry compote. Amanda: cheddar biscuit shortcake with banana pastry cream, and vanilla chantilly. Rasika: shrikhand with saffron. Shrikhand is yogurt that is thickened and flavored. Soo: “PB&J”: brioche puree, brioche shards, peanut brittle, and pasilla pepper blueberry jam. Michelle: corn cake with mascarpone cheese, basil cream, and lemon zest. Laura: chocolate muhallebi, espresso whipped cream, butter crumble, and caramel. Muhallebi is a Middle Eastern milk pudding. Danny: cream puff with black sesame pastry cream. Savannah: floating island, crème anglaise with meringue, apple and cranberry vinegar. You make a big blog of whipped egg whites and then poach it in crème anglaise which is thin custard. Kevin: shortbread cookie, strawberry and basil jam, cream cheese vanilla chantilly, and butter tuile. Dan: dark chocolate pudding, macerated plums, basil, and fried baguette.
Of course not everyone was successful. Manny's churro was soggy but tasted OK. Dan's whole dessert was a weird peanut butter texture. Huh. Danny made a bad cream puff. His wife is going to mock him. Kaleena made a smart dish, Michelle “helped contextualize dairy” whatever that means. Also Amanda somehow did a good balance. The winner is Michelle. She's happy to win and ride this wave.
Christina leaves and Matty Matheson comes in. He is credited as an actor, because he's on “The Bear”, but he also knows what he is doing cooking-wise. His default is just “yelling” is all. Everyone freaks out. It's time to embrace “chaos cuisine”. The Elimination Challenge is to “do whatever you feel”. Create something, destroy it, throw it on the floor. This is accompanied by a weird shot of plating a dish of what looks like baloney and a tortilla. Like, a shot of the empty plate, and then the plate with ketchup drizzled on it, and then the tortilla on it, and then reverse the shots so the plate is clean again. Who knows?
Kristen clarifies: break the mold of culinary convention. Amanda thinks this is her wheelhouse. To make sure they “all have fun” they will get 20 minutes and $150 to shop at a “specialty shop”. This sounds suspiciously like the unconventional materials challenge. But they can pick the shop? So maybe not? They will come back to the Top Chef kitchen and have access to that pantry. This is all the instruction they will get. Also to put last week's budget in perspective, this week they are serving 6 people, and have $150 plus full reign of the pantry they've stocked in the Top Chef kitchen. Last week they had to serve 45 with $200 and that had to buy everything.
Rasika has been taking chances, and made some weird combos. Several people end up at an Asian market. Dan says “okonomiyaki funnel cake” and buys MSG. Savannah wants to make a savory dessert with mustard greens. There is also a group at the African market. Rasika buys random spices to play around with. Kevin spies cocoa butter but does not know that you don't eat it. Manny and some other people are at the Latin market. Kaleena is making burritos but with stuffed pasta? Who knows. Soo has no idea. Having time to pivot and change his mind is screwing with him.
2 hours to cook. So I guess they told the chefs “do some weird shit” and left? Laura is going to make a rice dish. Michelle announces she's getting her mise en place ready for tomorrow, so I guess they're going to serve tomorrow? I missed all this I guess but I'm not going back. Michelle is making a Lebanese street food, but with Vietnamese shrimp. I wonder if the producers simply wanted people to be more creative. More creative means more impressive and that is a common complaint this season amongst viewers. Amanda asks Dan if he's chaotic and he says he's chaotic neutral. Amanda I guess has been labeled “chaotic cuisine” so she's just going to do her thing. It's modern fusion in the end. She makes black garlic pasta. Dan is quite pleased with how he has immunity.
Tom Time! And Matty. Soo says everyone has been very helpful, and then Tom makes a comment about them sabotaging Soo, as Matty snickers. Soo is like, “...I hadn't thought of that Tom, wow, thanks”. Heh. He tells them he's making “General Soo's chicken” which is not set in stone yet, but he tells them it will be great. Danny is making scallop mousse stuffed in cabbage, I think. Rasika is pairing eggplant and crab, and Tom visibly stares into the middle distance to think about this pairing. Savannah has preserved mustard stems. She tells Matty that when she made this dessert, with the mustard greens, that Matty was actually on FaceTime with her chef and told them not to put shit on the dessert that doesn't make sense. Matty doesn't remember her but when she tells him the chef's name he laughs so I think he remembers who that is. Manny has burnt something but it's on purpose. Tom and Matty talk about different people. Weird stuff is happening. They do mention that Manny doesn't necessarily have chaos, but a childhood memory of the street food vendor roasting corn and smelling the burnt corn husks so he burnt some tortillas. Rasika is steaming crème fraiche which could be terrible.
30 minutes to go. Michelle is happy with her flavors, and she's stuffing her pita bread tonight. Savannah has a potato souffle with layers. It's hollow? I don't know but at least she's testing it now. Soo decides to make shrimp and not chicken but he doesn't explain what's wrong with the chicken.
For no reason, in the morning Danny thinks about the challenge. There is a voiceover of all the random shit Matty said yesterday, over a montage of Danny cooking, techniques, shots of him as a kid, I don't know. They seem to have 90 minutes to finish up today.
Laura puts her rice into ring molds and then on the flattop. Rasika puts her crab and eggplant into the sous vide. Michelle has stuffed pita on the grill, and they can be dry so she has to avoid that. She says she's cooking them fifteen minutes. Danny says his subtle Japanese flavors in stuffed cabbage is chaotic to him. The judges are in the Stew Room, and Kristen says she's glad to have five people to help her understand this challenge. Matty says it's a personal journey. It does sound like “do whatever you want but put some fusion in”. Amanda is plating very early and she's worried it might get cold.
Laura: tahdig, yuzu kosho sauce, quail eggs, salmon, and seaweed salad. Tahdig is the layer of rice on the bottom of the pot that scorches or gets crispy, and yuzu kosho is yuzu and chili. Amanda: black garlic pappardelle with cumin lamb ragu, XO sauce, celery leaf, and shrimp chips. Laura's dish needs more flavors, or more blending of flavors. And her ring mold plating is very orderly. Amanda's lamb is great but the pasta is too dry. Also it's not particularly chaotic. It's just a pasta dish.
Soo has covered the rim of his plates in dots. One of his sauces won't make perfect dots. So now he has dots one one side and a smear on the other. But it's chaotic. Rasika is also plating early. You'll notice she's not up at the moment. Soo: General Soo's shrimp with salsa roja and salsa verde. Manny: esquites “risotto” with burnt tortilla aioli. Esquites is street corn, so I guess the flavors of the mayo and cotija cheese and spice. Manny balanced everything, although Tom thinks it's too safe. Matty says something about simplicity being chaos, which makes no sense. But this whole episode seems to be “just do something interesting please for the love of God”. Soo had some chaos and the texture is perfect.
Savannah has the riskiest dish she's ever made in her whole career. Michelle is feeling like she should have done more. Kevin: potato with raspberry, tarragon, and white chocolate. It's a white ball like a truffle, with raspberry inside, and then he's put potato chips on top, but all arranged so it just looks like a pile of chips. Michelle: Vietnamese shrimp and pork arayes, puffed rice, and herb salad. Arayes is pita bread stuffed with raw meat (usually kofta, ground meat) and then grilled. Kevin's dish caused Kristen to get the challenge because she isn't sure if she likes it. It's raspberry with the texture of potato. Everyone is confused and Tom says at least he went for it so I guess today if you're confused that's not the worst thing. Michelle focused on the Vietnamese but not the Lebanese so it's not chaotic. Except for where Kristen's seems to be raw and Tom's is burnt. Uh oh.
Danny has a very clean station, because he's forcing himself to not to plate too early. He ends up helping Dan plate. Dan has a lot of shit going on. Dan: okonomiyaki funnel cake with seafood, bacon, pickles, caviar, and herbs. Rasika: crab and eggplant with mushroom conserva, dukkah, and garlic tahini. Dan was ambitious, and funnel cake is a great vehicle for all his 19 ingredients. Rasika doesn't have any flavor and the eggplant was steamed so it's slimy? They're all shocked there's no flavor.
Kaleena: “trash burrito” agnolotti with ancho chile and morita crema. Moritas I think are a type of chile? Agnolotti is stuffed pasta. Savannah: potato souffle with golden milk, tropical fruit, and mustard greens. It appears to be two thin layers of potato, cut into a circle, and fried so it's puffy. Danny: scallop chou farci with yuzu kosho foam. “Chou farci” is just French for “stuffed cabbage”. Savannah's dish is amazing and Gail curses about it. I think it's Gail. She made bitterness work in a dessert. Danny's dish is luscious and the scallop mousse is perfect. Tom says it's like a duck: on the surface gliding calmly but underneath paddling furiously. Kaleena nailed the flavors of a burrito. Gail thinks she delivered on her idea, but maybe her idea wasn't the best because it was heavy.
Judges' Table. Tom (I think) asks if anyone is in trouble, and Michelle volunteers that since there weren't clear parameters for this challenge, you could go too far. I thought she was criticizing the judges and producers for a poorly-designed challenge, but I guess she's just explaining why she had trouble with it. Soo, Danny, Dan, and Savannah are the tops. Savannah I think failed the first time with this dish, and Matty says that first dish was about ten years ago and there's clear growth. It could have gone anywhere on the menu, not just as a dessert. Kristen tells Dan that everyone is going to try to copy his dish. Danny had a beautiful, subtle dish, but somehow respectful? I don't know. Soo's shrimp was delicious and everyone wanted a big pile. The winner is Danny. It's his first solo win. His dish was maybe not chaos but it was a big “fuck you” to the challenge? I didn't get the explanation but it was a great dish so I don't think they care that much.
Kristen calls Rasika and Michelle as the bottom two. Rasika took a risk with her flavor pairing. Tom asks what happened with the cooking, because yesterday she said she was going to sear the eggplant rolls on the flattop. She was worried the filling would come out so she steamed them instead. But that made it slimy. Tom says it was very bland. Kristen tells Michelle that her pita was raw in the center, while Tom's was burnt and therefore bitter. It was too simple. Matty seems to be trying to be nice, and Michelle promises she won't be hurt. She thought Vietnamese flavors in a Lebanese dish was enough and it wasn't. There wasn't really a wow factor.
Back in the Stew Room Michelle seems pretty calm. I do think this challenge wasn't very clearly defined. Rasika maybe didn't get why the judges didn't like her dish. And that dish took a ton of work, and then it didn't taste like anything. Michelle can't believe she undercooked something. I think it's more concerning that one plate was raw and one was burnt. Michelle made something that might have been fine for another challenge, but not today. They have to discuss if they will be sending both of them home.
Tom says the challenge was supposed to push them out of their comfort zone. “Unfortunately for one of you, it made you too uncomfortable.” Rasika is sent home. Oof. She was doing so well. She can head to Last Chance Kitchen. So Michelle is still in, which is good because I was looking forward to taking a week off of LCK and it didn't occur to me until 30 seconds ago that if they sent both of them home, they would have two eliminated chefs and LCK would happen as normal. Anyway, Rasika is gutted, but she's ready to show everyone what she's capable of.
Next week: sausage race, sounds like head-to-head battles.
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