Previously on “Top Chef”: The Quickfire asked the contestants to cook with livermush, which is a local “delicacy”. Anthony managed to keep Laurence from winning more money. Then everyone had to make “colorful” dishes with natural food dyes. Despite not ever saying so, or correcting anyone during the walkthrough, Tom and the rest of the judges decided that what the contestants had been told to do was color every component of their dishes in random unnatural colors. Not enhance whatever colors the food was in nature. So everyone got yelled at for being boring, when they didn't tell them to be weird in the first place. Then Nana got sent home for failing to plate her dish, for the second time out of three Elimination Challenges. Laurence made bao in different colors, so that was “unnatural” enough and he won. (click for more)
Also Jennifer has a shoulder injury, which seems pretty serious. I saw some people worried she might have a slipped disk or some other spinal injury, which would be much more serious than can be fixed with urgent care.
In the morning everyone sits around and talks about getting yelled at. Sherry especially feels pretty down. Tristen is waiting with Kristen in the kitchen. Anthony says he's worked with Tristen before, and Tristen told him to do better than he did. Anthony is like, what the fuck does that mean, you won though. Heh. Literally the first thing Tristen does is roast Justin for his shorts because they are vaguely short.
Kristen says a bad flight pun, and then mentions wine flights. Tristen says they are “a tasting menu all on the same plate”. Brittany claims to be a fan of the product placement wine brand. See wine flights because of the first powered flight and the Wright brothers. Kristen says it's the first food flights in Top Chef history. Sure. You must take one red wine, one white, and one rose, and pair them with a food flight. “In a flight of three chefs”. This feels like a lot of work for a Quickfire. Also I've never had a flight of wine that was red and white mixed. Only when I've had a tasting and made it up myself. “Random” knife draw to be assigned what wine you have, and then you can make your own teams. Justin says he and Jennifer used to work with Sieger so they're a team. Rhoda sneezes, but in a dainty way where she says “achoo!” in a tiny voice. Laurence gives her shit about how that's not a real sneeze, and she's like don't start with me, and he's like OK mom sorry. There are flavor notes if you don't drink. It is kind of a dick move to have challenges that revolve around alcohol if you have people who don't drink for whatever reason, but I'd rather it be in a Quickfire where there is no risk of someone getting eliminated because they can't pair alcohol properly. Flights need to be based on the same dish or ingredient, but have three distinct preparations. So for example, three different sliders with different proteins. I mention this example to see if someone does it. $15,000 for the winning team.
30 minutes to cook. Jennifer, Justin, and Sieger decide on eggs, while Anthony, Duyen, and Jonathan are going to make cheese. Or the same cheese in three ways? Something like that. The other twin is involved in a seafood flight. Laurence, Rhoda, and Sherry (who incidentally are “the cream team” which is terrible, just be the white team) are going to make mochi with fillings. Sherry is thrilled to be on the team with the two people who have won elimination challenges, but she's never made mochi before. It looks like Rhoda is going to make all the mochi dough. Duyen owns a wine company, so she probably understands the actual quality of this wine. But she feels pretty confident. Anthony doesn't drink a lot of wine so he's just following Duyen's lead. Justin has artichokes and eggs, for some reason. Supposedly artichokes are hard to pair with wines, but he's decided to take a risk. There is a lot of yelling about what everyone's making. Oscar briefly forgets his team has already decided he's going first. One of the twins scorches some berries on the stove. Jennifer says she is going last, because she has the red wine, but Sieger is making sabayon and dessert so he insists he's going last, and then he says “it doesn't matter” but I'm going to guess it will absolutely matter. He interviews that doing the white wine last will be a cool shake-up. I guess if you were going dry to sweet? Then he fake whines that his arms hurt from whipping the sabayon, which is not a great look when one of your teammates has an actual arm injury. Rhoda and her team don't have time to cook the mochi before they fill it, so that might be a problem. It looks like they're going to fry everything. Jennifer is still in pain. Plenty of last minute working. Sherry doesn't like their final dishes because they don't feel like mochi.
Green team is up first. This is the team doing the seafood. Oscar: rose, arepa with Parmesan, crème fraiche, and caviar. Brittany: chardonnay, seared scallop with plum sauce. Brandon: pinot noir, sourdough crusted grouper with dried fruits and nuts. Kristen asks Brittany what seems like a very pointed question about if she does wine pairings a lot. Which she does not.
Red team did a flight with Tomme cheese, which is a semi-soft French cheese. Jonathan: rose, Tomme grilled cheese with raspberry and apricot compote. Duyen: chardonnay, roasted and fried sunchokes with Tomme cheese sauce. Anthony: merlot, mushroom toast with seared ribeye, Tomme, and soubise. Anthony gets the same question Brittany did, only from Tristen, and he says Tristen already knows. Duyen speaks up and says that she told Anthony to just make whatever and she'd pair a wine with it.
Blue team has eggs. Kristen says she likes seeing red in the middle. Justin: rose, braised artichoke, poached quail egg, and rose mayonnaise. Jennifer: cabernet sauvignon, soft scrambled eggs with roasted grape verjus and croutons. Sieger: pinot grigio, poached peaches with sabayon.
Time for mochi. The three balls are served on giant wood rounds like slices of a log. I don't know. They look very dry and not like mochi. Rhoda: sauvignon blanc, sauteed mushroom mochi. Sherry: rose, potato and bottarga mochi with crème fraiche. Bottarga is a dried fish roe. Laurence: merlot, lamb, cherry, and parsley mochi.
So apparently “seafood” is too broad a category for a food flight, and also Brittany's scallop should have been paired with the rose. All the mochi dough was undercooked. Rhoda apologizes to her team who murmurs back to her that it's OK. Red team had very good pairings and Kristen loves Tomme cheese. Blue team successfully paired artichokes, and then the eggs were a good ingredient. The winning team is Blue team, so that's Jennifer, Justin, and Sieger. Nice.
Elimination Challenge. No meal is complete without sides. A PA wheels out a big table with a bunch of Southern side dishes: hoppin' john, red rice, potato salad, collard greens, hoe cakes, fried okra, smothered cabbage. There might be more, that's just from the screen I paused on. I lied, the guy wheeling out the table is the guest judge today, a local chef. He cooked all this stuff. Kristen invites them up to try everything, and at least one person is genre-savvy enough to know it's a trick. Also it looks like that's all the dishes on the table. Laurence loves the cabbage. It's all great, of course. Tristen calls them “legacy dishes”, and they're found everywhere. For example most cultures have some kind of dish with rice and beans. True. The challenge is to take one of these side dishes and make it the main dish. One of the twins is immediately confused. “You can't just make a bigger plate of collard greens.” No, but I don't think this concept is wildly impossible. Only two people can choose any one dish (so we don't get 12 red rice dishes) but since there are seven things to choose from, they can avoid okra if they want. Since Tom hates okra. Kristen specifically mentions avoiding okra, because Tristen doesn't like okra either. Dish selection is just a free-for-all. Duyen takes both cabbage cards and gives one to Brandon, so Jonathan is annoyed. Anthony is like “oo secret alliance” which I'll admit, makes this show more interesting. Laurence is also complaining about not getting cabbage, and Duyen says he has immunity so he can slow his roll. Everyone wanted the cabbage because it was delicious and meaningful to the guest judge, but I'd say that's why I'd avoid it. Do you want to take a dish that was the last thing his sister made before she passed, and then reimagine it? No one had picked okra, but then Sieger goes up and switches out whatever he had for okra. He says his mom loves it and he didn't want it to be out by itself.
Before they cook, everyone will get a field trip to a farm to pick some produce and meet the local farmers. 90 minutes to cook tomorrow for like 45 people. Actually 90 minutes before the first dish has to go out, and then another 90 minutes to serve the rest of the dining room. As everyone heads out to go to the farm, Tristen grabs a quart container of one of the dishes to go. Heh.
Jennifer's got her arm in the sling again. The farm has a lot of livestock just wandering around. They walk around and try things and talk about regenerative farming and traditionally black foods. Sieger knows he has an uphill battle with okra. Laurence is making clay pot hoppin' john. I'm not sure they picked enough produce to feed 45 people, but sure. They also get $300 at Whole Foods. Brittany buys more collard greens. She is tired of being on the bottom this whole time. The twins learned Southern cooking at home from their grandmother, and then European foods from mom, and apparently this was confusing to Jonathan because he “embraced” whatever cuisine he was cooking. How is that confusing?
In the morning Sherry gets a video call from her son, who is in basic training. Actually I think it's just a video he recorded. She records a response, as she says in voiceover that she can't let a single challenge defeat her. Jennifer turns a pair of Justin's jeans into cutoffs, and for some unknown reason she's cutting them while he's still wearing them. I don't know. He says he has to let his knees breathe.
90 minutes to cook. Sherry says she was born in New York, but grew up in Brazil. She and Justin have potato salad, and they're both trying to highlight potatoes, as opposed to putting some protein on top. Sieger is braising his okra, and then putting it with pork belly and some crunchy elements on top. Brandon makes bacon cream, and he says that time is tight to cook the cabbage through. Duyen is doing like a shrimp and grits but with cabbage? Oscar and Laurence took hoppin' john, and they both have other rice dishes in mind. Oscar is doing a Puerto Rican spin, and Laurence has the clay pot. Oscar says it's going to be Hoppin' Juan, and Laurence is like oh yeah mine's Hoppin' Huang. Heh. Rhoda is making curry and rice for red rice. Yeah that sounds great. Brittany is wrapping sausage in collard greens. Jennifer has pork necks to make “Indian pot likker” for hoe cakes. She says she's still figuring out “her” cuisine, but Justin is half Indian so they try to make things interesting. As she's voiceovering, there is a shot of her working and on the other side of the prep table is something on fire. Like, not a thing burning on the stove, but some kind of container with an open flame. I don't know. Justin says he's over here overcooking potatoes like an asshole.
Montage of people frantically working. We especially focus on Brittany rolling raw sausage meat into collard greens and interviewing that she has to have enough time to steam her dish and get the sausage cooked. Laurence is trying to have everything cooked before service, I think so he can just sear portions to get crispy rice on the bottom. As foreshadowed, Brittany's dish is ruined. For some reason, she put a big pan of sausage and collards into the steamer, and it wasn't even on. So everything is not only raw but cold. I'm not sure how you tell if the equipment is on, but my first instinct is that a professional chef should know? She claims she isn't familiar with the steamer, so I guess that was a risk, to use some equipment you don't use normally. She's pretty distraught, but in contrast to Nina's drama she's quiet about it. I mean, people still know because they can see her, but she's not screaming about it.
After commercial, Brittany tells people she can't start over. Someone asks what's her pivot, and it seems to be unrolling all her collards so she can take out the sausage and put it on the flattop. I feel like asking her what she's gonna do is not helpful right now. The judges arrive to look at the menu. They find “Hoppin' Juan” and “Hoppin' Huang” hilarious. There's some weird shots where it looks like the table the judges are at is really high up, like it's on a dais or something. Like right behind them is a random table and it looks like it's down a couple of steps. But it also doesn't feel like the restaurant is on different levels? I don't know, it just looks unnatural is all. Justin has huge potato slices, with the centers cut out, and then in the middles are traditional potato salad? Sherry says in confessional that it seems “lackluster” and maybe not the best idea after everyone sucked last week. I mean, I still feel like putting everyone in the bottom last week was not warranted, but sure.
Ah, it's that the judges are at a tall table with bar stools, instead of regular chairs. It looks like we're serving in pairs, so the people with the same dish will serve together. Sherry: marble potato salad with smoked trout, potato chip, and potato nage. Justin: Yukon filled with potato salad, scallion cream, and potato chip. Sherry's potato salad is declared “cookout worthy” which is funny. It felt like a main dish, and the potato was still the star. Justin's dish is good but Tom says it's still a side. It's still potato salad.
Brittany is trying to come up with something, and I think she'll at least have cooked pork. Oscar: “Hoppin' Juan”: beans with crispy bacon, sofrito, Carolina gold rice, and poached egg. He says hi to the farmers, who are over at another table. Laurence: “Hoppin' Huang”: crispy rice with charred shiitakes, butter beans, and cured egg yolk. It looks like fried rice in a round dish with a whole egg yolk on top. The bottom has crisp rice. Everyone loves Laurence's dish, and Tom seems especially impressed he got a good sear on the rice, and then carefully moved it to the plate so that layer stayed on the bottom. Oscar's rice is maybe underseasoned, but it's familiar and hits all the notes it needed to.
It looks like Brittany got her sausage cooked, then mixed it with like, mayo and stuff, and then put it back in the collards. Anthony: braised collards, chadon beni, and kimchi, with black bean and Tasso ham fritter. Chadon beni is culantro, a Caribbean herb. Brittany: collard wrapped pork and fennel sausage with smoked tomato butter sauce. It's room temperature, which allows Kristen to ask if that's on purpose, and Brittany to explain it's not what she planned on. Tristen stage whispers “never admit that” which is fair. Her dish on the menu was sausage wrapped in collard greens, and that's what she had on the plate. But I think the temperature thing meant they knew something was up. Anthony's dish is great but it's still a side dish that is also maybe too salty. Tristen doesn't understand Brittany's dish, and it's no longer reading as sausage. Yeah, the filling is now ground pork mixed with like, bread crumbs and some mayo or something. Gail says it's both sharp and mushy.
One of the twins flambes something, and then just wanders off while the pan is on fire and about to catch the cardboard box of salt on the shelf above. Duyen: charred cabbage with grits, confit tomatoes, and pickled corn. Brandon: charred cabbage with smoked bacon cream and Parmesan breadcrumbs. Duyen's dish is very colorful, and Brandon's looks like a wedge salad. Tom says that Brandon's dish is too watery. I think it's also undercooked, which means he didn't cook all the water out. A main dish, though. Duyen brought in her heritage and it was flavorful.
Jonathan: hoe cake with gochujang fried chicken and bourbon-bacon maple syrup. Jennifer: yeasted hoe cake with pot likker, butter beans, triple cream soft cheese and hot honey. Jonathan's dish is something you order for brunch after a night of drinking. Tristen says he weirdly likes it. Jennifer had a good idea, but her pot likker is salty and it's maybe not a main course. Tom says he likes the idea of it.
Sieger: braised okra and pork belly with seeded tempura. I think “seeded tempura” is just tempura batter dripped into oil to make a bunch of crispy bits. Rhoda: red curry rice and fried egg. Fried as in deep fried and crispy. Tom likes the okra actually. Rhoda made a good dish although Tom complains that the egg is the same texture as the rice so he'd like some contrast.
The Stew Room I think is a side room at the restaurant maybe. It's too nice. Someone asks how everyone feels, and Brandon says he liked his dish and everyone laughs at him. Apparently he is always confident about his dish.
Judges' Table. We are now back in the Top Chef kitchen so is that the regular Stew Room? With real furniture and everything? This was a good challenge and Tom is not grumpy for no reason so things went well, I guess. Sherry, Sieger, and Laurence are the tops. Sieger served braised pork belly, but not seared, because he wanted it to kind of be melty? And contrast the tempura. It's simple but it all worked. Sherry wanted as many different potatoes as possible. Plus the broth was made from the scraps. Tom says something which I guess is true, which is that he thinks he can identify if a dish is Sherry's, because she has a sense of who she is when she cooks. I don't disagree, but with how random the challenges can be on this show, I'm not sure that's always possible. Laurence explains how he got crispy rice on the bottoms of every plate. They loved how much flavor it had. The winner is Sieger. Nice. He's got immunity for next week.
The losers are Anthony, Jennifer, and Brittany. That tracks. Anthony talks about how he cooked his collard greens, and Kristen asks a pointed question about seasoning. But he did season them. He wanted to make the collards the main character of the dish, but it was missing an anchor. Maybe a bigger fritter. But it was very salty, and I think he said he put salt and also ham in with the collards. Anthony seems surprised it was salty, which implies he didn't taste it before it went out. Jennifer made her hoe cakes with rice and chickpea flour? It was too dense. She says she did think it was a main course because that's what she'd eat at her grandmother's house on Sundays. The guest judge points out that his wife would eat this as a main dish. Yeah, cornbread and beans feels like a solid vegetarian main dish. Anyway, her dish was also too salty so that's why she's up here. Brittany explains how her dish was supposed to be, although instead of saying “I wasn't familiar with the steamer and I thought it was on when it was off”, she talks in vague terms about not being able to execute her vision. There was potato in the filling too. Tom gets real pointed, and says he's been to her restaurant and it was good so why is she struggling so much now? That just seemed unnecessarily rude. Brittany says you cannot prepare for this, which is true, and as I have said many times, not being able to cook gimmicks with a strict time limit does not make you a failure at cooking.
As the contestants are walking out, the guest judge says he's glad Tom said that, because Brittany is one of the best cooks in Charlotte. I just don't like how the tone of that conversation was less “I know you're a great chef and you can do it”, and more “I know you're a great chef so why have you been fucking up?” Back in the Stew Room Brittany is proud she served something, and Anthony says she shouldn't be too hard on herself because at least it was a main course. Everyone in the bottom struggled with making a main course out of a side dish. Tom is vaguely offended that Anthony I guess thought he could just serve collards and one fritter and have that be a main course. Kristen puts it better and says you can make collards the star without it being the only thing on the plate. Jennifer says she tasted her dish a lot and she didn't think it was salty. None of her dish worked. Tom is like, how do you not know your dish is too salty, and Tristen says you taste it so much you get blind to it. Jennifer is also saying she burnt her tongue at some point. Brittany had to pivot. Gail says this kitchen is not for all chefs, which is true.
This is a really difficult kitchen. Brittany is eliminated. She expected it, though. She's actually upset, and I'm kind of shocked that the local chef is out so early. She promises she's coming back.
Next week: ziplining and white water rafting, Fortune Feimster shows up with small children to fuck with everyone, make something with dehydrated components. Tom tries to be funny but he's not going to beat a small child yelling “I thought you were trying to feed me a leaf!”
Last Chance Kitchen: so supposedly this episode was up this afternoon for a while, because someone fucked up. There is a very long montage about people talking about the season, but all from the actual show so no spoilers? Maybe there are spoilers. Get your shit together, Bravo, I spent a solid five minutes trying to find the name of tonight's episode but you can spoil who goes home like, hours before the episode is even on. I don't know what is happening. Brittany is still kind of reeling. Nana says the noise around her made her overthink everything. I'd argue these two chefs are great examples of people who are probably great in their restaurants and lousy at this show.
Nana and Brittany walk into the kitchen together, and there is a two top and Tom searing fish. Weird. Nana is immediately terrified. He asks if they've been thinking about how to fix their dishes, maybe correct some mistakes. He then starts telling them a story about how this dish is from his first job, which was a French restaurant, because he had training in French cuisine, and he was afraid to make Italian food for some reason, and then he had to sit down and really think about how to make a dish that was more “him”. He serves them braised red snapper with rosemary lemon vinaigrette and eggplant. Tom claims to understand this competition pulls you out of what you normally do, and you have to find yourself. Today's challenge is to go “back to basics” and put yourself on a plate.
30 minutes to cook. Both Nana and Brittany are making seafood. It's an easier challenge, but they still don't have a bunch of time. Nana says she's concentrating on only two things: sauce and fish. We'll see. Brittany is standing in the pantry, hands on hips, looking around and trying to decide what else to pull. She ends up with panzanella. She does declare she's trying to figure out what kind of chef she is still. Nana talks about using tomatoes a lot, and how Ghanian food is her comfort food. There is a lot of chatter but I still miss the peanut gallery.
Tom Time! Nana's dish is one she makes with her mom. She confirms Tom can handle spice. Brittany has everything planned out and laid out so now it's time to sear the fish perfectly. Nana decides to make a tomato salad, which I think is a last minute addition. Brittany has held her bread separate so it won't get soggy. It looks like they both get finished in time, so that's something.
Nana: pan-seared salmon with tomato salad and curry sauce. Very good flavors but Tom says it's on the verge of being too salty. Brittany: pan-seared halibut with grilled corn and tomato panzanella. Very well cooked, but Tom would have liked the bread to soak up more flavor maybe. He says if they had cooked like this they wouldn't be here now. Well yeah. Both proteins are cooked well so he's looking at the overall dish, and the better dish belongs to Nana. It had more flavor, and Brittany's bread was just too dry. She's ready to move forward. Nana says this is how she cooks.
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