Top Chef: Ur Doin' It Wrong (Week 10)
Whaddya mean I have no idea what I'm doing? Photo from Bravo.
Angelo is our villain: cocky, entitled, talented, and with a knack for making everyone hope for him to lose (previous examples include Hung, Stefan and Marcel). Kenny was our talented and promising cheftestant who went out early thanks to an executive chef stint on Restaurant Wars (see: Tre and Dale). And then we have Alex. Alex is the contestant that everyone hates. These contestants are never the most talented. Sure, they'll manage to cook a decent dish at some point, but mostly they survive and advance by being bad, but not the worst. Often, this strategy lands them on the bottom week after week but keeps them in the competition for a while, much to the chagrin of the other chefs (Robin and Lisa are your best previous examples of this phenomenon).
This week's episode began with pretty much everyone indicating they are ready for Alex to go, most feeling he should have gone last week. Alex himself says that he thinks this is all just people lashing out because Kenny's gone and they liked Kenny. Oh, Alex. We're sure you're right in that people liked Kenny and are sad he's gone, but we also think they just genuinely don't like you. One bright spot is Amanda, who says she likes Alex and respects and admires his cooking. Which is fitting since, more often than not, she joins him on the bottom at judges' table.
For this week's Quickfire, the cheftestants had to cook with a mystery box of ingredients, incorporating every ingredient in the box into the dish. And because this is Top Chef, there's a twist. As the contestants cook, more mystery boxes showed up with more ingredients that had to be added to the dish. This is also a high-stakes Quickfire, with the winner collecting $10,000. Once that's announced, we found out from Angelo that his fiancé lives in Russia and he really wants that $10 grand to "get everything worked out with the visa" so he can bring her here. Wow, generally we thought Russian mail-order brides came with free shipping. But seriously though, does $10,000 really equal an automatic visa?
This Quickfire challenge gave the contestants some trouble and had quite a few of them lost. Taking a look at the list of ingredients that the chefs ended up being handed, we'll concede that this one was tough. Fish, fava beans, hominy, squid, black garlic, ramps, passion fruit, and jicama. Any ideas what to make using all of that? Yep, none here either.
But the most surprising part of the Quickfire was how Angelo, usually all poise and cockiness, just sort of aimlessly wandered through the challenge with no idea what he's doing and a general sense of "I have no idea what the f*** is happening to me." And that's unsettling. We like our Top Chef villains to be extra villain-y and always self-assured. Angelo, you have a role to fill and you need to live up to it.
Tiffany ends up winning the Quickfire, as guest judge Wylie Dufresne chose her flavorful fish stew over Kevin's crispy rockfish. It's Tiffany's second high-stakes Quickfire win, and we're thinking she's going to have a pretty awesome wedding now that Top Chef is contributing $20,000 to the occasion.
For this week's elimination challenge, the chefs engaged in a bit of culinary espionage when they "disguised" a classic dish and head to Langley to serve it to CIA officers and chief Leon Panetta. These kinds of "re-invent a classic" challenges are always fun and a way to see the chefs' creative talents. But we're a bit worried about this season's group. They haven't proven been the most talented creative bunch.
Early on, we saw some problems brewing. Angelo bought frozen puff pastry for his Beef Wellington pizzas. (That worked out so well for other contestants Angelo -- good call!) He wasn't the only one struggling. Kelly just straight up didn't know what Kung Pao shrimp is supposed to taste like, so she buys a bottle of pre-made Kung Pao sauce to check the ingredient list. Smart girl. Unfortunately, those smarts fail her a bit when we learned that she doesn't know how to cook rice at sea level. Kels, we know you're from Denver, but you've visited sea level before, yes?
As the dishes went out, some of them clearly did a better job of handling the challenge than others. Kelly's Kung Pao shrimp soup went over well, as did Ed's deconstructed Chicken Cordon Bleu and Tiffany's fork-and-knife gyro. Other chefs are less successful. Not surprisingly, Angelo's decision to use frozen puff pastry came back to bite him. It turns out hard and dry, and his dish wasn't even that well disguised. Alex managed to disguise Veal Parmesan a little better, but his veal was overcooked and his tortellini looked like an afterthought.
In front of the judges, Tiffany won, earning herself a trip to Paris. (Wedding paid for and a honeymoon? Top Chef sure has been good to Tiff.) And, in what surely elicited a sigh of relief from 90% of the contestants and viewers, Alex ended up going home for his poorly executed dish.
But as sad as Alex's dish looked, we feel like Amanda was ultimately doin' it the wrongest. First of all, her attempt to disguise French onion soup was to make...drumroll...an onion soup with a cheese-covered piece of bread on the side. Sorry, but that is just not going to cut it. There were so many great ways to disguise and have fun with that dish. An open-face cheese sandwich with an onion gravy? Yum. What about a savory bread pudding that incorporates all the flavors of French onion soup? Or hey, what about just anything that isn't onion soup? Even worse, her poorly disguised onion soup ended up not tasting good to the judges.
Although the judges didn't agree with us that she was the worst of the worst, the good news is that we get to enjoy her "you're kidding me" face of shock at judges' table for at least one more week. It's all about the silver lining.
