Welcome to the finale! This season we get the first ever international finale of Top Chef as the cheftestants head to Singapore. All of the chefs are excited to be there, but early on Angelo stakes this out as his home turf. What will be interesting to see is whether this actually works to his benefit. Sure, he’s got a level of familiarity with the ingredients and techniques that gives him a bit of an advantage. But, on the other hand, there’s a lot of pressure that comes from cooking amidst the culture that inspires you back home, and there’s also the temptation to underestimate your competition and assume you’ve got a win in the bag.
Two more episodes of competition left until a Top Chef is anointed. This week, the cheftestants will be meeting in Singapore to go through the final stages of competition.
As this week’s episode began, we were left with little reflection on Amanda’s departure last week. Kevin says what seems to be the consensus: she’s gone and it was about time. There are five contestants left and no one is too sympathetic. This is the last Quickfire and Elimination to be filmed in D.C., before the top four chefs head off to film the finale.
At the start of this week’s episode, everyone was pretty unmoved by Alex’s departure, and now it seems that much of the pent-up anger and disdain people felt towards Alex is shifting onto Amanda. Which, given her performance last week and in previous weeks, makes a bit of sense.
Well, we’ve now made it through double-digit episodes in this season of Top Chef. And we’ve done it without resorting to a drinking game…yet. Whatever else one can say about this season, we’ll admit that it’s served up to a lot of classic Top Chef archetypes.
Finally, something happens on Top Chef this season. It’s about damn time. We got so much in this week’s episode: Nancy Pelosi, Restaurant Wars, and the return of everyone’s favorite dish, pea puree. There’s a ton to talk about this week, so let’s jump right into the action.
It’s that time of the week: time to recap another installment of Top Chef. Yawn. Oh, what, we don’t seem enthusiastic? Well, perhaps that’s because this season of Top Chef is an exercise in boredom that just won’t end. The contestants are childish, the food has been standard at best and downright unappetizing at worst and we don’t even have a local contestant left in the running. Short of inventing a drinking game (which we may resort to soon), watching the show seems like it’s going to continue to be an exercise in endurance.
The biggest complaint we’ve had (both in our own estimation and according to a number of commenters) is that this season has been kind of boring. It sort of seems like a flashback to two seasons ago when the food was so boring and the competition so blasé that Tom Colicchio gave the chefs a “step your game up” talking-to mid-season. Very little from this season has wowed us. Part of this could be because last season was a tough act to follow, with one of the strongest groups of competitors we’d seen in a while. In any case, the watching has been tough at times this go-round.
This week, the chefs had to wrestle with crabs. [Insert inevitable crabs joke here.] Photo from Bravo. For this season’s Top Chef , DCist will be bringing you our “woulda, coulda, shoulda” take on how the cheftestants are faring. Every week we will highlight one individual who was doin’ it wrong. This week’s Top Chef was all about local ingredients, including Maryland blue crabs, a Virginia farm and local chef Patrick O’Connell, who served…
Fans of last season’s runner-up Bryan Voltaggio had their dreams fulfilled by his guest judge appearance. Photo from Bravo. Last night’s episode of Top Chef may as well have been called “Couples’ Retreat”: everything seemed to be about twos. We got a quickfire where two lucky chefs snagged $10,000 each and an elimination challenge where teams won and lost in twos. And if we’ve learned anything from seasons of watching Top Chef, it’s that…
