Top Chef Recap
By Jason Lee
February 5, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Is Leah a decendant from Houdini or something? Does she headline as an escape artist on the side? Does she have her own Vegas show? If not, then she sure could have fooled me. I'm not sure why she's still around on this show.
Granted, in the early episodes I thought that she had talent and pluck, but lately, it just feels like she's been going through the motions, haphazardly cooking bad-to-worse food while passively watching more talented chefs go home. I can't explain it. How does she stay around in this competition? Did the Supreme Court give her all the electoral votes from Florida or something?
The show opens with Stefan and Fabio complaining about their time in the Bottom 3 last week - it was the first time for either chef to be on the bottom and they each swear to cook better food the next time around. Fabio, in particular, seems driven - saying that he wants to win the title for his wife. Uh oh, that's a bad sign. Anytime Top Chef contestants start thinking about their loved ones back home, it turns out to inevitably be a distraction and they're typically sent packing in an episode or two.
Someone who's not feeling the blues is Carla, who thinks that she's being underestimated by the other chefs and wants to take her momentum from the last challenge and use it to propel her into the final four.
The chefs enter the kitchen for the Quickfire Challenge and they see frequent Guest Judge on Top Chef, Eric Ripert. We learn something that we hadn't known about him, though: apparently his forte as a chef is cooking seafood. This makes Hosea nervous, as he cooks in a seafood restaurant and is feeling some pressure to deliver something great.
The Quickfire is a good one: test their precision and speed via a three-round Fish Filet tournament. For Round 1, they will have five minutes to filet two whole sardines using a sardine that Eric had done himself as a model. Carla is not happy, seeing as how the sardines are itty-bitty little rascals.
Sure enough, she doesn't do well. In fact, she does so badly that she has to use all the charm at her disposal to disarm Eric and ask that he move onto the next contestant's fish without actually judging hers.
"Girl," she says to Padma but also addressing Eric," it was just so small and my hand was shaking. You don't have to say what it looks like, just make my life easier, hun." She ushers them along, not wanting to spend a minute discussing her fish.
As for the other contestants, Leah does great, Stefan's is not half-bad, Jaime looks like she used a chainsaw to butcher hers, Hosea is pretty good but Fabio's super clean, super smooth looking fish blows the competition away. As expected, Jaime and Carla get eliminated and the remaining four go onto the next round where they find an arctic char waiting for them. They have five minutes to filet the damn thing.
After having done so well in the first fish, Leah stumbles badly. She makes a couple of rudimentary mistakes and gives up. Literally. She gives up. She puts down her knife and turns away from her fish. At this point, I'm really pissed off. She's not Top Chef material at all. Even her beloved Hosea turns on her, "She gave a really poor first impression to Chef Ripert," he says in disdain.
And of course, the two of the chefs that I like least, Hosea and Stefan, go onto the next round while I-Give-Up-Leah and Fabio are cut. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, Hosea has clearly tried to start a rivalry with Stefan, feeling that he's not only cocky but the biggest impediment to winning the title of Top Chef. Stefan, in total a-hole fashion, doesn't even notice Hosea and continues his winning ways by beautifully slaughtering his eel in the third round of this Quickfire while Hosea can only flounder, copying everything that Stefan does (because he has no idea how to filet an eel) and making a general fool of himself in front of everyone.
"Obviously, I've never done this before," Hosea says to Chef Eric Ripert before Stefan is declared the winner of the Quickfire Challenge. Yeah, you've never fileted an eel before and yet you work in a seafood restaurant. Good going.
So Stefan wins but he doesn't get immunity, rather, he gets "a significant advantage" in the Elimination Challenge, which won't be revealed yet. Instead, the chefs are invited to lunch at Eric's super-famous seafood restaurant in NYC. Everyone is excited and dresses up for the occasion.
As they sit down for a special six-course lunch, marveling at the flavors and textures inherent in Eric's food, I shake my head in disbelief. Have these chefs never watched this show before? Do they not know what's coming? Surely they realize that when the Season 2 finalist sat down for an authentic Hawaiian dinner they were expected to recreate the flavors the next day in their Elimination Challenge. They must remember when the Season 3 chefs had to sample a classic dish from a super-famous restaurant and re-create it as their Quickfire Challenge. They must realize by now that there are six chefs and six dishes in the menu and they will be expected to recreate one of them. Right? Right?
Nope. They are all surprised when the knife block comes out. They will each draw knives to find out which dish they'll be re-creating - though Stefan, as the winner, gets to choose his dish. He chooses a lobster dish and Hosea turns up his nose at this decision. "It's probably the easiest dish of the six. At this point in the competition, you either play big or go home," he says. Yeah, as if you wouldn't have chosen the easiest dish if you were in his place.
The five remaining chefs have to do the following seafood dishes:
Carla, escalar
Hosea, monkfish
Leah, mahi mahi
Fabio, red snapper
Jaime, black bass
The most interesting of these choices is Jaime, as she generally didn't like the dishes in Eric Ripert's tasting lunch and found the black bass dish to be the worst. Oh well, you got dealt a bad hand. Deal with it.
The six chefs head to the kitchen where they have two hours to experiment with all of the ingredients in their dish and try to re-create it. Stefan is overwhelmingly confident. He's figured out all the ingredients, for sure. "It's a really classic combination" he sniffs. He's really reminding me of Hung, lately. And not in a good way.
As for the other chefs, Jaime is unsure of how to braise celery for her dish but is giving it a try. Hosea is unsure of how to incorporate the za'atar spice into his fish and is particularly worried about using too much or too little. Fabio is worried about his Italian style clashing with Eric Ripert's French culinary style. Carla is confident in her skills, seeing as how she's classically trained.
Leah seems like she's having the most trouble (big surprise). She has no idea of how to incorporate the miso ingredient into the sauce for her fish. She decides to use butter. That seems like a huge mistake to me, seeing as how Japanese chefs never mix miso with butter.
Eric Ripert comes into the kitchen to try each chef's dish and give them suggestions before they have to cook the dish for real in the challenge. Stefan cooked his asparagus when it should be raw. Leah's broth is too intense. Carla is close with her sauce but needs acidity on her fish. Hosea hasn't cooked his fish using the right technique. All pretty minor issues except for Hosea.
Eric Ripert leaves the kitchen and I start yelling, "BUT WHAT ABOUT JAIME?!?!" He didn't taste her dish. I'm taking this as a good sign, assuming that he had nothing important to say to her, meaning that her dish is fine. Oh boy, am I wrong. Apparently, she's having so much trouble staying on schedule that there wasn't anything ready for him to taste. I'm starting to get really worried about her.
The two hours are up and the chefs begin presenting their dishes to the judges. Fabio is up first and it looks like he's burnt the top of his breaded fish . . . but apparently, it looks worse than it tastes. The top IS burnt and a little too thick, but the flavor is very close to the original according to Eric Ripert and it's dubbed "a very good forgery" by Tom. He's safe.
Leah is next and has been struggling to get her fish cooked all the way - sticking it back in the oven for another minute before plating. The minute the dish goes out, the complaints start pouring in. The miso saunce is not as thick as the original, says Tom. The flavor is definitely different, says Padma. There's not intensity of flavor, only ginger, says Tom. Toby says that her fish is "dull" while Eric's fish in the original recipe felt like an entirely new discovery, full of flavor and energy. Eric Ripert is genuinely humbled at this compliment, muttering a thank you. Padma proudly dubs him the new Top Chef.
Stefan prepares his dish to be served and is totally confident. He knows that the lobster tastes exactly the same and while his sauce is a little thicker, it tastes like Eric's. He's right on both counts. Toby and Tom are totally happy with the dish and Padma warns Eric that Stefan is nipping at his heels. Yep, this is exactly what happened with Hung in Season 3. Sigh.
Carla prepares her dish and she's struggling with finishing her potato chips, which accompany her fish. The entire Top Chef team pitches in and the dishes go out on time. Though the potato chips are not quite as crispy as Eric might have liked, Tom thinks that this is probably the most difficult of the six dishes and that Carla did a good job. Eric concedes that point and says that she was very loyal to the original dish.
Stupid Hosea goes next and he's concerned about the monkfish, saying that he knows that it wasn't cooked the same way as the original. While the sauce is apparently very close to the original, the judges have a big problem with his application of the spice, Za'atar, on top. "It's crusted," says Padma. "The sauce isn't close," says Tom, "it's overcooked and didn't get a chance to rest before cut it." Then Tom goes on a big rant about how Hosea has the most to lose since he works at a seafood restaurant.
Jaime is last and she feels good about her dish, saying that she knows how to cook good fish. She's worried, however, about her celery. She left them to cook a little longer before serving because they weren't soft enough, but what ended up happening was the sauce reduced to the point where the celery is now really, really salty. She realizes that there's nothing she can do, time has run out, so she serves it.
All the judges immediately react very badly to the celery. "It's like a salt lick," says Tom, though he admits that the fish is well cooked. Toby disagrees, calling it remarkably poor as a whole and hates everything on the plate. Oh boy.
At this point, I think Stefan, Carla and Fabio are on top with Leah, Hosea and Jaime on the bottom. I think that Stefan has this one in the bag but that Leah will go home since Jaime actually cooked her fish correctly.
I'm right about the chefs on the top. Stefan nailed the flavors in the dish, Fabio cooked his fish perfectly and Carla overcame the fact that the dish was misleadingly named and applied the correct technique to properly execute the dish. As expected, Stefan ends up on top and receives one of the more spectacular prizes in the history of the show: he gets to follow Chef Ripert around for one week into three of his restaurants and then accompany him to the Food and Wine festival in Pebble Beach. Wow, that's like a dream come true for any chef. Even I'm jealous.
"He won again!" exclaims Fabio as they re-enter the Stew Room.
The bottom three chefs slump out to Judges table. Hosea protests saying that he has no existing familiarity with Za'atar but the judges nail him anyway for overcooking his fish and applying a much too heavy coat of Za'atar to his fish. Tom, in particular, has a problem with his overcooked fish. "Monkfish needs to rest before you cut it and you didn't give it enough time," he lectures exasperatedly.
Leah, who's sounded stoned through this entire episode, opens by asking Eric Ripert how he prepared the sauce, admitting that she had no idea whatsoever in how to recreate the miso broth. Toby slams Leah for the dish, saying that her incompetent miso resulted in a dull fish flavor that's still stuck in his teeth - and not in a god way. She cringes.
"In the Quickfire, you kind of gave up?" Tom asks her. "Do you wanna give up?" That's the question that we all want to know, Tom.
"No, I wanna be here, I wanna win, I wanna be in the final four. I regret giving up but I can't take that back and today I tried my best to do that dish," Leah says in protest. Amazingly, she goes through that entire argument still sounding high.
Jaime opens by discussing exactly what her mistake was with the celery and saying that she knew what she should have done differently.
"I would have sent that dish back if I could have," Padma tells her. "It wasn't appetizing to see or eat."
"It had a metallic aftertaste, a burnt taste that had the effect of rendering the entire dish toxic," says Toby. "I didn't want to eat anything after the first bite."
Upon heading back to the Stew Room, Jaime exclaims, "It's gonna be me. They hated my dish." I'm still clinging to the fact that Jaime cooked her fish properly and that this will save her in the end.
Padma says that this decision is the most "compellingly difficult" one of the season so far. Sounds like Hosea made a bad error in not searing his fish before applying his Za'atar spice and not letting the fish rest before cutting it. Elementary mistakes but not huge ones. Tom doesn't think that Leah has her head in the game, saying that he doesn't know why she should stick around if she's not paying attention or putting energy into getting things done.
They turn their conversation to Jaime and after Padma criticizes the dish, Toby stands up for her saying, "In her defense, at least she understood what went wrong."
"We're dealing with a choice between someone who made a mistake and didn't fix it and someone who didn't know what they were doing and didn't understand it," Tom concludes.
Sure sounds like Jaime is safe to me. I rub my hands together greedily as I wait for Leah to be asked to pack her knives and go.
WHAT?!!? EXCUSE ME?!!?
I'm not sure how or why, but apparently, it's Jaime who's eliminated. She looks like she knows it was coming, but personally, I'm dumbfounded that Leah managed to escape yet again. She's the dunce of the group. The Bush among presidents. The peanut M&M with no peanut. The chef without a brain.
And yet, it's Jaime who's going home. To her credit, she gives a very poised speech, sadly noting the demise of Team Rainbow (I'm gonna miss you all!) and that being on the show has helped her grow as a chef. She says that she's formed some great friendships, learned to be more patient as a chef and to have more confidence in herself. I know she'll end up someplace great. I just wish that that "someplace great" was at the Top Chef finale. Sigh.
I hate Leah.