Top Chef Boston Recap
By Jason Lee
November 25, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The next morning, before anyone is even ready to start thinking about the Quickfire, in walks Tiffani Faison, runner-up in Top Chef Season 1 and Top Chef: Duels, and frankly, one of my favorite chefs to have ever graced the show. She says she has a surprise for them… and as a side note, I think there are few instances in life where the word “surprise” has more of a negative connotation. Do any of the chefs really relish hearing that there’s a “surprise” in store?
Tiffani takes the chefs to an unnamed lake or pond where they spot a huge load of cranberries floating in a fenced-in circle. Frankly, it looks like the exact lake where Ocean Spray films its commercials with that old, cranky guy and the dumb-but-in-a-cute-way younger guy.
The chefs are informed the first part of their Quickfire will require them to slog out in waist-high water to where the cranberries are and “harvest” them - meaning, carry armfuls of cranberries from the lake to the shore. The first four chefs to fill their baskets to the brim will get a “huge advantage” in the next part of the Quickfire.
Adam, with his long lanky legs, and Katsuji, with his… regular legs, jump out to an early lead. Mei Lin is fine being one of the slowest chefs. She points out that she can’t swim and is only 5’2”. In a bit of a surprise, Katie ends up being the quickest chef to fill her basket. Adam and Greg follow, with Doug getting the last spot. Katsuji collapses due to exhaustion on the shore. He’s only being slightly melodramatic.
Back at the Top Chef kitchen, the chefs are tasked with cooking a dish that highlights the versatility of the cranberry. And yes, Ocean Spray is the sponsor of this Quickfire Challenge, so the chefs will not only have the cranberries that they harvested, but lots of Ocean Spray products to use. As for the other ingredients available to the chefs, the four fastest chefs are allowed to use anything on the “high-end” table, while the five slowest must make due with more modest ingredients on a second table, like ground pork and ketchup. “It has nothing fancy,” Katsuji pouts. Keriann eyes the “high-end” table with obvious envy.
The cooking gets underway and most everything being made sounds pretty good… except for Katie’s dish. She’s using cranberries to make borscht. It sounds bizarre and looks bizarre, but she seems confident. “It looks disgusting,” Doug tells us.
Meanwhile, Adam is making something called “cranberry dirty water.” Don’t ask me what it is, because I have no clue. It was apparently intended for use in Adam’s couscous, but that idea has gone down the drain.
And so has his dish. Tiffani and Padma name Adam’s dish as one of the worst three in the Quickfire. Tiffani says that it wasn’t cohesive and lacked cranberry flavor. Joining him in the bottom is Katsuji (whose NY strip steak tartare was far too tough) and Stacy (whose cauliflower with pepper cranberry relish lacked seasoning and was “clunky”). Stacy is extremely unhappy. She says that, as a local chef, she uses cranberries all the time in her cooking and is tired of being on the bottom.
On the top, we have Doug, Katie, and Mei Lin. Seems like the first time in a while that Greg hasn’t been part of the top group. Doug’s bourbon and cranberry pork tenderloin, Tiffani says, demonstrated why we love to eat cranberries in the fall. Katie’s cranberry borscht - which, frankly, was the color of Pepto Bismol - was luscious and demonstrated a high degree of difficulty, using cranberries instead of vinegar. Finally, Mei Lin’s sweet and sour pork was “super complex and elegant” - something that Tiffani says she would be happy eating all day.
But in the end, the difficulty and creativity of Katie wins the day. She’ll have immunity during the Elimination Challenge.
Padma notes that with the cranberry sauces out of the way, it’s time to serve up the rest of Thanksgiving dinner. Since the very first Thanksgiving was held in Plymouth Rock, just forty miles south of Boston, the cheftestants will be serving up a Thanksgiving meal straight out of the 1600s. They’ll need to create a traditional feast using only native ingredients and ingredients brought over on the Mayflower, and they won’t get a look at the kitchen or the kitchen equipment until they actually arrive in Plymouth. Sounds daunting. Participating as a guest judge will be Ken Oringer (an iconic Boston chef), and descendants of the Wampanoag Tribe and the Mayflower colonists will be the diners.
Back in the loft that night, the chefs discuss their memories of Thanksgiving. And with such a diverse cast, it’s a multicultural affair. Katsuji notes that they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Mexico, but it’s an American tradition that he loves. Mei comments that during Thanksgiving, her family eats a big duck stuffed with sticky rice. Melissa chimes in that she’s had the same experience.
Off on the side, not really interacting with the group, is Stacy. Greg thinks that she’s upset with always being on the bottom. He’s right. Stacy is taking her loss in the cranberry Quickfire hard (“I should have had that Quickfire!”) and feels really alone. She Facetimes with her Marine Corps boyfriend, who’s deployed overseas, and cries. She describes her increasing vulnerability as “turning into a little bitch.” She says that the conversation helped her morale. I’m not so sure.
The chefs show up at Plymouth and are dumfounded. Not only will their ingredients be limited to those that were actually available in 1600s, but so will their kitchen tools. There are spit fires, old iron pots, dullish knives, big wooden spoons… this is gonna be interesting.
The chefs divide up into two groups for purposes of cooking and serving. Keriann wants to do a “free form blueberry pie,” which is amongst the worst ideas I’ve heard this season. Not only is it a dessert (always a danger), and not only is it tried and trite (who hasn’t eaten a blueberry pie before?), but it’s free form. That’s the kind of description used when a dish falls on the floor and has to be smooshed back together into some marginally palatable form.
Thankfully for her, Keriann realizes that her dough won’t come together without ice. She changes her dish to be venison with a (repurposed) blueberry sauce.
Katie, meanwhile, is doing a bizarre-sounding stuffing with a heavy inclusion of blueberries. She says that she’s ready to take a big leap because she has immunity. More power to her.
Mei is doing another bizarre-sounding dish: roasted cabbage with trout vinaigrette and duck fat. Every season, Tom asks some chef “Did you honestly think you could win with X and X dish?” His point is typically that you are not a “Top Chef” if you serve up middling dishes that lack imagination and innovation. I can already hear him saying to Mei at Judges Table, “Did you honestly think you’d win with roasted cabbage?” I decide to trust that Mei knows what she’s doing.
As the cooking continues, the chefs start to complain about the heat. Greg says that he feels sweaty and gross. Keriann can’t wait to take a shower that night. I start to laugh. This is obviously not Boston in the week before Thanksgiving. There are few in that city who complain about heat at the end of November. The judges and diners sit down at their table. It is quite obviously midday in the summer, and the guests are all baking in direct Boston sunlight. Again, I laugh out loud. Who in their right mind eats outdoors in Boston around Thanksgiving?
Meanwhile, Stacy is plating a clam dish. She’s squatting in the dirt, pulling clams out of her iron skillet and adding garnishments. Adam wonders from a hygiene perspective whether that’s a good idea.
The first group is up and they’re an unambiguous hit with the judges and diners. Doug’s spit-roasted rabbit gets raves. Katsuji has a roasted butternut squash with lobster and Tom loves the pairing. Stacy has ramp-smoked claims with butternut squash and Tom is thrilled to see her serve up “dirty food” - meaning that she allowed the dish to look rustic and focused on her flavors (though Gail and Padma note some strange sage-y, unpleasant aftertaste). Finally, Melissa has a roasted vegetable medley side dish. Tom wishes that the zucchini were cooked a little more but states that the dish had a lot of flavor. He then compliments the entire group: “You all really brought it.”
The second group is putting the finishing touches on their dishes. For Greg’s part, he’s freaking out a bit about his goose. It’s apparently “really, really chewy.” Doug notes that Greg really felt that, for Thanksgiving, they had to put a bird on the table. Goose was the only thing available, and serving it (in his opinion) was a big risk.
It’s service time and Adam kicks things off with his take on a classic succotash, with beets, corn, and summer squash (again, I laugh at the availability of summer squash in Boston during the winter). Gail loves what she’s tasting in his dish. Katie has a blueberry stuffing with blue cornmeal cornbread. Gail finds her cornbread “wacky” but notes that she might have eaten half of the bowl of stuffing. Tom declares that he’s “loving the stuffing.” Mei has a duck fat-roasted cabbage with trout vinaigrette. Gail finds the vinaigrette lovely.
Next, we have Greg with his chewy, chewy goose. BUM BUM BUM. For the first time this season, he’s offered up a dud. Gail tries to be nice and calls it “toothsome.” Ken agrees. Tom, who’s clearly a fan of Greg by this point, tries to salvage the dish by noting that the flavors were nice and pointing out that Greg chose a difficult protein.
Finally, we have Keriann’s seared venison loin with blueberry compote. It’s well received.
The chefs convene in the kitchen trying to figure out which chefs will be up for elimination. They’re having a tough time, since the judges seemed to like everyone’s food. This conclusion is borne out by the judges’ conversation happening at the same time. Tom and Padma agree that this is going to be a tough elimination because, as Tom puts it, “there wasn’t a bad dish.” Padma loved Mei’s dish and Gail agrees. Gail says that Doug’s rabbit dish was one of her favorites, and Ken says that it wasn’t predictable at all. Padma call’s Katsuji’s dish “sublime,” and Tom declares that it was “his kind of dish: sticky and savory.” Tom also was a fan of Katie’s stuffing, as he found himself going back to it over and over.
The weaker dishes are, predictably, Melissa (lacked flavor), Greg (too subtle and restrained), Keriann (sauce too sweet), and Stacy (weird flavor in certain bites). Despite these flaws, Tom thinks that Judges Table will be difficult because “someone will be going home for making a pretty good dish.”
The producers cut to Judges Table and we have Doug, Katsuji, and Mei. Tom loved the “great, intense flavor” in Katsuji’s dish, and Gail compliments his use of lobster. Padma found Doug’s rabbit delicious and Ken likes that he used the spitfire to cook his rabbit. Finally, Gail calls Mei’s cabbage “a brilliant dish,” and Ken compliments it as “pure comfort food.”
Reader of my past recaps will be familiar with my theory that “Tom f-ing gets whatever the hell he f-ing wants.” What I mean by this is that the winner of any given Elimination Challenge will be the dish that Tom liked best. This tendency is most evident during the Top Chef finales. Not once has a chef won Top Chef without being the chef whose food Tom liked best. If Tom thinks you should win, you win. Plain and simple.
And today’s episode proves this once more, with Katsuji ending up as the winner. He’s absolutely thrilled to have won an Elimination Challenge that required the chefs to cook where the first immigrants to this country cooked.
On the bottom, we have Stacy, Melissa, and Greg. Padma assures them that all three dishes were delicious, but notes that they had their flaws. Ken notes that Greg had serious “cojones” to cook goose, and Greg responds that he found it important to get a bird on the table for a Thanksgiving meal. Padma asks if it was perhaps too much of a risk, and Greg says it was “100% too much of a risk.”
Melissa says that she was happy with her dish, but Gail criticizes its simplicity, saying that it seemed to “blend into the background.”
Finally, Stacy admits to the judges that she’s feeling some pressure as the local chef. Gail thought she cooked her clams perfectly, but that there was a dirt-like flavor, which perhaps was the result of the fact that Stacy actually plated her food on the ground.
Padma again notes that the whole meal was delicious but names Stacy was the chef going home today. Stacy knew it was coming - she looked utterly defeated the entire time at Judges Table. Tom tries to console her - it was a really tasty dish, he says, but it was just the judge’s least favorite among eight other really good dishes.
Stacy says that she’s really sad about going home, but also “kinda relieved.” She says she felt so much pressure being from Boston that it would sometimes keep her up at night. Hopefully, she’s able to get a few nights of good rest before she heads off to Last Chance Kitchen.