Top Chef California: Episode 1
By Jason Lee
December 7, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
(The beginning of any Top Chef season is the hardest to recap due to the sheer number of cheftestants and the fact that we simply haven’t had the chance yet to get to know everyone. Thus, I hope you’ll forgive me if I paint in broad strokes for the first few weeks.)
Our host (Padma) and head judge (Tom) start off by all but hitting us over the head with the show’s amazing track record (“amazing talent, multiple restaurants and award winners”) and the caliber of chefs that we’ll see this season. Padma asks all the executive chefs to raise their hands (a bunch) and all the James Beard award nominees to raise their hands (at least five). As bragging goes, this instance is quite impressive - a sentiment echoed by Frances, a Filipino sous chef (the only sous chef of the bunch).
Among other notable cheftestants are Renee (a spunky redhead who cites her sunny personality in the kitchen), Angelina (the youngest cheftestant this season at 24), and one self-described “sassy” chef (Amar) who introduces himself by snap-snap-snaping his fingers in the standard bitchy-Z pattern.
Well, hello to you, too.
We also have one returning chef - Grayson from Top Chef Texas - whose standout quality appears to be the fact that even though I’ve been doing these recaps for years, I barely have any recollection of her. Ominous signs from this BOPer.
Side fashion note: there’s one chef (who I don’t think ever gets introduced in the entire episode) who’s donned a spiffy green sports jacket that looks like it’s been pilfered from Hugh Acheson’s closet.
In any event, things kick off like they did last year with the infamous mise-en-place race. The cheftestants are allowed to pick amongst five classic California ingredients (chickens, oranges, artichokes, eggs, and asparagus) and prep them as quickly as possible. The nine fastest chefs will move onto round two.
Because the ingredients are first-come-first-serve, the chefs bum rush the front table and scurry back to their stations. Pity the chef whose station lies at the back of the kitchen.
One chef, Phillip (who looks like he’s auditioning for the part of “hipster chef” with his man-bun and scruffy oh-I-only-use-organic-razors beard) boasts about having already won “a bunch” of cooking shows. He names them: Chopped, Cutthroat Kitchen, Guy’s Grocery Games. Having proven himself the class of Food Network, “I guess all that’s left is Top Chef.” I can already tell that Phillip is going to rub me the wrong way this season.
The executive chefs slave away at their sous chef duties and one by one, the nine slots get filled up. The ninth appears to go to one chef (I think it was Jeremy) who has all 20 of his egg yolks separated . . . but Tom (who “demands perfection”) notes that at least one of his yolks is broken. The clock starts again and Jeremy frantically cracks open an egg—the yolk breaks. He tries again—the yolk breaks again. Then, before he can see if the third time is indeed the charm, TC alum Grayson finishes off her chickens and makes it into the next round.
The nine remaining chefs are then randomly broken up into three groups of three. They’ll have to work together to create a dish that highlights one of the five ingredients from the previous round, but the catch (in classic Top Chef fashion) is that each chef will have ten minutes to cook solo, while his or her teammates stand blindfolded. No communication will be allowed.
Renee (the sunny redhead) kicks things off for the blue team by smartly grabbing all the ingredients for her team’s dish to give her teammates hints about what to do. Isaac, a Cajun chef for the green team, does the same, using obvious cooking preparations like breading chicken breasts, to provide a blueprint for his teammates. Meanwhile, Jason kneecaps his teammates on the red team, with no clear idea of what to do, prepping both chicken thighs on the grill and wings/drumsticks as a backup.
Nothing much happens with Frances on the blue team, but Grayson for the green team is able to follow the lead set by Isaac. Unsurprisingly, Jeremy on the red team has no idea what Jason was trying to do, and sticks the chicken breasts in the oven. Jason frets that their next teammate (absent communication) will never discover the chicken breasts in the oven.
The anchors now take over, with Amar (a chef from the Dominican Republic) finishing off the blue team’s chicken dish. Same with Carl on the green team. Wes, on the red team, has no idea that chicken breasts are in the oven, and sees only the still-partially raw wings and drumsticks on the grill. He cuts some small slices off those pieces of poultry and sautés them in a skillet.
Time is up and Tom and Padma head over to see what the chefs have come up with. The blue team offers a sweet and sour chicken breast with citrus slaw. Padma loves their use of mint.
The green team has a breaded chicken breast with brown butter asparagus and a mushroom sauce. Tom finds the chicken pleasingly moist.
Finally, the red team serves up what Padma dubs “an appetizer”: grilled chicken with orange and anchovy. Tom chokes on the dish’s overuse of anchovy.
Surprising absolutely no one, the red team is on the bottom. Tom declares that the balance was “out of whack” and was the only dish that tasted like it was made by three different chefs. With immunity up for grabs for the winning team, the blue team (comprised of Renee, Frances, and Amar) edges out the green team (Isaac, Grayson, and Carl).
Wasting no time, Tom gets to the Elimination Challenge. The cheftestants are tasked with cooking for 200 VIP guests - including food critics and bloggers from across the state - at Hollywood Park. Tom warns them that the diners are individuals of such caliber that they can make or break careers. Appropriately, then, the critics will score each cheftestant’s dish, and the judges will select from among those cheftestants at the top and bottom of the scoring.
Armed with $500 each, the cheftestants inflict mass chaos on their friendly neighborhood Whole Foods. They then head back to the Top Chef kitchen where more chaos ensues. One chef (Wes) makes a total and utter mess in the kitchen, spilling ingredients and towers of used cookware all over the floor in front of his station. “If only Tom could see that,” I think to myself.
Speak of the devil. Here comes Tom and Emeril Lagasse, our guest judge for the challenge. Wes tries frantically for a few minutes to clean up, but he’s hardly made a dent in the culinary flotsam and jetsam. “What’s going on over here…” Tom asks before trailing off.
After a full day’s work, the chefs head back to their swanky house - wait a minute, they’re not at a house this year. The chefs are shacking up at the Hotel Roosevelt - an amazing hotel, but still a hotel, to be sure. I guess there’s gonna be so much traveling this season (“from Los Angeles to San Francisco”) that Bravo decided not to spring for a house. I assume Andy Cohen’s botox (with its scary results) ate up the network’s production budget.
Morning arrives and the chefs trundle out to Hollywood Park for the Elimination Challenge. Rule #1 of Top Chef states that the first chef eliminated is typically the person who simply didn’t deserve to be on the show in the first place - the chef totally out of his or her league. The exception was, of course, last year where Gregory (runner up) knocked George (fifth place) out of the running (before returning halfway through).
Each chef will be cooking in their own tent with a sign bearing their name and a picture of their home state. As the chefs prep for the challenge, Garret decides to start trash talking. In an earlier portion of the show, he revealed himself to be a self-impressed individual who talks as though he swallowed a thesaurus and now regurgitates all the words that were too long to fit in his stomach, by which I mean to say he does his utmost best to incorporate as many multisyllabic words in his speech as possible to emphasize his superior intellect. In this particular instance, after learning that Marjorie works with Top Chef All-Stars runner up Mike Isabella, Garret declares that Mike serves in his restaurants “one of the worst bastardizations of Italian food” and hopes that Marjorie has better chops than her mentor.
To paraphrase Garret: barf.
The diners arrive and the judges start sampling. I won’t bore you with a recitation of the 17 different dishes that are offered up. Suffice to say that I cheered when Tom and Padma came over to sample Garret’s Vietnamese chicken brodo and responded by criticizing his noodles (“They’re broken or overdone,” said Padma) and garlic (“What happened to them? They’re burnt,” said Tom).
#karma
The critics end up placing Isaac (Shrimp Court-Bouillon), Amar (sherry-glazed pork belly meatballs), Jeremy (crudo of pacific snapper), Carl (spiced carrot soup), and Kwame (spicy romaine with shrimp and pork) in the top five. The judges agree with some (Carl and Jeremy) and disagree on others (Padma wouldn’t put Kwame in the top five “at all”).
On the bottom are Angelina (mushy goat cheese croquette), Renee (marinated pork loin that lacked seasoning), Grayson (boring pork and veal meatballs), Garret (broken noodles/burnt garlic), and Frances (mung bean soup with bitter melon).
Back in the stew room, hipster Phillip is bragging about all the food critics and bloggers he was able to recognize on sight. Massive eye rolling from the other chefs commences. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s already irritated by him.
Padma calls the chefs out to Judges Table, and Tom opens by hailing the fact that apart from minor issues, no single dish stood out as God awful as happens “a lot the first round.” Announced as the judge’s top three (of the critics’ top five) are Amar, Jeremy, and Carl. Gail praises Amar’s meatballs as anything but ordinary, Padma loved the balance of carrot and spices in Carl’s soup, and Tom thought Jeremy made a delicious version of a predictable dish.
Emeril, as a side note, comments on how organized Jeremy’s station was. “There are others who should take note,” Padma muses pointedly. The cameraman immediately shoots a close-up of Wes, who doesn’t look nearly as ashamed as he should.
The winning dish, Emeril says, stood out as one that deftly combined strong, clean flavors. I assume he’s talking about Carl and his carrot soup, but Jeremy with his snapper crudo takes home the prize. I don’t feel like I have a great gauge on his skills, but if history is any indicator, Jeremy now has a great shot to make it very far on the show.
On the opposite side of things, with Rene and Frances immune from elimination, the bottom three are made up of Angelina (the young’un), Grayson (the alum), and Garret (the asshat). Gail chides Angelina for not doing a dish that tried in some way to push the envelope (guess a croquette doesn’t qualify as cutting edge?). Garret, despite his attempts to weasel out of the fact that Emeril/Gail got a tasty version of his dish while Tom/Padma got a soggy noodle/burnt garlic version, gets slammed for inconsistency.
Finally, Padma turns to Grayson and says, “it can’t feel good to be standing up here.” I feel bad for Grayson. She looks at the judges and says, “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy my dish.” The entire table erupts with protestations from the judges. I’m very surprised. Tom says that the critics were the ones who put her in the bottom of the challenge, and Gail explains that Grayson just didn’t do enough to make her dish interesting. “It could have come from any Italian restaurant in the country,” she says. Emeril, saying he’s going to “cut through the bullshit,” admits that he had higher expectations for her.
“I’ll put on sparkles next time,” Grayson promises sarcastically.
“The carrot soup was simple,” Padma points out.
“You can be simple and still exciting,” Gail adds.
Applying Rule #1, I really think that either Angelina or Grayson is going home. Neither had a well-conceived dish, neither showed real ambition, and neither (it seems) has the chops necessary to make a deep run in this competition. There’s no real wrong choice available for the judges. Angelina and Grayson are prime examples of when being mediocre is simply less than mediocre.
“If you think this kitchen is crowded,” Tom says, “think about all the thousands of restaurants and hundreds of thousands of chefs out there. Think about why chefs stand out - great technique, taking something simple and making it exciting, and telling your own story. Those are all things needed to win, and things needed to make a restaurant stand out in a crowded field.” He casts a pointed look around the room. “Just a piece of advice.”
And the cheftestant leaving the show tonight is… Garret! WHOA. I am totally, totally shocked. “It was a more exciting dish,” Tom explains, “but it was the only one with a real mistake.” That’s a fair point.
Meanwhile, Garret is wasting no time saying goodbye to the judges and bidding farewell to the other cheftestants. He clearly has no interest in prolonging this experience now that he’s officially out of the running.
The chefs slowly make their way back to the stew room. “One little thing sends you home,” one muses. The silence that meets this statement more than demonstrates how much the point is hitting home. Burn some garlic and you too could be out. Hipster Phillip comments that he had initially thought of Top Chef as something akin to a vacation. That’s right, Phillip. It’s the only type of vacation where you pack knives in your carry on.
The next morning, the cheftestants receive a letter from Padma. “Please meet me on the roof.” As ominous, grey clouds hang overhead (hey, I thought those don’t exist in SoCal), Padma reminds them of her previous warning that the first few days would be intense. “We want you to get to know LA a little better,” she says, “so your next challenge will have you opening four pop-ups across the city.”
“Today.”
One chef’s reaction says it all: “Holy f*.”