Top Chef Charleston Recap: Episode 7
By Jason Lee
January 17, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The chefs whose signs align with fire all start going with almost literal interpretations of their sign, with Jamie and Katsuji both using fire-roasting techniques to get great char on their vegetables. There’s also a lot of heat from Sylva and Brooke. The air and water chefs go a bit more abstract, with Casey trying to be a playful Aquarius with a chicken wing stuffed with ‘nduja sausage (cause nothing says fun like meat products stuffed with meat!). In the end, Jamie, Katsuji, and Sheldon end up on top. Jamie’s lamb chop with pepper salad and cashew jus takes the cake (so to speak) based on his balance of heat in both components of his dish, while Katsuji (with a brilliant charred onion and cauliflower puree) and Sheldon (with a smart Pilipino ceviche) console themselves as runners up.
There’s more drama on the lower end of things, as the chefs pray to the culinary gods not to hear their names associated with the bottom three. Finding out that the gods aren’t huge fans of this year’s rookie class, it’ll be Jim, Sylva, and Emily cooking to stay on the show. Jim had a charred bison with watermelon dashi that was more water than fire. Sylva’s fire-roasted poblanos with couscous was underseasoned. And Emily… sigh, living-on-the-edge-of-elimination Emily… her last minute decision to incorporate spaetzle in her dish diverted her attention away from her pan-roasted chicken, which lacked texture and flavor (priorities, Emily, priorities!!).
In a very Beat Bobby Flay, we won’t be judges for this next round of cooking, type of move, Graham Elliot will decide which rookie goes home, with a little help from Padma and Guest Judge Michael Cimarusti. As none of the chefs had zodiac signs associated with earth, that will be the theme for the Sudden Death Quickfire. The three chefs will have three minutes to decide based on a tableful of earth-ish ingredients what one dish they’ll all do. Then they’ll have 20 minutes to cook. After surveying the table, Jim suggests a variety of steak dishes (steak frites, etc.) before getting overruled by Sylva and Emily in favor of steak tartare due to the time constraints.
This is a very interesting challenge from a casting point of view. Jim has been uniformly solid throughout this season and has been my pick as the rookie most likely to make it to the finale. Sylva is coming off a win in last week’s elimination challenge - the first rookie to win one. And Emily . . . well, she’s managed to escape elimination so many times thus far, one wonders if she’s destined to squeak her way into the finale.
When 20 minutes are up, Jim serves a steak tartare with arugula and egg yolk puree, which has a texture that all judges find off-putting (ah, the perils of using agar as a stabilizer). Sylva does a tataki-style steak tartare, searing the outside like a tuna steak, accompanied by a beet puree, which, apparently, is lacking in salt and flavor (including beet flavor). Finally, Emily offers a classic version of the dish with fish sauce and beet chips. In contrast to Sylva, hers is overseasoned and oversalted. In what I view as the biggest upset of the competition so far, Jim is asked to pack his knives and go. Like Silvia before him, it was a dream of Jim’s to compete on Top Chef, and he’s proud of how he did, even if it’s ending sooner than he’d hoped.
Which brings us to this week’s elimination challenge, which is the kookiest and cheesiest so far. Apparently, the pirate Blackbeard blockaded Charleston harbor 300 years ago, throwing a notorious party that led to his identification and death by the British Navy. In teams of three, the cheftestants are tasked with hosting a pirate-themed party. They’ll find their ingredients using their own treasure “map,” which has the location of treasure chests located on them (nuts, proteins, seafood, herbs, fruit, etc.). Each chest will have three types of that ingredient. The first team to each chest gets first pick, and the first team to collect all seven of their ingredients gets to start cooking first.
The red team, consisting of two local chefs (Emily and Jamie) and one visitor (John), is confident in their ability to traverse the city, despite the tropical storm lashing the coast. But while their familiarity with the city enables them to have first pick of seafood (John picks for them and goes with lobster), they fall woefully behind the other teams with the other ingredients.
Finishing first is the Yellow team (Shirley, Sheldon, and Sylva), which gets mussels, macadamia nuts, filet mignon, asparagus, fresh herbs, pineapple, and roasted red peppers. They love their ingredients, which largely go well together and will play to their strengths (I mean, c’mon, Sheldon and pineapple? Match made in heaven). Second up is the Black team (Brooke, Casey, and Katsuji), which gets preserved lemon, scallops, dried herbs, cauliflower, ground pork, brazil nuts, and raisins. Finally, the local team with the one chef with immunity starts cooking last with a bizarre pantry stocked with high-end food (lobster, truffles, and exotic herbs), and lowbrow food (oranges, chicken breast, canned peas, and peanut butter).
Per an agreement pushed through by John, Jamie agrees to take the least desirable ingredients to make a dish, as he’s immune from elimination. He decides to try and make a chicken satay with the chicken breast and peanut butter. Emily and John split the lobster… which, in John’s lingo, means Emily gets the honor of breaking down all the lobster tails while he focuses on his own gnocchi. And oh yeah, if she could grab him some bread crumbs from the pantry, that’d be greaaaaaaat.
In other red team news, their teammate, Jamie, is having some serious problems with his chicken. Someone (no clue as to who) turned off his grill, which led to his chicken breast strips sticking to the grate. He throws batch after batch of the chicken into what looks like a toaster oven to finish them off, just as the diners start to arrive in the Top Chef kitchen.
The judges head first to the Yellow team’s station, and they get rave reviews. Sylva has an asparagus soup with a soft-poached egg that is well cooked and has great flavor. So does Sheldon’s filet mignon with charred pineapple, though Tom finds it a bit too sweet. Padma declares Shirley’s take on a crewman’s stew with mussels to be delicious, and Tom likes the texture she added by including farro at the bottom.
The Black team fares much worse. Though Katsuji’s cauliflower soup with chorize is a hit with everyone, Brooke’s fried cauliflower with preserved lemon aioli is, according to Padma, an “acid bomb.” The judges can barely swallow it down. Same goes for Casey’s salt-brined scallop. Upon putting a bite of it in her mouth, Padma makes such a pained expression that Casey knows without a doubt that things are not going well. The problem, according to Tom, is that Casey decided to serve the scallops raw when they were nowhere near in good enough condition to do so. Searing them would have been the smarter way.
If the Black team thought they had it bad, it’s nothing compared to the Red team. The judges hate Emily’s fennel and lobster chowder, with its heaviness and muddy flavors. John’s lobster and canned pea gnocchi goes over well (it amazingly has good pea flavor) but Jamie’s chicken satay with pickled fennel is a disaster. Padma makes yet another “eww” face upon eating it, which Jamie takes as a bad sign (ya think?). Tom says it tasted like it came from a new-age cafeteria, and Padma criticizes the “synthetic and cloying” flavor of the sauce.
Tom has a clear understanding of what happened. He points out that the Red team dumped the bad ingredients on Jamie, who had immunity, who made a bad dish and sunk the team. Jamie realizes the same - he’s pretty guilt ridden about the fact that he made a bad dish and likely has put his teammates up for elimination. If that’s the case, he tells the other chefs in the stew room, he’ll give up immunity. The other chefs are stunned. Shirley points out that he only took those ingredients in the first place to try and help his teammates. Casey and Katsuji aren’t sure it’s even possible to relinquish immunity.
The chefs are brought to Judges’ Table and to no one’s surprise, the Red team takes top honors. Shirley’s stew didn’t look like much on the surface, but it delivered in terms of flavor and texture. Sheldon’s beef was well cooked and deftly incorporated charred pineapple. And Sylva’s asparagus soup had great flavor and an appropriate heartiness.
One dish, though, stood out in terms of making the most of the simple ingredients the team was given, and that’s Shirley’s dish. She takes home her first Elimination win, which she attributes to her teammates.
On the other end of things, there’s plenty of criticism to go around. Brooke’s dish was way too heavy on acid, and Casey’s scallops were unappetizingly fishy and not good enough to be served raw (though she vigorously contests this point). As for the Red team, John innocuously implies that Jamie, of his own volition, took the chicken breasts and peanut sauce for use in his dish before being interrupted by Emily. That was NOT how things went down, she tries to tell the judges. John was the one who tried to get Jamie to take those ingredients - taking one for the team, so to speak - and thus was basically forced to make a crappy dish cause he had immunity. She also chides John for leaving her to do all the prep work for the lobsters.
The judges, though, are focused on the actual food and dishes served, and not any behind-the-scenes shenanigans, which results in a moment that will live on in Top Chef infamy. Right before the judges dismiss the chefs to begin deliberations, Jamie asks if he might be heard. When granted permission, he offers to relinquish his immunity and be judged alongside his own teammates. Emily shakes her head in protest. Tom says that the judges will take that offer under advisement.
Back in the stew room, the cheftestants offer mad respect to Jamie. Katsuji and John both readily admit that they would have never offered up their own immunity. Jamie says that he wouldn’t have felt comfortable advancing in the competition knowing that someone else went home because of/in spite of his own dish. Back at Judges Table, Tom and Michael are insistent that Jamie cooked the worst dish, while Padma thinks Emily’s was the worst, and Graham is on the fence. They also discuss the fact that Brooke incorporated far too much acid in her dish, while Casey’s scallops were undeniably fishy… but it’s the Red team that’s on the chopping block.
When brought back before the judges, Padma recalls Jamie’s offer to relinquish immunity and asks if the offer still stands. “It does,” he says.
“Are you sure?” Padma asks one more time.
“Yeah,” he says, reading the writing on the wall.
And yes, it’s Jamie who’s going home. It’s stunning and unbelievable and frustrating and unfair and wrong . . . and yet, somehow fair and right. It’s not as if he was given bad ingredients—I mean, you’d think almost every chef on that show should be able to make something good out of chicken breasts and peanut butter. And yet, how unfair that Jamie was asked to take one for the team by using those ingredients, and now he’s, well, he’s taking one for the team.
As the chefs hug it out, Tom calls out to Emily. “To be clear,” he says, “if Jamie hadn’t done what he did, you’d be going home.”
“I don’t want him to go home,” Emily protests.
“It’s done,” Tom tells her.
And with that, as Jamie heads out the door, Emily walks back to the Stew Room. And that’s the difference between Emily and Jamie right there.