Top Chef: Texas Recap
By David Mumpower and Kim Hollis
January 25, 2012
Restaurant Wars brought the girls in over the guys, but not before they acted nasty to each other. Here's how the remaining contestants stack up:
1) Paul - Paul has won more money in this competition thus far than the average winner of the Showcase Showdown on The Price Is Right. He is absolutely dominant.
2) Edward - This is the only chef we currently believe has a legitimate shot at beating Paul for the title of Top Chef. Yes, anything can happen in an elimination challenge as we witnessed last year when Mike Isabella got hot at the end and almost won Top Chef All Stars. Still, when we look at the overall performance of the remaining contestants, the difference between second and third place seems dramatic.
3) Grayson - This is the point in the competition where I remind you that Grayson and Ed barely earned chef coats this season. They were the final two players to earn admission when they beat four others in a cook-off. Imagine what the season would be like if neither of the duo had earned a spot. Gruesome, right?
4) Sarah - In the first episode of the season, Sarah’s rage led to Keith’s elimination but not before he pointed out that she threw him under the bus. She denied the charge at the time; last week, she grabbed a bus driver hat and driving gloves and went over to Beverly’s house. To Sarah’s extreme frustration, Beverly refused to come outside and get thrown under the bus, which is pretty damned selfish of her. Doesn’t Beverly know that Sarah is only thinking of others when she selfishly targets “teammates” for elimination? Some people.
5) Beverly - Oops, there goes another rubber tree.
6) Lindsay - Lindsay is apparently a prom queen and a college valedictorian and while we compliment her for such achievements in life (well, the valedictorian part anyway), the fact that she felt the need to offer up such tidbits about her personal life strikes us as an insecure act. She won two episodes ago and finished on the high end last week in a technical sense even if she was the worst performer overall. Other than that, she has been in the middle just about every week and the other people from that group are almost all gone. This tips her over to the weak side of the remaining players and she seems to know this, which is why she is psyching herself up by talking about things she has done in the past. What she has not done this season is finish magna cum laude in cooking.
7) Chris - Chris has finished in the bottom group in four out of the last six challenges. The fact that he is still in the competition is a statistical anomaly. And we are not just saying that because we still have nightmares about the cigar.
Previously on Top Chef, restaurants warred. The result was the surprise in that the best two chefs remaining in the competition, Paul and Edward, were selected to the same squad and Edward’s buddy Ty was onboard as well. In spite of the clear advantage on paper, the men lost the war of the sexes as Beverly stepped up her game and won the competition, much to the chagrin of Sarah. She seemed perfectly willing to lose the challenge in order to eliminate her “teammate” Beverly from the competition. We are starting to suspect that there is some sort of vengeful spirit on the show this season; it inhabits the bodies of large women in order to torture petite women.
The strange aspect of Beverly’s personality conflicts is that they seem to bring out the best in her cooking. The week that vile hose beast Heather was eliminated from the show, Beverly finished in the top group. In the most recent episode, two members of a four player team actively worked against her yet she won the challenge. Beverly is proving to be the culinary world’s answer to Rocky.
Tonight’s episode begins with a scare for the remaining players. Tom enters the kitchen moments after the elimination of Ty, but his only reason is to inform the chefs that they are returning to San Antonio. This leads to a hysterical driving sequence. The men lament their loss in Restaurant Wars yet they are still jovial with one another. The men this season seem to genuinely enjoy one another’s company. The women…well, the magic word for the car ride is catty.
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