TOP CHEF ALL STARS Spoilers
Jan. 6th, 2011 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filkertomI didn't get around to a post of week before last, when the Quickfire Challenge was freakin' sadistic and Spike was eliminated in the main challenge for, effectively, slacking off. Buh-bye, Spikester. Don't let the door etc.
This week's Quickfire Challenge was time-based: come up with a good dish in the amount of time it takes a world-famous chef to do so.
Said chef being Tom Colicchio.
Holy crap, can that man move. Final time: 8:37. And the dish looked great.
Several people didn't even really get their dishes done. Blais, Marcel, and Mike did (Marcel had a beautifully sneaky tactic -- when everyone else was rushing for the fridge, he went for Tom's leftover sea bass), and Mike won a Toyota Prius for his efforts, along with immunity for the Elimination Challenge.
Unfortunately for everybody else, the Elimination Challenge is a killer: As a team, the chefs have to take over lunch rush at the Grand Harmony, a popular Dim Sum restaurant in NYC's Chinatown. This reeks of disaster from the get-go, and that's pretty much the way it falls out. Or down. Or apart.
To let you know how it goes: Casey actually picks chicken feet. One hundred eighty chicken feet. Each of which has to be trimmed of four claws before anything else can be done with it.
The diners, mostly Chinese people who eat here a lot, are waiting... and waiting... and waiting. Some of them get up to get their own food from the carts, rather than wait for it to get to the table. When they get it, they can't necessarily identify it. As summed up by one customer, "Caucasian dim sum." And it's coming so slowly that diners are starting to pick up and leave.
Colicchio eventually goes to the kitchen to "raise some hell". This doesn't much work. Egos get in the way, and The Team quickly becomes Every Chef For Him- Or Herself. By the time it's all over, they know Judges' Table is going to suck.
They're not wrong. It was frickin' brutal, watching those poor chefs try to defend themselves and their dishes when they knew everything had gone south.
Angelo, Tiffany D., Fabio, and Dale had the best food, and Dale won. It was interesting: Dale had said at the outset that this one was his to lose, and he was right, but all through Judges' Table he looked as if he expected to get kicked. As he said after, "I feel like I robbed the bank on that one. We were all morons. Service sucked -- it was terrible."
Given the judges' descriptions of everything as they went over the bad dishes, I had the vibe that Casey might get the boot, and she did. Again, no great loss, as far as I'm concerned. Most of the rest of 'em had an off day, but Jamie had a doubly bad day, and Casey's just sucked from concept to execution (done by Antonia, but with no supervision or even particular instruction from Casey).
At this point, I think it's getting down to the nitty and the gritty. Richard Blais is still a top contender, as are, I suppose, Angelo, Dale and Mike. I really don't think Tiffany, or Jamie are going to be there much longer. Same with Antonia and, sadly, Carla. Tiffani and Tre... maybe. Fabio is, surprisingly, turning out to be quite the wild card this season. Marcel... he's gonna get pushed down a dumbwaiter by one of the others any day now.
Thoughts?
This week's Quickfire Challenge was time-based: come up with a good dish in the amount of time it takes a world-famous chef to do so.
Said chef being Tom Colicchio.
Holy crap, can that man move. Final time: 8:37. And the dish looked great.
Several people didn't even really get their dishes done. Blais, Marcel, and Mike did (Marcel had a beautifully sneaky tactic -- when everyone else was rushing for the fridge, he went for Tom's leftover sea bass), and Mike won a Toyota Prius for his efforts, along with immunity for the Elimination Challenge.
Unfortunately for everybody else, the Elimination Challenge is a killer: As a team, the chefs have to take over lunch rush at the Grand Harmony, a popular Dim Sum restaurant in NYC's Chinatown. This reeks of disaster from the get-go, and that's pretty much the way it falls out. Or down. Or apart.
To let you know how it goes: Casey actually picks chicken feet. One hundred eighty chicken feet. Each of which has to be trimmed of four claws before anything else can be done with it.
The diners, mostly Chinese people who eat here a lot, are waiting... and waiting... and waiting. Some of them get up to get their own food from the carts, rather than wait for it to get to the table. When they get it, they can't necessarily identify it. As summed up by one customer, "Caucasian dim sum." And it's coming so slowly that diners are starting to pick up and leave.
Colicchio eventually goes to the kitchen to "raise some hell". This doesn't much work. Egos get in the way, and The Team quickly becomes Every Chef For Him- Or Herself. By the time it's all over, they know Judges' Table is going to suck.
They're not wrong. It was frickin' brutal, watching those poor chefs try to defend themselves and their dishes when they knew everything had gone south.
Angelo, Tiffany D., Fabio, and Dale had the best food, and Dale won. It was interesting: Dale had said at the outset that this one was his to lose, and he was right, but all through Judges' Table he looked as if he expected to get kicked. As he said after, "I feel like I robbed the bank on that one. We were all morons. Service sucked -- it was terrible."
Given the judges' descriptions of everything as they went over the bad dishes, I had the vibe that Casey might get the boot, and she did. Again, no great loss, as far as I'm concerned. Most of the rest of 'em had an off day, but Jamie had a doubly bad day, and Casey's just sucked from concept to execution (done by Antonia, but with no supervision or even particular instruction from Casey).
At this point, I think it's getting down to the nitty and the gritty. Richard Blais is still a top contender, as are, I suppose, Angelo, Dale and Mike. I really don't think Tiffany, or Jamie are going to be there much longer. Same with Antonia and, sadly, Carla. Tiffani and Tre... maybe. Fabio is, surprisingly, turning out to be quite the wild card this season. Marcel... he's gonna get pushed down a dumbwaiter by one of the others any day now.
Thoughts?
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Date: 2011-01-06 06:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-06 09:33 pm (UTC)Carla still has time to raise her game, but she needs to get it done soon. Mike and Fabio are both surprising me; I'd had them in the lower middle of the pack going in, but it's good to see them bringing it.
Jamie and Antonia were both lucky that Casey was around this week. (Though, to be fair, had Antonia merely done her one dish, and not collaborated on the beans or volunteered to do the chicken feet, she wouldn't have been in any danger.)
Double elimination next week. If this fishing ep is as much fun as the one on Top Chef: Masters was, we are in for a treat.