Restaurant Wars - Part IV

Top Chef - Season 4, Episode 11

Previously on Top Chef: The chefs looked at Lisa's terrible challenge placement record and were terrified of her cooking prowess, so someone sabotaged her rice. Either that or she just plain sucks. Not having to work on a team made Dale's competence soar, and he took the challenge win. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, Lisa sold Andrew out to the judges. His bizarre food and disdain for the challenge rules (after all, it's Top Chef 4 - Challenge Parameters Are Beneath Us!) had probably sealed his fate anyway, but it sure showed what Lisa's like when the mask falls off. It's not much different from when the mask is on. I think Lisa needs a new mask. Six chefs remain. Who will be eliminated tonight?

Opening menu. I made a salsa with corn, black beans, onion, tomato, cilantro, lime juice, cumin, and a little oil and sugar. It turned out well, though chopping the tomato and onion took four times what the entire prep time should have taken.

5:45 AM. Ptom sneaks into the house, and rouses the chefs from their beds. Luckily, nobody's naked. Everyone groggily heads down to the kitchen, where Ptom explains today's Quickfire.

LabRat: "You all have to come clean my house."

Ptom says that they're headed to a local greasy spoon diner to work the egg station for breakfast. Spike outlines how difficult that can be, after which we hear the traditional pointless interviews about how everyone wants to win, and how there's no room for error anymore, and blah blah blah.

Quickfire. The chefs walk into a crowded diner, and Dale says that there's a line out the door. I don't get that. I can see waiting around for dinner, but rare is the mood where I'll willingly stand around for a long time so that I can pay for the pleasure of scrambled eggs. Ptom settles at the counter with coffee and a paper, pausing only to introduce the diner's owner Helene, who will be observing the chefs and selecting a winner. The chefs get to watch how the kitchen runs for a few minutes, and will then take turns working the egg station or "The Hole". Heh. Antonia and her "Yo Biotch!" shirt are up first. She makes sure to call back her orders to the waitstaff, and Helene nods her approval. She holds down the line fairly well until Helene calls time. Stephanie, holding her own in the Fuck Up Every Quickfire Mini-Competition, ruins several eggs. Richard has issues with diner lingo, though we never hear any. Lisa melts styrofoam to-go containers. Spike is flustered. Dale has a lot of orders come in at once, but manages to rise to the occasion.

Results. Helene says that it's a tough challenge, and that all the chefs did a remarkable job. Remarkable enough that no bottom people are mentioned; only the two who most impressed Helene. Those two are Antonia and Dale, and Antonia scores the win. Yay! Ptom congratulates her, and tells her that she'll have an advantage in the upcoming Elimination Challenge. We all know that it's pretty even money at this point whether an "advantage" lives up to its name, so I'll believe it when I hear it. Ptom says that he'll be attending a charity event later, and won't be present for the Elimination Challenge. Double yay! Actually, that's not entirely fair. Ptom has been pretty tolerable so far this season. He sends them on their way. I ignore some wretched, awkward product placement.

Elimination Challenge. The chefs come into a large, mostly empty room, where they're met by Padma. She informs them that tomorrow night, they'll be running their own restaurants. Hey, I thought Restaurant Wars was replaced by the wedding challenge! I guess not. I don't enjoy the Restaurant Wars challenge as much as the chefs do, but who am I to step on their excitement? The chefs will be split into two teams, and each will receive about 35 diners. They'll have $1500 for food and $5000 for decor. As the winner of the Quickfire, Antonia gets to choose the team she works with. That sounds good, although being given that choice is often fraught with peril. Antonia has now been designated the team leader whether she likes it or not, so if the team goes down, it's likely that she'll be eliminated. Yikes.

Antonia is no fool, and picks Stephanie and Richard without hesitation, leaving Dale, Lisa, and Spike stuck together again. It pleases me enormously that the chefs with the crappiest personalities keep getting thrown together and have a miserable time, never thinking to examine why things are going so poorly. Stephanie points out that this is kind of a Wedding Wars rematch. Well, rather than assign different nicknames each time like I did with that episode, let's just go with the obvious and call Antonia/Richard/Stephanie Team Winner and Spike/Dale/Lisa Team Loser. Dale thinks Team Loser will do okay, now that they've dropped the dead weight that was Nikki. Yeah, SHE was the reason you guys sucked. Keep telling yourself that.

The chefs have an hour to plan. Team Winner takes a popular route by coming up with a "fine dining food in a very relaxed atmosphere" concept. In other words, "Let's make whatever the hell we want." Team Loser is going to do Asian food, of course. Lisa says it'll be "fun, good vibe, good energy". Has she met her teammates? Has she met herself? She and Dale flip a coin to determine who will be executive chef, and Dale wins, if the duty to look after this crew of infants can be considered "winning". Lisa interviews that Dale has pissed off a lot of people, especially herself and Spike, which makes her nervous for the team. See what I mean about how these three never really examine why their teams never work? Spike says that it's time for Team Loser to pull together and be professional. And naturally, Spike is the arbiter of workplace decorum. Don't you tell your coworkers that they're little bitches?

Commercials. Watching companies try to sell cars in the middle of a economic downturn rife with soaring gas prices is sort of funny, in a morbid kind of way.

With eight hours until the restaurants open, the teams go to Whole Foods for an hour of shopping time. Antonia points out that there won't be a well-stocked Kitchen to help them out this time, so they're just buying anything that they may need. Dale grabs some rice that claims to be good for rice puddings. After they check out, it's off to Pier 1 for another hour of shopping. Spike interviews that he's taking front-of-house responsibilities for this challenge, which he says will be tough. Yeah, "tough" in the sense that nobody who's ever taken front-of-house has ever been eliminated. Nice cover, Spike. Stephanie wants to keep Team Winner's restaurant decor fairly simple, while Spike says Team Loser's buying tons of Buddhas. With five hours until service, the chefs head into the restaurant space. Stephanie seems overly confident of Team Winner's victory, which makes me nervous. Why am I so jittery tonight? Lisa and Dale can't even choose what part of the kitchen to work in without getting snippy. Antonia says that she'll be executive chef for Team Winner, with Richard as sous chef and Stephanie on front-of-house.

Each course has two options. Team Winner's first course will be a beet and goat cheese salad with ras el hanout, or some linguine with clams. The second course will be trout with cauliflower or leg of lamb with some lamb loin as well. Dessert will be Stephanie's Gorgonzola cheesecake or Richard's banana "scallops", which we've seen before. Team Loser's first course will be a choice between shrimp laksa or pork and pickled plum pot stickers. The second course will be butterscotch miso scallops or braised short ribs, and dessert will be Dale's halo-halo and a mango sticky rice. Antonia points out again that Dale is fairly incapable of anything but Asian food. Is that such a detriment, though? I'm all for being well-rounded, but if you're going to specialize, Asian food is a good way to go. It's not like it'll ever be unpopular.

Spike is busy decorating, but makes sure he has some stamp on the food. He'll be braising the short ribs, which he says doesn't take a lot of work. Team Winner discovers that they didn't buy pasta, so they have to make their own. Man, if this season weren't already subtitled "Challenge Parameters Are Beneath Us!", then "Top Chef 4 - It's Pastariffic!" would be there to snap it up. Antonia worries about getting it done on time. At this point, Anthony Bourdain strides into the kitchen, as he is taking Ptom's place for the week.

Tiffany: "Hi, I'm here to be condescending."

The chefs are appropriately nervous. Spike interviews that if anyone can identify good Asian food, it's Anthony, so that adds some pressure. Both teams present a nice, united front. Everything's going great! No problems here! Anthony comes out to give the audience his impressions, and it is here that we discover that the major problem with the Ptimewasting segment rests with Ptom. Anthony says that Team Winner has deliberately created modest expectations, which makes it that much easier to exceed them. Meanwhile, Team Loser has a more challenging menu, which means they'll either do really well or really poorly. He says that they're confident with preparing Asian food, but "Asia's big. How good can you be at all of those things?" Lisa's laksa, in particular, must meet a high expectation, but if Team Loser can pull it off, it will be a major accomplishment. So Anthony just gave us information that was pertinent, insightful, and even kind of funny. Ptom can rarely dredge up even one of the three. Can we make this replacement permanent?

Anthony walks back into the kitchen, and tells the teams that since there's so much to do, they'll each get an additional pair of hands to help them. In come Jennifer, Nikki, Mark, and Andrew. Anthony Troy McClures that the chefs may remember these guys from such shows as this one. Hehe. Antonia is thrilled to have someone to roll out Team Winner's pasta. Team Loser gets to pick first. Andrew looks as psycho as ever, and Mark looks as stoned as ever, so Team Loser snags Jenn. Nikki the Pasta Queen is, of course, welcome over at Team Winner. Mark and Andrew leave, with Mark wishing everyone luck. Anthony tells the chefs they've got three hours left, and to make good use of their time.

Back to work, scrubs! Dale's halo-halo is to be accompanied by an avocado mousse, but one of the avocados must have been off, because the mixture is brown mush, and looks disgusting. He says he'll try to fix it, and if he can't, they'll toss it off the menu. Disappointing, but simple enough, right? Yes, but this is Dale we're talking about, so setbacks aren't met with calm competence; they're met with cursing and tantrums. Team Loser's problems continue when Lisa discovers that her rice has been pulled off the heat before it's done. Maybe Lisa should just avoid rice for the rest of her time. I don't even mean her time on the show. I mean her time on Earth. So now they're both in bad moods, and Lisa says that that's all Dale's fault, because she can't be cheerful when people around her are sour. Handy. Over at Team Winner, Nikki is proving more useful than just providing another pair of hands, as she discovers a lot of grit in the clams. Richard says that they should be fine, but Nikki tests them again, and finds grit again, so Antonia decides the clams should be rewashed. She interviews that rather than squabbling over individual dishes, they're all making sure that everything is successful, so that the entire team can win. How far in life does she expect to get with that reasonable, respectful attitude? She should punch a locker or something.

Lisa asks Dale to taste her food (the laksa, I think), and he says that he's not getting any spice off of it, just smoke. Spike finds something off about it, too. The editors do a nice job of showing the contrast between the two teams by Dale's interview that it's Lisa's soup, so what does he care if it sucks, and Spike's that nobody can hold him accountable for any problems with the food. Now, that's an attitude that'll get you ahead in life! With one hour until service, some waitstaff enters. Stephanie gives them the menu, and emphasizes having a good, fun experience. She doesn't want it to be a stuffy, suit-and-tie affair. And...contrast! Spike puts on a suit and tie, and isn't wearing a hat, for once. I'm surprised he was able to resist. He sets his waiters to work on setting tables and polishing flatware. With forty-five minutes left, Lisa finds that her mango sticky rice isn't sticky. Quick quiz! Does the blame for this lie with:

a) Lisa
b) Anyone in the world except Lisa

I'll bet you can guess Lisa's answer. Yes, she was "forced into" doing the sticky rice. Huh, I guess they edited out the scene where she was beaten with sticks until she tearfully agreed to take that on. Dale comes up with a suggestion to fold in a pastry cream to make the rice stickier, but when she does that, it turns out like mush. Dale tells her to throw it in a pot (and heat it, presumably) to season it. Time begins to wind down. Everyone makes final preparations. The doors open, and diners begin to flood in. Stephanie pastes a generic hey-there-how-can-I-help-you smile on her face.

Commercials. If you don't eat soy bars, how will you ever master the jump rope?

Stephanie seats some diners. Antonia interviews that historically, all teams have some disaster befall them in this challenge. It never goes entirely well for anyone. Spike hopes his underdog team can come from behind. I hope they fail miserably, and all three of them are eliminated. The judges head to Team Winner's side first. Padma introduces the judges. Along with herself and Anthony, Ted is again stepping in for Gail (boo!), and this week's guest judge is Jose Andres, a chef from Spain who will soon have a show on PBS. I love Spanish food; I may have to check that out. Antonia and Richard hop to get the judges' food ready in a hurry. Ted is pissy before he even takes a bite. My patience with him has almost entirely run out, especially because from what little I've read, the contestants have far more food and cooking credentials than him. Anyway, Stephanie serves and explains the first course. The beet salad looks kind of strange, but I've always had kind of a roller coaster relationship with beets, so I'm not the best judge. The linguine and clams comes with some sausage and a horseradish creme fraiche. The judges like everything more than they expected to, and the regular diners enjoy it as well.

The next course is the trout with cauliflower and the two kinds of lamb. The presentation is lovely, which the judges note. They also like all the flavors. Can it be? Could a team actually pull off a successful Restaurant Wars menu? Only dessert will tell. Stephanie brings out the savory Gorgonzola cheesecake with a sweet potato puree and a concord grape sauce. Richard's banana "scallops" are served with a banana guacamole and chocolate ice cream. I'd really like to try both of those dishes. Although the brown, poopy smear of chocolate on the plate doesn't appeal to the judges, the flavors do, and they also give points for difficulty in combining a sweet and savory dessert. Go Team Winner! The judges head over to Team Loser.

Panny: "Oh, this is going to be one nightmare after another."

Spike seats the judges, and silently endures their barbs about the purple napkins. Lisa frets over her crappy laksa. Dale yells at the waiters to take out the food, then calls them assholes when they go. Wouldn't you love to work for him? Spike presents the spicy coconut shrimp laksa (in very pretty bowls, I must say), and the pork and pickled plum pot stickers. The pot stickers get a good review, but the laksa is too smoky, just as Dale said it was. Spike comes back to the kitchen long enough to whine about the portion size of the short rib. After Lisa and Dale shoo him out, Dale calls him a fucking idiot. Seriously, the line to have Dale as your boss forms at the left. Hey, where's everyone going? The short ribs look good. They're served with pickled red cabbage and an apple basil salad. The butterscotch miso scallops are served with spicy eggplant and some pickled long beans. The butterscotch sauce is not a hit with either the judges or the diners.

Dale asks a mild question about Lisa's rice, and she snaps at him for seemingly no reason. Let's stick to calling Dale an asshole when he's actually being one, please. It's not like you'll have to wait too long for the opportunity. In fact, it takes approximately two seconds, as he begins yelling at Spike and the waiters again. Lisa hates Dale. Dale hates Lisa. Everyone hates both of them. Spike brings out dessert. The halo-halo looks like wheat germ juice. The mango sticky rice has toasted coconut on top. The judges say the halo-halo comes across as predictable, but successful. "Compared to this atrocity," Padma says, holding up the sticky rice. I think she may be drunk. Nobody likes it at all. Anthony calls it "baby vomit with wood chips". The diners agree that Team Loser's dessert sucked. Some noses are wrinkled in disgust. They fill out comment cards for both teams, which the judges will take into account. The chefs try to schmooze the diners for compliments. Jennifer tells Dale she hopes she was helpful. Well, I doubt she could have made this team any worse, so there's that. Spike says that Team Loser's diners didn't hear any hint of the turmoil in the kitchen, and loved everything. He then immediately goes on to say that both Dale and Lisa suck. In other words "We should totally win! But if we don't, it's not my fault!"

Commercials. Is it me, or is Bravo's lineup getting worse by the season? Once Project Runway jumps ship, what's left besides this show?

Judges' Table. The teams toast each other. Padma comes back to the Kitchen, and summons Team Winner to the table. The front of Richard's faux-hawk is pushed back, and he looks even loopier than usual. Team Winner is unsurprisingly declared victorious. Even Anthony was very impressed by the team's comportment and performance. Jose gets to announce this week's individual winner, and he chooses Stephanie, which I said in the short version was weird. I was thinking it was odd that the front-of-house person would win a challenge based on food, but since the judges saw her pasta and her cheesecake as standouts, it makes sense now. She wins two tickets to a culinary and wine tasting tour in Barcelona. Oh, snap! I've been there, but was horribly sick the whole time, and never got to enjoy it properly. Back in the Kitchen, Stephanie gives everyone on Team Loser a good-luck hug before they head to their doom.

Odd Asian music. Actually, I guess the Asian music makes total sense this week! OK, so... Asian music. Gong. Team Loser lines up, the expression on their faces showing that they're ready for battle, or at least a big hissyfit. Padma makes the remark that "a lot of the diners considered you the weaker team in this challenge". That sounds pretty fishy to me, like the comments were pretty evenly spread, and they're trying to bury it in semantics. I think it's great that this team lost, but don't see why the judges can't just say so. Asked who picked the ugly napkins, Spike says it was all three of them. Ah. So Spike, who earlier tried to wriggle out of any responsibility for anything not front-of-house related, is now trying to wriggle out of front-of-house related problems as well. He's hilarious, and not in the way he thinks he is. Anthony makes a good point when he says that the upscale decor only added to Team Loser's problems, as it suggested a place where a greasy dumpling is unforgivable, rather than a place where a greasy dumpling would be a delight.

The judges go on to excoriate the food. Dale takes responsibility for the butterscotch sauce, and admits that it was too sweet. Lisa takes responsibility for the laksa, and admits that it was too smoky. My hopes that these obnoxious freaks might actually act like adults this week rise. Except for Spike, of course, who's now busily explaining that his laksa is way better than Stupid Lisa Garbargeface's. Dale is asked where he was in this whole laksa process, and he says that he doesn't know laksa at all, and trusted his teammates to know what they were doing. That's a reasonable response, but the judges go back to that annoying argument they love so, which is that the executive chef is automatically to blame for anything going wrong. Asked about the relative highlight of the braised short ribs, the three chefs babble for a while before it's settled that they were Spike's recipe, but that Lisa and Dale actually made them.

Now, to the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad sticky rice. Here is where my hopes for a mature Judges' Table go up in flames. Lisa says she's never made sticky rice before, and that Dale selected the rice that went into it. This sparks a huge fight about whether he did or did not select the rice (he did), but neither of them seems to get that the kind of rice that went into this crap dessert isn't particularly germane to why it failed. After Dale and Lisa fight again, some more, FOREVER, Anthony intervenes. Jose is disgusted by the way they're acting, saying that these attitudes are not what this business is about. He then completely nails Spike for shrewdly choosing front-of-house duties to keep himself out of the line of fire. There's some talk about whether Dale, as executive chef, should have been able to keep a tighter rein on Lisa. I don't really buy that, just as I didn't when Lee Anne was blamed for not keeping control of Stephen. Trying to boss Lisa around would have made the experience even worse. They throw trite cliches at each other. The chefs are dismissed.

Deliberations. Team Loser was obviously working at cross-purposes from the very start. Spike is nothing to write home about, but did his job properly. I guess his tendency to ignore food and focus on the game actually paid off for once. Dale's butterscotch sauce was horrible. Lisa screwed up both of her dishes, and can't accept a word of criticism. Back in the Kitchen, Lisa and Spike snipe about Dale in whispers, and he crabs for them to just come out and say it. In the next sentence, he pretends not to care, and tells them they can whisper all they want. Convincing. And drop the fucking "street" gestures, please. You're about as intimidating as a Hello Kitty backpack full of daisies. The judges make a decision.

Commercials. Oh, I was wrong about the Bravo awards show giving out awards to other Bravo shows. So, it's not completely ridiculous. Just unnecessary.

Elimination. None of the chefs stepped up to the challenges of running a restaurant. Dale fell down on leadership, and his scallop dish was disgusting. Lisa made horrible food. Spike avoided trouble, whether by guile or luck. And with that, it's over to Padma for the chopping. I expect Lisa to go. The rest of the viewing party expects Lisa to go. Various plant life in Sweden expects Lisa to go. I begin to make an "L" in my notebook. Dale. Please pack your knives and go. Whaaaaaaaaa? Listen, I'm no fan of Dale's. I'd do a cartwheel right now if there were enough room, pleased as punch that I won't have to put up with this annoying twat anymore. But really? Dale over Lisa? I think in this challenge, it should really boil down to overall potential. Dale fucked up some food and has a terrible attitude. Lisa fucked up some food and has a terrible attitude. Dale failed to maintain a good line of communication with "his sous chef". Lisa failed to treat her "boss" with the proper respect. Based on the challenge alone, either one of them would be ripe for elimination, so why not cut the one whose food is consistently bad? What a strange choice.

Dale thanks the judges, but I'm not going to buy any pretense of class from someone who works overtime at being unpleasant. The chefs on Team Winner are just as shocked as everyone else to hear of Dale's elimination. In his final interview, he says he's happy with who he is, and tears up as he admits that he has trouble saying good-bye, though he manages one for everyone except his sworn enemy. He says he's made some bad decisions, but that doesn't make him a bad chef. No, he's probably a good chef. He's just a shitty human being.

P.S. - Anthony Bourdain's blog entry about this episode is worth reading. I agree with almost all of his points, except that chef personality clearly enters into decisions. Maybe not in this case, but if you look at the personas of the competitors and the order of elimination in all four seasons, you could practically plot most episodes' outcomes on a graph.

Overall Grade: B