Bitter, Party of Fifty

Top Chef - Season 5, Episode 2

Previously on Top Chef: Seventeen people with dreams of fame and glory came to New York City, but they weren't those other four thousand people who come to New York City each day with dreams of fame and glory. Stefan won the Quickfire, while...Laura? Erin? Whoever it was, she got kicked off the show before her luggage arrived on the airport carousel. The three gay chefs coalesced into a clique, and though Ariane did her best to keep them together by making terrible farro risotto, the rainbow lost a chunk of its hues with the elimination of Patrick. Stefan won the Elimination Challenge, and flew all the flags of Europe proudly. His arms must be tired. Fifteen chefs remain. Who will be eliminated tonight?

Opening credits. Drinking Game Rule #2: Take a drink at any reference to being thrown under a bus.

The opening segment always seems to be a rehashing of what went wrong in the previous episode, so I'll just refer to it as the Monday Morning Quarterback session. Richard tells us that we started with seventeen chefs, and two have been eliminated, so now there's fifteen. I can see why that interview was so crucial. Ariane continues to beat herself up, talking about how old she is and how much experience the other chefs have. It looks like she's beginning to seriously regret signing up for this show. I don't blame her; it seems like such a degrading experience. Fabio is happy to let Stefan win individual challenges as long as Fabio himself wins the competition, drawing a comparison to dragon-killing and princess-snatching. The chefs head out for the day.

Quickfire Challenge. The chefs are met in the Kitchen by Padma and this week's guest judge, Donatella Someoneorother. I'd be happy to write out her last name, but the Bravo folks have seen fit to cover the title up with an annoying ad for an annoying show. Padma says that the Quickfire will be the preparation of a New York favorite, which turns out to be a hot dog. Some lady who makes hot dogs comes in with her cart, and there's some blah about the chefs' dogs being compared to hers. This turns out to have absolutely no bearing on the Quickfire whatsoever, so with all due respect to this lady and her wieners, I don't see the point of mentioning her again. Forty-five minutes. Immunity for the winner. Ready? Go!

Ariane beats herself up some more. Daniel has acquired an odd, negative-space mustache. Fabio says you can't out hot dog a hot dog, so he works with sausage. Stefan uses a mix of international ingredients from Italian sausage to Wisconsin cheese to Irish tartar sauce. Jill, showing a knack for identifying last season's pitfall of "Challenge Parameters Are Beneath Us!" recognizes that incorporating hot dogs into a dish isn't the same thing as making one. So she decides to go ahead and ignore the instinct, doing just that. Radhika, who you'll remember introduced herself last week by sniffing that the other chefs would just write her off as a chef that makes Indian food (right before making chutney), makes an Indian-style kabob dog. Hehehe. Hosea concentrates on his flavors, rather than presentation. Time runs out.

Padma and Donatella go down the line. As promised, Jill has just shoved hot dogs into a summer roll. Besides not adhering to the challenge parameters, it looks totally gross. Radhika's kabob dog includes lamb and pork, and looks tasty. Daniel's has horseradish and mustard. Eugene has made a maki roll with cheese. Donatella cannot keep her emotions off her face, so it's fairly easy to tell when she hates something, as with Eugene's. Hosea's is bacon and roasted peppers. Yum. Stefan presents his World Dog. Donatella takes a bite, and her face crumbles again. Bad sign. Carla is told that her lamb and pork with sauerkraut is very moist. Ariane's chicken dog has too much celery seed. Fabio has concocted a Mediterranean dog made up of andouille sausage, goat cheese, roasted bell peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes. I'm not a big sun-dried tomato fan, but the rest sounds good. Jamie has used pork, and let a bone slip in to her dog. I bet that's the first bone she's ever let slip in. Thank you! I'm here all week!

Results. The bottom two are Jill's store-bought hot dog crud, and Stefan, whose World Dog should be wiped off the map. He whines that there was nothing wrong with his dog. Ah, so Stefan has won the first Elimination Challenge, and now he's whining about how the guest judge has no taste. I guess he's on-track to win, after all. Donatella loved Radhika's dog, saying she's glad Radhika embraced the Indian theme. Well, don't get too used to it, Donatella. Radhika is NOT just an Indian chef. The fact that she's made Indian food in two of three challenges, and was forced into doing Jamaican for the third should not be used against her. Fabio also impressed Donatella, as did Hosea's bacon. Radhika winds up winning, and it makes her happy to redeem herself after her unimpressive Quickfire performance last week. Immunity helps, too.

Elimination Challenge. Padma tells the chefs that they'll be opening a restaurant, and a lot of them break into grins. Jeff knows enough to wait until the other shoe drops. The challenge will be to create a three-course New American lunch menu. New American is about the vaguest cuisine type ever, but Jamie gives it the old college try by saying a lot of it is about reinventing classic American dishes. Each chef is responsible for their own dish, so five will be on appetizers, five on entrees, and five on dessert. There's some yakking about how New Yorkers are tough to please, as if the rest of us are happy with whatever pig slop you throw on the plate. I can see that I'll have to keep a Big Apple Snobbery Alert on throughout the season, and not just when Tuskegee Joey is on-screen. At least this one's pretty mild; a violet on the Snobbery Alert chart.

As soon as Padma leaves, there's an explosion of dibs on certain courses. What's weird is that a lot of the clamoring is for dessert, because on every other season of this show, chefs fled from dessert courses in terror. Strange. Anyhow, Jeff manages to get everyone ordered and organized. I have to say, if he manages to shed the pretty-boy image, there's a person underneath I think I like. The chefs head off to Whole Foods with $2,500 and thirty minutes of shopping time. I'm assuming that $2,500 has to cover everybody, though I'd love to see what kind of meal would result if each chef got that. Hosea wants fresh crab meat, but has to settle for canned. Fabio stocks up on beef and olives. Jill likes the creativity of ostrich egg, and hoists one into her basket so she can make a quiche. Wait, Whole Foods has ostrich eggs, but they don't have fresh crab meat? Odd. Everyone checks out.

Back at the Kitchen, the chefs get started on their two hours of prep time. The groups have shaken out to be:

Appetizers: Fabio, Hosea, Jamie, Melissa, and Leah
Entrees: Stefan, Jeff, Eugene, Alex, and Jill
Desserts: Carla, Ariane, Daniel, Richard, and Radhika

Jamie gets started on a sweet corn soup, and somewhat disdains Jill's idea to use an ostrich egg. I think using the egg itself is fine; it's what she makes with it that will be the real deciding factor. That is, if she can make anything at all, because she has real problems even breaking into the shell. She finally cracks it with Fabio's help. Ariane begins making a lemon meringue martini, and beats up on herself yet again, because she's not a dessert expert. Ptom stops by to drop a bomb on the chefs. First of all, they'll be cooking in his restaurant. That's a big who cares, because it's not like members of the public will be strolling in. Second, all fifty of the diners at the luncheon will be New York chefs who tried out for the show, and didn't make it. Daaaaaaaaaamn! Kudos to whoever thought this up, because that is deliciously evil. I can't think of anyone on the planet who would be harder to win over than reality show wannabes denied their moment in the sun. Carla nails it in interview, saying that it'll be impossible to get their dishes "right" for a bunch of jealous, hypercritical diners.

Evening. Fabio drags out his dragon/princess metaphor again, and has to be subtitled. Drink! Then, in an extremely bizarre sequence of events, there's a short commercial break, then a show segment literally less than a minute long that features Leah and Hosea flirting, and then it goes back into commercials. Um. OK. I guess that budding romance was just too compelling to leave on the cutting room floor. When we get back to the show, it's a new day. The chefs make their way to Ptom's restaurant, and get set up. Jamie's in love with her soup, but Fabio dismisses it in interview as too simple. It certainly is compared to his dish, which involves chemically altering olive juice so that it forms a solid shell on the outside, while remaining liquid on the inside. Interesting.

Hosea seasons his crab. Jill rushes her quiche into the oven. Carla frets over her pie crust. Ariane shops her martini around to the others. Richard wants to be all competitive by not sharing his opinion that it's too sweet, but that doesn't really work out when a bunch of other chefs volunteer the same criticism. Ariane knows she has the option to remake it, but is clearly welcoming elimination with open arms at this point, and is like "Meh. Screw it." The fifty loser guests begin to stream in and get down to the business of getting acquainted with each other. In this case, that means bragging about their cooking credentials. Some of them don't even wait to taste the food, and begin ragging on the chefs' selections just based on reading the menu. Ptom and the real chef that does all the work at his restaurant come back to expedite all the food. He reminds the chefs not to stick a utensil they've just used to sample their food back into the dish.

LabRat: "Why does he need to tell them that?"

Time runs down. The diners choose their courses. They probably ordered what they figured they'd hate the most to ensure a nice amount of complaining. The judges enter, and get seated. The chefs plate up, and time runs out. Now, to the appetizers. Jamie has made a chilled, sweet corn soup with chili oil and mint. Amazingly, nobody has a bad thing to say about it. The judges love it, and even one of the diners finds it "amazing". Hosea sends out his cold crab salad with citrus vanilla dressing, accented by mango and avocado. The judges dislike the texture and muddied flavors, and one of the diners is able to discern that the crab came out of a can, as it had a metal-ish flavor. Ugh, I hate that. Leah sends out seared scallops with Yukon potato, chives, and pink peppercorns (though the Reliably Shitty Titles Department refers to them as green peppercorns). The diners disdain them (one says they're too sandy), and Padma gets an '80s feel from the dish, whatever that means. Fabio sends out beef carpaccio with arugula salad, slices of Parmesan cheese, and those spherical olives he described earlier. Donatella says that it's a perfect lunch dish. Melissa has made grilled avocado, and served it alongside white peaches and nectarines. Zzzzzz.

Several jealous losers in the dining room make general nitpicky comments that make me all too glad they and their dumb haircuts and hipster outfits didn't make it onto the show. The entrees start to go out. Jill has made an ostrich egg quiche with a rice-pecan crust, and served it with asparagus and cheese. Donatella's face crumbles again, and she hurriedly reaches for her wine, saying the quiche tastes like glue. Ouch. Eugene has made a deconstructed meatloaf sandwich with ciabatta break, gouda, and a mushroom ragout. I have to say, the diners may be overly critical, but a lot of these dishes are boring as hell. The judges aren't impressed. Stefan sends out his pan-seared halibut, which is topped with greens, pasta ravioli, a champagne sauce, and dill. It gets a favorable reaction in the dining room. Jeff has made honey mustard chicken and a chorizo corn bread. That sounds good. The diners agree. Even one of the annoying hipsters says he has no complaints at all. Alex sends out a grilled pork tenderloin over potatoes with mushroom, tomato, and a red beet demi-glace. It's not popular.

Desserts. Radhika has made a citrus-avocado mousse with chocolate wontons and a chocolate milk Kahlua shot. That's one of those things I can't judge unless I taste it. The avocado mousse sounds unappetizing, but I don't know. It's pretty, anyway. Gail says it's obvious Radhika has immunity, because she's essentially made sweet guacamole. Eeeeeeew. Daniel has made a ricotta poundcake with toasted pistachios, and a strawberry-lemon sauce. Not only does that sound good, but Daniel has refrained from the uber-pretentious pronunciation of ricotta, and for that, I thank him. It gets good reviews, though he's never made it before. Good for him. Ariane has put together her half-assed lemon meringue martini with vanilla cookie crumbles and some cherry on the bottom. She says she thinks it may be a little too sweet. That assumption is confirmed when Padma takes a bite, and:

Yeah. Not a big hit. Richard sends out his sandwich of banana nut bread, peanut butter, and banana brulee with grape gelato. Okay, I see what he's going for, and I'd probably like how it tastes, but as with last week's lamb burger, he tends to go for simplistic ideas that aren't going to win any sophistication points. The judges agree with me by calling it an "after school snack". Carla plates her rustic apple tart with ginger peach tea, an apple cider reduction, and some cheddar cheese. ME WANT. Though her cheese is unattractively plated, she's saved by the flavor of her tart. Service winds down. The jealous losers fill out comment cards and whine their way out the door. See ya never! Ptom tells the chefs he'll see them at Judges' Table, to which they weirdly applaud. He goes out to join the other judges, and they discuss how disappointed they are. Ptom is floored by the downslide in quality between last week and tonight.

Fret 'n' sweat. Ptom comes back to the Kitchen to let the chefs know that the service was great, but the food sucked. That said, he summons Jamie, Hosea, Ariane, Fabio, Carla, and Jill to Judges' Table. Padma reiterates that most of the food was terrible, but allows that there were some bright spots. First is Carla's pastry. Though she should have found a way to incorporate her cheese a little better, it was great, overall. Fabio's name is called, and he immediately springs into defensive mode, saying he serves hundreds of dishes just like the one he made today, and challenges the judges to tell him why he's at Judges' Table. "You're here because we liked your dish, [moron]," Padma says. The "moron" is not said, but it hangs palpably in the air. Once Fabio understands he's actually on the winning side, he calms down. His grilled lemon was Gail's favorite part, while Donatella loved the spherical olives. Jamie's soup incorporated seasonal ingredients, flavor, and texture. Donatella gets to announce the challenge's winner, and she selects Fabio. He jabbers happily in Italian. The three winning chefs are dismissed. Fabio continues celebrating back in the Kitchen, happy to have tied up Elimination Challenge wins with Stefan. Yes, but what was that about challenges not mattering and dragons and princesses and such? Ah, who am I to intrude on his joy?

Back at Judges' Table, the three losing chefs are dissected. Not literally. That would be quite a different show. Hosea is surprised he's there, and makes a rookie mistake by saying he thought he'd be included amongst the winning group. There are multiple complaints about his food, from off-putting crab to sweetness issues to not enough seasoning. In the end, the judges can't even peg what was so wrong with the food, but know enough that they didn't like it. Ariane's dessert was boring and violently sweet. Padma informs her that she had to spit it into her napkin. Jill took an extraordinary ingredient and made a dull quiche out of it. Gail says that beyond the dish's concept, it just didn't taste good. Jill babbles about the pressure of being in the competition and that she's not sure what's getting to her. Her brain desperately searches for any sort of coherent defense, but she can't come up with anything better than "I understand the mistakes I made today, but just the pressure of the time, I had the idea, and...tried to execute it the best I could." Oof. I can't be too hard on her, because how do you defend food that judges simply didn't like the taste of? I guess she could have said something like "I tried to be creative by using an off-kilter ingredient, but that obviously affected the resulting flavor. I'll know to correct for that in future." Something like that. Instead, she's like Heroes: Unfocused and just stabs out at whatever idea she can think of, hoping one of them is a winner.

The chefs are dismissed. Ariane is convinced she's toast. Deliberations. Ptom is surprised that Hosea admitted he was complacent. Er, when did Hosea ever say that? I guess it could have been edited out, but then why show this deliberation? Gail is surprised that she can't articulate what she found so objectionable about the dish. That, more than anything, probably works in Hosea's favor. Ariane's food was way, way too sweet. She beats herself up some more in the Kitchen. Her spiral into utter depression is becoming uncomfortable to watch. Jill's explanation of her food was the lamest defense in five seasons of the show. Donatella agrees with my opinion that she's unfocused by failing to find any sort of point of view in Jill's food. The judges reach a decision.

Elimination. Hosea admitted he was complacent, which NO HE DIDN'T. Ariane just kind of sucks. Jill had a good ingredient, but couldn't make anything distinguished out of it. Ptom throws it over to Padma for the chop. Jill. Please pack your knives and go. Ariane looks like she wants to stick her head in the oven. She is so ready to go home. Jill is disappointed, and a bit surprised that her lackluster food was deemed worse than Ariane's actively bad food. She sheds a tear or two, which is nothing compared to the wrenching sobs coming from Ariane. She moans that she doesn't deserve to still be there, and Carla says she does, and gives her a big, comforting hug. Aw. She semi-ruins it by saying that "there is no mistake in the universe", but it was still a sweet gesture. Please, just eliminate Ariane. I'm not saying she's a bad chef, but this is clearly not the right setting for her, and at this point, it's the merciful thing to do. Poor, boring, overshadowed Jill says she'll take some time off and figure out what the hell she wants to do. Good idea.

Overall Grade: B+