Thursday, December 11, 2008

Italian. Wedding. Soup.

Top Chef - Season 5, Episode 5

Ah, what could be better than being joined with your soulmate in wedded bliss? How about having a bridal shower and having your bosses pick up the tab? That shrewd Gail Simmons parlays her judge status into a free party by agreeing to have the chefs cater her bridal shower.

First, in the Quickfire, the chefs compete tournament style to see who can identify the most sauce ingredients. It's a very cool challenge, and Hosea emerges victorious.

Then, the chefs are split into four teams for the bridal shower challenge, and are tasked with finding inspiration in Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, or Something Blue. That old chestnut is tonight's theme. Well, actually, the theme is how assy Stefan is, as Jamie, Hosea, Jeff, Leah, Stefan's twice-ex-wife, or the editors would be happy to tell you. But the poem is the secondary theme, and it throws more than one contestant for a loop.

Teams Old (Jeff/Stefan/Hosea) and Borrowed (Jamie/Ariane/Radhika) ultimately land in the top two, with Ariane scoring a surprise and seemingly undeserved win, much to Jamie's chagrin. Teams New (Eugene/Daniel/Carla) and Blue (Melissa/Leah/Fabio) sink to the bottom. The former's dish is just a complete mess from top to bottom. Eugene makes conceptual mistakes and gunks up his rice, Daniel screws up Carla's portion of the dish, and Carla refuses to attack her teammates. Ptom considers all three of these things unforgivable, though I'll bet you can spot the one that doesn't belong. In the end, Daniel takes a walk for just not getting it, and tortures us with a never-ending sports metaphor on his way out.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good thing none of the teams used rosemary. They'd likely have been eliminated on the spot!