Spyro Gyro

Top Chef - Season 7, Episode 10

Previously on Top Chef: War of the Restaurants. Alex's army decided he wasn't even competent enough to pass boot camp, and stuck him on dish duty in the mess hall. Kenny exulted in his status as a four-star general, and though nobody disputed his ability to rally the troops, his food marksmanship was less than stellar. No amount of medal-polishing could make up for the fact that his dishes pretty much sucked, and he was gloriously eliminated. Seven chefs remain. Who will be eliminated tonight?

Opening menu. I had to make good on last week's bet, and made an old family sweet and sour meatball recipe, some lemon squares, and a batch of blueberry muffins. Our gracious hosts provided the hummus, and once the wine was popped, a grand feast was had by all. Please to enjoy Drinking Game Rule #10. It may be a little late for it now, but since it keeps coming up over and over: Take a drink whenever you come across mention of the pea puree, whether on the show or in these recaps. Including that one. DRINK!

Oh, and I have a little tangential business to get to. Firstly, I have to credit LabRat for coming up with this week's post title. Be grateful that you aren't being subjected to the horrible puns that were swirling around my head. Okay, maybe one: Boris Not-Gudenov. Awful, right? Secondly, someone pointed me towards Ptom's blog about last week's episode. I was going to link to it when quoting the relevant portions, but forgot that Bravo has literally the worst website ever created by supposed professionals. I lost my patience after five attempts. The gist was that he's been getting some crap about Kenny being eliminated over Alex, and snarkily pointed out that duh, Alex was on the winning team, and thus not eligible for elimination. He also snarkily pointed out that each challenge is judged individually, so Kenny's past successes were not taken into account. I heartily agree with his decisions on both counts, but I don't think his tone is called for. I don't blame people for asking about the results, since rules were pretty obviously bent around for the elimination in the second episode, and because it seems like chefs' past successes are considered pretty often. Ptom's blog also addressed the pea puree incident again. DRINK! Ptom reports that other chefs have admitted that they actually saw Alex making his own puree (DRINK!), so there you go. Mystery solved. Still, it makes me wonder why there was all that whispering and gossip behind Alex's back if it was known he didn't do anything shady. Strange. All right, then. Ready to step into this week's shiny, Kenny-free episode?

Monday Morning Quarterback session. Naturally, we have to cover the whole Kenny vs. Alex debate again. Kevin -- who's had six seasons to watch and nine episodes to participate in -- still doesn't seem to get how team challenges work. He whines about Alex's team carrying him to unfair safety. Alex isn't too worked up about the whole situation, shrugging that he makes a handy venting target for Kevin to complain about his friend getting eliminated. That's a mature way of looking at it. He's also correct when he interviews that rules aside, he had nothing to do with the blue team making bad food. Point, set, match. Angelo is exhausted and unfocused after the stress of Restaurant Wars. He seems the most shaken by Kenny's elimination, because if one of the alpha males can be eliminated well before the finals, what does that mean for the other? The chefs head out for the day.

Quickfire Challenge. The chefs enter the Kitchen to find a bunch of boxes with question marks painted on the side. Nobody butts one with their head to see if a power-up comes out. Padma and guest judge Wylie Dufresne are there to greet them before Padma explains the rules of this week's Quickfire. It's a peach. At first glance, it's a repeat of the mystery box challenge. The chefs will have to incorporate all of the ingredients into a dish, but in a fun twist, more mystery boxes will appear as the dishes are cooking. The dish will have to actually evolve in real time as more ingredients are thrown into the mix. Good idea! Well done, challenge producers. None of the chefs are as thrilled as I am that they've been put into this situation, but they perk up when they learn that the winner will receive $10,000. The clock is set at forty minutes, and Padma starts the countdown.

The initial mystery box contains a large rockfish, fava beans, and an unlabeled can. Alex does not have his own can opener, and casts around for someone else's. Thing is, they have their own cans to open, and aren't anxious to hand over the goods. This is played as a we-hate-Alex kind of scene -- complete with Frankenbytes -- but I doubt the motives were that personal. People just want to open their own damn cans first. Those cans turn out to contain hominy. Angelo is completely lost without his rival to butt up against. He turns this way and that, indecisive about how he wants to prepare his dish. A guy in a suit and dark glasses enters to deliver the next mystery box. "Oh my God!" Amanda squawks, as if this is some wholly unexpected event. Or maybe she just said that because the messenger is kind of hot. The second box contains squid and black garlic. Jeez, whatever vision the chefs had at first blush will surely go out the window when confronted with these.

A few minutes later, Mr. Hot delivers another box. "Are you kidding me?" Alex groans. Seriously, were any of you present when Padma was telling you about the challenge parameters? Or were you all daydreaming about how you were going to spend your ten-thousand dollars? The third mystery box contains ramps and passion fruit. By this point, nobody knows what the hell they're doing, and are just trying to compose a dish that won't make the judges projectile vomit. The fourth mystery box arrives with jicama inside. That's the last one, and the chefs have a final ten minutes to get everything ready. Everyone's sweaty and miserable, but manages to get food on the plates. Time runs out.

Padma and Wylie go down the line. Alex has rockfish with a fava bean puree, ramp fondue with leeks, and squid sauteed in the black garlic. He bemoans his terrible Quickfire record, and says that this mess will probably fare no better. Tiffany has had a good idea, and made fish stew, which allows all sorts of things to be tossed in at the last minute without changing the overall picture. She's added some saffron to the mystery box ingredients. Kelly has done a version of Yucatecan seafood stew. Wylie finds it spicy, though I can't tell if he considers that good or bad. Amanda has crispy-skinned rockfish, with a squid fricassee and leek/mushroom fondue. Kevin serves rockfish and red pepper flake-marinated squid on a hominy/black garlic puree, with a jicama/passion fruit salad. Ed serves rockfish sashimi, with a hominy/basil puree, and grilled squid marinade. Angelo has a smoky hominy pot-au-feu, with squid, rockfish tataki, and a passion fruit gelee.

Results. The bottom two starts off with Alex, whose bean and passion fruit puree was good, but nothing else was. Amanda joins him for oily food. The top two starts with Tiffany, for well-integrated, flavorful components. Kevin's puree was nice, and his fish was well-cooked. The winner of the challenge, and the big cash prize is... Tiffany. Yay! She's thrilled that she can meet her fiancee at home with something other than an excuse for why she's been flirting with Ed for several weeks. She may not have phrased it that way.

Elimination Challenge. We continue with the episode's mystery theme, as Padma tells the chefs they'll be cooking for members of the CIA. That's the actual CIA, not the chefy one. Spies often have to adopt disguises, and the chefs will have to do the same thing. They'll be given a classic dish, and must cook it in such a way that it's physically unrecognizable, but still retains the flavors of the classic. Interesting. The chefs draw knives to determine their dishes:

Amanda - French onion soup
Ed - Chicken Cordon Bleu
Angelo - Beef Wellington
Kelly - Kung Pao shrimp
Tiffany - Gyro
Kevin - Cobb salad
Alex - Veal parmesan

Padma tells the chefs that they'll be serving to a bunch of CIA officers, including the head of the organization, Leon Panetta. Amanda fantasizes about being recruited as a spy and seducing secrets out of the KGB. It won't be such a romantic idea when you see what those guys look like. The chefs will serve at CIA headquarters, and the winner of the challenge will win a trip to Paris. Nice! Nice, that is. Not Nice. The chefs head off to the store with a $200 budget. Alex interviews that he's only been a chef for about six years, and was an event videographer before that. He spins this as a positive, saying that someone without as much experience is more open to new ideas and experimentation. Kelly has never cooked Chinese food in her life, and has the very smart idea to track down a prepared Kung Pao sauce and note the ingredients so she can recreate it. I like the way she thinks. See, I knew I've been on her side for a good reason. Angelo has to include puff pastry in his dish, and heads for the frozen food aisle to pick some up. The other chefs are taken aback, because that stuff was about half the reason John got eliminated in the first episode. The other half being his hair.

Back in the Kitchen, the chefs have two and a half hours to get their food prepared. They banter about what their spy names would be. Tiffany, who loves La Femme Nikita, chooses Brigitte. She's disguising her gyro by deconstructing it into separate components. Amanda (code name - Natasha) is disguising French onion soup by... Making French onion soup. Kelly hopes to disguise her Kung Pao shrimp by turning it into a soup. More Frankenbytes manufacture some we-hate-Alex quotes. I mean, I'm sure that he's pretty much as unpopular as the quotes suggest. I just doubt Tiffany and Kelly are strutting around the Kitchen sneering about how much he sucks. He packs his veal parmesan into tortellini, which sounds pretty good. Angelo's choice to use prepackaged frozen puff pastry is dissected some more. Ed comes up with a code name of Muffin Winthrop (hehehehe), while Alex opts for the more well-worn Doctor Zhivago. Ed is disguising his dish by turning it inside out, putting the ham and cheese on the outside, rather than encasing it in the chicken as usual. Kevin's grand plan to disguise his Cobb salad is to change the textures. To his credit, he realizes how weak an idea this is, and just focuses on making it taste as good as possible. Time runs out.

The next day, the chefs arrive at CIA headquarters. An appropriately big deal is made of their surroundings. Once ensconced in the kitchen, the chefs have an additional hour and a half to get their food prepared. Angelo worries that his dish isn't as creative or complex as he wants it to be. He really is falling apart this week. Kelly has plenty of time to get all her food done, but still takes the shortcut of putting her rice in the rice cooker, rather than preparing it on the stove. Amanda likes the flavors of her soup, but is anxious that she didn't disguise it enough. "Helen Keller would be able to guess what the dish is," she snarks. Oh, a Helen Keller joke! I appear to have fallen through a wormhole and popped back out in eighth grade, when people were still telling those.

Kender: "Isn't that the idea? That Helen Keller would be able to identify the dish?"

Alex shares his strategy of not cooking anything that he's ever made before, saying that it's worked out for him so far. Well, it's kept him safe, but he certainly hasn't been racking up the challenge wins. But hey, he's won more than Amanda, so what do I know? Ed disdains this method, grousing that Alex's style of cooking is totally unimpressive. Are they trying to turn Alex into the Robin of the season now that Stephen is gone? Kelly frets over her rice cooker, while Tiffany frets over the simplicity of her dish. She interviews that if one component goes awry, the entire dish's concept will collapse. It turns out Kelly was right to worry, because her rice has overcooked into complete mush. She tells Tiffany that it's "unedible" and interviews that she's used to cooking rice in Colorado, where it takes an hour minimum to cook. Yeesh, what a chore. Tiffany sends her to start some new rice on the stove, which she should have done in the first place. And while we're correcting little mistakes in order to make our lives better, Kelly? Inedible.

Time begins to wind down. Tiffany helps Kelly plate, interviewing that she wants to beat the other chefs because she outcooks them, not because of some technicality. I heartily endorse that attitude. The diners get seated, and time runs out. Padma introduces Leon Panetta, and service starts. Angelo is disheartened by the way his dish has come out, and wonders why he can't get his head in the game this week. He and Kelly serve first, and their dishes are not identified for the diners. Angelo has tartlets with slivers of beef on top. His dish is easily identified, and is not well-received. It was overly salty and the much-discussed puff pastry is hard. Eric Ripert, filling in for Gail this week, says that it looks like Angelo took some shortcuts. Kelly has spicy shrimp broth with rice and a Szechuan shrimp tempura. Ooh, that sounds good. When will I learn to eat before I settle in to write these recaps? Wylie kids Leon about knowing what it is before the spymaster does. It takes the panel a long time to figure out what it is, and once they do, they give it generally positive reviews. Wylie thinks there may be a bit too much broth, but overall, everyone really likes it.

Kevin helps Tiffany wipe her plates down before time runs out. The two of them are up next. Tiffany's plate has roasted leg of lamb, with smoky eggplant, tomatoes, and pickled onions. Once it's identified as a gyro, everyone sings its praises. Eric calls it the most elegant gyro he's ever eaten. Sweet! Kevin has romaine lettuce, tomato, bacon, Roquefort cheese, avocado, cucumber, and turkey. In other words, he's served a Cobb salad as a Cobb salad. Fortunately for him, it tastes good, and Ptom is prenaturally disposed to liking Cobb salads in general. At this point, a note arrives for Leon. Duty calls, and he must leave for the rest of the meal. In the kitchen, Alex brings Amanda some veal to test. She finds it close to overcooked, but makes sure to tell us in interview that although Alex has execution problems, and his ouster would help her chances, she'd hate to see her buddy get eliminated.

She and Alex are the next ones to serve. Amanda has consomme with oxtail marmalade, caramelized onions, and shaved gruyere. She's done the best she can to disguise a very easily identifiable dish, but her marmalade is way too sweet. One of the diners compares it to honey-lemon cough syrup. Yikes. Alex's plate has veal and parmesan tortellini, with tomato sauce and tempura cheese. Really? Tempura cheese? I wonder how that tastes. I originally thought the veal was going into the tortellini as well, but it's on the plate as a big chunk of meat, topped with tortellini stuffed with parmesan. The diners find the meat amazingly tough, and though they feel he did perhaps the best job with his disguise, the major execution problems ruin his concept. Ed's plate goes out solo. It's roasted chicken breast, with a ham and cheese croquette, and a spring onion soubise. His dish receives the converse of the reaction to Alex's. The food itself is great, and impresses the entire table, but he didn't really put much thought into the disguise. Service wraps up, and Padma thanks the remaining CIA staff. The chefs tear into the leftovers, and catch an inkling of which way the wind might be blowing. Kelly gently tells Amanda that her soup is a little sweet, while Angelo is blown away by Tiffany's eggplant.

Interstitial. The chefs chat about the secrets Leon Panetta holds. Angelo jokes that he knows the whereabouts of an extra-terrestrial living in Los Angeles, pointing at Alex. He does have kind of a big head.

Fret 'n sweat. The chefs discuss how important the challenge's concept will be to the judging, or if good food will be enough to save a bad idea. We're about to find out. Padma enters, and summons Tiffany, Kelly, and Ed to the dining room. It's not hard to peg this group as the top three, and they're happy to hear it. That settles the question of concept vs. execution, because nobody was impressed with Ed's disguise. Kelly's concept was great, and her spicy broth was balanced nicely with the rice. Tiffany's gyro was high-end and delicious. Ed's dish was perfectly executed. Wylie gets to announce the winner of the challenge and the trip to Paris, which turns out to be... Tiffany. She squeals with delight. I believe this may be the first time in Top Chef history that a chef has won both the Quickfire and the Elimination Challenges in more than one episode. And since I love Tiffany, I'm ecstatic that she's raised the bar for all future contestants. She's just thrilled that no matter the outcome of the season, Top Chef has paid for her wedding, and has now given her a honeymoon trip as well.

Back in the Kitchen, Kevin initially thinks Ed has won, before the top three makes it clear that Tiffany has emerged victorious. It's funny, with all the Kenny vs. Angelo talk, and all the Alex-needs-to-step-up-and-prove-himself grunting from Kevin and Ed, the men of this season seem to be curiously blind to the threat the women pose. I'm not saying they're sexist, but considering all of the challenges Kelly and Tiffany have excelled in, you'd think they'd be noted as potential usurpers. Instead, the guys walk around bumping chests and seeing who can pee the farthest, while Tiffany quietly puts away a double episode sweep. Her win is applauded before she shares the bad news that the judges would like to see Alex, Amanda, and Angelo. Not a good week for the A's, I'm afraid.

The bottom three head out to the dining room. Amanda probably takes the wrong tack when she explains that she knows she didn't do a great job disguising her dish, but was aiming more for flavor than concept. Wylie agrees that she didn't seize various opportunities to mask the soup better. Ptom suggests a panna cotta, apparently forgetting that that particular dish may as well be served with a little card that reads: "Please eliminate me tonight!" That wasn't Amanda's only problem, though. Her marmalade was far too sweet. Angelo didn't put any creativity into his concept, and the disappointment of the puff pastry could have easily been avoided with a little of the reinvention specifically requested by the challenge.

Alex's disguise was well thought-out, but his execution was way off the mark. He tells the judges that he wanted to try some new, creative techniques, which gives them the opportunity to nail him on one of those tiresome Catch-22s the judges are so fond of. This chestnut says that if you try to do something new, you should be eliminated for wandering out of your comfort zone. If you stay in your comfort zone, you should be eliminated for not taking enough risks. I understand that there's a delicate balance between successful food and a wide range of technique, but they often (as in this case) do not straddle this line well when it comes to deliberation. Unfortunately for Alex, it doesn't matter much, because no matter what risks he took, the result was bad food, pure and simple. Ptom tells all three chefs that they've essentially turned in their worst work of the competition. After that, they're dismissed. Angelo beats up on himself back in the Kitchen. Kelly interviews that while he's a nice guy, it'd be much smoother sailing in the competition if he got eliminated.

Deliberations. None of the bottom three addressed the challenge parameters well, and all of them put out terrible dishes. Wait, I thought Alex did approach the challenge with all of the appropriate creativity, but just didn't cook the food well. Didn't they just finish saying that? The judges admit that he had a viable idea, but add that he couldn't carry it through. Amanda failed on just about every level. Angelo's Beef Wellington would "make Julia Child very sad". That's about the worst thing anyone could ever say about my cooking. The judges reach a decision.

Elimination. I really need to come up with a shorthand term for those ridiculously terrible wordplay phrases Ptom recites each week. You'd think somebody would have noticed at this point how cringeworthy they are, and yet... "You were asked to take a dish and disguise it, and in all your cases, your cover was blown." Hork. Padma delivers the bad news. Alex. Please pack your knives and go. He thanks the judges, and shrugs in his final interview that at this point, there's no allowable margin of error. He's unhappy with his overall placement, but takes the events of the competition in stride, choosing not to make a big deal over false accusations of pea puree theft (DRINK!) and anger over his Restaurant War contributions. Yeah, I think he's gotten a bum rap in that household; it makes me somewhat sad for him. He doesn't seem to mind as much, saying that he strives every day to make himself a better person. Well, he may have been unfairly maligned by his competitors, but if he's taking suggestions: Be nicer to your waitstaff.

Overall Grade: B