That's An Order

Top Chef - Season 12, Episode 4

Previously on Top Chef: Teas! Tears! Toupees! T'ballpark food! Gregory hit a homerun, picking up yet another challenge win, while Ron struck out. Twelve chefs remain. Who will be eliminated tonight?

Monday Morning Quarterback Session. Aaron talks. Nobody cares. Kariann bemoans how she hasn't been doing well in the competition, and cries about missing her kids. She should also spare some crying for wasting an entire tube of Dr. Pepper lip gloss, which is smeared all over her mouth. The chefs receive a note from Padma with the address where they are supposed to meet her. It's supposed to be very clandestine, but the surprise is immediately blown by hometown girl Stacy, who recognizes the address as Cheers. Whoops! That was the shortest game of Carmen Sandiego I've ever seen.

Quickfire Challenge. Indeed, the chefs are on their way to the original Cheers bar, where they are met by Padma and George Wendt. He graciously suffers through the chefs yelling "Norm!" at him before we get down to business. Here's an interesting tidbit of trivia for the audience: By law, all bars in Boston must serve food. So, for today's Quickfire, the chefs will use whatever's on-hand in the Cheers kitchen to make an upscale bar snack. Winner gets immunity. Ready? Go!

Aaron combines eggs with peanut butter and mayonnaise, which sounds gross, but he insists that it actually works if balanced properly. I'll buy it; I'd like to try that mixture if it's in the right proportion. Gregory gets a good start on his burger, but gravity is not his friend today, and a lot of his ingredients fly off the plate and onto the floor. Adam is making black bean chilaquile with egg on top, and it's the first dish of the day (and maybe of the competition) that's really made me sit up and take notice. James works on a vegetable hummus, and insists that in Michigan, crudite is totally a bar food. I am unconvinced. Katsuji whips up a spin on a fish taco with some tuna, while Kariann focuses on crabcakes.

Tasting. Padma attempts to banter with George Wendt, who clearly wishes he were anywhere else. He's about as excited to appear on this show as he would be to get a root canal with a rusty screw. Obviously, Gregory is in the bottom, since most of his food is currently getting ground into the kitchen floor by people's shoes. He's joined by James, who didn't make anything approaching bar food. Save the carrot sticks for the garden party, brah. Katsuji and Kariann are the top two, with Katsuji taking the challenge and immunity. He's very pleased, but not as happy as George, who takes off so fast, there's a George-shaped puff of smoke left behind.

Elimination Challenge. Michael Schlow (a competitor from Top Chef: Masters and local food luminary) will be turning his restaurant over to the chefs and guest judging. The chefs will break into teams and each team will serve a three-course Italian meal: Antipasti, pasta, and entree. The chefs will design a menu, and whichever menu gets ordered the most by guests will be automatically be declared the winner and be safe from elimination. So, it doesn't even matter how the food tastes. If it at least sounds appetizing enough to entice the diners, a team can skate by. Everyone else is up for elimination.

How do we feel about this? I've been stewing it over in my mind, and have come to the conclusion that I like this challenge. Sure, on the one hand, it doesn't sound entirely fair that the chefs get to shield themselves from elimination via advertising rather than cooking skills. But, there's no denying that designing a menu does fall under the purview of a chef's duties, and if you can't appeal to diners' imaginations and manage their expectations, it doesn't really matter how good your food is, cause they'll never order it. In another fun little twist, Padma tells the chefs that they can pick their own teams, so let's see how that popularity contest shakes out:

Orange: Adam/Doug/Mei (the sous chef team)
Grey: Kariann/Melissa/James (the seafood team)
Blue: Rebecca/Katie/Stacy (the let's work with anyone except Aaron team)
Purple: Aaron/Katsuji/Gregory (the leftovers)

Interesting. It's completely natural that everyone else would avoid Aaron (including his girlfriend, apparently), but with all that talk last week about the bond between James and Aaron, it's curious that they didn't wind up together. Speaking of last week, since nobody went home during that Sudden Death Quickfire, Padma informs the chefs that this week will be a double elimination, and two people will be going home. The chefs make various consternated faces.

Planning and prep. James is reluctant to make seafood, but in the interest of team harmony, agrees to make fish. Katsuji and Aaron immediately fall to squabbling, of course, and Gregory is kept as busy trying to shut them up and keep them on task as cooking. During the meal, the judges are joined by Emmy Rossum, who drops the bomb on the chefs that she is gluten-free, so that pasta course takes on a new dimension. Katsuji responds to this by ripping open his ravioli and just dumping the filling into a bowl. It's not as though Emmy Rossum is missing anything, as the judges pretty uniformly hate his pasta, anyway. Stacy cuts her ribeye into thin strips, and chars the hell out of her vegetables. Every season seems to attract a group of people with one big problem. Last season, it was overseasoning/underseasoning. This time around, nobody can seem to cook their food for the proper amount of time. Doug makes a pretty basic radicchio salad, but everyone seems to enjoy it.

But, as you know, no matter how good or bad this food is, the winner is all about how good the food sounds. When the dust settles, it doesn't matter that Katsuji's pasta was awful, because the diners ordered the Purple menu most, so the most dysfunctional team gets to slide this week, but not before Katsuji is told he'd be looking at the business end of an elimination if things hadn't happened this way. All of the food on the Orange team was well-received, so they are declared safe as well. Katie, Kariann, and Melissa made some impressive items and are also excused. That brings it down to James, Rebecca, and Stacy. James' sauce was bad, and he should have stuck with his gut and made meat. I mean, yes, you have to make sure you can stand behind the dish you make, but if he can't make a serviceable fish entree, he doesn't really belong here, anyway. Rebecca's concept was all wrong (unbalanced and old-fashioned), and it didn't have enough sauce. Stacy's meat was cut too thin, and her vegetables sucked. Tom throws it over to Padma. Rebecca and James, please pack your knives and go.

Whew. Stacy has been one of the few bright spots so far in this snooze of a season, and it would have been disheartening to see her go. As it is, I'm not too put out to see Non-Entity Rebecca and Swayze Tattoo take off into the sunset. Now, if we could fast-forward to the part of the season that isn't incredibly dull, that'd be great.

Overall Grade: C+