On last night's episode of Top Chef, Spike confirmed his maybe-sexist tendencies, Richard was all up in my Slashfood post, and contestants couldn't distinguish between low-quality and high-quality butter. Let's backtrack. The theme of the episode was "taste," and Blue Ginger's Ming Tsai guest judged. At first, I thought the theme seemed a bit lame for a show that obviously centers around taste during every episode, but I was quickly swayed when the show revealed my favorite Quickfire Challenge ever: the taste test. The theme also led to some of that heated Top Chef drama that I love. We'll get to that in a bit.
For the Quickfire Challenge, Padma and Ming Tsai blindfolded contestants and asked them to distinguish between high and low quality ingredients. The show flashed through the ingredients quickly, but I saw olive oil, syrup, butter, pork, bacon, chocolate, crab and sake. Apparently, it's much harder than it looks, and Stephanie (who is a strong chef on the show) lost with a disappointing 6/15 correct. Antonia (who you may remember is my favorite) won her first Quickfire with 12 correct. She raved beforehand about how this was her favorite Quickfire too, so I was especially proud.
For the Elimination Challenge, chefs prepared the first-course for a Meals on Wheels ball. They were divided into four teams: Fire, Air, Water and Earth (I kept waiting for Andrew to dress up as Captain Planet and sing the show's theme song, but sadly that moment never came). Now, I try to refrain from being too critical when I know that I could never do better, but it really surprised me that some teams conceptualized these themes so poorly. The Air Team for example, chose duck, which I always think of as rather heavy (don't worry, I get it -- ducks are birds).
The judges didn't seem to mind that choice so much however, instead choosing to pick on Water Team's sous-vide salmon (it had scales) and Earth Team's beef carpaccio (it was flavorless and not earthy enough). Though Richard probably had the most individual fault, there was no way he could leave the show this early. The judges instead defaulted to agreeing with guest reviews and sent away Zoi, who worked on some mushrooms for Earth Team. Jennifer (her girlfriend) was angered as we knew she would be.
And despite contention between Dale and Lisa, judges loved Fire Team's prawns with chili rub and smoked bacon. Lisa won the challenge for demanding an Asian-inspired dish (as opposed to the original plan of deviled eggs), and carrying it through.
Perhaps the best part of the episode came after Zoi left, when Spike tried to nail Antonia for forcing Earth Team into making beef carpaccio instead of the butternut squash soup that he had advocated. Antonia defended herself like a star, repeatedly telling Spike to stand by his dish. I personally found him extremely obnoxious, especially since earlier in the episode he said that, "unless you are going to take two women and strangle them, there comes a time when you gotta just go with it and do the best you can." Wow, and take off that hat, son. Dale, following Spike's lead, attacked Lisa for being pushy throughout the show, even though their dish won. The men on this show (Richard, Ryan, Mark excepted) are quite intimidated by the strong female personalities, and I can't wait to see the showdowns that come out of it.
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