Chatting with the Latest Exiled Top Chef

Spoiler alert: Our goal in presenting these exclusive interviews is to satisfy our readers who are huge Top Chef fans in a timely, lively fashion. Some of you who hadn't yet watched the show were upset that the title and leading photo spoiled the show's outcome in past weeks. We will continue to do these exit interviews, but will mask the "loser" by not featuring their profile photo or name in the title.

Read on for our exit interview with the latest Top Chef Master to get the boot.
On this week's Top Chef Masters, the cheftestants were faced with creating a Greek God-themed dish.

It turns out that love wasn't in the air for Los Angeles chef Susan Feniger. Her inspiration came from Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and she chose to make Kaya toast, a dish that has had Los Angeleans raving since the opening of Street last year. In the end, the judges just didn't see a sandwich -- no matter how decadent it was – fit for "master level" showmanship. Take a look at Feniger's recipe here.

But for Feniger, her loss was secondary. Over the course of this season, she has raised an impressive $32,500 for the Schleroderma Research Foundation, an organization for which she serves on the board.

With nearly three decades worth of experience under her belt, Feniger is the author of 5 cookbooks, the former co-host of the Food Network's Too Hot Tamales and has shaped L.A.'s food scene in several restaurants, including Santa Monica's Border Grill, L.A.'s Ciudad, the Border Grill Truck and of course, Street.

Slashfood spoke with Feniger about the Kaya Toast's sexual properties, her Top Chef Masters advantages and being outted as a cheerleader. And for those in Los Angeles, Chef Feniger is giving away one free order of Kaya Toast per table to patrons who whisper "pack your knives," now through June 1.

I thought you were going all the way.

Susan Feniger: I was completely surprised. In all the other challenges, I don't think there was a dish that I thought was perfect. But this was perfect for the Aphrodite challenge...I thought the egg thing was perfect.

Conceptually, the challenge felt more theoretical than in the past. Tailgating is a defined thing, but this time it was like saying, "Here's a God, figure it out."

SF: In all of the challenges, I tried to think, "What would be a dish that would really meet that challenge?" So when I picked Aphrodite, I tried to think of the Goddess of love or reproduction or whatever that is, so I thought what does that mean to me? I thought about eggs and what would be a cool thing to talk about. Eggs are about having babies, about love making, about life beginning. There's that. And I think there's the actual dish, that is something we serve at Street. It's one of those dishes that 99.9% of people make comments about like, "This is the best thing I've ever ate," or "This is something I totally want to run all over my body." The comments are totally sexual [laughs]. I thought this would be fantastic. What's also interesting is that this dish was probably the most challenging dish I did on the whole show.

It seems like it's pretty complex.

SF: It's incredibly complex to do it for that many people and to try to figure out how to coordinate it. I barely had enough time to get the coconut curd with pandan leaves made. So I was doing two bowls of like 40 yolks each. And you have to cook them slow and just stand there. So for that time, I was literally doing the curd. It's sensitive, like a curd can be, and making it in big batches like that -- it's the heat, it's the timing, it's not breaking the emulsion, the egg. Once the curd's done, it's how you time getting toast toasted, cooking a soft cooked egg. I made a cocktail but I don't think they showed that. It was a Canton ginger cocktail, which is an aphrodisiac, which I thought would be a nice addition to it. I haven't seen the show, but the fact that one of the judges said: "I don't think doing a sandwich is Top Chef Masters level," is like really? But what are you going to do? It's an honor to be on that show and have Schleroderma Research Foundation out there in the public eye. I've gotten so many email messages and Facebook messages from all over the country. So for me, I'm totally the winner in this.

I know you talked openly about the sexual qualities of the Kaya dish-do you think you'll be seeing an influx of first dates at Street now?

SF: I don't know, maybe! I think the Kaya toast got picked as one of the top dishes in Los Angeles in 2009, as the favorites of people. It's one of those dishes that we get so many people eating. You don't often find that one dish that everyone is blown away by, but Kaya is that. It's a mix of very unusual flavors. It's the sweetness of that pandan and the coconut, the saltiness of that really dark soy that we get from the Korean markets, and that soft cooked egg. Honestly, for me, if I was going to go out on a dish, that's the dish I'd go out on. It's unusual and exciting and loaded with great flavors. It's definitely something I feel proud to go out on -- and at least I didn't screw up the dish.

If you go back a few episodes to where you cooked the sea cucumber -- how'd that taste?

SF: It was so interesting because I was completely freaked out that I got that. I'd never worked with sea cucumber and no one really had. No one could say, "This is what you do with it." But I really felt fantastic about it because it was really good. I evaluated what the product was, what the consistency was and thought about doing something that had similar qualities.

It's fascinating hearing about the trial and error knowledge you all have. A lot of professions don't lend itself to doing stuff like that.

SF: We're so used to being in situations that potentially are catastrophic. If you're in our world -- the restaurant business -- you have to be so ready for a typical Saturday night, where you have 350 people coming through the door, a dish washer doesn't show up, the drain in the kitchen backs up, you have a line cook who cuts her hand and has to go to the hospital. That is a typical night. You handle all of these challenges. If you're not in that frame of mind where you can handle stress, this is the wrong profession for you. I just try to go through in my mind, that this is something that's natural. I don't get stressed out by stuff, so for Top Chef Masters that works.

You also have a history of being around cameras with your old show Too Hot Tamales. Do you think that gave an advantage? For some of the chefs it seemed like the camera presence was bothersome at times.

SF: Yeah. I feel comfortable, I've been teaching a long time, I've been on TV a lot. But no matter how comfortable you are in front of a camera, its another thing where you have a timed thing, where someone is saying you have five minutes, you have three minutes. That is pressure for everybody. I don't know that it helps you any when they're just around. For me, I'm the same in my restaurants, talking to staff as I am on camera. It doesn't make me nervous, that's definitely to my advantage. Sure if you're trying to beat the clock, the cameras get in your way.

And I don't think anyone ever pegged you as a cheerleader.

SF: Ha! Wasn't that good? I don't even know where they got those pictures. Either they went back to my high school or my girlfriends dug them out from somewhere.