I broke down the Justin Upton trade today for Insiders, and I did a Klawchat as well.
Top Chef: The Aftermath. We begin in the house where Brooke says that she would have said something if she thought there was any chance Kristen would be sent home … which I ain’t buying. She was in the room for the judging and never said anything, not even after they sent Kristen home (which would have been a good time to say something, too). Maybe Brooke figured seeing the strongest competitor sent home wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe she didn’t want to talk back to the judges. But she couldn’t have stood there and thought Kristen was completely safe.
Then Josie is tearfully defending herself to Lizzie, who has “STFU” tattooed on her forehead for the entire conversation. Or whatever they say instead of “STFU” in South Africa.
* Quickfire: Create a sushi dish to impress Katsuya Uechi, master sushi chef. He says, mystically, “Don’t touch too much, don’t mix up too much ingredients … make people happy.” It sounds like an empty plate that with positive qi would be a better dish than some raw fish and rice. Immunity is off the table, but the winner gets $5K.
* Josh says he doesn’t crave sushi like bacon, and he’s making some weird sushi breakfast sandwich thing that Stefan calls “so fucking dumb.” I love sushi, but bacon really checks all the boxes.
* Stefan is the only chef we see smelling the fish on the table, which is smart, especially after Lizzie nearly got sent home for serving scallops that were off.
* Josie has done parties where they served sushi on naked women, saying “it’s kind of fun.” If by fun you mean horribly degrading, then yes, I agree.
* Lizzie says sushi is “an art, it’s not my art,” except it sounds a million times better when she says it.
* Sheldon says he doesn’t “do sushi that much,” going sashimi, lemon charcoal – grilled, blended, turned into powder.
* The dishes … Stefan: Yellowtail with grilled shiitake and mustard, and raw lobster with seaweed and unagi. Josie: halibut with yuzu and bacon aioli. Not enough punch for Katsuya. Lizzie: Lobster soup, micro greens, pickle ginger, yuzu sake broth, fresh ginger. Could have had rice underneath. Brooke: Octopus, yuzu, fresh wasabi, sliced shiso, EVOO. Josh: Tempura bacon, omelette, salmon belly, yuzu-koshu aioli, sandwiched between two bricks of rice. Sheldon: hamachi sashimi, fresh ponzu, mitsuba, lemon charcoal – grilled the lemons then ground the charred peel into a powder. Katsuya approves: “Burning lemon? That’s interesting.”
* Lizzie and Josh are on the bottom, neither of which is a surprise. Brooke and Stefan are on top, with Stefan the winner, his first win of any kind this season. Wikipedia says Stefan served as a judge on the Finnish version of Top Chef. Am I the only one who’d watch international versions of the show if they were subtitled in English? They’ve done two seasons of an “Arab World” edition, which would probably be fascinating, and I’d love to see the Portuguese version (bacalao ice cream!) too.
* Elimination challenge: Make fried chicken for an all-star collection of chefs, including Tom, Emeril, Wolfgang, Michelle Bernstein, David Chang, and the guys from LA’s Animal and Son of a Gun, who love fried chicken. Dinner is that night, so there’s not much time to prep or marinate the chicken.
* Stefan, discussing what I thought was chicken: “I like breasts a lot … you can hold on to the thighs much better.” Subtle.
* Josh says “danger zone” for no apparent reason, so I’ll assume that’s an Archer reference.
* Josie is talking all kinds of smack, saying she’s “got this one in the bag” because she’s from the south. Josh points out, correctly, that south Florida isn’t actually the South. Burn.
* Tom makes a crack about Wolfgang opening a chain of fried-chicken restaurants called “Wolfgang Cluck.” I’m not sure how the General will like the competition. Any last words, Clucky?
* Brooke’s plan is to remove the skins, fry them, and use them (ground, I assume) in the breading. Then she doesn’t have time to fry the skins, which I don’t get, since they should cook in a flash in the hot oil.
* Lizzie talks about wanting her mom to buy “one of those tubs” of fried chicken when she was a kid. If she had, she might never have come to the U.S. in the first place for fear she’d starve to death.
* So … I actually like fried chicken a lot, but rarely make it at home because it’s a big mess to do it right, usually in shortening in a big cast-iron skillet, frying at a relatively low temperature for about 45 minutes in total, with oil spattering everywhere. But I’ll order it when I’m out at any place that seems to do it right: Crispy exterior, so much so that it cracks or shatters as you bite into it, but that won’t slide off the meat itself. And dark meat, please.
* Service. Josie, who was sent home last time around by Michelle Bernstein, does a “southern style” chicken with black garlic, cayenne, and rice flour, along with a daikon salad. The judges then mock her for fake-south nonsense by serving on a banana leaf, with the chicken too oily and greasy and the breading underseasoned. Michelle says “I had to put it down … I just, I can’t.” We might all finally get our wish here, people.
* Sheldon does it two ways, umami-style legs (brined with bacon, shiitakes, and bonito, then dipped in a buttermilk-konbu mixture before it’s breaded) and Momofuku-style wings, although he has to toss the first batch of wings because they cooked too quickly on the outside. Everyone loves what he served and his out of the box thinking, but they complain that he didn’t serve enough. Pretty ballsy to serve “Momofuku-style wings” to the chef from Momofuku.
* Lizzie does a fried chicken breast with coriander, black pepper, and brown sugar rub, with a side of cabbage and pickled peach slaw. Judges like the flavor, but call it “shake and bake” (which it does, unfortunately, resemble), and Tom says it’s just not fried chicken.
* Stefan does chicken cordon bleu with garlic aioli. It sucks. I hate chicken cordon bleu anyway.
* Josh smokes his chicken first, then fries it and serves it with hot sauce and blue cheese. Tom loves the concept, so even though it’s not that crispy – was it breaded at all? – it gets the highest marks.
* Brooke does a dukkah-crusted chicken breasts on a bed of wilted escarole and tomato salad. She cooked the chicken too early, then refries it to serve, which is a terrible idea that produces terrible results. Wolfgang says it’s not Top Chef, and he “wouldn’t even call it the apprentice.” The Animal guys also reveal that Brooke interviewed them years earlier for a job at one of her restaurants but turned them down. Isn’t that a bit unfair to tell her now? Great for the cameras, but why not just kick her in the stomach while you’re at it?
* The chefs from LA only served breasts. Wolfgang says “it’s LA, plastic surgery everywhere.” Someone needs to point out that chicken breasts are, in a rather significant reversal, the least interesting part of the bird.
* Top three: Josh, Sheldon, Lizzie. Lizzie fried hers really well, producing a crispy crust that wasn’t greasy; it wasn’t truly fried chicken, but when says she’s not so familiar with it Padma jumps in with a “That’s fair.” That’s significant when we get to the bottom three. David Chang says Josh’s was a clever take on a traditional recipe. Sheldon’s two types, one savory one sweet, also get high marks, with the only criticism that there wasn’t enough of it. Josh wins over Sheldon in what I think was a mild upset, and I’m not sure what we didn’t hear that would back that up.
* My wife, on Josh: “Can I cut his mustache off in his sleep?” Not sure why she’d be sleeping with him, but maybe I can give Padma a call now.
* Bottom: Brooke, yeah, whatever, no way she’s going home. Then we get The Josie Show: She blames the fryer, she blames the clock, but never blames herself. Tom closes his eyes, puts two fingers on his forehead, and makes the “You have got to be shitting me” face. (We need a GIF of this.) Then he starts mocking her for running out of time and nails her for “wasting time.” She argues with him and says everyone (that is, her competitors) who tasted it said it was “delicious,” after which Tom says that clearly the judges were the idiots here. He looks at Josie like she’s the bad penny of Top Chef. Hey, you could have sent her home last week, pal. This one is your own fault.
* Stefan then says fried chicken isn’t “European,” so Wolfgang, who is European, says fried chicken is a classic Austrian dish. Tom calls cordon bleu a “bad banquets” dish and Emeril says it wasn’t even good chicken cordon bleu. He has the best line later, when Padma asks when anyone had seen the dish on a menu, saying “I had it two flights ago.”
* So the three chefs leave the room and Padma says, “such a bullshitter, such a bullshitter!” except that I wasn’t sure if she meant Stefan or Josie. Turns out she meant Stefan, who she says was lying about not knowing about fried chicken. My wife’s response: “If they’re gonna start sending people home for lyin’, there ain’t gonna be nobody left.”
* Josie is eliminated. Josh speaks for all of us when he says, “Thank God the Josie Show has been cancelled.” The fact that she even reached the top 6 is insulting; she won one Quickfire, never won an elimination challenge, and finished in the bottom seven times in eleven episodes, avoiding elimination in week 3 because she had immunity. I watch Top Chef for one reason more than any other – to see the food. I like watching the process, and I like getting ideas from their innovations. Every week Josie was on instead of someone more imaginative made the show worse. Don’t let the kitchen door hit you on the way out.
* Last Chance Kitchen: Kristen wins the grudge match, which was very satisfying to watch. Leave it to Josie to screw up and start making more excuses.
* Rankings: Again, Kristen remains the favorite. Of the five still in the big house, from top to bottom: Brooke, Sheldon, Lizzie, Stefan, Josh. I’d be happy with a final three of Kristen, Brooke, and Sheldon, although Kristen has to run the table to make that possible.
Having Josie gone just makes everything so much better. Truthfully, I’m fine with a top3 of anyone who is still remaining (obviously, Stefan, Josh, and Lizzie are a notch below the top 3). I think all of them can bust out a great meal in the finale (which I presume is the same as S8 and S9).
Anyone else think Stefan is holding back a bit? All his food seems really restrained. It’s like he’s scared of striking out, so he’s bunting instead. I think if he gets to the finals, we’ll see him bust out the food that made him the best S5 chef.
Sheldon’s really come on strong, so I’d venture to put him above Brooke at this moment. Also, Josh has a bit of Kevin from Season 7 “momentum” going… struggling big time the first half the season, almost being sent home a number of times, surviving, turning things around and then actually some how winning. Not saying Josh will make the final three, but his season has gone roughly the same as Kevin’s. Finally, I’m having the hardest time as to where to place Lizzie. It appears she’s only made one truly poor dish but was able to redeem herself thanks to a twist. And she been in the top three a lot, but hasn’t won a quickfire or challenge.
As always, thanks for the recap and well put about you know who, she was ruining the show.
Favorite part of the episode was Katsuya’s complete lack of a compliment for anything the chefs made in the QF. The closest he came was the “That’s interesting.” line Klaw notes above.
Also, did they hire joke writers for this episode? Seems like there were a ton of one liners.
What are the odds that the producers set up the LCK challenge to specifically place Josie and Kristen in a car together, just to see if Kristen would shove Josie out of a movie vehicle? I put them at non-zero…
We still don’t know what the save a chef will bring and CJ could easily win that
@John: My understanding, which might be wrong, is that the Save a Chef winner faces the LCK incumbent, and then the winner goes to the finals. I’d still take Kristen over CJ, if that’s the format.
Correct. The quote from the website detailing Save A Chef is “Your vote will keep one chef alive for another week. In the end, the last chef standing will compete in the Last Chance Kitchen finale.”
I wonder how the scheduling of the show is affected though. Last year they brought Beverly back for the final challenge before the “finale” portion of the season. We won’t know the winner of Save A Chef until three weeks (?) from now at the soonest. The scheduling guide lists an episode two weeks from now that results in a final three. The person who goes home in that episode’s accompanying LCK will have a week long Save A Chef vote to determine the LCK finale. I’m wondering if there will be a break between the LCK finale and the season finale to shoot and edit the finale. Seems like there has to be.
I’d put Sheldon as the front runner in the remaining bunch. I think he’s on a similar track as Paul from S9.
More TC racism! Sheldon gets called “Sushi Master”… Cut to Sheldon stating he doesn’t make sushi that much. But, eh, all Asians are the same, right?
Wow Kaz, why don’t you go ahead and launch into an appeal for the fight against Feline AIDS… you know you want to.
Thanks for the recap, KLaw. I couldn’t bear to watch this week, but maybe next week will be palatable.
Love the recap as always. Anyone else think it was really funny that all the judges at the elimination challenge were trashed? Seems like they had a little too much of that Terlato wine…I never knew Wolfgang would drop so many F-bombs. I thought that was why Judges’ Table was the next morning rather than that night—they were all drunk.
As far as the actual episode, I of course was happy to see Josie go home. At this point, I think we’re setting up for CJ v. Kristen Round 2 to get back into the competition. As far as those still left in the house, Sheldon and Brooke have performed the best, but I wouldn’t sleep on Lizzie and Stefan. I agree with the commenter above who said that Stefan has been restrained this season; though he was the runner up on S5, I thought he was the best chef there. Seems like he’s just skating along right now in order to get to the finals, then he’ll turn it on. Lizzie has also been consistently good, which I think we’ve seen is a recipe for success on this show. I’m ready for Kevin to go home–I love bacon and pork, but it seems like that is all he knows how to cook (and he basically admits that every episode)
Nick,
What, exactly, is ridiculous about my comment? Is it acceptable to call a Hawaiian man with Korean ancestry “sushi master” despite his having little experience preparing sushi?
Re: Jose.
Do you think, in the grand scheme of things, she is a bad chef? Or just a bad chef by TC’s standards and context? Like, if you went to her restaurant, do you think the food would be just okay? Bad? Good but not great? My assumption is that all the contestants, even those eliminated early, are talented chefs who either struggle with the structure of the show (e.g., time constraints, competition, thinking on the fly) or who are green but will eventually be pretty good. But Josie really challenged that assumption.
@Keith:
Wasn’t it Sheldon & Stefan as the top 2 quick fire chefs?
The judges being…buzzed…made for some of the best viewing I can remember. Very entertaining and loved the candid remarks on how they really felt about some of the weaker dishes. Tom finally putting his foot down at judges table was also great to see.
Disappointing to see again that it appeared Padma was defending Josie. I don’t remember the exact quote from the scene and could be remembering wrong but my memory was that she wasn’t even targeting a specific chef to go home but rather saying Josie should stay.
Glad Josie’s gone but I’m also still upset she made it remotely this far. Even if she hadn’t been annoying, she was on the bottom for over half the season and still made it to final 6.
@Kazzy re Nick – Kazzy I had the same thought about the sushi master comment/assumption.
Unless there was some sort of miscommunication about Sheldon’s background from off camera conversations, this is the second season in a row a “top” chef has basically categorized Asia as singular food style that any chef with the ancestry from Asia will have mastered.
It’s a pretty small portion of the earth so I can understand why people would think this is the case..
Kazzy, I’m all about calling out racism, and I appreciate that you do, and I think it’s rampant on this show around the Asian chefs. But, when you do so, make sure you get people’s ethnicity right. Sheldon is Filipino, not Korean. Besides the fact that he doesn’t look remotely Korean, an entire episode centered on his ethnicity via his restaurant concept. Not hard to get right 🙂
It’s interesting to me that last season Beverly got pigeonholed for always doing “Asian” food but Paul never did, even though he A) worked at a Japanese restaurant and B) clearly had very strong Japanese and SE Asian influences in almost all of his dishes.
Ryan,
It’s not limited to TC. When Cristeta Comerford, the White House executive chef, participated in Iron Chef America, Bobby Flay made a point to inform the viewers that he told Comerford it was ‘okay for her to use her heritage as an influence’, something I’ve never heard him say of another chef. Oh yea… Comerford is Filipino.
Thanks, Daphne. Total brain fart, but one I should be more mindful of.
I’ve always wondered if there would be the same expectations around Black and Latin@ chefs, but it’s nearly impossible to say, because there are hardly ever any of the latter on TC and so few of the former make it far at all. (Clever of them, wasn’t it, to have five Black chefs on season 7 which was in Washington DC, compared to one in Seattle!)
I don’t remember Kevin getting pigeon holed as such, nor Carla. However, I don’t know that we have as strong an association between Black-Americans and certain cuisines as we do with Asians and Asian-Americans.
I actually interpreted the talk of Sheldon as a “sushi master” as a reference to his island roots and predilection for using seafood, not as an ethnocentric put-down.
Not a Top Chef viewer, but I continue to approve of the Justin Upton. That is all.
This is an absurd discussion. Chefs pigeonhole themselves. When you make nothing but Asian food, people will start to expect it – regardless of race.
Raise your hand if you think Stefan would win a schnitzel quickfire.
*all hands are raised*
Racists.
keith,
That might have been the case. But it still demonstrates a certain ignorance… seafood does not equal sushi, Hawaii does not equal Japan, etc.
And I don’t think whomever said it (Stefan? Josh?) necessarily meant it as a putdown… but was just part of a broader, “Meh… Asian is Asian, right?” mindset.
Calling it racist was probably a step too far on my behalf. But it certainly was ignorant, no matter what way you slice it.
Raise your hand if you think Stefan would win a schnitzel quickfire.
Except that he’s Finnish. So I’d like his odds better in the kaalikääryleet challenge.
Oddly enough, I like Stefan’s chances better in a sushi quickfire.
Consigliari,
But do you see how you conflated being associated with a single country (which you were wrong about) and an entire continent? Saying someone makes “Asian” food is like saying someone makes “European” food. Would you expect Ripert to dominate Italian cooking or Batalli to dominate Spanish cooking? No. So why should we expect Sheldon to dominate Japanese cooking? He’s not Japanese and, from what I remember, never made Japanese food. The Philippines are an entirely different country, hundreds of miles away, with an entirely different cuisine.
Looking at the menu for Star Noodle, I don’t see a single dish that could even remotely qualify as “sushi”. He never cooked sushi on Top Chef. He is not Japanese. So what, exactly, makes him a “sushi master”?
“Brooke, yeah whatever, there’s no way she’s going home” — Pretty presumptuous to say just one week after Kristen was eliminated…