Top Chef, S11E04.

Today’s Klawchat transcript is up, as is my joint ranking of the top 30 prospects for the 2014 draft, done with Chris Crawford. Enjoy.

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This week’s guest judge is Eddie Huang, author of Fresh Off the Boat and a fast-rising star in the culinary world who only opened his first restaurant, BaoHaus, in 2009. Huang was born in the United States and is of Hunanese descent, but the challenge in this episode revolves around Vietnamese cuisine, celebrating the major contributions of Vietnamese immigrants to New Orleans and the surrounding region, notably to its shrimp industry.

* No quickfire this week – just an elimination challenge where three teams of five chefs apiece must create a Vietnamese menu, with at least one dish highlighting shrimp, and serve it to local Vietnamese diners.

* Travis is talking a big game about his knowledge of Vietnamese food, as he’s spent a lot of time there and his boyfriend is Vietnamese. All of this footage this early in the show means he’s going to end up with pho all over his phace.

* Carlos is extremely nervous and says he’s never eaten Vietnamese food, something he has in common with several other chefs in the house. I have no idea how that is even possible: Vietnamese food isn’t unusual or exotic, and any chef in any major city in the United States has access to dozens of Vietnamese restaurants, serving pho (the signature Vietnamese soup), bun (grilled meats over thin rice noodles), or banh mi (pressed sandwiches on crusty French bread). You’d have to go out of your way to avoid eating Vietnamese food. Wouldn’t any chef, especially a young one, want to explore new cuisines, just to extend his/her palate? Is this some residual anger over the fall of Saigon that I’m not aware of? Jane Fonda won’t be waiting on your table, I promise.

* Emeril and Eddie are taking the chefs on a three-stop “crash course” in Vietnamese cuisine, which Travis says he should be giving. I’m now imagining him drowning in a giant bowl of steamed rice noodles.

* First stop: Dong Phuong, the “best bakery in town,” per Michael. Eddie says it’s the best banh mi in New Orleans, with French bread so good restaurants order from the bakery. We see dumplings, meat turnovers (their versions of Cornish pasties or empanadas?), and xá xíu, the Vietnamese version of the Chinese barbecued pork dish char siu. The bakery is located east of downtown New Orleans, so it’s in the opposite direction from where I’m usually headed (such as to Baton Rouge).

* Nina thinks Michael has no talent is “faker than Pamela Anderson’s breasts.” Dated reference aside – when was the last time Anderson was culturally relevant – was I the only one surprised to see Nina dropping some trash talk?

* Second stop: The shrimp docks. Shirley immediately starts grilling (pun intended) the shrimpers’ wives on their favorite recipes, and they’re all talking about using butter. Either that’s the French colonial influence or these women have adapted very quickly to American modes of cooking (fry it or drown it in butter).

* Janine volunteered on an elephant reserve in Thailand because she wants to prove that not only is she prettier than everyone else, she’s also a better person.

* Ho Travis is pushing a tomato-based sauce he claims is common in central Vietnam; Janine says she’s never seen a tomato-based sauce in Vietnamese food, and for what it’s worth, I found a few articles on central Vietnamese cuisine and none mentioned tomatoes at all. Why wouldn’t he push something clearly authentic that still had a wow factor, like the crispy pancakes called bánh xèo, which are folded and stuffed with pork and shrimp like glorious Vietnamese tacos of goodness?

* Last stop: Kim Anh’s noodle house in Harahan, Louisiana. Owner of a 96% rating on Urbanspoon – whatever you think of Urbanspoon’s users, 96% means it hasn’t had a lot of angry trolls trying to slash its rating – Kim Anh is just west of downtown and south of Metairie, a strip-mall noodle shop known for its noodles, pho, and banh mi, the holy trinity of Vietnamese cuisine (or at least of Vietnamese cuisine as it exists here in the U.S.).

* Brian is Korean, cooks Peruvian, and doesn’t know Vietnamese that well. I seem to recall a controversy a few years ago about one chef who only cooked “Asian”…

* Sara is also not impressed by Ho Travis’s knowledge of Vietnamese cuisine. This becomes important at the grocery store, when she starts rearranging the team’s ingredient purchases, putting a bunch of items back and swapping them out for other items that will work better … but possibly leaving one key ingredient behind: lemongrass, an essential flavor in Vietnamese (and Thai) cuisine. So, if Sara took it out, no one noticed? Were all four other team members checking Twitter while she overhauled the shopping list? Five people were responsible for that cart and no one realized it was gone. You all fail.

* Meanwhile, Justin realizes he bought way too much lemongrass, but the green team never asks if anyone else has extra. Ho Travis then tells Eddie that they don’t have lemongrass, which, as Sara correctly forecasts, is all the judges are going to notice when they eat the green team’s food. Meanwhile, Travis says Eddie is “kind of a douchebag” for mocking him for deprecating the importance of lemongrass in Vietnamese dishes.

* Steph’s allergic to shrimp, which is kind of relevant in this challenge. She ends up cooking a dessert, but no one seems to point out that she can’t taste most of the dishes going out of this kitchen, so cooking any item containing shrimp or other shellfish-derived ingredients (like oyster sauce) is out of the question for her. No one seems terribly concerned about this, and the judges are either unaware of it or forgot about it when looking at her dish.

* Justin totally hacks up a Napoleon quote, claiming the little guy said, “Brilliance is winning, but also not telling your opponent when they’re losing.” The diminutive dictator’s actual line was the much more concise and forceful, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Brevity … wit.

* To the food … the orange team serves Nicholas’ black pepper squid with cabbage and peanuts (which the judges said was bland), Brian’s gulf shrimp and pork belly spring roll, Carlos’ fish head soup with pineapple and tomato (which was also bland and lacked acid), Louis’ beef broth pho with raw eye round and oxtail (also bland, lacking aromatics and herbs). So orange is the new bland. Tom cracked that the meal made him want to go out and have actual Vietnamese food. I think Tom’s snark increases when he has a partner in crime in the house, like Huang, who appears to hold nothing back.

* The red team offers Nina and Carrie’s raw beef salad with pickled vegetables, which looked like cat food with slaw on the screen; Shirley’s Vietnamese take on BBQ shrimp, with creole butter and lots of it; Justin’s beef pho with rice noodles and beef belly; and Carrie’s lemon custard with caramelized banh mi (which looks like it’s just the bread). Shirley emphasizes that Patty helped with every dish, although no specific dish was hers. Justin and Shirley come out on top here, while no one liked the texture of the raw beef plate, and Carrie’s dessert flops on presentation. Mostly this was Justin’s broth versus Shirley’s giant pool of butter. I know where my money is.

* The green team starts with Ho Travis’ grilled pork sausage wraps with pineapple and shrimp paste, Sara and Stephanie’s oxtail rice wrap and pork shrimp rice wrap; Bene and Janine’s fried gulf shrimp with a Vietnamese tomato-ginger sauce; and Stephanie’s coconut macaroon with Vietnamese coffee-caramel. Travis’ sausage gets good marks, but the sauce has no balance and “smacks you in the face,” which leads to Padma saying she’s “happy to be smacked in the face by something” and Gail saying what probably everyone was thinking but really only the other woman at the table had any right to say. The shrimp is a disaster, soggy from being sauced before serving, while the tomato sauce is too reduced and reminds everyone of an Italian tomato sauce. The rice with the shrimp is “atrocious” as well, which we saw briefly in the kitchen but probably could have used more attention in the editing room. (It sounds like the rice cooker didn’t work correctly, but we barely got any of that footage.) The dessert was the best course, although there’s an element of “by default” in those comments.

* The chefs have a plank-off in the stew room. I really have nothing for this.

* Eddie’s comments on the stew room monitor, where he says “a few people did get it right,” imply that most of them didn’t. The main praise goes to Justin for nailing the flavors in his two-hour pho and Shirley for the flavors of her shrimp, and for butter. The green team disappointed across the board except for the macaroon, and even that didn’t blow Tom away. Their shrimp was “hammered.” The rice was “shattered,” like baby food. These are not words you want to hear in descriptions of your food.

* The red team is on top, and Shirley wins. Beyond just, well, butter, she may also have earned points for incorporating Creole elements into a Vietnamese dish (or perhaps Vietnamese elements into a Creole dish), and also because she had the dish that highlighted the episode’s central ingredient. Brian hugs Shirley in the stew room and picks her up, saying, “My Asian sister.” But if he’s Korean, and she’s Chinese … forget it, I’m only digging my own grave here.

* The green team is on the bottom, of course. Sara starts crying straight off in front of the judges. Tom breaks out the flamethrower to go after the tomato sauce, and he’s clearly hunting for big blame. Ho Travis takes responsibility and says he’s “had it three times” in central Vietnam, but Tom just lights into him more with a McDonald’s analogy that should have left Travis a smoldering pile of ashes. Eddie makes the more salient point – even if it’s authentic, is that the dish or the flavor you want to highlight? Then Tom turns the flame on the shrimp, and Janine owns up to frying it twice and then saucing it before service. And then the questions on the rice start, but when Sara tries to take responsibility, Janine jumps in to acknowledge that she had a hand in it, and Tom just withers the team with a “Why serve it?” Eddie says the macaroon is akin to “janky ratchet Asian desserts.” Then, after the chefs leave, Emeril calls the tomato sauce like something from “Mama Baloney’s.” I’m getting the sense here that they didn’t like the green team’s food.

* Janine’s eliminated, but doesn’t seem shocked, saying, “Any fry cook at Hooters can cook shrimp,” although it sounded better when she said it. She can console herself with her upcoming restaurant in New York City. Meanwhile …

* LCK: Janine squares off against Jason, Aaron, Ramon, and Bret in the first episode of Last Chance Kitchen, where the chefs have 30 minutes to make whatever they want. Unsurprisingly, Aaron, Ramon, and Bret all fall short, and Tom chooses between Janine’s fried oyster (which photographed beautifully) and Jason’s raw fish with white chocolate and other stuff but what the hell is the white chocolate doing on a fish dish? I don’t like white chocolate that much to begin with, but Jason covered the plate like he was grating pecorino romano or something. Janine wins. Jason seems awfully slow to exit the kitchen. Don’t stare directly at an angry Tom, Jason. He’s better with a knife than you are.

* Top three prediction: Carrie, Shirley, Justin, followed by Stephanie, Brian, and Sara. Bottom three are Bene, Louis, and Patty.