Top Chef, S13E06.

Two new Insider posts from Saturday – a draft blog post on Delvin Perez and other Puerto Rican prospects and another post on the Ian Kennedy and Chris Davis contracts.

I thought this was the best episode of the season. The challenges were all well-designed and focused on the food. The dishes on the whole sounded really good – even one of the judges’ least favorites from the elimination challenge sounded like something I’d want to make at home. But there was one moment in the quickfire challenge that absolutely pissed me off.

* First we get some postgame drama from the previous challenge, with Jason killing Phillip in a big group discussion after the judging. Phillip comes off increasingly lacking in self-awareness every week, including his comment to Jason: “What you call gummy, I may enjoy. Does that make me wrong?” He’s shouted down with “yes,” because gummy potatoes are just disgusting (and I think are considered “wrong” by pretty much everybody – any decent cookbook explains that you shouldn’t overwork mashed potatoes for this reason). Plus it’s clear that in a challenge where all the chefs are on one team, they’re embarrassed to have a failure anywhere in the meal, even if it indirectly benefits them in the competition.

* Off to San Diego … their drive down from Palm Springs was totally fake. I can tell because we saw no traffic.

* Chad joined the Navy after 9/11, which is how he ended up in San Diego. He says he joined because he “wanted to kick whoever’s ass did that to us.” That mentality was apt in 1941.

* Javier Plascencia is the guest judge for the Quickfire; I didn’t realize this, but he has a new restaurant in San Diego’s resurgent Little Italy neighborhood called Bracero. Also, I keep wanting to call him Javier Placenta.

* The quickfire challenge is to make fish tacos in 20 minutes, and unfortunately, it’s a sudden death quickfire. I hate these gimmicks.

* In the scramble for ingredients, Jeremy called Wesley a “dick” for taking a lobster from him, which appears to have come because Jeremy was trying to take two and Wesley wanted one. I’m waiting for the inevitable episode where one chef kicks another in the balls over a slab of foie gras.

* And then Wesley can’t seem to hold on to his crustacean, putting it on Marjorie’s station and freaking out when he thinks someone stole it, eventually admitting, “I just misplaced my lobster.” He should be tagged with that in the future; instead of saying where he works, his font should say “Wesley: Misplaced Lobster.”

* Carl says he opened a taco stand in Nicaragua on a whim while staying there with his girlfriend. That’s kind of awesome, and apparently Nicaragua doesn’t have a very high standard covering who can sell food there.

* Chad makes his dish very spicy because Javier “eats habaneros like they’re apples.” More importantly, Chad says it correctly, with no tilde on the n. (Jalapeño, but habanero.)

* Is it really a bad idea to do your own tortillas? Marjorie is. I’ve never had a packaged tortilla that could come close to the worst fresh ones I’ve made. They start to dry out the moment they touch the air. Meanwhile, Wesley is doing a taco without a tortilla, more like a sushi roll, which does not strike me as something you can eat with your hands.

* And then, this happened: Angelina plated right on her cutting board, not on the plates, so she can’t serve anything to the judges. Is that not ticky-tack? If the dishes are done, they’re done, and they’re just a few inches away from the plates themselves. I don’t see any good reason why she couldn’t have served from there. The food was finished – and if it wasn’t, then she’d be judged on that, not on an empty dish. This isn’t failing to use a required ingredient, or continuing to cook or plate once time had expired. She made the dish. Just fucking eat it.

* Which brings me to my second point: Competition rules aside, I have a real problem with wasting food. The fact that Padma and Javier wouldn’t even taste that food – did it just go in the trash? – is beyond insulting. Taste it, give some feedback, and inform her she’s automatically on the bottom if you must. This was equivalent to taking her food and dumping it on the floor. Javier could easily have pled ignorance and just picked up one taco to taste it, even if it didn’t “count” for the show.

* Favorites: Karen’s oyster taco with kimchi-sesame salsa, pickled red cabbage, and avocado; Chad’s very spicy grilled thresher shark with oyster and sea urchin salsa, soy, and sesame; and, of course, Kwame, who made a wahoo taco with truffle cream and chipotle salsa. Winner is Chad, the hometown boy. Canking up the capsaicin appears to have been good strategy.

* Meanwhile, Phillip, from his orbit somewhere beyond Neptune: “Why is it that when I cook something perfect, I’m not in the top? I don’t understand. Am I not supposed to be making yummy food?” Well, you could start by not saying “yummy” because you’re not a three-year-old.

* Bottom: Angelina by default. Wesley goes on camera, saying failing to plate is “just stupid,” and then he knocks three trays and a pile of mangos on the floor. Angelina has to pick one chef to battle to save herself from elimination, and chooses … Wesley, because he “can get into his own head sometimes.”

* The quickfire elimination challenge is Caesar salad-inspired. It was invented in the restaurant Javier owns now, called Caesar, and the chefs must make any dish using only the ingredients he uses in that salad. I was a bit surprised to see anchovies in the dressing; I’m pretty sure Alton Brown said in his episode on the subject that they were not traditional.

* Wesley is struggling to fry an egg cleanly. Angelina calls out Wesley for double-dipping a spoon. This is kind of a race to the bottom at this point.

* Wesley eventually makes a proper fried egg, serving it with anchovy remoulade, grilled romaine hearts, croutons, and lime zest. Angelina made crostini with garlic, olive oil, dijon vinaigrette, lime, grilled romaine, and anchovy. Wesley’s was simple, with a perfectly cooked (!) egg, but Javier wanted more of the “garlic condiment of the lettuce” (I think that’s what he said – I listened three times and that’s the best I got). Angelina had a good idea but Javier says he wanted more sauce. Wesley wins, so Angelina goes home. I also think Angelina’s dish didn’t show much technique at all – it sounded more like layered ingredients but nothing like Wesley’s remoulade or grilled romaine.

* Elimination challenge: Emeril, Tom, and Blais show up with craft beer that they (including Padma) made in conjunction with Stone Brewing, a major microbrewer in the city. Each chef gets one and has to create a dish that includes or emphasizes the flavors the judge added to that beer. Padma’s golden ale includes jalapeño, ginger, and tamarind. Blais’ stout contains beets, chocolate, and ras el hanout (a Moroccan/Maghreb spice mix that includes about a dozen ingredients, like combining the spices for a pumpkin pie with those in a garam masala). Emeril’s beer, type unknown, contained coffee, cayenne, and tangerine. Tom’s wheat beer has lemon, coriander, and banana (for body). Wheat beer with coriander sounds very soapy to me – and I happen to really like coriander.

* They’re cooking at Juniper + Ivy, Blais’ first restaurant in Little Italy – his second, the Crack Shack, just opened right next door – and one of my favorite places to eat in the country. I think I even spotted one of my servers on the show. Anyway, if you haven’t picked up Blais’ cookbook, Try This At Home, I recommend it highly. (That links to my review.)

* If the episode is just an hour long, so 44 minutes of content without commercials, we could do with less footage in Whole Foods and more footage of actual cookery.

* Isaac says that banana is fatty (which it most definitely is not), so he has the idea to make it into a sort of mayonnaise that he calls “#banannaise.” Don’t try this at home, kids. Mostly because it will be gross.

* One of the guests at judges’ table – possibly the guy from Stone – says there are 106 microbreweries in San Diego, further proving that it is the greatest place to live in the continental United States.

* The dishes start with Padma’s beer. Chad made a carrot-roasted opah (moonfish) with ginger hominy, jalapeño purée, and tamarind-glazed carrots. Good marks all around. Amar made a sous vide chicken breast, crispy chicken thigh, jalapeño popper, and tamarind ginger chutney. This gets higher marks, particularly for how it complements the beer.

* Wesley sees that his lamb is overcooked, because he let it rest too long. But remember – Angelina’s mistake was “stupid.”

* The next set of dishes go with Blais’s stout: Karen made a roasted duck breast with cocoa nib beet puree, ras el hanout, and roasted carrots. Wesley served his lamb with roasted beet purée and ras el hanout roasted carrots. The judges pounce, saying the lamb is dry and the beet puree too one-dimensional. Jeremy made duck breast with chocolate granola, pickled beet, and a pickled blueberry hibiscus reduction. The judges like the concept but it needed more fat and more chocolate.

* Emeril’s beer: Marjorie made roasted potato gnocchi with chicken ragù, made with coffee, tangerine, cayenne, and roasted mushrooms. She braised the chicken in the beer, but the flavor of the beer did not come through to the final dish at all, although Blais says he loves it anyway. (The J&I menu always has a couple of hearty pasta dishes along these lines.) Phillip made a roasted duck breast with rutabaga puree, fresh tangerine, and a sauce with coffee in it. Carl made a grilled short rib with ancho chile, coffee, and dried cherry salsa. The pairing with the beer is almost too close, and Emeril says it needed a tiny bit more salt. Just on the description, this sounded the most mundane dish of all – I’ve had short rib preparations with all of those ingredients before.

* Tom’s beer: Isaac made a corn and crab velouté (actually a sauce made with stock and a blond roux) with crispy potato, king crab salad, and his sriracha banannaise. The dish just reads weird to the judges, including the presentation of the crab salad on top of a chunk of a corn cob. Kwame made a chicken mojo with banana soffrito puree, garlic puree, crispy chicken thigh, and garlic green onion. Huge raves, of course. Jason made a pork and squid meatball with a carrot wheat beer sauce, salsa povera, and grilled squid tentacles. The meatball is compared to the stuffing from dim sum dumplings. Blais can’t stop commenting on how weird it is. Tom says, “This is bait, man!”

* Karen, Jeremy, Amar, Kwame were among the judges’ favorites. Their least favorites include Jason’s; Blais keeps calling it weird, Emeril says customers would have sent it back, and Tom says it was too “historical” (based on Jason’s own defense of the dish). Wesley’s was not refined enough, and he killed the lamb. Isaac’s soup was a “muck of a velouté.” Marjorie’s dish was good, but had nowhere near enough beer flavor.

* Judges’ Table: The top three are Amar, Karen, and, The Man We All Know and Love, Kwame. Amar’s dish was “powerful” with the most assertive flavors of the season from him. He went heavy on jalapeño, which seems to have been a winning formula in this episode. Karen’s beet sauce was “addictive” per Tom. Padma loved how Kwame took the banana element form the beer and “made it (his) own.” Tom says, “That dish could stand up anywhere.” Yet the winner is Karen. I really thought Kwame would win based on comments and how clever his use of the banana was; perhaps they’re trying to spread the wins out a little more so he doesn’t Qui the whole season?

* Jason, Isaac, and Wesley on the bottom. Jason’s sounds really terrible. The tentacles were slimy and the whole dish was incredibly strange. Yet Wesley is sent home; Tom says shortly before elimination that the “worst-cooked dish sends you home,” and overcooking your protein is a capital crime in front of the 24-hour short rib master.

* LCK: Grayson, Angelina, and Wesley are in a three-person battle, making hamburgers in fifteen minutes to make the burgers. Angelina says you need 10-12 minutes to make a great burger, which sounds about right; I usually give mine about 10 minutes on a grill to get to medium, 12 for medium-well, although managing the heat is key.

* The first thing to do is start heating the skillet, right? You want that sucker hot when the meat hits the pan. All three chefs make very thick burgers that will require the maximum time to cook.

* Grayson wants to use pork belly in her burger, but it’s not ground yet, which costs her a minute or so. Her burger sounds similar to Bar at Husk’s burger, which is 1/3 bacon. Wesley is doing lamb, my least favorite protein and IMO a terrible burger meat because it’s so lean. Even at medium, it’s probably past eating.

* Wesley serves that lamb burger with a fennel-jalapeño onion slaw, goat cheese, and ras el hanout, although Tom says it’s a little too compacted. Grayson serves her beef and pork belly burger with mushrooms, pickled red onion, and Wisconsin cheddar. It looks gloriously messy but the cheese didn’t melt all the way. There’s that minute she lost to grinding the pork. Angelina’s burger includes beef and pork and comes with avocado, chimichurri, heirloom tomato, pickled habanero, and fresh arugula.

* Angelina wins! Go figure. The previously-eliminated chefs seem pretty happy for her. She did take a bit of a beating in the main show.

* Rankings: Kwame

… Jeremy, Marjorie, Karen, Amar, Carl, Jason, Chad, Isaac, Phillip. I’m making a call on Isaac here, as he’s cooked almost entirely within his Cajun comfort zone and struggles to get outside of it. And while I mock Phillip’s “my food is yumm-ay!” commentary, he’s right about one thing – the judges don’t seem to love his food.