Top Chef, S13E11.

I have a new draft blog post on possible first-rounders Robert Tyler and Kyle Lewis up for Insiders.

So the remaining seven chefs are all acting like they’re going to miss Phillip … no, they’re not. I think they all made it clear they didn’t really like him, and how could you, given how he acted? Kwame says “I understood him,” after which Marjorie, the one honest soul there, says, “I didn’t.”

* Quickfire: They’re in Oakland and MC Hammer is here. (Where’s MC Slammer and Vanilla Sherbet?) I don’t see the point of having Hammer here, although at least he drops a “Go A’s, go Warriors, go Raiders” on us. The challenge is for the chefs to come up with their own rap names and create a dish that visually and conceptually expresses that name. Hammer says he made sure it “personified how hard I hit the stage.” Yeah, nothing says “hard” to me like “Help the Children.”

* It’s actually kind of painful to watch this. Kwame seems like the only chef there with any sense of rap culture at all, given the name he picks and what eventually happens during judging.

* Kwame says he did shows when he was a teenager and dropped a couple of mixtapes, when he had “a very short-lived rap career” where he’d give away food at the shows to get people to show up.

* Carl picks the name “Dr. Funky Fresh,” which would have sounded dated in 1988. Marjorie’s “Miss Punch-a-Lot” is almost as bad.

* The dishes: Karen (rap name: “Pink Dragon”) made a hot and sour soup with pork meatballs, shiitakes, and morels … Carl (I had to mute him rapping) made a beef tartare lettuce wrap … Amar (“Santana Lovah”) made a soy-glazed sea bass with dashi broth … Marjorie made a fried chicken sandwich with honey sriracha and marinated watermelon radish salad … Isaac (“Toups Legit”) made scallops with BBQ sauce and grits … Jeremy (“Spicy J-Rock 305” … what the fuck is that) made spicy dungeness crab in broth with grilled summer squash and halibut cheek … Kwame (“Baylish”) did a seafood broth with grilled lobster and dungeness crab.

* Kwame drops a few rhymes and at least sounds somewhat current – way better than Carl.

* Least favorites: Amar’s plate was just fish; the bread on Marjorie’s andwich just “sucked up the spices;” Kwame’s dish was fine but other plates were “simyular” to his yet better.

* Favorites: Carl, Isaac, and Karen. Hammer’s comments are kind of worthless and I truly don’t see why he would be a guest judge here. Why not invite Alison Barakat of Bakesale Betty’s and challenge everyone to make a fried chicken sandwich?

* The winner is Isaac, again, and he gets immunity.

* Elimination challenge: Guest judge Jonathan Waxman, who seems to pop up once a season here. Each chef must cook a dish from a specific place and time in history. The chefs get to pick off a globe that has at least ten options on it, so even the chef picking last gets a choice. Isaac picks the Viking age. Carl picks ancient Greece. Amar chooses Paris’s Belle Époque (roughly contemporary with our Gilded Age). Marjorie picks ancient India. Kwame takes the Han dynasty of Beijing. Jeremy chooses the Gold Rush in San Francisco. Karen, picking last, takes the Empire of Japan. No one wanted the Italian Renaissance?

* The chefs get two hours to research at the SF library … which does not make riveting television.

* The chefs go drinking at an old-fashioned kitsch tiki lounge. And suddenly Jeremy is banging the drums and giving us the metal horns. Honestly, I kind of wish his food read more “metal.” He’d be much more interesting.

* Amar gets to make classical French cuisine, which is a mixed blessing – I’m sure it’s food he knows, but it’s also food every chef who’s going to judge his food knows.

* Kwame’s dish has four ingredients: duck, eggplant, a duck “jus,” and lapsang souchong, a black tea that is dried by smoking it over burning pine wood. He goes to serve a “sample” to Tom/Jonathan and his duck is raw in the center. He says he roasted the duck for 16 minutes … is it just me or is that barely enough to get the duck to room temperature?

* Waxman’s enthusiasm is great, especially when Tom can seem a bit cantankerous in the kitchen and many guest judges don’t bring much personality at all. Also, Waxman agrees with me and says he would have chosen Italian Renaissance “in a heartbeat.” Of course, he did write a book on Italian cooking, so he may have a better handle on it than I do.

* The dishes: Carl made marinated mackerel and calamari with olives and grapes, seasoned with garum, an ancient Roman fish sauce that, as far as I know, no longer exists. (He probably used Asian fish sauce or colatura, a modern Italian descendant of garum.) It’s a big hit. Marjorie made a lamb kebab with heart jus, curried split peas, and paratha (an unleavened Indian flatbread). Padma likes the balance of spice/heat in the dish, but the paratha was too greasy. I’m wondering if Marjorie only fried it, rather than baking it partway and then frying it. Waxman says her lamb should have been cooked all the way through to be authentic.

* Isaac made a cumin- and mustard-seared venison with caramelized onion “grautr” (I assume this is grøt, a sort of porridge often made with barley) and pickled beets. There’s a great texture/flavor to venison. Kwame made a coriander-crusted duck with black sesame jus, lapsang souchong “cream” with silken tofu, and eggplant. Waxman loves the coriander. Tom says duck is nicely cooked, which is a nice comeback from the kitchen debacle. Of everything we saw in the elimination challenge, this is the dish I’d most want to eat.

* Jeremy made halibut with shellfish chowder. Tom says it’s not a chowder and is more like a sauce. Waxman says it’s not authentic at all, since miner food would likely have been rustic and hearty. Karen made soba noodles in a mushroom dashi with pickled mushrooms and wagyu beef. Padma says the broth more Chinese than Japanese. Waxman says she should have stopped with the clear broth, and Gail says she should have kept the dish simple.

* Amar made roasted squab with sweetbreads, foie gras, tourné vegetables, and a lot of truffle sauce. The sauce seems to be the key, and Tom says it’s a very concentrated sauce for only three hours of cooking time.

* Marjorie, Karen, Jeremy are on the bottom. The other four all did well.

* Kwame, Amar, and Carl were top three. Waxman loved Kwame’s sparseness and restraint. Amar showed off a lot of technique. Tom praises Carl’s dish, saying how every ingredient mattered. The winner is Amar. His dish may very well have been the best, but he also got the easiest challenge, cooking in a style any chef who went to culinary school or trained in a high-end restaurant would have learned.

* Karen’s dish had too many components, plus it wasn’t really authentic. Waxman said it’s a chef’s job to edit, and she didn’t. Marjorie’s lamb didn’t have enough char. Padma says the paratha got too crispy when Marjorie fried it. Jeremy’s dish didn’t have the flavor depth of a chowder; it was definitely not a miner’s chowder and was too fussy.

* Karen is sent home. How is it not Jeremy? I understand Karen’s dish wasn’t very authentic, but neither was Jeremy’s, plus it seems like hers tasted better.

* By the way, that’s easily the most emotional goodbye from other chefs we’ve seen this year. She’s struck me as a little glib on screen, but she must be much more genuine in person than I thought.

* LCK: Teppanyaki challenge. Ten minutes to prep, ten to cook and put on a show. We end up with the chefs doing shots of sake. It’s just so much more collegial in LCK than on the main show.

* Karen calls and audible and changes her dish to lobster fried rice when her omelet cooks a little too fast. She serves it with a quail egg, mushrooms, and asparagus. It looks very messy but like it has a zillion flavors. I would also eat this.

* Jason says he’s a “natural performer” and is into drag … with an actual character he’s named Sissy Chablis. He makese seared wagyu NY strip with shiitakes, asparagus, and quail egg, topped with “dancing” bonito flakes. It seems like his dish was a little better executed and he gave a little more entertainment, so he wins again, his fourth in a row.

* Rankings: Kwame, Marjorie, Amar, Carl, Isaac, Jeremy. How many chances can Jeremy get? Outside of his crudo dishes, he hasn’t really excelled, and he seems to be trending downward as the challenges progress and the competition gets better.