Top Chef, S13E12.

My ranking of the top 25 prospects for 2016 impact is up for Insiders, and I held a Klawchat yesterday afternoon.

* Quickfire: Chef Martin Yan of Yan Can Cook and Martin Yan Quick and Easy fame is the guest judge. The man is 67 years old and still full of energy, at least on camera. He explains that during the California gold rush, a lot of miners came from Guangdong (Canton), where his father also came from. The intersection of cultures led to chop suey, an iconic Americanized Chinese dish. (Wikipedia’s entry on the dish offers a more detailed explanation of the dish’s roots, tracing it back to a dish common Taishan made from leftovers.) The chefs must make a version of chop suey, cooking at a typical wok station, which is at least five times stronger than a professional kitchen burner. So we get a quickfire challenge that is just about cooking!

* I remember seeing Yan as a judge on ICA maybe ten years ago, and he was very big on “texture contrast” in every dish. I’d imagine in chop suey that’s as critical as anything, because you’re cooking vegetables so fast that they should remain crisp.

* Kwame is blanch-frying the vegetables in oil the wok, which apparently is a traditional technique. I can’t imagine cooking on a burner with that kind of power, because it seems like food could burn in a matter of seconds, and any aerosolized oil droplets would ignite right in front of you.

* Jeremy makes a Dungeness crab with bok choy, red chile, long beans, and onions … Marjorie makes lobster with ginger, thai chili, and orange … Carl does a Szechuan-style lobster with snow peas, ginger, and I presume a lot of chiles … Amar does pork (not chicken!) with vegetables and Szechuan peppercorns … Isaac makes General Tso’s chicken with cracklings, sambal, and orange … Kwame serves crispy beef with eggplant, long beans, carrots, cabbage, and noodles. Yan recognizes the oil-blanching technique right away.

* One other thing I remember from Yan’s appearance on ICA, because it’s evident here too: He’s just very kind. He couches everything he says with an almost educational context, and his criticisms are almost apologetic.

* The least favorites: Carl’s should have had more vegetables. I assume that’s an authenticity thing; when meat was expensive and limited, you’d fill up with cheap vegetables? Kwame’s blanch-frying technique made the vegetables greasy, and Yan says the eggplant soaked up the oil. Isaac used too much starch in his sauce.

* The winner is Marjorie, apparently because she had the best balance of all the ingredients.

* Elimination challenge: Guest judge is the founder of Umami Burger and 800 Degrees, Adam Fleischman. I’ve been to both places, as well as the now-defunct Umamicatessen; what the two existing concepts have in common is that they serve good food relatively fast, turning over tables quickly, and offer alcohol to boost profits. The challenge for each of the chefs is to come up with a fast casual concept that “would work in any city in North America.” Each must make one dish for 150 diners and potential investors, and to create an entire menu for the concept. Six of the eliminated chefs are there to be sous chefs. Marjorie, as the quickfire winner, gets to pick her own sous.

* Marjorie picks Angelina because she’s “a beast with prep.” She also gets to assign the other five sous chefs, although I wondered if she was spiteful enough to take full advantage. She assigns Jason to Jeremy, Chad to Carl, Karen to Amar, Wesley to Isaac, and Phillip with Kwame. That last one she did on purpose, since they’d sparred and she sees Kwame as competition, although I don’t think anyone wanted Phillip.

* Amar is making rotisserie chicken. Has he never heard of Boston Market?

* Kwame wants to do chicken and waffles that are easy to eat. I love the concept … and then he says he’s going to buy frozen waffles. What. The. Fuck. My man, Kwame, have you never watched Top Chef before? Frozen means pack your knives and gozen.

* Marjorie worked at Per Se and learned pasta there; she now wants to adapt that to fast casual. She’s doing olive-oil poached tuna with pasta, a very classic northern Italian combination. Pasta’s tough for fast casual, though, because it doesn’t travel or reheat well, and I think too many Americans hear pasta and think “tomato sauce.”

* Isaac says that he “got a couple of ideas I shoot to myself, then I shoot them down cause they’re stupid.” He has to be a top 5 most entertaining chef in Top Chef history. I’d love to do play-by-play with him of any sport, regardless of whether he knew it, because I think he’d be hilarious – maybe more so if he knew nothing about it. He settles on gumbo, of course. Three hours is not a lot of time to make gumbo, given the time required for the roux.

* The other chefs are mocking Kwame for buying frozen waffles while they’re all in the checkout line at Whole Foods. This is beyond foreshadowing. Kwame is toast, pun intended.

* Carl’s concept is a Mediterranean place that will showcase some lesser-known flavors of the region. (Isn’t this a little like Zoe’s Kitchen?) He’s making the lamb stew of his imagination.

* Amar’s concept is called Pio Pio, which is an actual rotisserie chicken place near Orlando that is very good.

* Jeremy’s concept is Asian-style tacos. Tom points out that the taco market is already very crowded. He’s frying pork belly strips with nam pla caramel and serving with wontons or lettuce wraps.

* Adam and Tom look at Kwame like he’s a complete idiot when he says he’s using frozen waffles. I mean, you see people making their own waffles at crappy free hotel breakfasts all the time. You can’t make your own on Top Chef?

* Marjorie needs pasta baskets (inserts for the pots in which she’ll cook the pasta) and finds none. She decides to use the fryer as a boiler. I saw something like that at Sotto in Cincinnati and they made it work beautifully, although it was built for that purpose – it had two chambers, one for gluten-free pastas and one for wheat pastas.

* Kwame immediately gets the biggest line, because who doesn’t love fried chicken and waffles?

* Blais is back as the fourth judge, always a welcome sight.

* Carl’s concept is SavoryMed, which he even acknowledges might sound like a health-care company. Blais compares it to Chipotle without saying that name (Chipotle without the sick employees!). The dish is lamb and piquillo pepper stew over couscous with yogurt, feta, fresh herb salad. The menu would offer the modular approach of Chipotle and its imitators. The judges all love the dish and the concept. Tom questions the feasibility of an herb salad, but that is serious nitpicking.

* Isaac’s concept is called Gumbo for Y’all, and his dish is gumbo ya-ya with chicken and sausage. What I think really sells the judges here is when he describes the concept as one that suits takeout and even catering – go buy a bowl of gumbo, or a couple of gallons to feed a crowd. That’s a food that reheats well and even gets better the next day. Hold your surprise, but Isaac’s gumbo is good, by the way.

* Kwame’s concept name is Waffle Me, which is great, but it’s all downhill from there. Customers would customize their waffle, topping, and spice level. He’s serving a whole wheat waffle topped with fried chicken, maple jus, mustard seeds, and an ancho chili crust (on the waffles, I think). Blais says the dish is a “disaster of a business model” because the bites are way too small. The frozen waffles weren’t good, of course.

* Marjorie’s concept is called Pasta Mama. One idea is to have a pasta extruder in every store, but I assume she’d ship the fresh pasta sheets from a central facility? Making pasta fresh on-site seems like a tall order for fast casual. Tom notes and admires the use of the fryer as the pasta cooking vessel. Her dish is olive-oil poached tuna with spaghetti, chili, garlic, lemon bread crumb. Tom says the tuna is cooked well. He and Blais are already working on commercials.

* Jeremy has the worst concept name, “Taco Dudes.” Adam says the menu has too many unfamiliar terms on it, although Tom sees a social media campaign around them. I think I side with Adam – you don’t want a menu to intimidate a customer who has just walked in without knowing the place already. Jeremy’s dish is crispy pork belly with nam pla caramel glaze, lime aioli, cabbage slaw, and pickled habaneros. Jeremy starts describing the place as a gastropub with a rooftop garden and “hot chicks serving you.” That gets a look from Padma, as it should, because he’s apparently a pig. Are you selling tacos or boobs? The food is good, but the concept isn’t.

* Amar’s Pio Pio has a very simple format and menu; his dish is chicken with Spanish yellow rice, four bean salad, and a choice of four sauces – I caught two, romesco and a chimichurri sauce. Rather than serving whole chicken pieces, he’s shredded the meat and mixed the white and dark together, which I think is a terrible move because there are people who, for health or taste reasons, prefer only one kind. Plus shredding is more work for the kitchen. Blais says Amar didn’t sell the concept well enough and the chicken doesn’t have the rotisserie flavor it should.

* Top three were Marjorie, for the dish and the concept’s “great branding opportunities;” Carl, for a “very articulate vision” of the restaurant (yeah, because we’ve seen something a lot like it before); and Isaac, who I think had the best concept, and of course the judges loved the gumbo.

* Kwame’s chicken and waffles were “nothing special” compared to others the judges have tried, his portions were too small, and have I mentioned that he used frozen waffles? Amar’s concept isn’t novel, although the sauces were good. Jeremy’s concept was “half-baked” and the judges say they’ve seen plenty of Asian taco places before. One thing I’ll say in Jeremy’s defense is that I think the Asian taco concept is still largely limited to major cities, maybe even just major cities on the coasts; it’s definitely not in small-town America very much, although I see no reason it wouldn’t work everywhere.

* Judges’ table: Majorie and Carl at the top. She’s not Italian but the judges just loved the concept. Adam says it’s hard to do pasta in fast-casual environment but she twisted it and “made it your own,” whatever that means – it doesn’t explain how she could execute fresh pasta in that type of restaurant. Carl’s food looks healthy and colorful, and the menu focuses on flavors Tom says are popular right now.

* Carl wins. He was the overwhelming favorite of the diners too.

* The bottom two are Kwame and Jeremy. Jeremy’s had a “few flavors missing,” and the concept was flawed. Tom can’t get past the “two dudes” name and explanation, saying that that story goes with fish tacos rather than pork. But the whole concept – in a gastropub, with a roof garden, with hot chicks – was a mess. Kwame’s dish required “too much technical precision” for fast-casual … and hey, frozen waffles, dumbass. Tom points out that the menu showed sweet-potato waffles, for example, and if Kwame had made those, he would probably have fared much better.

* Kwame is eliminated. Frozen anything gets you sent home. He gives a thoughtful thank-you speech to Tom, where he started at Craft as a waiter. You could see Tom was both very surprised and touched.

* LCK: Tom starts by saying Kwame is there because of the frozen waffles, so it’s a breakfast challenge, even though he says chefs hate working that shift and concedes that at home he’ll even serve frozen waffles to his kids. The chefs have fifteen minutes to make a creative breakfast.

* I grew up eating Eggos quite a bit and they do still have a nostalgic appeal to me, although if we have waffles in the freezer at my house, they’re probably leftovers from a weekend breakfast I made from scratch. Just lay them out on the counter on a cooling rack until they reach room temperature, then put them in a freezer bag. If you put hot waffles in the bag without cooling them, you’re trapping all that steam you want to lose first and the waffles will get soggy.

* I think it’s weird Kwame doesn’t have a waffle recipe off the top of his head. Even I do. They’re really just pancakes with more fat.

* Kwame is making egg bhurji, an Indian dish with lots of savory flavors and spices. Jason is making migas, a Spanish dish usually made from leftover bread that’s stale. He’s using fresh bread and just tearing it, rather than throwing it in a food processor to grind it a bit.

* The chefs in the peanut gallery are all acting very silly, or just drunk. Probably drunk, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

* Jason deep-fries the eggs rather than skillet-fry them, which is easier to manage and also gives the white a nice crispy, brown edge. Is poaching an egg in 15 minutes too risky because you can’t redo it? I think the Alton Brown method I’ve used requires about 12 minutes, so it’s doable, but you’ve got just one shot.

* Jason’s migas has sausage, pine nuts, currants, and thyme, and it’s kind of like a big hash where you break the egg yolk and toss it all together. Tom loves it. Kwame serves the egg scrambled with the bhurji like a thick sauce over brioche with cilantro. Tom seems to like it too. He’s surprised there’s no curry in the eggs but I think the sauce is so flavorful that he thought the eggs were spiced too. (Side note: Every recipe I found for eggs bhurji includes hing, the spice also known as asafoetida, an Indian spice famous for its fetid smell. I’ve actually never seen the spice here, although I imagine it’s easy to find in Indian groceries.)

* Tom loved both, but says “if I had to travel” to go eat one dish again, it would have been to Spain for Jason’s. So Kwame, who seemed like he was lapping the field before the ten-years-ago challenge, doesn’t even reach the finals.

* Ranking: Marjorie, Carl, Jason, Isaac, Amar, Jeremy. Carl’s stayed very strong throughout the season, but I think this is Marjorie’s to win right now. Jeremy was saved by Kwame’s disastrous choice this week, but he’s had more flops this season than any two other chefs remaining combined.