So, Jeremy won more challenges than anyone else this season? I wouldn’t have guessed that, other than that as the only contestant left who appeared in every episode he’s had more opportunities. I feel like I remember his failures (restaurant wars, hot chicks taco stand) more than I remember his successes.
* Tom is going to cook a meal for Jeremy and Amar, which he says the first meal he’s cooking on Top Chef … except didn’t he cook a meal in eight minutes once, determining the length of a quickfire?
* Still, he’s making a multi-course meal including fresh handmade pasta, so I don’t think the guys have any complaints here. He makes crab and sea urchin with finger limes (not actually limes or even citrus, but the source of “lime caviar”) for the first course. Squab, honey-glazed onions, turnips, smoked peaches for the second. Potato agnolotti with leeks and caviar for the third. Wagyu beef, chanterelle and lobster mushrooms, aged soy bordelaise, shishito peppers for the fourth. I’m full just watching this.
* He says the meal is about ingredients that get him really excited, and wants the chefs to think about the ingredients that do the same for them. This got me thinking about what ingredients I might choose; I’d pick some number from duck legs (skin included, of course), peaches, chocolate, wild mushrooms, short ribs, or eggs. I’d have said pie, but that doesn’t scale well if they’re asked to cook for 100 people.
* Padma does not age. Someone should look into this.
* All the chefs are in the house, so the two remaining contestants draft their sous chefs. Amar takes Kwame, Jeremy takes Carl, Amar takes Marjorie (thinking about the dessert course), Jeremy takes Angie (saying she’s the fastest prep cook). The challenge: Create a four-course meal highlighting four specific ingredients, one per course, of their choice. Serving at craftsteak in MGM, which is spectacular if you haven’t been – they serve the short rib dish that made me realize how much I love short ribs after years of thinking I didn’t like them.
* In walk their mentors, Charlie Palmer and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. JGV says he sees himself in Jeremy, which is a little weird given Jeremy’s laid-back, dudebro personality. The mentors are here to help prep and cook as sous-chefs, but will sit with the judges for service.
* So we get to see Palmer and JGV walking through Whole Foods. No big deal, I’m sure they do this all the time.
* Jeremy declines JGV’s advice on the foie gras duo. This doesn’t seem like a good thing.
* Palmer, while doing line cook work, says, “No one’s too good to do anything.” He also says there’s a difference between being confident in what you do and being a complete asshole, and Amar had crossed the line back in their time together.
* Amar’s making risotto! This also doesn’t seem like a good thing.
* I would really watch a five-minute online clip of Charlie Palmer trimming (the word is “frenching,” unfortunately) that rack of lamb.
* Amar says his style is fewer elements, better flavors, less explanation, as compared to Jeremy’s more technical and more complex approach. I happen to like both when I’m eating out, but recognize that they’re going to come from very different places.
* Amar admits he’s making sashimi after giving Jeremy shit over multiple crudos because “they always win.”
* First course: Jeremy’s dish is foie gras two ways (one warm, one cold), with chili, passion fruit, and marshmallows. Amar’s is seared tuna tataki with habanero coconut dressing, compressed pineapple, toasted peanuts, and crispy rice.
* The chefs’ parents and siblings are there as a surprise. Sad to see how badly diabetes has debilitated Jeremy’s mom, and Amar’s only got his mother and brother there as his father passed away a few years ago.
* Jeremy’s two-day foie gras torchon worked, as did his duo overall. Go figure – maybe he’s good at this whole cheffing thing?
* It seems like some of the judges/diners think Amar’s dish is a little too spicy? I would think this plays right to Padma’s palate. You hear more complaints on this show about dishes that aren’t spicy enough.
* Jeremy’s fish fillets didn’t all cook through, leading to a brief panic in the kitchen. I want to know why he made the fish look like some cheap St. Patrick’s Day entree.
* Second course: Jeremy’s branzino, slow-cooked with an herbal lime vinaigrette, lime zest, squash, and cherry tomatoes. Amar made an uni risotto with butter poached lobster, jicama, finger limes, and shellfish froth.
* Dominique Crenn (the French-born executive chef of San Francisco’s Atelier Crenn and Petit Crenn) loves the risotto, and Tom says everything in it is perfect, which, given the history of risotto on Top Chef, is some pretty high praise. Reading between the lines of the comments on Jeremy’s dish, though, it seems like his green sauce overshadowed the fish. It looks like someone threw up a shamrock shake on the plate.
* Jeremy waited too long to fire the duck for the third course. Says it’s “duck hell right now,” and has no time to let it rest. Meanwhile, we hear Marjorie say to Amar that she thinks the lamb needs “two more minutes,” but he says it’s perfect even though it’s bleating as he slices it.
* Third: Amar’s plate is harissa-rubbed lamb racks with braised lamb pastilla (a Moroccan-Andalusian kind of meat pie), date-ginger puree, and a yogurt harissa emulsion. Jeremy made duck with roasted maitake mushrooms, smoked chili, buttermilk, and lemon.
* Amar’s lamb is indeed a little undercooked. Padma loves the lamb jus, which Charlie says he had a hand in making, although I thought he was making a “you lika the juice” joke. Dominique says the lamb is “poorly undercooked,” which sounds even worse when said with a French accent. Jeremy’s duck is definitely undercooked. There’s just raw meat everywhere.
* Does Tom look stressed describing these two dishes? He seems almost pained at how close the contest is so far.
* Amar’s mocking all of Jeremy’s “spears” and “cones” … he says that’s all been done before, and he wants to make dishes that are amazing, not interesting. It seems to me like Jeremy’s style of cooking generates a ton of waste, especially plastic, which really should be a thing of the past.
* Fourth and final course: Amar made a coconut financier, mango sorbet, passion fruit curd, tropical fruit salard, brulée meringue, and lime zest. Jeremy made a cheese course, a ricotta and mozzarella cheese cylinder with spiced fig jam, pumpernickel toast, and honey “bubble.” There’s no question I’d want to eat Amar’s dish rather than Jeremy’s.
* Blais says Jeremy’s technique led the dish, not the ignredients. Emeril calls it “intellectual.” I wouldn’t think that was a compliment, although he seems to mean it that way.
* Amar’s financier is a little dense, but everyone loves the flavors. A financier is a small sponge cake, like a madeleine but made with brown butter, lifted with an egg white foam, and cooked till brown around the edges; it’s often made with almond flour but I think Amar may have used coconut flour here, which could explain the change in texture.
* Blais asks Amar if the tataki was “too safe” a dish for the finals. Tom praises Jeremy’s torchon. In the second courses, Jeremy’s dish needed more lemon, and the tomatoes were the star ingredient … which should be a point against him, right?
* Amar gets big praise for making a risotto. Gail says it’s the best risotto they’ve had on TC in “many, many seasons.” Has anyone else made a truly successful risotto on Top Chef? Or won a challenge with one?
* Jeremy says he was going for med-rare to medium with his duck, but then tries to dance around the criticism that it was short or rare. Just acknowledge the mistake up front, dude. Amar’s lamb was rare to undercooked, when he wanted rare to med-rare, but at least he owns it right away. Both dishes were badly cooked meat surrounded by other great elements.
* Amar’s dessert had great flavors, but the financier was dense; Blais says the name might have been the problem because everyone expected the light texture of a financier. Jeremy’s cheese log was great, but the honey bubble was a failure. I’m still trying to fathom what a mozzarella cheese “log” would taste like but keep imagining that awful string cheese they sell in individually-wrapped landfill fodder.
* Padma says they still haven’t decided on the winner, by which she probably means Tom hasn’t decided.
* They’re praising Jeremy’s technique and details, but seem to like Amar’s flavors more. Padma even says it specifically – one chef’s meal was technique-forward, the other’s was flavor-forward. Technique is great, but don’t you have to love the food too?
* Jeremy says off-camera, “Top Chef is not about the money to me.” Kind of the wrong/privileged thing to say, especially when your opponent came from a third world country and has made himself into a successful chef from meager beginnings.
* The winner of $125,000 and the title of Top Chef is … Jeremy. “No fucking way.” You tell ’em, dudebro.
* This is the first time since I started watching the show that I can say I’m disappointed in an outcome. We don’t taste the food, so I don’t know who actually deserved to win, but I can’t escape the feeling that we’ve seen Jeremy’s kind of food on this show before, many times in fact. I don’t think he had a dish, even a winning dish, all season that made me say “I’d want to make that,” or even “That gives me a great idea.” (Actually the best dish all season from that perspective was Karen’s Asian steak salad from Restaurant Wars, which I made for dinner yet again a few hours before this show aired.) The chefs who impressed early in the season were long gone by the finale, and while Amar makes the food you’d be more likely to want to eat, the judges appear to have gone with the fancier techniques. They’re not wrong – how could I say they’re wrong when I didn’t eat the food! – but it’s not the outcome I wanted, to say the least.
* Gail gives Amar a kiss on each cheek, and he says, “Finally! I’ve been waiting all season for this.” Well, it’s a decent consolation prize for losing $125 grand, I guess.