{"id":1995,"date":"2011-11-25T15:26:39","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T20:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=1995"},"modified":"2011-11-25T15:26:39","modified_gmt":"2011-11-25T20:26:39","slug":"top-chef-s9e4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/25\/top-chef-s9e4\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Chef S9E4."},"content":{"rendered":"

Kind of an uneventful episode, especially since, of the five teams in the elimination challenge, four of them made extremely similar variations on chili \u2013 similar cuts of beef, similar flavor profiles, the chili even looked the same. One team took a gamble on a non-traditional approach and they failed. I respect the gamble, but making chili that tastes like mole is out there enough that the chefs couldn’t miss on execution, which they did.<\/p>\n

The quickfire challenged the chefs to build dishes around the chile pepper of their choice, from poblanos to ghost chiles (although the latter is no longer the world’s hottest pepper, surpassed earlier this year by the Naga Viper cultivar<\/a>). Still, the ghost chile is damn hot, and carries with it the biggest cash prize if the winning chef uses it in his\/her dish \u2026 so why does only one of the chefs, Paul, choose it? They’re practically commanding you to pick that pepper, and we get wimpy chefs going for Anaheims and poblanos that toddlers in India use as palate cleansers. On the other end of the spectrum, Beverly \u2013 who might be insane, although I’m still refining that judgment \u2013 serves her peppers raw, which would be great if this was something other than a cooking show. Anyway, the result here was fairly obvious: If you use the most difficult ingredient effectively \u2013 and putting chiles with dairy or a similar rich fat like coconut is a great way to carry the heat while protecting diners’ mouths from gustatory Ragnarok \u2013 you win. And so it goes.<\/p>\n

(Also: Chuy uses canned tomatoes. I can not imagine that there was any lack of fresh tomatoes in the Top Chef Kitchen, and he went for canned. Never mind the judgment call of that moment when he bypassed the genuine article \u2013 what chef ever looks for canned over fresh in any situation?)<\/p>\n

Then the chefs head have to prepare giant pots of chili (now we’re talking about the stew) for the Tejas Rodeo. Split into five teams of three, we get the ridiculous battle for equipment and cooking space at the house \u2013 really, you built a beautiful kitchen for the chefs to use, but won’t let them use it? I’m not seeing the point here except to stir up a little drama \u2013 followed by an all-nighter that has the chefs dragging like an Atlanta reliever at the end of September. We get meat shortages at Whole Foods, which makes no sense, because you know the producers are calling the store ahead of time to say, \u201cIncoming!\u201d and perhaps give a heads-up on what items they might want to have on hand. As much as I love short ribs, though, I’m having a hard time picturing that in a chili \u2013 the fibers would get very stringy after they fall apart during all that time in the heat, right?<\/p>\n

The shots of the chefs getting slaphappy overnight \u2026 whatever. I’m just here for the food. Although they are setting Chuy up to be a villain character down the road by giving him every chance to show off his ego on national television.<\/p>\n

Judging: Not enough comments from patrons, in my opinion. The actual judges’ comments were helpful, but if the winners weren’t their call, then let’s hear more from the customers who voted. As for elimination, asking three sleep-deprived chefs to cook again is probably a bit much, but I thought Richie and Beverly were potentially the two weakest chefs there, and as long as Nyesha stuck around, I was fine with either of the other two leaving.<\/p>\n

Random thoughts:<\/p>\n

* I wonder if Paul’s dish will make the next Top Chef Quickfire Cookbook<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, perhaps modified for an easier-to-find hot pepper.<\/p>\n

* Speaking of which, I think Chuy was the only chef to pronounce \u201chabanero\u201d correctly. There’s no tilde on the n, so it’s ha-bah-NAIR-oh, not ha-bah-NYEH-ro. The latter pronunciation reminds me of New York Italians who dropped the final vowels from words like mozzarella and locatelli. Maybe there’s some dialect of Italian where that’s correct, but in New York, it’s just affect.<\/p>\n

* Really, the emphasis on all the waterworks seemed very overblown, given how little sleep the chefs had had by the time the elimination rolled around. I don’t care how stoic you are with seven hours of sleep, you’re going to struggle with your emotions after 30 hours or more without any rest.<\/p>\n

* Did you know Texas chili has no beans in it? Man, I’m glad they reminded us of that fact \u2026 about fifteen times.<\/p>\n

* No Hugh Acheson? Nothing against the ladies of the Border Grill, but this show definitely missed Hugh’s dark humor. His recap<\/a> was typically hilarious: \u201cChuy wants to die under the table. This can be arranged but is not good TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Chris C. is going to end up with multiple restraining orders against him at this rate. Dude, we know Padma’s hot. Dial it down a notch. And really, you compare one of the most beautiful women in the world to Fabio<\/i>?<\/p>\n

* Last Chance Kitchen: I thought Tom’s \u201clooks inventive, isn’t really\u201d critique of Richie’s food spoke volumes about Richie’s style: In effect, he said Richie’s cooking was superficial, and I don’t think that would play on Top Chef<\/i> anyway. It seems like Richie has the techniques down (aside from salt), but not the deeper understanding to deploy them in ways that can make an old dish feel new. It must really suck to lose, get ready to leave, and then lose again. Glad to see Keith moving forward \u2013 it seemed like Tom’s only real criticism was the weird pumpkin pie smear on the plate, as if Keith was trying to seem a little more avant garde than he is. I’m guessing whatever success he has on LCK going forward will come from sticking to his style of smart comfort food, rather than trying to be something he’s not.<\/p>\n

* I was going to pick a final three, but I feel like we’re not seeing enough discussion of winning dishes for me to make anything more than a random guess, skewed by how much screen time they’re giving chefs who say weird things. Next week, I’ll take that plunge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kind of an uneventful episode, especially since, of the five teams in the elimination challenge, four of them made extremely similar variations on chili \u2013 similar cuts of beef, similar flavor profiles, the chili even looked the same. One team took a gamble on a non-traditional approach and they failed. I respect the gamble, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[442,306],"class_list":["post-1995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-top-chef","tag-tv","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1996,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}