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So, I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole pea puree thing. I mean, I haven’t. I haven’t even thought about it once. I’m an adult, with an adult life to lead. Let’s all try and keep things in perspective. But last night they mentioned it, and I thought about it, like, between commercials? So last week, Alex supposedly steals Ed’s pea puree, right? And they both end up in the top 3, but Alex wins based almost solely on the pea puree. Ed is like “whuuuuuut?” This week, as the show opens, it is all pea puree this, pea puree that. Ed explains that he’s not mad. Really?! Because if this really happened and was a real thing, then you definitely would be mad. “The fact that a guy who looks like Fievel the Mouse if Fievel the Mouse was cast in the Campbell Scott role in Dying Young, and who has proven himself time and again to be completely incompetent in the kitchen, STOLE one of the key components of my dish, and then WON the challenge with that component, doesn’t make me mad. I’m just curious. The thing I love more than winning this grueling competition show that I’ve agreed to be on for the sole purpose of winning is THE TRUTH.” Nonsense. But so then, at the end of this week, SPOILER ALERT, both Ed and Alex are on the BOTTOM now, even though Ed’s dish was clearly fine and better than some of the other dishes out there (cough Amanda cough), as if the producers wanted to give Ed a chance to dramatically confront Alex in a dramatic confrontation during Dramatic Confrontations’ Table, suggests to me that something else entirely is going on here, and that the whole thing was an elaborate production ruse to drum up some fabricated, mid-level stakes in an otherwise boring season. And even then it didn’t happen. Nothing happened. Even exposing this SCANDAL is a non-starter. Whatever. YUMMY SNORE PUREE!
This week’s Quickfire Challenge is to make Ethiopian food. The end. It is a refreshing challenge in which the chefs are forced to cook in a style with which most of them are unfamiliar, in a test of their skill and ingenuity, rather than the reification of a corny pun based off a high-school level Civics 101 understanding of government. “As you know, the President needs the approval of congress to declare war, so you are going to need the approval of a songstress to declare your dish delicious.” No.
In the race for supplies, Alex beats Kelly to a pressure cooker and then spit-cackles in her fucking face. “HA!” he shrieks. “BEAT YOU TO IT!” What a stupid piece of shit. He’s the kind of guy at the barbecue who takes the game of Uno way too seriously. He’s the guy whose girlfriend starts play wrestling with him, and suddenly she’s pinned to the ground, and his knees are digging into her biceps, and he’s demanding that she admit that he is a better wrestler than she is, and she starts crying, and he doesn’t understand why she’s crying, and now he won’t let her up off the ground until she explains apologizes for turning this whole thing back around on him when she was the one who started wrestling in the first place and she knows it’s basically her fault so she should admit that. I know this is a competition and everything, but chill out, Krang.
Also, Stephen had a feeling this challenge was coming. Haha. No you didn’t, Stephen.
Poor Stephen.
Anyway, guest judge Marcus Samuelsson does not like Kevin’s braised chicken with chickpeas, cucumber-mint salad & yogurt, Stephen’s stew with lamb meatballs & yogurt sauce, or Alex’s beef & lamb tongue stew with cabbage & potatoes (“HA!”). He does, however, like Amanda’s stewed goat on grilled injera, Angelo’s berbere-spiced doro wat with egg, mango yogurt & mint on steamed injera, and Tiffany’s beef goulash with poached egg, currants, peppers & yogurt. Tiffany wins! Hooray! Ed interviews that this is great news because it means Angelo does not win. Agreed. Angelo needs to be taken down a couple million notches. He needs to be taken down all the notches. Don’t worry, Angelo, there’s plenty of hair product at the bottom.
For the Elimination Challenge, the chefs will be preparing individual ethnic-themed dishes for a group of foreign dignitaries. They draw knives to determine the order in which they will select the country whose cuisine they will represent. Foreign dignitaries, of course, spend a lifetime struggling with complicated issues of international relations and the fragile and tendentious cobweb of modern geopolitics. So at the end of a long day of shaking hands and easing tensions, there’s nothing they like better than relaxing in front of a group of television cameras, eating food that barely resembles anything they’ve ever even heard of in some kind of backwards, jingoistic half-assed tribute to the diversity of NON-AMERICAN flavors as part of a reality show challenge. “It was all worth it,” they all say. “It’s delicious at the top.”
Shop shop shop. Cook cook cook. Cheese portrait?
At the event itself, the judges judge. There is a particularly funny moment when the guest Spanish judge complains that Ed’s dish doesn’t feel like an authentic enough tribute to the flavors of China, and then they cut to the Chinese Ambassador, who is like “that was an incredibly authentic tribute to the flavors of China.” Fair enough. I think this is the kind of thing that happens a lot in this world, now that everyone is a critic. This guy knows what I’m talking about:
Back at Judges’ Table, the judges loved Kelly’s beef carpaccio, spring vegetable salad & parmigiano-reggiano, Kevin’s stewed chicken with leek & parsnip puree, cucumber-mango salad & lentils, and Tiffany’s chicken tamales with queso fresco & tomatillo sauce. As Tom pointed out, you don’t have to cook traditional food, you just have to cook food that tastes good. That sounds reasonable enough, although when Tom was eating Angelo’s tuna sashimi, he was complaining about how it was delicious but didn’t really seem like it was prepared in a traditional Japanese style. WELL? WHICH IS IT CUEBALL? Anyway, Tiffany wins! TIFFANY STRAIGHT CRUSHING THE COMPETITION!
She also gets $10,000 and $10,000 donated to charity. Nice!
Not so nice: the judges did NOT like Alex’s braised veal cheeks, jamon torta with olive & tomato salad, Ed’s tea-smoked duck breast with pot stickers in szechuan jus, or Stephen’s flank steak in chimichurri sauce with black beans & rice. Personally, I think Ed was just thrown in there because they needed three, and because Spanish General Tso over there didn’t think it was authentic enough. But Alex and Stephen both definitely deserve to be up for elimination, as they have deserved to be up for elimination every week since the competition began. The producers’ attempts at an Ed-Alex Showdown come to naught, but Alex does manage to look like a snake stuffed through a too-tight sweater.
In the end, though, it is Stephen who goes home because all he cooked was steak and rice, and he cooked the steak poorly, and he fucked the rice. Stephen was literally a ticking elimination bomb, and yet, after all is said and done: POOR STEPHEN.
Next Week: Goodbye Alex! Or Amanda! Or Kevin! Probably!
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I admit it, I don’t watch this show. I don’t deem it worthy of my time, my time is reserved for high-quality productions such as Jersey Shore and anything to do with the Kardashians.
But, I still read Gabe’s reviews just to see the things he does to the stills of the episode. Look at that King Cobra with a sweater! How silly!
Why didn’t Stephen just cook loads and loads of meat and serve it on a sword?
(If I am correct and that is Stephen holding the map of Brazil).
Because Stephen confused Brazilian food with Argentine food. “They’re both in South America!” — Stephen, 1972-2010
“When in doubt head due south; to Portugal.”
— Stephen (GOB) Bluth, 1972-2012
I love it when people take the “I’m not mad” approach to something that they should be mad at, because as a society we’ve deemed that it’s the maturest road you could take. “I’m not really mad you spilled coffee on my nice sweater, I just want to know why you did it.”
I honestly thought when Ed said, “I’m not mad…” that he was going to finish by saying, “…I’m just disappointed.” But then he said the other cliche thing! So many surprises, this show.
Great. Now every time i see Alex I’ll be singing “Somewhere out there” in my head.
you’re missing “after Angelo dumped them”
“Therefore I’m an expert on Chinese food.” Huh?
Look, if putting my penis in something made me an expert on it, I’d be James Dyson.
So much awesomeness.
I’d be the CEO of Fruit of the Loom.
oh, like angelo has ever dated a woman.
Dated? Yes.
Slept with? No
I’m so glad Gabe mentioned the absolute best part of the whole episode, which was Spanish guy talking about how a dish wasn’t Chinese, and then a Chinese guy talking about how this was like the most authentic and wonderful Chinese dish there ever was. Thank you for that, producers!
Otherwise this was a pretty boring episode, but doesn’t Restaurant Wars look like one big bag of “YOU MAD!” ?!?! All yelling all the time! Can’t wait!
As usual, on an unrelated note… Work of art was keeping the crazy onslaught coming. Jackie posed in the buff… again, before defaulting to a rock on a stick, Abdi drew a cool picture with rocks, Peregrine made a tree person with hippies making sex in its branches, nicole made a glowing Wookie testicle, and Miles generally continued to make the show worth watching. If Bethany getting Married(?) got greenlit, can we get Bravo to give miles his own show?
Hahahahahahaha Jackie! I love how she sulks whenever her boobs aren’t out. PS Miles already has a show. It’s called Obsessed.
I think this sums up Jackie nicely:
hi, jackie? please leave. kthanksbye.
Haha. I remember when Miles was OCD nerd genius…before he turned into pervy nerd douche.
“My work systematically recreates a system of dripping bleach onto paper to systematically represent the systematic death of everything.” I’m so over Miles, but he’s probably going to win, unless Abdi pulls out another gorgeous piece like the one this week.
jwormyk: OCD nerd genius and pervy nerd douche are just two sides of the same nerd.
Does Miles really have OCD? So far the only symptom I’ve seen is him saying “I am OCD.”
“If it was a nicer day, I would have gotten my tits out.” Jaclyn should just give up and become a porn star. Or marry a rich guy. Those are the only two things fake tits are good for, right?
Jackie clearly can’t make art without getting naked; her art is her naked body, exclusively. I kind of felt bad for her, except that she could’ve done an impression of her naked body covered in mud, or drawn her naked body with dirt, or constructed a model of her naked body with leaves or whatever–lots of things involving her naked body, instead of that gigantic-ring-on-a-pole-in-front-of-the-sunset business she ended up with. Poor old one-note Jackie.
At least Peregrine and her adorable lisp made it!
I was sad that Nicole got eliminated. I felt like most of her work was original, beautiful, technically proficient, and had vision.
I wish the producers had pulled a Shyamalan TWIST and also let Nicole into the finals. Or just eliminated Peregrine.
Abdi really threw everything off by making something that the judges actually liked. And by saying something nice about Miles during confessiontime. Saying anything against him is the show’s usual “tell” for who’s packing up their brushes and going home.
I think if Jackie had just mounted the rock on the pole, it would have gotten her into the finals. Just hanging there, it didn’t look like anything.
I’m kind of disappointed Peregrine made it to the final three. Now I am going to have to put up with her weird inability to pronounce sibilants during the finale. Also, I am sick of the judges just accepting anything Miles does. They just assume there is some awesome concept behind his work even when there is obviously not one.
The one consistently awesome thing about this show is Simon, the french mentor. He is the best mentor ever.
I believe he’s Swiss, but when I close my eyes all I hear is Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. I keep waiting for him to ask for a glass of milk.
I always wonder if that’s what he’s like in “real life” and kind of hope that he just cooked up the character of “euro mentor” for the purposes of Work of Art.
1. Abdi’s drawing was very good, but would have been very much good-er if it had been hung upside-down. That would have looked really great and disoriented the viewer in a good way. As it was, it was a very well executed, but sort of tired “religious, floating, baptism” thing. But it did look nice. Not the worst of the show.
2. Miles is entertaining and while I didn’t like his piece last night (I liked the fungus scans), I like that he is one of the few on the show that seems to be thinking about his work on a deeper level, which is nice.
3. I think Nicole is the other contestant who tended to put a little more thought into her work and I certianly thought that she should have gone on to the next round. Most of her work that the critics have really liked this season, I didn’t really see the visual appeal of, but like the concept, and I accept that the visual may not have translated across the television-ocean to my eyes.
4. Peregrine, I’m sorry, I love the whole thing you do, but I just am not into it. I thought the tree-leg-hook-up-park was not much to look at. Generally, I think when you are creating a peice of art, continuing to add and bedazzle, rather than just acheive a goal and stop, is a sign of weakness. I know that things come to us as we work, whether in music or writing or the visual arts, but I think you have to have some fairly complete idea when you begin to ensure that at the end you don’t just have a junk mess that doesn’t work on any level.
5. Jackie, oh! In some ways, she seems like the opposite of Miles, or the inverse. That is, where Milkes makes a peice and it seems okay, but when he talks about it, I can see that he’s put some thought into it, or at least come up with some ideas afterward, and they seem like good ideas, and he comes off as a bright, if maybe immature, artist; Jackie, on the other hand make a peice that seems okay or maybe a little boring, but her talking about it makes it worse and worse and you realize that maybe she didn’t have an idea at all. It was sort of sad, but not suprising, to see her shut down last night. I actually really wanted her to do well.
I didn’t see why Jackie didn’t go with the rock confinement route seeing as how that’s what she was talking about originally. Seems like anyone could just throw up any piece of crap, but explain it “correctly” and you’ve got yourself one fiiiine piece of art. even I saw the rock/confined BS and I don’t care. At all. Barely watching while sleeping.
I thought in Abdi should have been naked. I am surprised that the judges didn’t hit him for that. Oh wait that would require them to be less coked out.
I have no idea why Jaclyn couldn’t just take (yet another) picture of her moping self during their designated work time to continue to work in her preferred medium of Herself, Undressed.
Maybe the cold meds made her forget how much the judges dislike her work when she turns to “nature images presented right angles with flair suspended in front”. Last night’s piece was essentially a retread of her Childhood Tree Painting, although her interviews about hating the woods kind of revealed that her story of being a kid who hid in trees was made up on the spot for the crit.
also: “Miles: Building Stuff and Doing Experiments?” would be a great series.
that snake stole my sweater! snakes. can’t live with them. can’t let them kick it in your closet while you watch Top Chef. (I don’t watch Top Chef)
When are the going to cook turtles in a half shell…?
*they
Hopefully never, although…
Twas sposed to be a reply to krull_nugget…
Tonight I dine on turtle soup!
So, I don’t have cable and only spotty stolen internet so I, too, do not watch this show but read the recaps because they’re funny. I was curious to see Angelo’s hair for myself and did some googling.
Hm.
Hahahahaha that ‘s’ was a total typo, I’m an idiot!
Is it just me or is this season of Top Chef borderline Hell’s Kitchen contestants? I just really don’t care much this time around… The show is UNINSPIRED this season.
Stephen (I think?) said, “I was chosen from thousands of people to be on this show.” Um, not really. It seems like the producers are scraping the bottom of the barrel to find contestants now.
It still feels like a step up from last cycle’s “Five Good Chefs and The Rest Can’t Boil Water” theme. It is boring and unexciting, but at least I feel like they are more or less all well matched, except for Stephen whose only reason for staying this long is becuase he was waiting for a bus.
The thing that is really starting to bug me about this show can be summarized in one word: carpaccio. EVERY EPISODE somebody is thinly slicing some meat, fish, or vegetables and making a carpaccio. What I loved originally about this show was how new techniques and new dishes would pop up every episode that really showed how creative the chefs could be. Like him or hate him, Richard Blais did some orginal stuff that was fun to watch.
The problem is that as viewers, we don’t get to taste this food, so the cooking is more exciting when its really original, and cold meat flat on a plate may taste good, but until I get taste-o-vision, carpaccio is pretty damn dull.
Hung. Ilan. Marcel. Those dudes could cook. And sous-vide. I think we can trace the downward decline to Hosea.
3 seasons ago it was scallops everywhere.
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No, that Spanish guy was Jose Andres, a DC-based Spanish chef. Ferran Adria on ‘Top Chef’ would be like Isaac Newton on ‘Mythbusters’.
Hey Bubs, the Spanish guest judge was Jose Andres. Did Ferran Adria show up somewhere else in this episode? I was kind of walking in and out of the room during the part where they were serving the food.
Oh man my bad. I guess I was hoping for Adria and got Andres instead.
I was Team Alex is last Elimination until he left the big as spoon in his chef jacket.
So we won’t get anymore Poor Stephen pictures?! Say it ain’t so!
Dear chef’testants:
Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world. Of course it has a cuisine.
p.s. China and India are the BIGGEST. And they have very distinct, diverse, delicious and well-known cuisines. WHY DID YOU PICK THEM LAST? You picked trendy food countries like Spain? Double ugh.
I highly doubt anyone on the show thought Brazil had no distinct cuisine but realistically in a food competition the easiest/most familiar countries are gonna be picked first
sorry but the three main cuisines emphasized in culinary school = France, Italy, Spain and most chefs these days are familiar with good Mexican food, the fact that China/India are huge with numerous distinct cuisines within them (not to mention the fact that it’s easy to attempt them and end up with cheap take out quality food) does more to discourage – you have 5 min to decide what you’re going to spend the next 3 hours working on what do you choose a huge complicated cuisine with a billion directions to go in that you’ve (most likely) spent minimal time studying, or something slightly more boring that’s been drilled into your head since day one
Also, does the face that Spain has become trendy somehow disqualify them from being a legitimate cuisine? Because I’ve been all around Spain (from touristy spots to hole in the wall intimate operations) and I was just as offended by Alex’s disaster as you were probably by Stephen’s