Top Chef: Anything You Can Do, Eric Ripert Can Do Better
Jeff's elimination has really stirred the pot. Get it? Stirred the pot? That's cook talk for stuff. Stefan didn't like his visit to the bottom three. "It's my first time on the bottom and I feel like shit." That. Is. What. She. Said. Hosea points out that he's the last American male chef left in the competition, but that he's going to beat these Euros. That could be a rallying cry for a moment of communal jingoistic pride, but it's not, because Hosea? Blah. Love it and leave it, Hosea. Seriously. Leave it. Get out of here. Our guest judge tonight is Eric Ripert, so the show is going to be all about fish. Starting with the Quickfire, which is three rounds of cleaning various fish (and also eel). You should see these clowns fall all over each other to brag about how much they know about fish while simultaneously explaining why they can't do this challenge. This is Top Chef, not Top Excuses. Everyone go home! Pack your knives and go! Hosea will lead the way!
During round one, in which they have to clean and butterfly sardines, Fabio explains that he doesn't do small fish in his restaurant. Ugh. I love Fabio, but come on. It's one thing to admit that you don't know how to clean a sardine, but to present it as if it's an aesthetic choice to not know how to do something...I wouldn't say I'm angry at Fabio, just disappointed. Leah is also having trouble. "Oh my God, I should just go home right now." Agreed! Carla forces defeat upon herself, but is surprisingly charming. There is no shame in admitting weakness (cough, Fabio, cough cough cough). Hosea explains that the reason his sardines don't look very well cleaned and butterflied is because he runs a seafood restaurant. Huh? Fabio and Stefan crush it on the sardines, but Leah wins that round.
Round two is to filet arctic char. Immediately: "I give up" -- Leah. And then also, "I can't even do this right now" -- Leah. Total champ. Her will to win is overwhelming. Her face should go on a Wheaties box. (Her face should not go on a Wheaties box. Her face should go on the box of a brand of cereal marketed to self-defeating losers.) Ripert reprimands Fabio for leaving too much meat on his butchered head. Fabio agrees. Finally, some of that classic Italian humility. It's down to Hosea and Stefan for round three, skinning eels.
Stefan immediately nails the eels head to the cutting board and rips the skin off. Hosea explains that they don't have eels in Colorado. Sure, but you RUN A SEAFOOD RESTAURANT. One would imagine that you had encountered eel at some point in your life, considering how your life is all about encountering seafood. Unless Hosea's restaurant is called Everything Is Made With Canned Tuna John Silver's, in which case nevermind. "Skinning an eel is like riding a bike," Stefan says. You just nail the bike's head to a cutting board and rip the bike's skin off, and slice the bike down the middle, and remove the bike's bones. Look ma, no hands.
Eric Ripert wants to fuck Stefan. Or...something.
"It puts the eel in the basket."
Stefan wins the Quickfire. He won't be getting immunity, to which he gives a cocky shoulder toss. He spits on your immunity. But he will get an advantage in the elimination challenge.
The next day, the chefs meet Tom and Padma and Eric Ripert at Ripert's restaurant Le Bernardin (no Toby Youngs allowed!) for a six course tasting menu of delicious seafood dishes. That sounds delicious, unless you're Jamie. "I'm bored by this food," says Jamie. UH OH! Baby's diaper has too much delicious food in it! Someone loosen Jamie's diamond shoes, they are too tight. At the end of the meal, Tom says there is one more course. It is a block of knives. YES! They all have to eat knives. Finally. "This knife bores me," says Jamie, "it just doesn't inspi--"
Each knife corresponds to one of the dishes served at the tasting menu, and each chef will have to recreate the dish that night, so Tom hopes they've been paying attention. Carla is worried because this is like "recreating the Garden of Eden." Huh. Stefan's Quickfire advantage is that he gets to choose the dish he wants to recreate, so he chooses the baked lobster. Hosea scoffs at this as an easy way out. "Go big or go home," he says. That is seriously the motto of people who lose reality TV competitions. Or is it "go big and go home"? What I'm saying is Hosea, go home.
Everyone is given all the required ingredients to recreate the dish, and at one point Eric Ripert tastes their first attempt and gives them feedback. It's also important to point out, again, that this season has absolutely NO VILLAINS. They've tried with Stefan, but it doesn't work. Even his ongoing feud with Hosea is constantly defused with scenes of them playing lemon catch or whatever. And this week, everyone helps everyone with every single dish to get it plated and out to the judges. Aww. Hugz, u guyz.
The judges taste each dish with an original serving from the Bernardin kitchen for comparison. Because the first sign of a great chef (Ripert) is that their dishes can be instantly replicated after one serving by even middling chefs like Leah. It's called cooking, look it up. So, Fabio and Stefan both do really well. Carla kind of bites it on her potatoes, but her dish (oil poached something I've never heard of on a bed of something ridiculous) is the most complicated so she basically gets a pass. Hosea fucks up his dish because of how he's a seafood guy and did you know he's a seafood guy and he runs a seafood restaurant and his blood is actually 80 percent clam juice. Jamie also fucks up, because she was just so uninspired by delicious food made by one of the world's most famous chefs. Awww. Poor wittle Jamie. If the challenge was to make a delicious dish out of sour grapes and crybaby tears, she would have killed it.
Stefan wins. I think that's wrong. Even though "go big or go home" is just another word for second place, he did pick an easier dish, whereas Fabio recreated something much more complicated and hit it out of the park! He really stepped up to the plate! Other sports metaphors commonly misused on reality TV! Stefan's prize is Eric Ripert's new cookbook, NATURALLY, but also he will get to follow Ripert around for a week to his various restaurants and to Aspen. It puts the prize in the basket.
Hosea, Leah and Jamie are up for elimination, and let's be real, it could basically be any of them. But it is not any of them, it is Jamie. If Padma could have sent her dish back, she would have. "Please send this back." "I'm sorry ma'am, you can't." I guess Fabio was right. This is not Top Scallops after all.
Posted by Gabe at 12:00 PM in Reality TV
Tags: Eric Ripert | Padma Lakshmi | Toby Young | Tom Colicchio | Top Chef
I hate Toby Young. "Pablo Escolar?" Ugh.
Score = 3
This was a fair comment, on Toby's part. If that escolar had gotten outside of the restaurant, it probably would have ended up killing hundreds of police, dozens of judges, and controlled 80% of the world's cocaine supply.
Toby should be metaphor extradited to Simile Prison.
Score = 9
Gabe is really going to bat for Fabio.
Score = 2
i'm no Jamie apologist, but Leah should have been cut. like 4 times already.
i smell producer input.
Score = 8
Totally agree. Plus I wanted to see Stefan try even harder to impossibly woo Jamie in future episodes.
Score = 1
As a sports fan, watching Stefan become the Tiger Woods of Top Chef is riveting stuff. And I burn jello.
Score = 0
as a total and unabashed jamie apologist, i also think leah should have gone home. but i've been demanding leah and hosea comeuppance for weeks to no avail (why do the producers not hear my internet cries? why?). leah's whiny and hosea is a wimp. they're both unwelcome in my living room and/or kitchen. i don't care if jesus (tom collichio) makes all your meals, gabe, eventually you aren't gonna like something. i think it's totally valid for for jamie to give a big ol' MEH on her ripert lunch. it's impressive that even though she didn't like it and especially hated her celery thing, she still almost got it right. if it had been any other challenge, she just wouldn't have served the celery and they'd be all "this is a beautiful perfectly cooked piece of fish and i want to be a lesbian for you." she failed at one ingredient while leah fails at life.
Score = 5
Put me in this column. Am I the only one certain that Leah is fucking a producer? the second obvious time that she should have gone home and another, better chef is auf'd. Sorry wrong Bravo show. But I think you get my point
Score = 2
So, I have a big Stefan-esque crush on Jamie, but I'm not just mad that she went home.....I'm mad that dumbass Leah is still there! She can't cook for shit!
I love that I can judge, even though I've never had any of their food. Oh well.
Score = 3
Agreed. Jamie gives me a big ole lady boner in my heart-hole... Oh, and she's a good cook and I was sure she was going to make it crazy far if not all the way. But the good thing to come from this is Stefan will dedicate everything he does from now on to Jamie so it's sort of a big Fuck Yeah.
If the lesbian can't win, then the man who loves her will. Stefan FTW!
Score = 0
This post FTW, seriously. I've never roffled so hard in my life with all this Silence of the Lambs stuff.
Score = 1
Leah has to be sleeping with one of the producers. She puts no effort into anything and then, when she's called out, does that stupid pouty lips thing. Leah strikes me as the kind of woman who takes on the role of "poor helpless little girl" when she wants men to run in and resuce her.
Score = 1
Um, waiter? Yes, I'll have the Mahi mahi with miso-horny sauce and a chiffonade of apathy please.
Oh wait I'd rather have the Salty Celery beacuse I'll take salt over apathy any day!!!
Score = 0
1. I'm 100% convinced that Stefan won because he and Eric Ripert had some sort of instantaneous lust connection. If you go back and watch the show every time they look at each other, you can see the white hot passion coming out of their eyes.
2. Producers, Leah and Hosea are done messing around with each other. So, you have no more reason to keep either one of them on the show. Little Miss Inappropriately Pouty-Lip Flirty Cooking Is Hard and Little Mr. You Are So Boring I Can't Even Come Up with a Name for You GO HOME!!
Score = 0
So wait, the first dish where she couldnt use scallops is the dish she gets sent home on? Well, I made fun of her before but i guess she can ONLY cook scallops...
Score = 0