Top Chef S06E11: Checkout Time Is Knife O'Clock
A friend told me last night that this was the second to last episode of this season's Top Chef. I don't think that's true. But at the time it made sense. There were only five chefs left going into last night's episode, so it would make sense for them to get eliminate one and then have a four-way face-off (Four-Way Face/Off is going to be an amazing sequel, btw, or is it Four-Way Four Face/Off? I don't know) for the supersized finale. Except that there weren't five chefs going into last night's episode. There were six. We forgot to include Eli in our calculations. Which I think officially makes Eli the "dark horse" contestant. He's the one who somehow manages to slip through the cracks, all the way until the end, at which point you are like "wait a second, I thought that bacon t-shirt was a gift of peace," but it turns out that the bacon t-shirt was full of Elis, and it was a Trojan Bacon T-Shirt. It's called history, and you should seriously look it up. Anyway, the point is there are six contestants this episode, not five, OK, so we should all just pay better attention since I am sure this is a mistake that every single person made last night without exception and I am not at all alone in being so dumb about how many people are left on this show.
This week's guest judge is Nigella Lawson, who Eli describes as a British Julia Child. "Gordon Ramsey named a turkey after her, she's legit." Huh? It sounds like Eli just had a Quickfire Challenge in which he was given 30 seconds in which to cook up the most ridiculous sounding sentence. Yum! Anyway, the actual Quickfire this week is to cook Padma and Nigella breakfast in bed. HOTCHA!
Sometimes this show is just ridiculous. Every time a chef comes into this room they laugh, and who wouldn't. These silly ladies. "Oh, hi, you just happened to catch us lying in side-by-side Queen beds in our bathrobes naturally like human beings do in the morning every day." Also, who orders room service and then just tucks themselves deep into bed and waits for the food to be served to them? I love Padma (I mean, I am IN love with her) but the only person who can get away with this is Prince Akeem and whoever he takes as his bride.
Robin, obviously, is a mess. Both figuratively and literally. She makes blintzes stuffed with whatever she managed to not step on after it fell on the ground. And then interviews about how she deserves to be here. Does she? Even though I don't think Robin really deserves to be here (and neither do her fellow chefs, and neither does America) I would actually be willing to accept an argument from her along the lines of "I've made it this far, which can't just be luck, and I have just as much stake in this as anyone else, so I feel that I have earned a chance to win this competition." Fine! But the never-ending refrain of "I deserve to be here," has the absolute opposite effect. For one thing, methinks the lady doth protest and dye her hair too much. And for second, no one DESERVES to be on a reality TV show, you just ARE on a reality TV show. Shut up, Robin.
Kevin makes steak and eggs because he is from the South and "likes a hearty breakfast." Has anyone else noticed how Kevin is constantly coming up with elaborate explanations for why he loves eating meat? Kevin, we can tell that you love eating meat. This isn't a reality radio. Meanwhile, Michael V. inherits Robin's nightmare station, which he is not happy about, but still manages to squeeze out some pretty good looking huevos cubano, which both Padma and Nigella seem to enjoy. "They really seemed to be enjoying it," Michael says, "which is funny because I knew how messy the kitchen was." Is it funny that people are enjoying your food, Michael? Is your food a clown to them? Scarface!
ANYHOW, Robin and Bryan V. are in the bottom (Bryan put vanilla on poached eggs with crabcakes, which is admittedly an odd choice), and Eli and Kevin are in the top. Eli wins with his reuben benedict, which really did look very good. As the winner, his recipe will be featured in the Top Chef Quickfire cookbook. Neat. Although, I am pretty sure I can figure out how to make a breakfast reuben. The only part of the recipe I would need is how to get Padma to wait in bed for it. YOWZA!
For this week's Elimination Challenge, each chef will have to prepare a dish for 175 people based on a hotel. Based on a hotel, come on this show. "My dish is served under blacklight so that the halibut resembles a bedsheet covered in cum and blood stains." Basically.
Everyone visits their knife-appointed hotel, and walks around with a notebook, pretending to get "inspired." Back at the house, Eli complains that his hotel, Circus Circus, doesn't have a clear enough theme. Haha! Call your mom, Eli.
The chefs prepare their dishes, and then serve them on a very windy roof. It is so windy there!
Most of the dishes, good or bad, at least make some thematic sense. Jen got a Medieval Times restaurant, so she did a sword in the stone piece of meat. Robin makes a panna cotta...because of...art work...on a ceiling. I mean, sure. If anything, Eli is the one who kind of slips off the rails with his peanut soup covered in crumbled popcorn. Sure, they have peanuts at the circus, and they also have popcorn, but apparently his inspiration was the garbage can in which all of these things are placed at the end of the night. I'm also not sure that I totally get how Michael V. made chicken wings because of New York, New York. "I figured this is what firefighters would like." Huh? 9/11? The chicken wings that brought us together after 9/11? Although to be fair, what was he going to make? Bagel Bites?
Kevin, Michael V., and Bryan V. are the top 3 at the end of the night, but it is Michael V.'s patriotic never forget fuhgettaboutit chicken wings that win him a novelty-sized bottle of wine and a trip to novelty-sized bottle of wine country. Congratulations, Michael V. You earned that ridiculous prize.
This means that Robin, Jennifer, and Eli are on the bottom, and really any of them could go home at this point. I mean, Robin is a human disaster, but her dish was mostly inoffensive this week. And Jennifer has been falling apart at the seams lately. As Toby Young pointed out, this is a marathon, because Toby Young knows a lot about marathons and just exercise in general, obviously, and maybe Jennifer has hit a wall. Maybe.
She certainly does have that "I just remembered so hard that I ran face-first into a tree" look about her. And Eli is the dark horse, but the dark horse can turn into the going home horse pretty quickly. And he did seriously serve the judges a plastic cup full of actual vomit this week. "The crushed popcorn represents the part of the vomit that's not fully digested yet, and the peanut soup is the awful bile."
But in the end it is Robin who goes home.
She points out that it's probably because she doesn't know how to play it safe. I agree that it has something to do with things that she does not know how to do (cook)! Goodbye, Robin! The producers toyed with you long enough. Rest now. Hush.
Next week: Michael V. says that Kevin cooks the type of food that Michael V. makes on his day off. Well then maybe you should make that food, Michael V.! Because Kevin is doing really great!
Posted by Gabe at 11:45 AM in Reality TV, Recaps
Tags: Las Vegas | Nigella Lawson | Padma Lakshmi | Toby Young | Tom Colicchio | Top Chef
I just google image searched "Toby Young" because I have not actually seen this show.
This is rather high on my list of regrets (actually it is that list in its entirety).
Score = 2
I felt a little bad for Eli, because -- and the show just barely hinted at this -- going to Circus Circus is a profoundly depressing experience, and I'd imagine that setting foot in there would throw you off your game for at least 24 hours. It's weird: All the other hotels are at the new, shiny end of the strip, and Circus Circus is at the old, sad, filthy end. It's as if, during the New York season, they'd announced, "You all have to go to a different New York landmark and make a dish based on it! Your choices are the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, Rockefeller Center, the Met, Lincoln Center, and Flashdancer's Gentlemen's Club. Good luck!"
Score = 25
all i could think of when Eli pulled Circus Circus was the scene in fear and loathing in las vegas when they're both on ether and benicio del toro (no i did not read the book. read?) says "how much did they pay you to fuck that polar bear?" and i have to say, Eli's dish did fairly resemble fucking a polar bear.
Score = 13
"Eli, your plastic cup of child's vomit made me feel nauseous and suicidal. Congratulations! You've done the best job of capturing the spirit of your casino!"
Score = 25
It takes a tough man to make a tender QuickFire.
You keep fucking that polar bear.
Score = 0
For anyone that doesn't have the funds to get to Vegas and wants to experience the Eli challenge, go to the most rundown Chuck E Cheese you can find, add some gambling and replace kids with depressed adults. Now make a theme meal.
Score = 8
You're right about Circus Circus but good God, have you ever been to the Excalibur? It's just as bad, super grimy and completely out of place on the Strip. It doesn't even have that "family fun" excuse that Circus Circus has, where maybe it's a place you could legitimately take your kids on a Vegas trip. It's just awful. I know more than one person who got screwed with a room there and left immediately after checking in because paying three times as much somewhere else was still better than another minute at the old X-Cal. (Also I ate the $3.99 buffet there because I was too drunk to know better and too poor from craps to afford anything else.)
Score = 1
True, although at least Excalibur is right next door to other, better casinos, so you can walk over to the Luxor or New York New York. At Circus Circus, you're really screwed.
Score = 2
I bet you were poor from craps the next morning too, if you know what I mean.
Score = 8
Jennifer will
get her shit together soon.
don't worry. it'll
be her and Kevin
in the top two.
Score = 6
I prefer to read the padma caption as: "take me, seriously."
Score = 24
I really wish Jennifer got the MGM so she could have made Tupac Tuna Tartare
Score = 6
I expected you to comment -- but maybe it was too much of a gimme -- on the shot where the bottom three are waiting to go in front of the judges and it's like Glum City as usual but Robin is doing something new which is actually lying on the floor, her head resting on some papers.
Score = 5
Nigella Lawson is Padma's baby daddy
Score = 1
My favorite part was Eli calling that building "George Orwellian". What?
Score = 8
How about when Nigella insisted panna cotta should "quiver like a 17th-century courtesan's inner thigh"? Someone's gunning to take over Toby Young's position of Chair of Shitty Simile Studies at U of Yuck. Seriously, all of it-- yuck.
Score = 17
she said a whole lotta bullshit, but she looked almost exactly like rachel weisz (at least on a super-blurry zshare screen!) so, you know --- all the the crushes.
Score = 3
Yes, that imagery is weird, but if you've ever seen Nigella anywhere else you would never lump her in with Toby. She seems 1, really genuine 2, actually a talented chef and 3, someone who just loves food.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpbLXicvK0k&feature=related , for instance.
Sorry to be Nigella's lawyer, she is glorious.
Score = 4
Nothing to me sounds less appetizing than peanut soup with popcorn.
Score = 7
I have a stomach like a goat, but even I doubt I could eat that.
Score = 7
wait -- no mention of toby's broadway zing? "more spamalot than camelot."
Score = 5
"The Royal Penis is Clean"
- Gabe
Score = 7
I used to enjoy watching this show. But now I just wish they would save us some time and do one two-hour long episode full of quickfire challenges that result in the loser being eliminated. Or maybe they should forego the cooking and just have the arguments. TOP ARGUMENT!
Score = 1
remember when this was the height of cuisine-related entertainment:
http://www.jonesgoodassbbqandfootmassage.com/
let's go back to those times, friends
Score = 1
Hear hear on the issue of Robin's entitlement. The worst part about her overstaying her welcome was that she actually thought that just barely skating by week after week somehow confirmed her talent and justified her being there. Lady, you won one single Quickfire, were never in the top three (that I can remember) and were on the chopping block more than you safe. If anything you DESERVE to go home, but have been lucky that you only screw up second-worst each week.
I love this show but the judging allows undistinguished chefs to quietly sneak through to the end is a big flaw. I call it the Hosea Factor.
Score = 4
It was far past time for Robin to pack her knives and go home to takeover a shiny nightclub's appetizer menu, but it was kind of difficult to see how Eli didn't lose this week. Aside from his usual insufferability, hardly any of the judges could bring themselves to put his food in their mouths, let alone swallow it.
Score = 1
"Here is my dish. I call it 'Two Clowns One Cup'."
"OK, you may stay."
"Here is my dish, Slightly Too-Firm Panna Cotta."
"Get out of my sight."
Score = 10
LOL A+
Score = 0
I barely even paid attention to this episode. There's never been such a bunch of hacks in the top rungs in 5 seasons. Who will win: Kevin or Mike? Who cares?
Score = 0
Reading Max Silvestri's recap reminded me of Jennifer's Shit on a Shingle. Why would you feed something that's called that and looks like that to a human being ever, much less to the judges on a food competition show?! I've had S.O.S. before and it's as disgusting as it looks/sounds. Yuuuuuuuuck.
Score = 2
OK, two things made me SOL(AMD) or Snort Out Loud At My Desk
-The photo of Toby Young's head blowing in the wind
-And this:
"Based on a hotel, come on this show. "My dish is served under blacklight so that the halibut resembles a bedsheet covered in cum and blood stains." Basically."
Bravo, Gabe! And I mean that in a non-network-name-checking way.
Score = 2
now if only Jen will get her groove back. and have sexual tension fun with Brian along the way. 5 LEFT Y'ALL. i just realized that this season might have a higher caliber of chefs but it's no way near as entertaining as the last season. wheres the 'THIS ISNT TOP SCALLOPS' of this season?
Score = 0
"The only part of the recipe I would need is how to get Padma to wait in bed for it. YOWZA!"
You are trying too hard to sound straight. I will tell everyone how G*Y (middle letter omitted so people do not realize) unless my demands are met.
I HAVE BUT ONE DEMAND:
Review "Envy" in your hunt for the worst movie of whatever. Ironically, a horrible film that serves only to ruin lives is your only salvation.
REVIEW "ENVY" STARRING BEN STILLER AND JACK BLACK. God damn it, I don't know what kind of stupid queue you're using to determine what movie gets reviewed when and why, but bump "ENVY" (the film. Starring Jack Black. And starring Ben Stiller.) to the top or I will ruin your closeted h*mosexuali*y.
Score = 0
I'm really surprised that you didn't comment on the fact that Tom and all the other judges (even Robin agreed to this) agreed that Robin is trying too hard to cook as well as everyone around her. UM IF SHE IS INFERIOR WHY IS SHE STILL THERE?!
Score = 2