Top Chef: "Melting Pot" - Episode 501

You know how there is usually one thing in your life that you both love and hate at the same time? That's how I feel about Top Chef. I love watching people create the most delicious-looking dishes imaginable out of virtually nothing, but I can't stand having to sit around watching the judges pick them apart with meaningless phrases like 'it's a total failure of imagination'. I love seeing one of my favorite authors like Anthony Bourdain show up and tear these hash-slinging nincompoops a new one at least once or twice a season, but I can't stand the sight of that empty-headed dingbat Padma sitting right next to him when I know full well that it should be me in her place. I could pretend to be as cultured as she thinks she is FAR better than she can, dammit. More Top Chef after the jump...

 

 

After gracing such world class culinary cities like San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Season 5 of Top Chef is based in New York, the undisputed champion of champions when it comes to diversity, top-notch cuisine, and self-righteous, pretentious dickheads the world over. Come on - is there anyone on the planet more self-involved than a New Yorker? A New Yorker foodie, no less? Personal biases aside, though, I think this season should be quite interesting to watch. From Carla the crazy-eyed Big Bird lookalike who prattled on about her 'spirit guides' for no apparent reason to the unintelligible Italian Fabio (no relation, I think), this season's contestants look like all kinds of fun. Unless they turn out not to be, that is.

 

What better way to kick things off than with the first Quickfire challenge? To celebrate the Big Apple in the cheesiest way possible, the 17 hopeful chefs are subjected to a three-round elimination challenge involving (tah-dah!) apples. The first of the three rounds involves knife skills - the contestants are asked to peel 15 apples using nothing but a paring knife, and only the first 8 to complete this task will avoid being eliminated right off the bat. You heard that right - eliminated. While there are 17 contestants on the line right now, only 16 of them will be actually get to move into the ridiculously overpriced New York apartment and continue on to compete in the Top Chef kitchen. The first round moves rather quickly, and the second round involves the utilization of even more knife skills. Did you even know what a brunoise-style apple dicing would look like before this episode? Me neither. Regardless, five more chefs move on to the non-elimination round, leaving us with just four slackers who have obviously left all the chopping duties up to their sous chefs until now. Tom introduces the third and final round of the Quickfire - the four chefs will be asked to prepare a dish utilizing apples, and the worst of the bunch will be kicked out and shipped home on the next ferry faster than you can say 'Why did they even bother with 17 in the first place'? Ready to taste, er, see what we got? Here we go.

 

First up is Leah, and her seared scallops look mighty tasty. Tom agrees, and she's through. Next is the Indian girl Radhika, and while she reminds me a bit too much of the Indian girl on that god-awful 'The Next Food Network Reality Star' show that aired over the summer, she squeaks by as well. Left rotting at the bottom of the barrel (see what I did there?) are Patrick and Lauren, two culinary school pals that basically make the same boring salad dish. Lauren spices hers up with some interesting ingredients (including the time-tested old favorite of bacon), but in the end, she gets the boot back to Savannah, Georgia with not even a souvenir Top Chef hat to take with her. Patrick just barely made it by her, though, and being that he's barely out of culinary school himself, I'd say he needs to watch his ass.

 

Quick aside: My reality show curse is still very much with me. The one woman that I am even remotely attracted to on every reality show I ever watch ALWAYS goes home first. This rang true once again tonight. Dammit.

 

Now that we're already down one cheftestant within the first half hour, let's see what other extraneous fat we can trim. It's time for the Elimination Challenge, and you know what that means - knife block! All 16 contestants are asked to draw a knife from the truly huge wooden block, and printed on those knives are the names of various New York neighborhoods. There is Chinatown, Brighton Beach, Long Island City, Ozone Park, Jamaica, Astoria, Little Italy, and Little India. I'm sure I barely need to explain this, but those neighborhoods correspond with various types of food. Brighton Beach is Russian food, Little India is Indian, Little Italy is nine-dollar slices of pizza with no soda, et cetera. After being broken into teams of two, the chefs will be asked to make one dish each of that food and then go head-to-head against one another in order to move on. 

 

Early standouts are difficult to ascertain this soon in the game (not for a lack of trying, though), but two very distinct teams emerge as soon as the cheftestants take up residence in the Top Chef apartment. First off, we have Team Rainbow, the all-gay trio of Richard, Patrick, and Jamie. I like Papa Bear Richard and tiny little Patrick just fine, but by default, I will be rooting for Jamie solely because she lives and works in San Francisco, my favorite city of all. Next, we have the European contingent of Finnish wunderkind Stefan who currently lives in Santa Monica and took the top prize of immunity in the Quickfire challenge, and the outspoken Italian Fabio who claims that there are two kinds of people in Europe - the Italians, and those who want to be Italian. Um, okay. When it comes back to the subject of food, though, the contestants seem to have a little bit more trouble identifying themselves at all. Dishes range from Alex's juicy Indian-inspired lamb chops to Patrick's horrendous black rice noodles that look like he just pulled them from the drain trap in his bathtub. Big Black Big Bird Carla brings the crazy by claiming that her barely-Russian-at-all dish was inspired by her 'spirit guide'. Let me guess - your spirit guide is a great big yellow bird that can talk, right Carla?

 

Two by two, the chefs make their way to the judges' table, and one from each pair is selected to go to Loser's Row and face the judges at the end of the show for elimination. On the other side, the winning chefs are herded together and evaluated once more to decide who among them will be the overall winner, and once again, the Finnish menace Stefan and his absolutely delicious-looking Middle Eastern-inspired lamb & beef skewers take top honors. Without a doubt, he is the one to beat. Newcomer Eugene from Hawaii came damn close with his purely accidental foray into old-school Southern India cuisine, though, so I'll be keeping a close eye on him as well.

 

As for eliminations, Patrick couldn't get lucky enough to dodge two bullets in the same day and gets sent packing for his ham-handed attempt at Chinese food. Ariane comes close to it herself, and she takes a cheap shot from Tom for claiming she'd probably consult a cookbook if faced with a dish she'd never attempted before. The horrors of learning from books! The very same books that people like Tom write and give out as parting gifts to contestants on reality cooking shows! Oh, Tom. Hopefully now that the show is based closer to your family in New York, you'll stop being such a put-out little priss all the time and start acting like you even give a shit about being here anymore.

 

Don't even get me started on Padma, either. That woman is no more cultured or sophisticated than the woman who sprays you in the face with perfume at a department store.

 

BITE-SIZED BITS - 

 

I wanted to reach through my screen and grab Richard's lamb sliders right off that plate. Very much my kind of food. Too bad they apparently sucked.

 

On the other side of Team Rainbow's efforts, however, Jamie's eggplant puree looked like baby food. Baby food you find two hours later in a diaper. Blargh.

 

Why is it that whenever Gail Simmons Of Food And Wine Magazine gets a full-length shot on camera, she finds it necessary to pose like a teenage beauty pageant contestant? Tell us about the situation in Iraq such as, Gail.

 

Any New Yorkers out there have any idea how much that apartment would cost to rent month-to-month in today's market? $10,000? $20,000? A first-born child, perhaps?

 

-littlebigmouth.