Top Chef: "Gail's Bridal Shower" Episode 505

A note to any and all aspiring chefs out there. Two, actually. First, drop the whole 'deconstructed' thing like now. No one who is sane and hungry wants to roll their own sushi on their plate. NOBODY. This isn't El Pollo Loco. Second, if you have any hopes of ever being taken seriously in a professional kitchen, don't buy any of those Top Chef shirts and chef coats and such. You will be laughed out of the place faster than you can possibly imagine, and most likely taken outside and beaten. More Top Chef after the jump...

 

Before we get to the hilarious, haughty mess that was Gail's faux-bridal shower (I can't wait!), let's begin at the beginning - the Quickfire. The cheftestants were asked to pull knives and break into teams of two, and from there, they went head-to-head against one another in a 'Name That Tune'-themed taste-off challenge. Princess Padma presented each group of chefs with a mystery sauce, which she then let them taste. The chef that could name the highest number of ingredients in that sauce moved on to the next round of tastings. You got all that, Monty Hall? Then let's play the Pyramid!

 

Daniel & Hosea square off first, and their sauce in question is a shrimp & lobster bouillabaise. Hosea whips Daniel like a narc at a biker rally by naming four ingredients right off the bat, so he's off to the next round. Ariane, Stefan, Leah, Radhika, and Carla follow suit (most of which by default when their opposition blows it), so here we go into Round 2. Hosea reveals himself as a clear threat when he takes out Ariane by naming seven straight ingredients in the Thai green curry sauce, but Stefan somehow manages to one-up him by identifying a mind-shattering 8 in his bout against the lovely Leah. Radhika bites it against Carla and sends Bird Lady into the 3-chef finale against Stefan and Hosea. Carla's out almost immediately when she's dumb enough to think that Mexican mole sauce has anything to do with peanut butter, so all we have left are the two baldies. It's a tight battle, but when Stefan takes a dive and incorrectly names tomato paste as an ingredient in the yummiest Mexican sauce known to man, Hosea chimes in with vegetable oil and takes the prize. Props to Hosea, but come on - couldn't half of these people gotten a lot further than they did simply by sticking with 'salt' and 'pepper'? Talk about overthinking it.

 

So after last week's craptastic swan dive into cheap bar food with world champion book-shiller Rocco DiSpirito, I was more than happy to learn that this week's Elimination Challenge was clearly going to be oodles more precious and dainty. Gentlemen, adjust your monocles, and ladies, keep your hands flat on your back at all times. Top Chef's own Gail Simmons is getting married, you see, so Padma's challenge for the chefs was to throw her a bridal shower. The chefs were broken up into four groups of three by way of the all-knowing Knife Block oracle, and their team identities were assigned as such - New, Old, Borrowed, Blue. Get it? Yeah, I thought you might. See, I was expecting the chefs to be broken up into Boys against Girls for this one, but maybe they're saving that for when Richard marries Tom Colicchio. At gunpoint.

 

So after Gail lays down the law by DEMANDING that there not be any veal or black beans anywhere NEAR the place (WTF?), the teams hit Whole Foods and begin preparing their menus. Team Borrowed (Ariane, Rahdika, Jamie) decide to use Radhika's cultural background and Jamie's smuggled-in Indian spice to go with a fairly delicious-looking lamb dish. They pair it up with a raita sauce from Rhadika and a carrot puree' from Jamie, and given her history of making kick-ass soups (remember her challenge-winning corn/mint/chili concoction from a few weeks back? Yum), I'd say they're in good shape. Ariane can't help but do her best to fuck it up by nearly ruining the lamb, but the rest of the ladies on her team pitch in to bring it home.

 

Team New (Daniel, Carla, Eugene), on the other hand, decide to take their dishes completely off the map. They go with a surf-and-turf sushi roll, of all things, and what's more, it will be 'deconstructed'. If you're not familiar with this unbelievably overused phrase on Top Chef, it basically means to take the ingredients of your dish, throw them in all directions onto a plate, and then scoff at your diner when they have to admit they don't know what the hell to do with any of it. It is Eugene's plan to have Gail Simmons' guests roll their own sushi right at their table, and yes - it's is just as insane as it sounds. I mean, come on - people pay good money out in the real world to learn how to roll sushi. Did he really expect a bunch of half-in-the-bag old hens to even WANT to attempt something like that after a few cocktails? Dumbass. He may as well have brought them a bucket of water and a live chicken and requested them to make their own soup. Carla lends a hand to the kooky-wackiness by making edible salad bowls out of wontons, and if you're not peaking yet, Daniel throws together a peach BBQ sauce to slather all over the skirt steak that is lying on top of the sad little sushi roll. The sushi roll that hasn't been put together yet. Oh, did I mention that Eugene screwed the pooch on the rice, too? By the time he's done overcooking it, you could use the stuff to water-seal your deck. 

 

Team Blue (Melissa, Leah, Fabio) know they're up against it here what with the non-existence of any blue foods in the known universe (Tom got all bitchy when Melissa tried to bring up the subject of blueberries), but they manage to improvise and pull off something that at least SOUNDED good. Fabio brainstorms and decides to make their main dish seafood, and he accentuates his observation that the ocean is blue by coating the whole thing in a blue corn flour crust. Sounded good, but of course, the judges hated it. We'll get to that in a minute.

 

Team Old (Stefan, Jeff, Hosea) went with a tomato theme, and despite Stefan's pushiness in Whole Foods, it actually came together quite well. Stefan made a sort of tomato & eggplant loaf thing, Hosea made a guzpacho, and Jeff brings up the rear with a tomato sorbet with carpaccio. Wait - wasn't Fabio's entry in Tom's bullshit 'New American Cuisine' challenge a carpaccio, too? Why was carpaccio interpreted as 'new' in that competition, but here, it's 'old'? Oh, right - Tom's ego. Almost forgot. To be honest, I don't think I'd eat any of that crap, but of course, edibility clearly has no place in how the judges receive anything. With all dishes prepared, the teams packed up and prepared for the bridal shower.

 

Here come the judges! Not only are Princess Padma and Gail Simmons at the enormous dining table, but they've also gathered together a group of industry bigwigs at food-magazines-you've-never-read from all over the country. Being that this is a bridal shower, they're all female, so Tom gets kicked to the curb by being forced to stand in the kitchen all night and babysit the chefs. The boys of Team Old are the first to present their tomato concoctions to Gail and her pussy posse, and they're well-received all around. Jeff's sorbet is especially appreciated, and because Stefan advised against him making it in the first place, he's a little less than happy. Tom sucks down a whole plate of Stefan's dish back in the kitchen, though, so that makes up for it at least a little bit.

 

Team New is next, and quite frankly, the ladies don't seem to know what the hell to do with it all. Daniel's sneaking of some odd mushroom caps into Carla's salad without her knowledge doesn't seem to help them out any, and above all, Eugene's do-it-yourself sushi bar on a plate goes over like a fart in a car. Princess Padma falls back on her usual state of shock and disgust when confronted with the strange dish, and she even goes so far as to hold the various pieces of it up over her head in confusion. Settle down, Princess. A lowly servant will be along to rub your precious tootsies soon enough. Could somebody summon her golden carriage, please? Thank you.

 

Jamie's Borrowed crew follows, and because so many of the ladies claimed to have been made "really happy" by their Indian spiced lamb, I'd say it went well. You've never seen such happiness at a table. Doves flew, babies giggled, Hugh Jackman bent over, and Manolo Blahniks went for 50% off. Ah, marital bliss.

 

Fabio's Blue Bombers finished off the evening, and with the presentation of his team's dishes alone, he had every woman in the room eating out of the palm of his hand. They didn't necessarily like what they were eating from that hand, unfortunately, but every last one of them swooned uncontrollably when he brought out the big guns and pronounced everything in a truly kick-ass Super Mario accent. He sold his team's Blue angle the best he could, even going so far as to claim that the yellow of the sweet corn puree' and the green of the Swiss chard somehow combined themselves to make blue. Uh, Fabio? No. Yellow + green = yellowish green, not blue. Take notes, Chef Boyardee. We'll get into shapes and letters next week. It hardly mattered, though, as Fabio could've taken a dump on the table and called it chocolate-covered caviar, and all the ladies would've been just as smitten. Mmm! Chocolate-covered caviar!

 

Judges' table time, and the two winning teams are called forward - the Old team, and the Borrowed. Jeff gets respect for his tomato sorbet (much to the chagrin of Stefan), and in the surprise of the evening, Ariane takes the top prize for her seemingly-botched lamb. Wasn't there some drama in there somewhere about how it wasn't supposed to come out at all? Oh well. Pixie dust and lemonade, I suppose. Jamie's a little pissed about just barely missing yet another win, but at least she'll have Stefan's welcoming arms to console her. Ariane receives a set of Calphalon cooking stuff for her win (the second product placement of the night, I might add), and with that, the two losing teams are summoned forth.

 

The Blue team gets off fairly easy with a warning on how their food tasted like it should've been served at an old folk's home, but the New team? Holy shit. Eugene is roasted from all sides on the conceptual dipshittery behind his do-it-yourself sushi, and Daniel gets blasted for the flavorless mushrooms he dumped in Carla's salad. Regardless of the judge's comments, Daniel stands behind everything his team put together, even though everyone else saw fit to abandon ship as soon as they realized they hadn't won. See, I definitely thought this was Eugene's last stand, but Daniel takes the fall instead and heads back home to Long Island. Despite his loss, he manages to put forth a smile that pokes out from behind that hedge maze he calls a beard. Fuhgeddaboudit!

 

LEFTOVERS - 

 

Well, one thing is clear - Gail clearly doesn't have any friends outside of work.

 

I don't get Stefan's persistance towards getting a kiss from Jamie. Yes, she's quite cute, but can he not take a hint at all? She seems perfectly fine with rolling her own sushi, if you get my drift. Deal with it.

 

Where can I get me one of them there "I MAKE GOOD BABY" shirts? I doubt I actually would, but I still want one. A shirt, that is.

 

Gail's concern with how politically correct the Chilean sea bass was certainly didn't make her shovel it into her pie hole with any less of a quickness, did it? Jesus. I was afraid to put my fingers anywhere near the screen.

 

You KNOW Princess Padma didn't like playing second fiddle to Gail at her bridal shower. Princess Padma MUST be the center of attention at all times. It's in her contract, goddamnit. Were the two of them having a cleavage contest to settle it, or what? Women are weird.

 

My quest to correctly identify which pop culture icon Carla most resembles rages on. She's the Chicken Lady from Kids In The Hall, right? 

 

Speaking of Carla, she grabbed the line of the night with "Are pickles new?" Daniel's mention of "splooge" was close, but no cigar. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but man - Daniel was SUCH a dumbass. Also, do you think his facial hair grows like that? He's from Long Island, so I wouldn't be surprised.

 

-littlebigmouth.