Top Chef made two eliminations last week so now that we’re down to 15 contestants, I might start using some proper names instead of India girl, crazy old lady, bald man #2, then again, where’s the fun in that. This week the chef’s took a big step back and so did the season.
One of the hardest things about keeping a reality show fresh is the challenges. Top Chef has excelled at this throughout its first four seasons. Last night however, the challenges just stunk, each for different reasons.
The Quickfire Challenge started innocently enough as Padma introduced guest judge extraordinaire (she also doles out the criticism regularly on Iron Chef America) Donatella Arpaia. Then Padma introduced the challenge, create your own version of a New York staple. I wish they had stopped right there or better yet, brought out the knife block and have the contestants choose from bagels, pizza, knishes, hot dogs, etc. It’s not as if New York has one iconic dish. Unfortunately, in the interest of boring TV, the producers chose only one…the hot dog. Then Padma throws in a completely unnecessary twist by bringing in the hot dog queen of Queens. She says something about the contestants having to beat the hot dog queen and my interest is piqued. In the end, though the hot dog queen is merely a confusing prop. Oh, there was some cooking too. India girl (Radhika) once again falls back on her trademark flavors that she insisted were not her trademarks. This time however, she pulls out a win. In a case of foreshadowing, Jill makes a fool of herself by using store bought hot dogs while her compatriots all made their own. In the end, it was a boring challenge and a missed opportunity.
The Elimination Challenge was even more confusing. First Padma says they’re opening a Top Chef restaurant and immediately I’m thinking we’re having an early Restaurant Wars. Then she states that they’ll all be making a New American dish and will be split into apps, entrees and desserts. Ok so they’ll be on teams then? Nope they just get to randomly choose what they want to do. There was absolutely no structure to this challenge whatsoever. The only pleasant surprise about the challenge is that the guests at the restaurants are all chefs who applied for the season but didn’t make the cut. This made for some awesome criticism. Tom Colicchio made the mistake of letting these folks stage the challenge in his flagship restaurant, Craft. After seeing the food that came out of his kitchen, I’m guessing he regrets that. Other then the inventive Carpaccio created by half of Team Europe and the corn soup created by half of Team Rainbow, the dishes looked absolutely horrible. You knew things were off to a bad start when Bald Man#2 (Josea) went for jarred crab. If you’re supposedly a seafood specialist, I’d hope you know what good seafood is! Meanwhile Jill fell in love with an ostrich egg even though she’d never used one before. Smart choice hot dog girl! Lastly, you had crazy old lady Arian complaining about making a dessert even though she chose to make a dessert. All three dishes looked like disasters but in fairness to those three, the majority of the dishes looked like crap. Arian was my pick to go as her meringue martini with cherry surprise (pictured above) looked worse then a McDonald’s yogurt parfait. Jill however was sent packing and after her inability to use the English language in defending her dish, I can’t blame the judges.
All in all just a disappointing week. Next week looks promising as the Foo Fighters show up for a Thanksgiving filmed in July. Hopefully we can see the chefs and the season rebound. On a personal note, don’t expect my coverage on the ep until Friday next week as I’ll be travelling for the holidays. Gobble gobble!
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