Top Chef All-Stars, Episode One, Post 2 of 2
I love the gameshow Top Chef for many reasons even though I’m a vegetarian and can barely cook more than tofu and eggs. Last week, on the new season of All-Stars, the first episode, the eliminated contestants were brought back and forced to redo the dish that got them sent him in their previous loss. Given that this batch of cheftestants is more talented than any other season because the bottom rungers are already gone, the challenges are certainly going to shape who wins or who loses. A lucky challenge can get any of them through to the next round.
By shoving their losing dish back to them for another try, it put people on very unequal footing. Some lost by inches on the original dish and Stephen had it the worst, since he had to cook other people’s appetizers because he’d been eliminated for not cooking enough and spending too much of restaurant wars in the front of the house.
Spike rocked those frozen scallops with the brilliant trick of masking them. It was rough and he certainly earned one of the top three (sort of four) spots by taking an ill-chosen ingredient and burying it so deep in the dish when it returned to haunt him. Dale was in trouble but had immunity. He was goofing around and made misshapen cornbread for no apparent reason.
The bad move was to embrace your previous failure. Fabio and Elia both claimed the judges had been wrong before and gave a fairly similar dish. That did a nice job of shuffling the people who don’t understand the competition to the bottom. It’s not like food works for everyone. The judge’s tastebuds are all that matter and they’re all biased toward certain things. Give it to ‘em again the second time and they’ll send you home a second time.
Jamie has had a personality shift, Richard has a new look, but she strikes me as the most changed. Tiffani from season one had little training when she placed second back then, so she’s likely to have improved the most at cooking-but half the show is how they play the game. It’s Survivor with knives! Jamie was also smart enough to ask Blaise for help on getting a vacuum sealer to work. I also thought it was slick how she still hated Eric Rippert’s but managed to rock it anyway for a slot at the winning judge’s table. Blaise noticed Angelo was on the ball. Angelo, as much as I dislike him more than I like him, has the redemption story down pat. He lost last season and was sick and only well enough for one day of the two day competition…and now he won with the dish. In terms of narrative stories and that weird self-help thing inside his head, Angelo’s certainly one to watch, especially with the first win down (which seems to mean a lot in the strange mysticism of Top Chef).
Mike managed to save a bad idea and nailed his leeks even though it was a poor concept. Jen underseasoned after overseasoning last time. A couple of the did that, over-reacting to whatever had got them sent home. They went to the opposite extreme, overcompensating. Spike, called “sneaky and devious” by Antonia, conquered his frozen scallops problem so creatively that Bourdain, leave it to him to be a scholar of Top Chef lore, called him a crafty ____.
Elia’s loss was set up subtly and she drifted downward. The show has gotten extremely good at burying the right story in there somewhere. She wanted to be unharried. She wanted to give almost the exact same dish. She got both. Tom was quite subtle when he split the group up. The secret cameras didn’t alter the challenge much, as far as I could tell, because the cameras only appeared once the food was out there. Then again, the bottom three were all in the first group. Perhaps critiquing the others made them cook better but who knows?
Angelo was a ringer when he was on last season. He already ran a successful restaurant consulting group and now it’s just more successful. Angelo and Richard might be the two who most want the title and are less concerned with just the cash. Blaise appears to have come in first, based on the table comments, but was DQ-ed for playing past the deadline. He’s out of practice. In real life, an extra minute for perfect food is almost always reasonable. Jen said none of the others came close to Blaise. It could be editing, but dishing going out while he’s still drizzling might actually be a good sign. On some level, instead of realizing time was up, he was so comfortable that he kept trying to make great food. At the judge’s table, when they told him he was disqualified, I don’t think they knew if they were the winners or the losers. When he said, “Okay,” a bit more cheerfully, it was right after he knew he couldn’t win but wasn’t going home. It looked like there was a minute when he was concerned about the punishment being worse.
Jamie dismissed a dish she did well, Spike addressed a tough problem in a smart way and Angelo nixed the watermelon and saved his dish.
Tre’s dish got short shrift. Stephen’s looked like a nightmare, bulging, uneven and rushed (which Colichio called “off balance”). Even without Bourdain skewering it, Fabio’s food looked atrocious. Elia seemed afraid of criticism. Too many people seemed to make pork bellies. Maybe the advantage to the second crop of nine chefs was that the equipment had been dug out of cupboards and was waiting in the dishwasher. The editing tricks are sneaky. One never really knows. Fabio’s threat to Bourdain was ridiculous. Bourdain’s not someone in cooking that any chef should try to mess with, partially because Bourdain’s better at words than food. Casey’s looked beautiful. Marcel took Fabio’s dig as a compliment and looked straight at the camera when he said it. I’m still not sure what he was talking about with papering looking better than a dirty plate. I guess he meant it kept dripping from plating to serving, which probably shows how icky the whole mess was.
Off camera, I wonder if Gail’s just glad that Just Desserts is over for now. The bottom three have all improved at their doublespeak for judge’s table. Stephen’s item by item rundown sounded convincing and, despite feeling he’s better at image than flavor, it was a tougher challenge for him because it wasn’t his food. Elia replicated her failure. She claimed it was medium instead of raw then conceded that it took longer in the steamer. She might have failed with a different problem but her dislike of the fast pace of the competition and her desire to stick with the dish put her in a rough spot. Fabio’s chunked up stew was ugly. The convo with Bourdain had a weird moment where it jumped ahead to talking about the paper. In a soundbite, Fabio conceded he might be the worst chef.
Marcel and Jen had rough nights. Some of the others managed to hide in the pack a little… We’ll know more in a few minutes.