Top Chef – Recap & Review – Don’t Be Tardy for the Dinner Party

photo: bravo

Top Chef
Don’t Be Tardy for the Dinner Party

Original Air Date: Nov 30, 2011

Ryan O – Two Cents Senior Reviewer
ryano@thetwocentscorp.com

This episode was a nice in the progression of the season. It allowed the chefestants to cook what they want to cook without interference from being on a team for the first time this season.

It also solidified, for me anyway, who the person to hate is. There’s one every season. I won’t mention the name here. I’ll let you try to figure out who it is by the end (Hint: it won’t be hard).

We rejoin the cheftestants immediately after their last challenge. Padma walks in and everyone groans, thinking there’s going to be a Quickfire right then. Nope. Instead they’re told go home and pack their bags. They’re going to Dallas.

Incidentally, Chris J? Dillhole. He refers to the other Chris as “ugly Chris” without the slightest bit of humor or irony and then uses the phrase, “skills to pay the bills” within 10 seconds and that’s after calling Richie, who was eliminated last week, “his best little buddy” in the most condescending way possible. (Oh, I suppose I should’ve waited beyond the second paragraph to reveal who it is I passionately dislike.)

The chefs pack up and drive to Dallas in their product-placement cars.

Quickfire

They’re driving down a road when they come to a police road block. They pull over and Padma is there on the side in a field with Top Chef Masters alum John Besh. There are picnic tables set up and the challenge is to make the best dish they can using the survival kits in the trunk and portable propane burners.

Here’s what 11 of them they made:

Chris J: Fried chicken on lemongrass noodles
Chuy: Basmati rice with smoked trout
Grayson: Pickled herring with hearts of palm, dates, and herring juice
Lindsay: Triple club with tuna and sardines in French onion soup with Vienna sausage
Ty-Lor: Black pepper chicken stew with garbanzo beans and rice
Sarah: Dried beef and pineapple rice, apple sauce and hearts of palm
Chris C: Spicy garbanzo beans with tofu and crab
Whitney: Beer and peach glazed chicken with green bean casserole
Edward: Thai peanut soup with salmon, tofu, and fried hominy
Paul: Pork and bean with coffee and basmati rice
Dakota: Sweet and spicy noodles with crab meat and pineapple juice

Bottom 3
Whitney: Just straight out of the can with no thought
Dakota: One dimensional, too sweet
Chris C: Raw tofu and under-seasoned

Top 3
Edward: The whole dish worked well together and there was a good attention to detail
Lindsay: The sandwich sent it over the top
Chuy: The canned smoked trout turned out to be very good

Lindsay is the winner. She wins $5,000 and immunity.

Elimination Challenge

They have to create a dish for a progressive dinner in an exclusive, upper-class Dallas neighborhood. They’re divided up into appetizer, entree, and dessert groups. Each group goes to a separate house that will be hosting that course.

The couple hosting the appetizer team is annoying. The wife is a lifestyle and entertaining author. She doesn’t want anything adventurous but wants it to be a conversation starter. She wants it to be easy to eat. She doesn’t want anything that might make her guests feel self-conscious about their breath. She doesn’t like bell peppers or cilantro. The husband has perma-smirk and can’t seem to close his mouth all the way. It’s very odd.

The entree couple is a high-maintenance woman and a guy who’s trying hard to be adventurous but isn’t. The dessert couple seems the most normal but the guy talks about his wedding cake being a giant gummy bear and talks way too much about the chefs tapping into their “inner-fat kid,” so not that normal.

Here’s what they made:

Appetizers
Chris J: Roasted chicken cigar with sweet corn, collard greens and cumin ash (It looks like a half-used cigar with a pile of ash and looks very unappetizing to me)
Sarah: Grilled Roman-style artichokes with date puree
Lindsay: Roasted and raw beet salad with chickpeas and Greek vinaigrette
Whitney: Seared sea scallop over sweet corn puree
Paul: Fried Brussels sprouts with grilled prosciutto

Tom says the flavors in Chris’s dish are okay but the whole thing is dry. Gail says that Sarah’s artichoke was grilled perfectly. While the guests love Lindsay’s beets, John Besh calls them boring and unexciting. (I don’t really care what the rich people have to say for a variety of reasons. You can tell that Tom and John also don’t care what they have to say. They aren’t doing a great job of hiding their disbelief that the show chose these people.)

Entrees
Heather: Garlic and rosemary grilled lamb chops with garbanzo beans and mint chimichurri
Chuy: Sockeye salmon fillet stuffed with goat cheese
Beverly: Seared scallop with creamy polenta
Ty-Lor: Grilled pork tenderloin with summer slaw
Nyesha: Roasted fillet of beef with vegetable melange

Gail thinks that Ty’s pork is a bit sloppy. Tom can’t get past the overcooked lamb chops in Heather’s dish. John assures one woman that it’s not blood with the beef but a red wine reduction. You can tell that he’s barely tolerating these people.

Desserts
Dakota: Banana bread pudding, banana mousse, and banana date milkshake
Chris C: Strawberry cupcake with banana custard and chocolate icing
Edward: Panna cotta, cantaloupe consomme and raspberrie stuffed with basil pudding
Grayson: Chocolate sponge cake, caramelized bananas, and semifreddo (like and ice cream)

Tom mentions the old saying, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything,” in regards to Chris’s cupcake. And that’s it for comments from the judges in regards to the desserts. This might’ve been the most useless eating and commenting section I’ve seen in a long time.

Judges Table

Top 4
Sarah, Grayson, Paul, and Dakota. (See what I mean about useless? We have no reason to guess that the judges liked or disliked Dakota and Grayson’s dishes and would end up on top.)

Tom liked the pretzels from Grayson’s dessert. John liked the refined flavors from Sarah’s artichoke dish. Gail liked Dakota’s bread pudding. Tom loved the textures in Paul’s dish.

Paul is declared the winner.

Bottom 3
Chris C, Chris J, Chuy, and Ty-Lor.

Tom says there was way too much going on in Chris C’s dessert. Ty-Lor’s dish was out of proportion according to Gail. John says the dish showed a lack of knife skills. Gail says Chuy’s salmon was overcooked and the goat cheese was mealy. Tom says you have to look at the ingredients and ask if the idea is the best idea for the ingredients in regards to Chris J’s chicken cigar. (He doesn’t say that the best idea for Chris J’s hair is not to make a pigtail in the middle of the top his head. I suspect that Chris J believes it looks like a samurai’s hair but it doesn’t. It looks stupid.) John calls it a gimmick and one that wasn’t executed well.

Chuy is told to pack his knives and go.

Last Chance Kitchen

Chuy vs. Keith. They have 45 minutes to butcher five bone-in ribeyes and then perfectly cook one medium-rare steak.

Keith did a good job with the butchering with the exception of one spot. Tom says that he cooked and season the steak he cooked very well although one side was seared a bit more than the other.

Tom didn’t like that Chuy took the fat cap off the ribeye when butchering but other than that he did a really good job with very clean bones. He did a great job cooking the steak with a nice sear on both sides.

Tom says they’re very close. Because Keith seared one side a little more than the other, Chuy wins. Chuy moves on to face next week’s loser and Keith is all done.

What did you find to be tasty in this episode? Did you think anything was overdone? Give us your Two Cents below!