Hey, That’s My Name

Once again, someone with actual talent goes home while two subpar chefs manage to tread water for yet another week. Lame.

THE QUICKFIRE

Tom tiptoes into the house to wake the chefs. For the Quickfire, they’ll be serving time as a short order cook at a popular Chicago breakfast place. Everyone grumbles. Spike points out that he’s served as a short order cook and that cooking eggs is really hard. Very few people seem to actually be very good at this. Stephanie has trouble with poaching, Richard doesn’t do well with the rapid fire order and Lisa cooks some styrofoam along with her eggs. Antonia and Dale are called out as the top two (so much for Spike’s experience in “The Hole”), but Antonia takes it for her calm demeanor. Tom tells them that he will not be at this Elimination Challenge because of a prior engagement and hands them an address where they are to meet Padma for the next portion of the competition. The Chicagoans scratch their heads at the unfamiliar street name, but thanks to the glory of modern cell phone technology, they make their way to the warehouse space.

THE ELIMINATION CHALLENGE

At the warehouse, Padma gleefully announces that Restaurant Wars have returned (no mention that she totally lied about them being gone two episodes ago). Antonia gets a monster advantage by getting to choose her teammates and, because she’s a smart cookie, she goes with Stephanie and Richard. It’s a essentially a Wedding Wars rematch sans Nikki and Andrew. Dale doesn’t fault Antonia, saying he would have picked the same people and says that he does think his team is stronger than last time, no offense intended to Nikki (yeah right).

Reunited, Team Awesome immediately gels on a gastropub theme. Antonia is the executive chef, Richard the chef de cuisine and Stephanie the front of the house manager. The great thing about this team is that there are no egos here. Everyone gets along and respects one another’s talent. No one is trying to show anyone else up, they’re just trying to do the best they can. Plus, of the three people on their team, both Richard and Stephanie have opened restaurants before, so there’s some solid experience there, as well.

Team Gimpy does also come together pretty quickly. All three have experience and a speciality with Asian food, so they decide on an Asian fusion restaurant. Lisa and Dale both want to be executive chef, so they flip a coin and Dale wins. (When is a win not really a win? When it means that by winning you get to captain a leaky ship.) Spike makes one of his brighter strategic decisions to be the front of the house manager, keeping himself out of that damn kitchen.

In the kitchen, both teams seem to be having their share of difficulties. Team Awesome was having problems with their freshly made pasta. I begin to get a little concerned that if this team goes down, someone that should win could go home. Anthony Bourdain drops in, causing Team Gimpy to have heart palpitations. He’ll be filling in for Tom this round and they’ve got a dish on their menu (Laksa) that he says he takes “very seriously.” Lisa and Dale start out pretty civil, but the existing animostiy between the two of them just slowly boils over, with Lisa blaming her bad attitude on Dale’s (because it’s not like she’s ever been pissy when he was nowhere near her *ahem* last week).

To help them out, the chefs are offered an extra pair of hands from one of the last four eliminated contestants. Gimpy gets to choose first and Dale snaps up Jen (partially, I think, so that he can have someone on his team that he actually likes). Awesome takes Nikki to help with their pasta problems and while I think she’s the weakest “Top Chef” of the bunch, as an extra work horse, it seems like a pretty solid decision. Andrew and Mark leave the kitchen with their tails between their legs, having been picked last for dodgeball.

Things seem to be going pretty will with Awesome now, but Gimpy’s shit is hitting the fan. Dale accidentally mixed a brown avocado in with his pretty green ones, causing an element of his dessert (the same one he made in the dessert Quickfire) to look kinda like, well, poo. This immediately sours his mood about everything else. Dale and Spike also give a taste to Lisa’s laksa and both think it’s too smoky and just downright not so good. Lisa’s also having issues with her dessert, a mango sticky rice.

The restaurants open to customers with Stephanie and Spike (sans hat!) getting all dolled up to greet the masses. They both clean up very nice. The judges visit Warehouse Kitchen, Awesome’s restaurant, first. They heap praise on just about everything put in front of them from the first courses of Beet Salad and Linguine with Clams to the main courses of Trout and Lamb. Richard made his Banana Scallops dessert (the one that landed him in the Top Chef cookbook) and this group is less impressed with it. Bourdain, in particular doesn’t like the chocolate smear on the plate because he thinks it looks, well, like poo (that’s right, it’s a second food looks like poo reference). The judges are skeptical of Stephanie’s Gorgonzola Cheesecake dessert, but are turned around after tasting it. It’s clear that Team Gimpy has their work cut out for them to show this menu up.

Making their way over to Gimpy’s Mai Buddha restaurant, jokes are made about the silver tablecloths and purple napkins, including a reference to Steven Tyler’s microphone. The laksa is the first dish out and it does not set a good tone for the meal. Bourdain describes eating it like putting your nose into a campfire. Ouch. The main courses are split. Dale’s Butterscotch Scallops are universally reviled, while everyone likes Spike’s Braised Short Rib recipe. Again, the desserts are split. The Halo Halo is well received (the poo factor having been brought down a tad, it looks mostly green now), but Lisa’s rice is described as baby vomit with wood chips. Again I say, OUCH.

The diners were given comment cards, but it’s absolutely clear who the winners and losers are in this challenge. Team Awesome’s praise session at the judges’ table is brief. Stephanie is awarded the win for her two dishes, as well as for the initiating the gastropub theme. For her troubles she wins a trip to Barcelona and she’s just so damn cute in her acceptance of this.

Team Gimpy, however, comes to the judges’ table with the same scowls we’ve come to know and revile. Lisa takes the lumps for her crappy dishes, though she does try to blame the rice on Dale. Dale takes the lumps for his scallops and, actually, for a lot of what went wrong, stating “I fucked up.” Spike doesn’t have much to own up to because, as with Wedding Wars, he didn’t do much. Mostly, he hung buddhas, which, since this is <em>Top Chef</em>, is a really important skill to have. They used his recipe for the short ribs, but since he was busy being the metrosexual interior designer, he didn’t actually cook it, Dale did.

In the stew room, Spike and Lisa decide to show how adult they are by sitting five feet behind Dale and talk smack about him like he can’t hear them. Real mature, guys. Then, when he calls them out for it, Spike says, “we weren’t only talking about you.” WTF?!? The sad victim of an unfortunate coin toss, Dale is sent home for being in charge of the doomed ship that was Mai Buddha. Had Lisa won the coin toss, I imagine that the menu, in all its atrocity, would have been the same, but she would have gone home for it. It’s a sad day, because Dale was a really gifted chef and Spike and Lisa aren’t. The opposing team is shocked and dismayed to hear that he’s going. Spike pats Dale on the back and gives him a man hug, but Lisa sits in the corner with her arms crossed like a little bitch. In his exit interview, Dale is weepier than any of the other contestants thus far, stating that he will miss Antonia, Richard and Stephanie (no mention of Spike and Lisa).

THE CHEFTESTANT BREAKDOWN

Stephanie: Back on top again! She definitely hit it out of the park tonight by making good food and giving a good presence to the dining room. I’m really worried she’s going to trip herself up again like she has in the past and cost herself the top four position she deserves, but I’m crossing my fingers.

Richard: The well-oiled machine that was their team meant that both Richard and Antonia didn’t stand out that much. He got it done as he always does. His beet salad was very well-received, even if Bourdain didn’t care for the Banana Scallops.

Antonia: She showed some great composure in the Quickfire, but after that she, like Richard, didn’t cause a lot of fireworks, beyond being part of the really good team. She was responsible for both of the main courses, which were very well received.

Lisa: I think it’s kind of a travesty that Lisa got to stay, while Dale left. I get it, but given that both of the dishes she did were universally detested and this is supposed to be contest about people being good cooks, it seems to me like she should have been sent packing. And that’s completely discounting the horrendous attitude that she’s maintained the entire time she’s been here. She doesn’t deserve to still be around and the idea that she may end up in the final four is just sad.

Spike: It’s hard to be really upset with Spike this week because, frankly, he didn’t really do anything. He decorated the restaurant and put on a suit. Yay? Stephanie was the front of the house manager, too, and she managed to make two dishes. Why did Spike’s managerial duties keep him from doing anything but contributing a recipe for a braised short rib? I think if Tom would have been at the judges’ table this week, he would have taken Spike to task much more for this.

Dale: I’m really sad to see Dale go. He was a really good chef and kept getting saddled with Spike and Lisa. It’s true that, had he been a nicer guy to work with, he might have ended up on the good team, but I still maintain that, while Dale’s attitude could be bad, Lisa has shown hers to be much, much worse. He should’ve been in the final four, it’s a damn shame that at least Spike or Lisa will end up in the spot that should have been his.

NEXT ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK

For the love of all things culinary, if both Spike and Lisa end up in the final four it will be a sad, sad commentary on <em>Top Chef</em>. I realize that the smallest foul up can get you sent home at this point, but these two should’ve been out a long time ago and if Antonia, Stephanie and Richard aren’t the final three then this competition is in no way legitimate.