POSTED: Friday, June 25, 2010, 1:03 AM
Filed Under: Food TV |
Top Chef
I promise to explain this right after the jump.
Quickfire: This one's dubbed a "Biparti-sandwich" Challenge, as the cheftestants are paired off according to a knife draw and made to don sewn-together two-party-system aprons, resulting in the sort of frenetic, three-legged, too-close-for-comfort competition that produces weird, unintentionally avant-garde images like the one above. The teamed-up one-handed chefs flail about and nearly stab each other a lot of times. "If anything, you'll give me a manicure!"
Arnold reassures his partner
Dark Horse Kelly as she slices a cuke he's holding steady. Oh, Arnold! This leads me to the first installment of what I hope will become a recurring feature this season — every time Arnold says something sassy and irreverent, you automatically get a free order of ...
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| ARNOLD FACE! |
The twosome of
Tracy and
Angelo, the latter of whom uses terms like "sex on a plate" and "liquid love" to describe their flounder/sriracha mayo get-up (mmm, just
talking about flounder turns me on!), win the QF, plus elimination immunity, after getting the blessing from the studly guest judge, White House assistant chef
Sam Kass. Kass, for what it's worth, looks like the dude from the video game
God of War:
About the
Top Chef producers dropping the heartburn-y term "Biparti-sandwich" this go-'round: Surely this just the beginning of what will end up being a cache of hundreds of groanworthy political food puns. I propose that we just get
all of them out of our systems right now so we can move on with our lives. I'll start it off, and then you have a spin in the comments. Ready? GO. Majority Whip-ped Cream! Bill of Raita! Secretary of Skate! Phyllo-buster! House of Crepe-resentatives! Federal kefta-cit! Supreme gorp! Impeachment! G-O-Peas!* F-B-Ice Cream!* Department of Homeland Secure-the-Cheese!*
* I would like to note that those last three were contributed by City Paper
's Isaiah Thompson, who is paid a living wage to write words.
Elimination: Kass, who spearheads a national initiative to improve school lunches, tells four-chef teams that they must cook healthy, square, kid-friendly meals for 50 middle-school-age children, relying on a budget of $2.60 a head — the average amount allotted to feed the average kid a lunch in an American public school. "When I go out, I spent $130 on
myself!" exclaims Arnold.
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| ARNOLD FACE! |
Amanda, who's teamed with
Tamesha,
Stephen and
Jacqueline, states that she wants to avoid cooking anything sweet, because "People who makes desserts go home." Amanda knows what's up! She opts instead for a sherry-braised chicken thigh (hm, maybe she doesn't know what's up), while the rest of her squad does rice, salad and a strawberry thing. "Kids fucking love tacos," observes Kelly, who puts together carnitas for the main component of her team's plate, which also includes a black bean cake with a Muppet-like sweet potato "wig" from
Lynne, plus a sweet potato/sherbet dessert from
Tiffany. (Earlier in the ep, Arnold beefs with Kelly about relenting control, but it wasn't that sassy so we won't Arnold-face y'all again.)
Elsewhere,
Alex,
Andrea,
Jersey Kev and
Timothy make a well-conceived spread based around apple cider BBQ chicken, while the immune Angelo and Tracy work with
Ed and
Kenny Blalicchio on a chicken burger/apple pudding/PB-and-celery meal. Aside from an anonymous kid yelling "MTV CRIBS," some tween who looks like the
The Last Airbender proclaiming his puberty-soaked love for Dark Horse Kelly's tacos,
Gail going "Chocolate milk, please!" to a table and
Padma dishing out a dozen or so transcendently beautiful bear-hugs to various brace-faces, the actual tasting is uneventful.
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| "The fuck you just say about my Diet Coke commercial?" |
At the top: Kass agrees with Airbender, proclaiming Dark Horse Kelly's team the victor and the Colorado chef the individual victor. "That is a solid taco," Kass declares. Hee. Kelly, don't win anything for awhile so you can continue being the Dark Horse! Jersey Kev gets some close-but-no-cigar love for his healthy yogurt mousse with fruit.
At the bottom: Amanda's team, for her poorly received pollo and a Jacqueline-made dessert that ends up having a bunch of unneeded sugar in it; and the Angelo/Tracy foursome, who get chastised for Ed's too-spicy potato puree, their dearth of vegetables and their admitted indifference toward that lack. After a bunch of juicy under-the-bus throwing at judges' table, Jacqueline's sacked for her patently unhealthy dessert. That's
two weeks in a row — OK, I'm back to thinking Amanda knows what's up again.
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| "I'm going to stare at you like this, and
continue to stare at you like this, until
you sate my current post-partum craving.
Eggs over hard and an acoustic rendition
of Del Amitri's 'Roll to Me' or I'll vaporize
you with my fucking eyes." |
