POSTED: Thursday, July 1, 2010, 10:11 PM
Filed Under: Food TV |
Top Chef
This season of
Top Chef is shaping up to be pretty awesome, don't you agree?
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| "Please do your best. It was just yesterday that Johnny asphyxiated a line cook with his
chain wallet for making a watery panna cotta." |
Quickfire: The transcendently beautiful
Padma, joined by the lovely
Gail Simmons and clearly-way-into-Rocket from the Crypt
Jean Georges pastry chef
Johnny Iuzzini (the latter two will host the upcoming
Top Chef Just Desserts), challenge the cheftestants to make a pie. AMERICA! Everyone is extremely pissed. Meanwhile, deep in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, a wry, telling smile spreads across the lineless face of
Special Agent Dale Cooper. "I have no idea where this pie-based Quickfire challenge will lead us," says Cooper, a mug of hot coffee, black as midnight on a moonless night, half-raised to his lips. "But I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange."
OMGZ Agent Dale Cooper and Gail would make such a cute couple! Whaddya say, Gail?
OK that's just rude Gail!
Jersey Kev says America like "Amurrica" so I like him. And Arnold whips out the big guns RIGHT AWAY. I think pies live in the clouds with the unicorns!" he exclaims. "They just appear magically sometimes! That shit is so Arnold Face-worthy that we're gonna have to roll out ...
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| ARNOLD FACE IN DRAG ON Y'ALL FOOLS!!! |
Alex's pie is criticized for its quiche-ness,
Tracey's crust turns out poorly and
Ed's purportedly grandma-inspired banana cream pie, tricked out with salted peanut and celery espuma (!), is roundly ridiculed by Gail. "How does it compare to your grandmother's
celery espuma?" she asks all Gail-like. Ed is like owwww. (Judges are
mean on this episode!)
Amanda gets clapped up by Iuzzuni when she leads into her pie description with some "I'm not a pastry chef"-type sentiment. "My grandma is not a pastry chef either, and she can make a pie," Iuzzuni snorts. OK it's settled, Ed's grandma and Johnny's grandma shall box to the death, Broughton's rules!
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| Picture both as grandmas, one with a
sweet pompadour |
Kelly and
Stephen are praised for their tasty offerings, but
Kenny Blalicchio ends up taking the Quickfire, and immunity, for a bad-ass-sounding bananas foster-inspired pie with Chinese five spice. Blalicchio is a threat!
Elimination: The chefs are told they must tackle yet another American tradition the summer picnic by preparing dishes for 150 Capitol Hill interns at Mt. Vernon, George Washington's idyllic estate. Before we go any further I would like to bring your attention to a viewer poll question Bravo currently has posted on its website:
I get it, because of the INTERNS. You guys just HAD to go for the cheap, infinitely dated
Monica Lewinsky reference, didn't you? While we're at it, here's an exclusive sneak peek at next week's viewer poll:
Each chef is required to come up with a main and a side for the Elimination, so they all go frantic-shopping at Whole Foods. This is precisely when Bravo decides to splice in a testimonial from Amanda discussing how she had a lot of drug problems in the early part of her mid-20s. I'm very happy that Amanda says she has kicked those habits, but it's really bizarre how the producers did it they cut it in super-fast and random and apropos of nothing, like:
Again, very happy that this is no longer the case with Amanda. And despite the fact that
Angelo talks a bunch of smack on her in a weird Inigo Montoya-style cadence ("She's actually very smart, but can Amanda beat me? No, she cannot beat me."), she rocks out the Elimination, impressing the judges (including guest
Jonathan Waxman) with her ribs and asparagus. (Even Angelo shows love.) Those two end up in the top four, along with Ed, who erases any memory of Celeryespumagate with a spiced tuna loin dish; and Arnold, who rocks flavorful lamb meatballs so good that they end up winning the challenge. Arn's excited that he takes it a testament to straight skills, I suppose, especially considering he had to peek at Blalicchio's grill setup pre-cooking to get a fix on what to do. "I'm not a grill guy," he states at the outset. "It'll clog the pores way too fast!"
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| ARNOLD FACE, ART EDITION! |
They can't all be winners, of course. At the bottom of the Elimination
Tim, whose pork two ways is overshadowed by Amanda's ribs; the highly-ranked-in-the-Quickfire Stephen, with an "unappealing" bacon-wrapped Chilean sea bass; Jersey Kev, whose Puerto Rican-inspired flank steak and beans/rice is called too safe; and Tracey, who was gonna do Italian sausage but got stuck for time and ended up turning the same meat into slider patties. Like I mentioned before, the judges are cold as ice on this episode (or is it this season?) after beating up all of the bottom four, Tom C. and Waxman focus the brunt of their ire on Tracey. "My 10-year-old son probably could've made that patty," says Waxman. "If that's what you call Italian food, it's insulting to Italians, me being one," goes
Tom C. Owwwwww. Needless to say, Tracey ends up packing her knives and going. Rough!
