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“Top Chef All-Stars” Recap (8.05): Should have left your knives at home, ’cause this is a disastuh

When approaching this recap I had considered just writing in all-caps, 100-point, bolded letters “DIM SUCKS” and calling it a day. But, the epic, epic fail that was this week’s Elimination Challenge performance deserves a spanking in proportion to its total lack of success. In other words, gird your loins, we’re doing this thing.

The chefs walk into the kitchen to find Padma Lakshmi channeling Anne Shirley and wearing a puffed-sleeve shirt. She tells the chefs something about speed in the kitchen, but I’m wondering if she secretly angling to have Gilbert Blythe to ask her to the grand ball. She manages to subvert those longings long enough to tell the cheftestants that their Elimination Challenge will be to make a dish that beats the time of one of the nation’s top chefs. Which top chef? The Top Chef: head judge Tom Colicchio.

Now that’s a brilliant example of do unto others as you would have done unto you. Tom gets moving and he is really moving. He tears through his prep and even manages to throw a little fish carcass at Padma’s shoes when his trash bucket falls off the table. Now, that’s a Top Chef first.

The cheftestants are all suitably impressed and worried. The dude is fast. How fast? Eight minutes and 37 seconds fast. So now they will have the same amount of time to make a winning dish. Tom tells them degree of difficulty will factor in, so no cutting a piece of tuna and calling it tartare. But their race against the clock will be worth it because the winner gets immunity and a brand new Toyota Prius. Look at Top Chef going all Oprah – and you get a car, and you get a car, and you get a car!

The chefs attack the fridge like a pack of hungry jackals, except for Marcel who runs like a wily coyote the other way to retrieve Tom’s leftover fish. Gotta hand it to Wolverine, that was sneaky, smart move. Even Papa Bear Tom is impressed with his craftiness. Did I get enough animal metaphors in there? Good, just checking.

As everyone scrambles, chefbian Jamie says she thinks speed is important in certain contexts. She has dated people who are “fast” and says “I might be considered ‘fast.'” Forget the damn challenge, tell us more about your fastness, chef.

Time runs out and the judges survey the damage. Angelo has given them a crudo, when Tom explicitly told them not to make a raw dish. Jamie has only been able to give them one clam (too many jokes). And Dale failed in his attempt to make egg noodle pad thai. On the other hand, Mike, Blais and Marcel all get praised for the flavors they were able to bring out in just such a short time. But who won the brand new car? Mike. Good, maybe he can drive off into the sunset in it — immediately.

But the chefs speed demon skills aren’t over being put to the test. The Elimination Challenge is to take over a popular Chinatown dim sum restaurant and serve to hundred of diners during the lunch rush. All the chefs look a little sick at the prospect of making dim sum, except for Little Mad Dale who has experience making dim sum and works at the contemporary Asian restaurant Buddakan.

The chefs go back to the house to menu plan together. Jamie tells everyone she wants to do a scallop dish because she hasn’t done one yet this season. She adds, “No, seriously, I know you’re going to laugh at me, but I’d like to for this one.” They laugh accordingly and Fabio asks the camera later if she learned anything from her Season 5 experience, otherwise known as “Top Scallop.”

Everyone argues about who will work front of the house (they’ve learned the lesson of Restaurant Wars well — though Carla and Casey end up taking one for the team) and then who will do two dishes (Angelo, Dale and, to everyone’s surprise, Jamie). Blais says them all working together in the Chinese kitchen has disaster written all over it. Oh, honey, you don’t even know.

Later the girls are sitting around the kitchen table playing cards and talking about support. Tiffani jokes that she’ll give her bra if someone needs extra support. Mike, who apparently doesn’t have much experience with women’s breasts or what bras look like, says she doesn’t wear a bra. Tiffani quips: “I’m a 36DD. If I don’t wear bras you would have gotten hurt in the Quickfire today.”

This hilarity leads to Antonia saying she got squirted with jalapeno in her eye and then Tiffani removing her bra to “support” her as she washes it out. The boys scattering like cockroaches at the sight of the ladies undergarment. Tiffani says they “out boyed the boys” and then scoffs “they can talk about fiddling with their diddlies, but can’t talk about bras and boobs, like, whatever — please.” Gotta give Tiffani props for going from Season 1 villain to All-Stars crackup.

But the next day is no laughing matter. First at the Chinese market they have difficulty finding their ingredients because everyone who works there only speaks Chinese. But that’s nothing compared to the difficulty they find in the kitchen. First, it’s filled with traditional Chinese woks and steamers and such. Second, Jesus, do the chefs have no idea what they are doing.

Jamie and Antonia are working together on the Chinese long beans dish. But Jamie is more concerned about her scallop dumplings, which aren’t turning out as she had hoped. Tiffani noticed the beans going untouched and when Antonia asks her to discuss the dish, Jamie says, “I have no time.” Danger, Chefbian Rogers, danger!

Casey has made the ballsy (read: stupid) move of making a chicken feet dish. But first she has to prep them and that means taking off their toenails. She does this at what seems like a glacial pace. You’re not manicuring them, girl, hot foot it — so to speak.

Service starts and 250 hungry Chinatown diners with high standards for and low patience wait for the food to arrive. And they wait, and they wait. The judges Tom, Padma, Gail Simmons and guest judge Susur Lee wait, too. They should have renamed it to the Waiting Challenge.

Mike, who is expediting the service, and Tiffany, who is running it to the dumbwaiter, are both panicked about the lack of food coming out of the kitchen. There are no carts with food in the dining area. All the chefs are futzing around with their intricate presentations. The diners are bored and starving. I don’t mean to be crass, but, guys, this is a total sh-t show.

Jamie and Antonia are working together on the long beans. Antonia tells Jamie they’re under seasoned. She throws them back into the pan, but then later Jamie says she thought they were delicious as is “and I think she has PMS.” And with that, Jamie’s status as All-Stars villain is cemented.

As food trickles out, the diners start to get pushy. They grab plates from carts. They swarm the servers. Carla pleads helplessly: “Please don’t fight.” What food they do get, is disdainfully dismissed as “Caucasian dim sum.” To quote the queens Gaga and BeyoncĂ©, “This is a disastuh!”

The food the judges receive is hit and miss. They like Angelo’s spring rolls, Tiffany’s pork buns and Dale’s sticky rice. They dislike Carla’s bland summer rolls, Jamie and Antonia’s greasy, Hoisin- heavy long beans and Tre’s watery orange dessert. And no one has seen Casey’s chicken feet. She goes down to check. Apparently, they’re heating them wrong. And Casey complains that Antonia was only paying attention to her dish and lost her feet. (Yes, I know, puns. But this episode is so grim something has to lighten the mood.)

Tom has had enough. He calls the food “slow sum” and goes down to check/raise holy hell. Man, this is the cooking equivalent of dad stopping the car and coming back into the backseat as he promised. Tom scolds them appropriately, possibly not hard enough. Get food out, chefs. This is a restaurant. A beautiful dish that never makes it to the customer is worthless. See Tom’s face? This is no longer Papa Bear. This is Furious Grizzly.

After he leaves there’s a lot of complaining about the service slowness, but not much hustle. Antonia is hustling, she’s busting her ass and everyone else’s. But Dale is, I’m not joking, cleaning his shoes. The final plates go up to the judges. They’re mostly so-so, though Antonia’s shrimp toast gets praised. But Padma notes that as hungry as all the diners are, Casey’s chicken foot is left untouched on almost every plate.

I think Mike summed it up best: “Everyone sucked and everything sucked.” Basically, yes.

In the Stew Room, Padma calls in Casey, Antonia, Carla, Jamie and Tre. The Elimination Challenge was so bad, they judges switched the order and called in the worst competitors first so they get right to the yelling. Jamie knows her dumpling was bad, and guest judge Susur tells her it’s because she picked a wrapper meant to be boiled, not steamed. Antonia is praised for the toast, but dinged for her role in the greasy beans. Tre’s dessert was soup. Carla’s rolls were too boring.

But it’s Casey who gets the harshest zingers. Susur tells Casey even if given a couple of hours he could have only eaten one of her chicken feet. Ouch. Then Tom comes in to kick her while she is down and calls her pancakes underneath leaden. You can almost see her waiving a white flag and pleading, “Enough!”

They chefs go back to the Stew Room, asses sufficiently handed to them. Tiffany, Angelo, Dale and Fabio get called in instead for the good news. You know, I’m glad they’re getting recognized for making tasty dishes and all, but I really think the judges should have called everyone in and given them an earful. This wasn’t just a few people’s failure, this was every single chef’s inability to get food out quickly and work as a team to feed hungry people. I think no one should have won.

But, someone does. Dale the shoe shiner wins the challenge. He admits afterward that he “robbed the bank on that one” and says “we were all morons.” Truth.

The loser chefs are brought back. Tom gives them one more body blow each. And then it’s the big reveal. Who got PYKAGed? Casey. Jamie audibly gasps and I suspect folks at home scream something slightly more profane.

Jamie made two poor dishes compared to Casey’s one. Casey expected to hear Jamie’s name. Jamie expected to hear Jamie’s name. Everyone in the Stew Room expected to hear Jamie’s name. Everyone at home expected to hear Jamie’s name. But if you listened closely to Tom, you would have known it all along. He called Casey’s chicken feet “inedible.” There is no worse thing to call food. If the judges can’t eat it, you are going home. Period.

So, yeah, that was the worst Top Chef Elimination Challenge I have ever seen, ever. I don’t think any of those chefs are going out for dim sum anytime soon, for fear of post traumatic stress disorder kicking in. Hell, I don’t want to eat it for fear of PTSD. Get it together, cheftestants, or we’re going to have to rename the show Pathetic Chefs.

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