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'Top Chef' Twice Is Nice

Posted by Harold Check, August 23, 2007 at 10:45 AM

As you'll recall, last week's Top Chef played to a draw. Due to the fact that everyone screwed up to some extent, no one got sent home. The ultimate decision was to stage a do-over of the Restaurant Wars challenge and see if things shook out a little more clearly. So, this week, we have Restaurant Wars, the sequel. In case you forgot, Team "Garage" is Sara, Hung, Howie, and Dale, while Team "April" is CJ, Tre, Casey, and Brian.

The show starts off with a team Quickfire—a mise en place relay race. The winning team will get the services of a sommelier and an extra $200 in their wine budget. Basically, it's a straight-up speed competition with four sections—shuck 15 oysters, finely dice five onions, break down four chickens, and whip a batch of egg whites. It was very close in the first round, with Howie and Brian shucking and jiving pretty much neck and neck. But round two ended the drama as Sara's impressive knife skills left Casey in the dust. It was actually painful to watch Casey plod along. It almost felt like we were watching the challenge in real time. After Hung massacred the chickens, and Dale coasted through the egg whites, the Garage crew, likening themselves to the Bad News Bears came through with the morale-boosting win. (Note to Dale: Don't forget, the Bad News Bears ended up losing. Note to readers: Spoilers after the jump.)

The second segment offers Christopher "Madonna's Brother" Ciccone giving stern design advice to both teams and everyone swallowing their pride and accepting it. Then both crews head back to their hotel to strategize and revise their menus.

On the day of the challenge, the teams divide for food and wine shopping and we get to meet the mystery sommelier. In a move that surprises exactly no one, it turns out the wine expert is Stephen from Season One. The only truly shocking aspect of the appearance was that Stephen has lost any ability to dismay or otherwise interest the audience. Except, perhaps, for his ties, which manage to simultaneously defy both sanity and the laws of topology.

During this delightful interlude, we also learn that the guest judge for tonight's repeat performance is Geoffrey Zakarian from Town and Country restaurants in Manhattan. Other adjustments include the fact that Team Garage has changed the name of their restaurant to Quatre and that Tom Colicchio will stay in the kitchen the entire night and observe the competitors—an innovation that sort of makes you wonder why they don't do that more often. Seems like it would clarify some of the questions that inevitably come up at judges' table.

So, as the meals are trotted out to Ted Allen, Padma Lakshmi, and Zakarian, initial impressions definitely stack up in favor of Team Garage/Quatre. Except for Dale's short-sleeve polo and jeans, which are deemed too casual for the level of cuisine, it's clear that Team Garage has made a lot of positive changes and Team April is in serious trouble. In fact, several of that group's dishes are met with shock and awe at the table. The winning team seemed obvious during service, while the likely chef to be eliminated was anything but certain.

At the judges' table, the obvious is confirmed, as Sara gets the win for presiding over the comeback kids and treating Howie and Hung with the tough love that they so clearly need. During the episode, we were treated to several shots of Sara telling her charges to "Do it again!" and for that alone, she deserves a gold medal. It was nice to see her get an elimination challenge win, bringing her into contention for the final showdown. Things are definitely tightening up at the top of Top Chef.

On the losing side, it was difficult, but not impossible to see who was going to be sent packing. CJ was dinged for abdicating most of the responsibility for the team that he put together—although he didn't ask for that task, he was awarded it for winning a Quickfire Challenge. Casey, similarly, was criticized for producing a lackluster dish and not contributing more to the overall quality of the food. Brian, who again handled front-of-the-house duties, seemed largely immune to critique, since he performed much better in that role this week, but he was compared unfavorably to Dale, who acted as waiter and chef on the Team Garage staff.

In the end, it was obvious that the worst errors had come from the top, the executive chef spot filled by Tre. Several of his dishes—beet-cured salmon with pesto sauce (!) and a lackluster bread pudding—were met with near revulsion by judges and patrons alike. And it was a customer who probably had the final word on Tre's turn as Top Chef contestant when he said, "I don't think I'd come back to this restaurant." It can't get much plainer than that.

Of course, it was sad to see the likable Tre get the ax. In the end, it probably wasn't just that disastrous salmon dish that did him in but his inability to edit himself. Several times we've seen him produce stunning hits, but he's also sent out a number of dreadful misses and in almost every case, the judges wondered why Tre didn't just toss the failed dish and play it safe. I think the message is clear: Be bold, take chances in the kitchen, but know whether your gamble paid off before you send it into the dining room.

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Tags: Top Chef, TV