'Top Chef': Lions, Penguins, Bears, et al
This week, with 15 chefs still in the running for the Top Chef crown, the show settled into familiar rhythms and let the audience begin to appreciate the contestants' skills and personalities.
The Quickfire Challenge involved 30 minutes of shopping at the Chicago Green City Market and required a dish with no more than five ingredients, not including salt, pepper, sugar, and oil. Mark, the New Zealander, managed to harass a bunch of vendors and leave behind some of his ingredients. Silly hobbit! [Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
Of course, wouldn't you know it, he managed to salvage the challenge in the kitchen and guest judge Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 awarded him immunity for the Elimination Challenge. One suspects that Mark's sideburns may have, in fact, acted as a secret fifth ingredient.
In the Elimination Challenge, five teams of three were assembled, each assigned an animal: vulture, lion, bear, gorilla, and penguin. The task: Cater a station for a 200-guest cocktail party at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The twist: Each team has to use foods that its assigned animal would eat.
Like the chefs, we learn that gorillas are vegetarians, vultures like lamb, and lions are fans of beets. After menu-planning and shopping, each team has three hours in the kitchen and an hour to prep on site. Some teams definitely don't gel from a personality standpoint and, no surprise, it's the food that suffers.
Team Bear (Nikki, Dale, and Spike) get into a tremendous dustup over Nikki's stuffed mushrooms. They look awful, we can't serve them. Wait, let's dress them up with cheese and serve them. They won't stay warm, let's not serve them. Oh hey, here come the judges, let's get those mushrooms out of the trashcan and serve them. Genius move of the competition, that one.
Over on the gorilla crew, things were a little more cordial, at least on the surface. Last week's winner, Stephanie, anchored the all-girl team rounded out by Antonia and Valerie. No one seemed to give Valerie much respect, even herself as she meekly acquiesced to the menu plan, despite some reservations. Stephanie's dish, a crab salad that was supposed to be served on a celery chip, was a failure, but she was also responsible for a banana-bread dessert that was a real crowd-pleaser. Sadly, Valerie's black-olive blini with rutabaga and fennel marscapone cream was a critical failure on multiple levels: concept, execution, and taste.
In the end, Valerie's crimes were found to be the most severe and she was sent on a short cab ride back to whence she came.
And here's a note to Valerie and all future Top Chef contestants: If you ever find yourself about to utter the sentence, "I've never made ______ before, so I just hope it turns out OK," please consider an alternate strategy. Either fake it till you make it, people, or make something you know.
And, oh yeah, Andrew of Team Penguin won. He made a squid dish that bowled everyone over, plus he contributed an edible glacier and a bunch of embarrassing sound bites.
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