Top Chef: Lying + Cheating=Lychee-ting?
We'll still tune in tonight to Top Chef on Bravo -- but last week's episode was pretty annoying as far as we were concerned. Is the sheen off the apple, or was this crappy episode just a one-time thing? Gosh, we hope it's just the latter, because we'd like for this to remain our favorite show.
Why were we displeased this show? Guest judge Ming Tsai was kind of a schmuck. Very arrogant; disappointing when contrasted with his rather affable T.V. personality to date. Another thing: Marcel, who we hoped to continue loving to hate, seemed to take a pill. He was humbler. His Jimmy Neutron hair is no fun to make fun of when he's not being obnoxious. Sorta local Michael? Seems too much like Keith from Hell's Kitchen (a.k.a. dumb). As we said last week, seems like they could have done some winnowing of the unappealing and less talented before launching the second season. Oh, and the ridiculous "steal the crate of fruit" melodrama? Handled poorly by everyone.
Rant over. Let's start from the beginning.
The Quickfire Challenge, granting immunity from elimination in the next round, was pretty cool. For one thing, the contestants were forced out of bed at the crack of early, 4:30 a.m. The challenge was to create some sushi, and some it was beautiful; some was laughable. That's okay, not everyone has sushi experience. Michael Cliff made a roll that was vibrant and original. Otto started making up for his poor performance from week one by kinda overdoing -- a huge, pretty presentation with a variety of rolls. Less impressive was his self description of being "just a round-eye from Cleveland." Elia, still our favorite, brings some stunning flavor; Ilan, last week's winner, gets some props too from the guest judge Chef Hiroshi Shima.
Michael Cliff wins! Hamma oysters with ginger, soy, mango and jalapeño; also prawns with hamachi, sisho leaf and daikon (no, we couldn't remember these exact details; thanks to Chef Tom's Blog for the 411)..
Comments on the Elimination Challenge, so full of mystery, intrigue, angst, and a whole lotta "blah" after the jump.
The chefs are divided into two teams, one will cook Vietnamese food for a trade show; the other will cook Korean.
Team Vietnam: Martha Plimpton (Emily) and Betty are career caterers; they think this gives their team an edge in this mass production/small plate battle. Josie worked for a chef in this type of cuisine and has some definite plans. She sort of becomes de facto leader Shoot, Josie, much as we love -- LOVE -- pho, there is no good reason to try to serve it to 200 people. Made to order is the best for that dish; give us the beef raw so we can cook it ourselves in the broth. We were skeptical.
The other team, meanwhile, gets stinking drunk on sangria before they even get down to the business of menu planning. Duh. Elia gets frustrated and tries to keep the team on point, to no avail. Marisa, a pastry chef (and one of the San Franciscans) will do a dessert -- a jasmine tea panna cotta, with lychee garnish. They will also do a spicy braised pork with "fresh" kimchee.
We're skeptical of them as well. To us, a quickly made kimchee seemed like a bad idea, as fermentation usually takes forever. The panna cotta sounded intriguing, though (cue the ominous music).
Too bad Otto noticed an extra case of lychee that the team didn't pay for, because that just turned this episode stupid. He mentions it within earshot of Marisa before the car even leaves the supermarket-- "hey, I think we got a case of lychee for free." (we're paraphrasing). To pay for this crate would have put them over budget, so they are cheating if they take it. Marisa says NOTHING, but later in the kitchen starts pretending to be all moral. Gah! She's all knotted up about it, far after the fact. She tells Chef Tom. He asks Otto about it, who kind of fesses up. He goes to return it. Fruit of the poison lychee -- the whole team is now in disarray -- one less guy to help, a moral question, an obvious scapegoat . . .
We know, we know -- if you didn't see the episode, you might think, "wow, this sounds like the kind of stuff we LOVE about reality TV." Sorry, guys -- to us (and our better half) it just felt trite and petty and . . . we're mad at Marisa.
We had a big problem with her, even more so than Otto. The lychee was for Marisa's dish; she, in effect, was the manager of that project and could only really stand on high moral ground if she'd spoken up at the start and stopped Otto in his tracks right then. Her silence after his comment was akin to implied support. She's a hypocrite in our eyes in this situation.
Shame; we wanted to root for her. Sorry, now we can't. Sound and fury signifying nothing, because when her virtue was initially tested she failed. Too little, too late.
On to the actual food, which the teams serve at an area food show,
Project-by-Project’s annual Food & Wine Tasting Benefit; which was to benefit Visual Communications.
So, our skepticism was unfounded. Team Korea's kimchee WORKED. Unreal. The pork was good too. Rice was "unservable." But the friggin' dessert -- the dessert that caused the faux controversy--SUCKED. It was like a hockey puck. Bad marks for Marisa.
The other team did better. Ilan, on Team Korea, called Team Vietnam's pork "a joke" (they'd made their pho with pork rather than beef). Ming Tsai and Josie have a little sniping about how to pronounce the dishes' names and whether or not they were "traditional." Jerk. Time and place to be snotty, Ming. Nonetheless, Team Vietnam won -- Betty's cucumber refresher and her swell personality carried the day and more than made up for the poor pork. The pickled watermelon rind spring roll was also deemed good enough; the overall package beat Team Vietnam. Unsurprisingly, Betty was the winner among winners.
So, to the losing team. They verbally spar for a while. Marisa was the real screwup, but Otto's sorta-theft screwed them up in a few different ways. Marisa even snipes at Elia, lovely Elia with the cute accent, and basically calls her a turncoat, even though she ends up agreeing that Otto should be gone. Most of the team seems to feel that Otto needs to go. The judges deliberate. Frank, who we now think is swell despite being the progenitor of the bad rice, has a great quote. He stands up and berates his teammates, most of whom were (semi-rightly) throwing Otto to the wolves.
"If you don't back your teammates, you should put your head up your ass," the burly, bearded man chastises the rest of Team Korea.
The judges seem to think that if Otto shows contrition, they'll get rid of Marisa. If not, Otto goes back to his teaching job in Vegas. They're brought back into the judging room, but it doesn't go as planned: Otto fesses up AND falls on the sword. Lovely Padma tells him to "pack his knives and go."
No big loss. But not a good episode.
And, Marisa? We're watching you. You might not be sneaky like a snake (sssss), but we're not rooting for you until you show you have a spine.