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Top Chef

Week 3

This was the third week of Top Chef Season 5, New York.  14 chefs remain after Jill was sent home last week.  Tonight's guest judge: Grant Achatz, a young successful restaurateur - the contestants were impressed to meet him.

Quickfire Challenge

To start the show the contestants have to do a "Quickfire Challenge" which is generally a skills test. Today's was a cooking challenge - the contestants had to pull out a knife from the block.  Each knife had a number on it and, as they were soon to discover, the numbers corresponded to pages in the Top Chef cookbook and the contestants had to make their own version of the dish on that page.  No problem, right?  Wrong.  Suddenly Padma and Grant stop the contestants and tell them that instead...they want soup!  And the contestants have to make their soup with the ingredients they were already working with. (Note the HUGE Swanson broth product placement here)

Some were better than others, as you might expect.  Winners included Jamie's chick pea soup and Daniel's surprising ham and egg soup.  But the ultimate winner was Leah who made a chilled asparagus soup with tuna and olive tapanade.  Grant was particularly impressed with how she did with the white asparagus which he described as a "difficult ingredient.

Leah won immunity for this week and, very importantly, the right to pick her 6 teammates for this week's elimination challenge.

Elimination Challenge

For the Elimination Challenge the contestants had a chance to cook Thanksgiving dinner for one of the hottest bands in rock and roll today: The Foo Fighters. 

The contestants split into two teams (de facto chosen by Leah)

Team Sexy Pants Team Cougar
Leah Jeff
Jamie Carla
Hosea Alex
Stefan Miguel
Melissa Daniel
Fabio Ariane
Radhika Richard

Their challenge was to go to the Blue Cross Arena where the Foo Fighters were going to perform and cook them a Thanksgiving dinner.  They were told that the band likes bacon and frozen, chocolate-covered, bananas, among other things.  When they got to the venue they were in for a rude surprise...their "kitchen" was an outdoor patio - no freezer, just one burner, microwaves, toaster ovens.  To cook a Turkey dinner! 

  • Eugene got clever and built a little charcoal grill to cook his pork.  It worked great - he got very good reviews for his pork dish and they liked his ingenuity.
  • Towards the late stages of the cooking it started to rain.  They scrambled to save the food as crews tried to erect tents over them.  It was a "curveball" as Jeff put it, but Tom wasn't buying it as an excuse because both teams had to deal with the same conditions.
  • Nobody seemed to know why Leah's team was Team "Sexy Pants" though between Leah and the Europeans I suppose we can guess.  Team Cougar apparently got it's name because the guys think Ariane is a sexy mom.
  • Jeff took leadership of Team Cougar which may have been a mistake - he had his hands full with his own dishes and trying to lead the team too.  His leadership seemed good, but his dishes were pretty much all awful.

In the end it was Team Sexy Pants that was judged best.

First the winners...

  • Fabio's Pumpkin Tiramisu got Tom's admiration.  Fabio is Italian and "unfamiliar with the tradition" as Tom put it, but he got creative and used the traditional pumpkin in a non-traditional way.
  • Alex made a 5-cheese macaroni and cheese with bacon which the band really loved.
  • Jamie made a vegan cornbread stuffing that they all enjoyed.
  • Ariane redeemed herself with a very well received turkey.

And for the not-so-successful?

  • Team Cougar's desserts were universally scorned.  Carla's peach and cherry cobbler was the "least offensive" of the bunch and so she was allowed to stay.  No such luck for Richard's Banana and Chocolate S'mores or Jeff's fruit and pumpkin mousse.
  • Daniel got his first taste of the bottom of judge's table too for his undercooked potatoes.

Richard ultimately got asked to pack his knives and go.  The decision was largely because they thought S'mores were a bad idea and poorly executed.  In his defense he had planned to do frozen bananas and was surprised to discover that there weren't any freezers at the venue.

The Winner? I thought I had missed something but reading the recaps it appears that I didn't....no overall winner was announced on-air?

Observations and Random Stuff

  • The winning team got to stay and watch the concert while the losing team had to clean up.
  • Eugene is pretty creative and talented but also packs a ton of attitude.  The good news is he has skills, the bad news is that he doesn't seem to be having much fun.
  • I can't remember the last time I saw a losing team so upset about it.  This group really took it hard.  I half expected to see somebody punch a locker like Dale did.

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