"A Wake Up Call." That's what I would have titled this week's episode.
After a snoozy "Restaurant Wars" where none of the top contenders stepped up, I think one of the producers finally said to the others, "We need to shake this season up!" And they did.
Right away we start off with a Sudden Death QuickFire.
In the "Top Chef" kitchen alongside Padma stands Jasper White. He's kind of a big deal in Boston. He is to Boston what Emeril Legasse is to New Orleans.
While we're comparing the two chefs, as Emeril is known for his gumbos, Jasper is known for his chowder or ... chowdah.
Chowder is this week's QuickFire challenge. The chefs have 30 minutes to come up with a unique chowder dish that'll impress White, the man who literally wrote the book on chowders. The winner gets immunity and the loser will have to battle his/her way to stay alive.
(Sidenote: It's interesting how this is a 30 minute QuickFire considering in chef White's book, "50 Chowders" there's a chapter on "curing" where he states it is best to let a chowder sit for at least an hour before serving. So by his own instructions the judges are not tasting the very best results. But I digress.)
There's a giant table full of all kinds of shell fish. There are different varieties of clams, lobster and oysters. And of course, it's time for a mad dash for ingredients.
Mei immediately grabs the entire bucket of littleneck clams and that didn't go over too well with the rest of the chefs. Adam insists on "sharing" and Melissa straight-out robs her when she steps away from her station. Mei is left with three littleneck clams and has to use steamer clams instead.
Melissa gives zero cares. She's taking her littleneck clams and making some delicious looking seafood cioppino.
The good thing about waiting this far into the season to throw a chowder challenge is that all the rabble chefs are gone. So you don't get one of these "Um, I've never made chowder before" cooks who have no business being on the show. Instead, you get chefs like Gregory who did his homework. He tells the room, "You know, chowder was like, the first on top of my list for notes for coming here."
That's why he's the top contender. He's doing a Japanese-inspired razor clam dish with kombu dashi and coconut milk. Dougie's not impressed. He thinks Gregory is a one-trick coconut-curry pony.
Katsuji is making this god-awful looking green thing and calling it Mexican oyster chowder. And Katie is putting black tea and sour dough bread in her chowder. It's these kind of brilliant decisions that'll land them in the bottom.
It's time to judge. On top are Gregory, Melissa and Adam. Adam made a refined version of Manhattan clam chowder using tomato water in lieu of cream. It is White's second favorite dish.
The winner is the person who did his research. Gregory narrowly beats out Adam for immunity.
On the bottom, there's the aforementioned Katie, Katsuji and then Dougie (who probably should have used coconut milk), and robbery victim Mei, whose steamer clams just wasn't flavorful enough.
The chef that has to battle for her "Top Chef" life is Katie. In one of the most damning dismissals of a dish by a judge, Jasper says, "It's really hard to define what a chowder is, but when you eat one you kind of know it's made with love. It has that spirit. And the chowder for me that had none of that was Katie's."
Katie now has to battle another chef head to head to see if she gets to stay. However, this time they're shaking things up. Tom walks in carrying a covered serving tray, clearly with a hidden ingredient inside. And behind him is a row of every eliminated chefs from this season.
The twist is this: The eliminated chefs must each nominate someone from their side to battle against Katie. They can't vote for themselves and if the chef with the most votes beats Katie then that person gets to come back in to the competition. Did I mention "Last Chance Kitchen" is also back?
Now we're cooking with fire.
George Pagonis wins the popularity contest. Mostly because he was eliminated on Day 1 during the QuickFire. So some of the other chefs thought he, of all them, deserved a second chance.
This was a great choice because coming into this season, George was one of the early favorites. Why? He is partners with "Top Chef" veteran Mike Isabella. With all the subsequent name dropping you'd thought Isabella himself was coming back to the show. Hey, third time's the charm right?
The secret ingredient is rabbit, one of Tom's favorite things to cook. The chefs will have 45 minutes to come up with the best rabbit dish. Winner stays, loser walks. I've had rabbit. It tastes like chicken.
Best line of the night comes from George, who is obviously pumped for getting a second chance. "I know nothing about Katie, and I don't care," he says. Dude is focused.
He's going to braise rabbit legs and serve it with parsnip puree, barley risotto and glazed carrots. That's a lot of components to put together in 45 minutes. Katie's also braising legs. She's making braised rabbit legs with Moroccan tomato sauce.
Perennial color commentator Katsuji offers the insight, "At least we know Katie. We know she's not the bad one, we don't know George. George can be the game changer for all so you know, we want to get rid of Katie but at the same time would be smart to keep her."
With about 10 minutes left George realize his rabbitis not braising fast enough. It's still too tough. So he quickly comes up with a back up plan and goes for the rabbit loin (which can be cooked in five minutes) instead. He's also not used to the "Top Chef" clock, which goes by much faster than you think. So everyone's giving him instructions and tips on when things are ready and when to plate his dish.
No one on Katie's side is helping her. They're all glued to what George is doing.
Consider the game changed. George wins a decisive victory and sends Katie packing.
No time to celebrate. We move right into the Elimination Challenge.
For the first time, "Top Chef" tweeted that they are going to cater an event for all the foodies and super fans of the show. Tom says in one day they received 15,000 responses. I guess Fenway Park wasn't available that day, because they only invited 75 people.
And just to make things more interesting, for another first time ever, the judges will shop for the contestants. The chefs will have no idea what's in their pantry until the day of the event.
Judges Richard Blais and Gail Simmons joins Tom and Padma this week for their Whole Foods shopping excursion. They'll (supposedly) have 30 minutes to shop. Richard, having done this for two seasons as a contestant, knows the drill. He takes off sprinting with the shopping cart, while Tom, Gail and Padma stroll around with no urgency. I think Padma is sauntering.
"Padma probably has people shopping for her at grocery stores right?" Richard says, "I think it's been a while since she shopped."
When Richard runs back for something he forgot, Padma sneakily steals his cart and tries to hide it somewhere when the entire container full of fish topples over. Prompting Padma for this week's title, "We need a clean up in aisle 2!"
It's time to learn about George, and it turns out he is just as boring as everone else. His dad's an immigrant who opened up a Greek diner. He's been around food his entire life. He just want to prove to his family and make his father proud. Yawn.
The most interesting thing about George is how much better he looks without that Gordon Gekko-style slicked back hair.
And when you thought that story was a cliche, here comes Adam with his typical tale of bad kid with terrible grades whose life got turned around because of food. How come you never hear of those straight-A students in honor societies finding passion for cooking? Well, remember Ming Tsai? He graduated from Yale as a mechanical engineer, got his masters in hotel administration from Cornell and then went to the Cordon Bleu in Paris. See? Not all chefs come from broken homes.
Back to cooking.
All four judges did a good job buying an assortment of proteins and fresh veggies, so the chefs can pretty much cook what they wanted.
Well, except for Katsuji. Gail was responsible for his pantry. I'm not sure if she's a big fan of Mexican cuisine because poor dude has no chilies to work with. So I guess we won't see a "salsa du jour" today.
Adam's also bummed about his pantry. He drew Richard, who threw some liquid nitrogen and versawhip in there. Versawhip is a soy protein similar but stronger in structure than egg whites. It's what you use to make foam. Adam doesn't make foam.
Adam is also tired of coasting through in the middle. As an individual he hasn't won any challenges yet but he's also never been on the bottom. Both of his top/bottoms were team challenges. So he's going outside the box and using some technique he learned overseas to pour scalding hot oil over raw shrimp so it just gently cooks the outside. "Live once. Go hard." he says. Thank god at least he didn't say "YOLO" or "Go big or go home."
Gregory and George got Padma's pantry. She was kind enough to get items in their cooking style. Curries and lentils all day long. And yes, there is coconut milk. They're both totally psyched. George is keeping it simple with a beef and lamb kabob dish while Gregory's doing another chicken curry. But wait. He's cutting this exotic looking pod in half and digging out these orange looking things. Turns out what I thought was durian is actually a jackfruit. The orange innerards has a sweet and tropical flavor profile. That's something you don't see every day.
Here come the foodies.
The judges mingle and talk about their strategy in stocking the pantry, asking people about their favorite season and chefs. It was nice. They didn't have the foodies cast votes or help pick a favorite for some reason. That would have been a nice touch.
Usually judges give very little away when they're walking around and tasting the food. Not this time. Tom and Padma openly lauded Gregory's curry chicken, commenting on how perfectly the chicken was cooked and what a great dish it is. Meanwhile on the other side of the kitchen, Gail and Richard pretty much told Adam his shrimps are undercooked.
"It feels a little squeaky?" says Gail.
Pretty sure "squeaky" is not an adjective you want to hear when a judge desribing your shrimp. That overseas hot-oil technique didn't work out too well for Adam.
The dish Gail and Richard did like was Dougie's. Even though he and Adam both had Richard's pantry, the results were quite different. Dougie paired chorizo with mussels and made a delicious Spanish styled dish.
They also stopped by Melissa's station, where she once again decided to focus on knife skills for some reason and made another sautéed shrimp with herb salad. Richard thinks it's "beautiful for a cafe, but a little safe for competition."
Back to Padma and Tom. They stopped by Mei's station for some rack of lamb with eggplant puree. Voltaggio, we have a problem. The lamb is really undercooked. During the cooking portion we see that Mei was having a hard time getting the lamb to cook evenly, and now this. However, she's savvy enough to tell Tom that this is how she usually cooks her lamb. Knowing full well that admitting mistakes is the shortcut to being booted. Tom's not buying it.
What Tom is buying, though, is George's beef and lamb kabob with green lentils and cucumber mint yogurt. The kabob is moist and the lentils are cooked just right. George owns Kapnos, a Greek restaurant in nearby Washington, so this dish could have easily be something he already serves at his restaurant. (I checked, it's not, yet.) So this was pretty much a slam dunk for him. Kinda like a welcome back softball, if you will.
At Judges' Table, it was no surprise when George, Dougie and Gregory end up on top. All three picked the pantry items best suited to their strength. They kept it simple and executed their dish perfectly. I thought the winner was going to be Gregory, especially taking on a challenging ingredient like jackfruit.
But the winning dish belonged to Dougie, who really classed up something as simple sounding as chorizo and mussels. That's back-to-back wins for Dougie. Looks like he's gaining some momentum and could be a contender.
Speaking of contender, remember when Mei was one? Not lately. She hasn't won anything since Week 1. Whenever she's come up with a good dish, it's always overshadowed by someone else. And now, she's down in the bottom with Adam and Melissa. Their respective sins are slimy lamb, squeaky shrimp and a boring dish.
Mei was saved by the rest of her plate. The eggplant puree and her scallion salad were delicious. Plus, they weren't going to send her home based on this. Call it the Gregory-rubbery-goose pass. All the strong chefs gets one "Get Out of Jail" card.
Melissa was saved by her knife skills and the fact they used a lot of the pantry items in her dish. While it wasn't the most exciting dish, there were no glaring mistakes either. I'd count this as strike two though. Don't bore Padma again or you'll face the "mean girl."
Unfortunately, there's no saving serving raw shrimp to judges. Ironically Richard says at the end that these are all tasty dishes, but there at this point in the game, "there's no more middle." And all along Adam has said he's tired of being in the middle.
Adam is crushed. There's no "thank you for the opportunity" speech. Instead we get a distraught and teary, "If you don't love cooking enough to be an emotional mess on national television, put the knife down." Amen.
Good episode, people!
Next week: New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski flirts with Padma and some sort of author/book themed challenge. (Reminder: Bravo's website has the premiere of this season's Last Chance Kitchen.)