Top Chef Season 4: Judges Perplexing

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Top Chef was entertaining and a lot of fun last night, but disappointing in who was finally shown the door.

The Quickfire was all about desserts and finally a group of chefs arrived armed with at least one, if not several, dessert recipes memorized, all except, of course Antonia.  I have yet to understand how she continues to dodge the bullets at the Judges Table.  More about that later.

For the most part, I was impressed by all the great looking desserts everyone came up with.  Our guest judge, Johnny Luzzini,  on the whole I think was pleased.  Richard won the challenge and immunity again, but stepped right-up for the Elimination Challenge and worked great with comrade Dale.

Now I had to laugh when Padma told them that they were going to go to Second City for a night off and again I beg to ask, “Do ANY of you ever watch this show?!?!?!”  Everyone is getting all styled.  Stephanie comments how it will be nice to just go out as friends, etc…Fortunately for them, there was no cooking trailer waiting for them as for the chefs in Miami.  They were drinking, laughing having fun, and then it happened.  “We need the audience to shout out some words for us.  Call out some ingredients”  The faces of each one of them changed drastically.  Some in shock…Andrew, some couldn’t help but giggle.  They knew what was getting ready to happen.  But they all stepped-up and ran with it.  Oh, yes, everyone that is except Antonia (no surprise) and Lisa.

So they all had these weird words to try and come up with a dish.  So, what would you do with “green, perplexed, tofu”?They were fortunate enough to have the freedom to pick their own partner, which I think is a great advantage.  They took away all their electrical equipment without notifying them so that they would have to “improv” and with 30 minutes to go told them to pack-up their food using the coolers and the Glad Family line of products (of course) and take them to the TC House for the dinner. 

Spike finally got to make his squash soup.  My attitude is much like the reaction of Rob Janas from Second City, it might taste good, but soup?  Then Tom C set him straight:

They brought out the first course — butternut squash soup. It was awesome; everybody liked it. But come on, this can’t win, it’s soup, right? Anybody can make soup. Then Tom said that soup was very difficult and that in France chefs are judged by their soups. He said it politely, but I knew he thought I was a real idiot.

Hmm, who knew?  I guess a top chef.  Anyway, Richard and Dale nailed it again with their “perplexed, green tofu”.  It was one of those ingenious ideas.  Tofu in beef fat to perplex the palate and a curry that was out of this world.  They both received the kudos and Dale received another notch on his belt.  Jenn/Stephanie and Antonia/Lisa were asked to step before the judges table.

I heard the arguments of the judges and left very disappointed that Jenn got the boot.  First of all, I think she was the strongest hope of a woman actually winning this thing, now that is left to Stephanie.  My biggest disappointment is because I strongly disagree with their argument.  Just because they didn’t understand what Jenn and Stephanie were working towards doesn’t mean it was wrong.  The mistake was Jenn’s bread and the amount of cheese which they could have fixed.  But Antonia and Lisa with their “drunken, magenta, polish sausage” completely missed the point and attempted to explain it away with the word “improv”.  If Antonia said that one more time I was going to “vomit in MY mouth”.  When you go to an improv show (of which they just saw) and people throw out words, the troupe doesn’t say, “hmm…I hate those words, I am going to improv another set.”  They just had no clue how to work with polish sausage or how to make their own.  They even sluffed it off by using some chorizo and making Chilean Sea Bass their main ingredient!  They didn’t care for the color magenta and so made a subtler purple and then to top it off they did not put any alcohol in the dish and just drank a couple of shots of Tequila in front of the guests, giving their diners none to enjoy to explain away “drunken”.  It should have been Antonia or Lisa who left last night.  The only saving grace is that I truly believe both their days are numbered.  Sadly, the show lost a great chef too soon.

I realize that we aren’t actually able to taste the food, but do you think I am completely off base and that Jenn deserved to pack-up her knives?

Next week should be interesting.  These foul-mouthed chefs are going to be spending some time in the kitchen cooking with little kids.  Now I wonder who will be annoyed and who will remember how they first learned about the love of cooking.