TOP CHEF: 6.11 “Strip Around the World”
My apologies for the lack of a liveblog last night. What a shame, because this would have been a good episode! It started, though, in typical Top Chef style, with a gratuitous shot of GLAD garbage bags. Nice product placement! At least the chefs aren’t cooking with it this season. The quickfire involved our six remaining chefs serving room service breakfast to Padma and the guest judge. Eli won, and his recipe will be placed in the Top Chef quickfire cookbook. Not too much else was memorable from the quickfire; they really blew through it in this episode.
For the elimination, each contestant was paired off with a Las Vegas casino. Here’s what happened:
- Eli drew the Circus Circus. His eventual dish involved some sort of peanut soup, and crushed popcorn. Really? Sure, it sounds inventive, but not particularly good. The judges didn’t like it either.
- Jen’s casino was some sort of medieval times type of place, I forget the exact name. Her dish was a “sword in the stone,” with the sword being a cocktail saber, and the stone a huge hunk of steak. She admitted to being overwhelmed and unable to focus as she was planning her dish, and sure enough, she wound up in the bottom three. This is the third or fourth episode in a row where she has completely folded. At one point, she even announced to one of the cameras that she was ready to go home. With her poor performance as of late, and her apparent complete lack of competitiveness, I’m thinking that she might be falling behind Eli in the standings. She’s more talented than he, but she’s got no backbone!
- Robin drew the Bellagio. When she walked into the casino to inspect it, she was awed by the artistic nature of everything she saw. I knew right away that this would be bad news. Throughout the entire show, Robin has consistently gotten herself in trouble whenever she tried to do something too complicated.
- I don’t remember Bryan or Kevin’s casinos or dishes, but they were good enough to land them in the top three. While neither one of them won, it seems to me that they’re both destined to be in the final three.
- Michael V. won again. I can’t recall how many eliminations he’s won so far, but he’s certainly looking very strong coming down the stretch. His casino, New York, New York, inspired him to create boneless crispy chicken wings, with buffalo sauce inside, and topped with some kind of disc of blue cheese dressing. It looked weird, but the judges loved the taste, and the updated sophistication of classic pub food.
When it came down to elimination, I said: “While Robin deserves to go home, I want Eli to go home, but Jen looks like SHE wants to go home.” In the end, the deserving one was sent packing. The only surprise here is that Robin lasted as long as she did. She was shown to be consistently over her head when matched up with the other remaining chefs. I think she could have stuck around longer if she hadn’t tried to be so complex at times.
The remaining five are all very talented. Michael V, Bryan and Kevin are pretty much on the same level. Jen’s just slightly below those three, and Eli a bit below her. However, with the steady erosion of Jen’s confidence over the last couple weeks, I think she could get eliminated next week as easily as Eli. Unless, of course, one of the top three screws up badly (which might be possible, judging by the previews shown at the end of the episode.)
Tune in next week for another liveblog. It’s coming down to the wire!
