Okay so I've only just caught up with Top Chef: Season 7 (Washington D.C.), thanks to a major marathon last weekend, and I'm still missing a few of the earlier episodes, so bear with my fractured and frazzled recap.
The Quickfire Challenge this week was Food Idioms (yeah, I don't know where they come up with this stuff either). Ed runs around sweating buckets, making gnocchi in an hour (hot potato), but it pays off because he's in the top two along with Kevin, who made bacon three ways (bring home the bacon) . Personally this looked the opposite of appetizing to me--one of the three ways was a "bacon foam." I have never tasted bacon foam in my life nor do I ever want to.
Amanda makes a huge honking bowl of mac and cheese (big cheese) with a frigging giant pork chop on the side. The mac and cheese looks yummy to me, but it's also a serving size worthy of Paul Bunyan. Guest judge Rick Moonen agrees and declares her dish to be in the bottom, along with Kelly's chicken with grape sauce.
Padma asks Moonen which dish would make the best frozen entree (to be put into production by Schwanns) and he chooses Ed. Well, yeah: I can imagine gnocchi, veggies, and mushroom fricassée as a viable frozen food product (I'm quite partial to Trader Joe's gnocchi alla sorrentina myself). But bacon purée, chopped bacon, and bacon froth? Not so much, no.
The Elimination Challenge is to come up with a dish for the concession stand at a Washington Nationals baseball game. The Cheftestants have to work together as a unit in the kitchen, and Kelly starts organizing (read: bossing people around). This may be an unpopular opinion but I do not like Kelly. She is super controlling and overdramatic. I'm waiting for her to get PYKAGed by Padma any day now. However, her concession stand food, a crabcake BLT, sounds pretty darn good to me. Tiffany (love her!) makes a meatball sub which the patrons seem to enjoy greatly and Ed makes some shrimp and corn fritters that also go over well. Angelo makes pork sandwiches and Kevin makes some sad-looking chicken kabobs. Nothing is sadder, though, than Amanda's gray tuna tartare. Ick.
Eric Ripert was totally the winner of this episode, though, with his hilarious comments about the concession stand food. On Tiffany's meatball sub: "It's too...messy." Eric, it's concession stand food! I wonder if he's ever had a sloppy joe. On Kevin's kabob skewers: "It was touching the bottom of my mouth and bothering me." He brings this up AGAIN during judges' table. I die laughing. On Amanda's tartare: "The color of the tuna offended me." Okay, justified. Producers, replacing that bore Toby Young with Mr. Ripert was the best thing you've ever done. In the end, Amanda gets PYKAGed, which was probably overdue. Tiffany and Ed are the top two and Ed takes it home.
I have to say, while I'm enjoying this season, I'm not really rooting for as many people as I have in the past. Tiffany is the only person I outright like and Ed is all right. I can't stand Kelly and Kevin is starting to annoy me as well. As for Angelo, he really let his freak flag fly this week, which oddly enough, endeared me to him (the phone call to his Russian girlfriend? the quasi-shrine to famous chefs and strange chantings? Had me in stitches). Tiffany has been winning a lot which, of course to me, spells crash and burn before the finale (this happens every season), so I'm not getting my hopes up. If she doesn't make it to the top 3 I may well lose interest in the finale.
Next week: BUZZ ALDRIN!
And alert: Eric Ripert has a twitter! He tweets like he talks. You can thank me later.
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