Top Chef Review: Bye Bye, Little Myint

We get a double elimination this week on Top Chef and it goes to show that sometimes it’s not just about the cooking and success also has to do with the people that you are involved with.

In the quickfire challenge, Padma and Tom have the contestants create a dish that would satisfy them as new parents and a version for their new babies. This is an interesting challenge because an adult palette is definitely a lot different from a newborn. You also have to consider what types of food can their tiny stomachs digest.

There were two winners to this round, one decided by Tom and the other Padma. Padma picks Kenny with his curried chicken, mango salad, butternut squash confit and maitake mushrooms and Tom’s choice was Tameka’s salmon with vegetable chowder and lobster stock, Thai basil and licorice oil. They both win ten thousand dollars each. Not too shabby! Angelo of course is pissed that Kenny won, but he gets his flirt on with Tameka in the elimination round (they pair up).

The elimination challenge was an intense three rounds of cooking tournament-style. The chefs were paired up and in the breakfast round two teams would be safe, then the remaining groups would cook lunch where another two teams would be declared safe and finally the remaining would move on to the dinner round. One team would be eliminated while another would be declared the winner of the whole tournament. The theme is to create a healthy yet appetizing dish that will be incorporated into the Hilton Hotel menu.

While the challenge itself is potentially rough to the groups that have to cook three rounds, it does remind me of previous Top Chef challenges where the winner would get their dish onto the menu of some large chain restaurant. I wonder if that’s how the show gets sponsors, we’ll design a challenge around your restaurant, or in this case hotel. Since it’s a Hilton I’m wondering when Paris will show up as a guest judge.

Speaking of judges, there were a lot of them: Tom, Padma, Eric Ripert, Nora Pouillon (owner of America’s first organic restaurant, Restaurant Nora), and former Top Chef contestants and current DC metro-area chefs Spike, Mike Isabella, and Bryan Voltaggio. I’m not sure why they needed so many judges.

In the first round Tim and Tiffany and Amanda and Stephen are safe while in the lunch round Angelo and Tameka and Alex and Ed win. That leaves us with Kenny and Kevin, Lynn and Arnold, and Kelly and Andrea for the last round.

Kelly and Andrea win with their braised beef short bib, polenta, shiitake mushrooms & gremolata. They also win a trip for two to Spain and Italy as an added bonus. I’m glad that Andrea gets a win under her belt because she has been in the middle in the last three episodes and it’s great that she gets this. Was the food that creative though? Not really.

I’m disappointed that the loosing team was Arnold and Lynn because I love Arnold and his “I’m more than a Louis Vuitton bag” antics. He took lead in the dinner dish and took a risk and gave the judges something creative with pineapple red curry mussels with squid ink pasta and focaccia. So while I understand that the challenge was for the Hilton Hotel menu and probably not the most adventurous eaters out there, I don’t think it should have gotten him kicked off the competition. I believe that Lynn’s undercooked pasta is the culprit, which is frustrating after we see her complain about how she knows how to cook fresh pasta and refused to listen to Arnold.

Lynn and Kevin should have gotten kicked out. Here’s hoping that Arnold gets a chance to come back into the competition in a later episode if they do one of those let’s give kicked off contestants another chance at it challenges.

Over all the episode was filled with the usual dramas of chefs bumping egos and kitchen utensils. Amanda still annoys me and I’m still waiting to be wowed by the food.

Season 7, Episode 4: Room Service (original air date July 7, 2010)

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Photographs courtesy of Bravo and David Giesbrecht.