Top Chef Review: An Affair of Blahness

Top Chef continues to underwhelm me and it’s been hard to continually be excited to watch new episodes. Case in point, I’ve missed the past three weeks worth and I didn’t feel like I was missing much. Lucky me though, Bravo aired the entire season again this week starting 2 pm on August 4, enabling me to catch up on the DC drama.

So what did we miss from July 14-28? Here’s the important stuff:

July 14: Quickfire – Ed; Elimination – Kenny (winner), Timothy (eliminated)

July 21: Quickfire – Kelly; Elimination – Kevin (winner), Tamesha (eliminated)

July 28: Quickfire – Angelo; Elimination – Alex (winner), Andrea (eliminated)

As for this week’s episode, I felt that the right person won and got eliminated, at least based on the judge’s comments and overall performance from past challenges. Otherwise Amanda is still annoying and Alex just came on my radar on those charges as well. His elimination dish of cordobesa braised veal cheeks, jamon torta with olive & tomato salad was not aesthetically pleasing to look at and I’m going to defer to the opinion of Chef José Andrés (who was the guest judge for that round) that, “it was like a little nightmare.” And seriously where did he get those peas in the last episode? Will the producers of Top Chef ever reveal it to us? Certainly if he did steal them they would have caught it on camera! I always find it hilarious that shows will intentionally edit scenes to make it more dramatic. So I guess we’ll never truly know if Alex stole Ed’s peas. Maybe Andy Cohen can ask him that on the reunion special.

Chef Marcus Samuelsson was the guest judge for the quickfire challenge and notably recent winner of Top Chef Masters season two. The contestants were tasked with creating an Ethiopian-inspired dish because there are tons of Ethiopian restaurants in DC. That’s not exactly the most creative reason for a challenge, but okay I guess its not easy to come up with new and creative challenges.

The winner was Tiffany with her beef goulash with poached egg, currants, peppers and yogurt. This was a satisfying victory for her over Angelo, especially since she’s never had Ethiopian food before and he’s had previous exposure to it. As an added bonus she also received immunity in the next challenge.

For the elimination round, each chef had to pick a country and then conceptualize  a dish that was inspired from that area. They would be preparing their food for diplomats at the Meridian International Center, a “non-partisan, not-for-profit organization dedicated to strenthening international understanding,” who were all looking for a little taste of home.

Tiffany wins again with her chicken tamales with queso fresco and tomatillo sauce. It was great actually to see her win both the quickfire and the elimination because she hadn’t won anything this whole season and she doesn’t get on my nerves. Her food sounded good, from the way the judges were describing it, and that’s fine by me. Her style actually reminds me of Kevin’s from last season. Maybe it’s also because they’re both from the south.

In other news, Stephen finally gets eliminated. He’s been one of those contestants consistently at the bottom, but has been lucky enough to be spared because of other people’s mess-ups. In this episode, his mushy rice, lack of creativity, and use of chimichurri sauce did him in. As Gail pointed out, chimichurri is originally from Argentina and Stephen was supposed to be representing Brazil.

The drama continues and the food continues to be boring. Next week is restaurant wars, which is normally one of the most entertaining episodes of the season. I’m notholding my breath though.

Season 7, Episode 8: Foreign Affairs (originally aired Aug 4, 2010)

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Wednesdays at 9/8C, Bravo

Photographs courtesy of Bravo and David Giesbrecht.