Top Chef Review: Oxidation, Skewers, and Ballparks

This week’s episode was titled, “Making Concessions”, fitting for the elimination challenge, and the team work necessary to make it work, as Tim Gunn would say.

Before we get to that, let’s look at the quickfire. Padma and guest judge and Top Chef Masters alumnus Rick Moonen had the chefs pick a food-related idiom to base a dish on. (Don’t know what an idiom is? It’s an expression, word, or phrase that means something other than the literal meanings of the individual words.) Some of the choices included “sour grapes”, “the big cheese”, and “hot potato.”

The big winner is Ed who took “hot potato” and made herb and roasted garlic gnocchi, spring vegetables, and mushroom fricassee. He gets to have his food added to the frozen section aisle courtesy of Schwan’s.

Meanwhile Angelo still appears off his game. Before they get to the Hilton, we get Amanda sniggering during an interview that Angelo listens to Anthony Robbins books and chants to himself. Now that Alex is gone, are we being told that we’ve got a new weirdo in the competition? Early in the season Angelo was made out to be this super intense guy who was arrogant and appeared to have the skills to back it up. Now that he’s taken a nose dive to the bottom, we learn that as a child he had a shrine to famous chefs and he’d pray to them. Let’s not forget his Russian fiancé whom he proposed to in Paris, but has only seen a few times. How is that information relevant to this competition? Oh it’s not, but it just sets up his shadiness given all his flirting with Tameka.

But let’s get back to the relevant stuff. During the elimination round, the chefs learn they will be running a concession stand at Nationals Stadium where they’ll serve upscale food for ballpark goers. Here’s where the title comes in, “making concessions”, concession stands, get it? And that they have to learn to really work together as one unit because the kitchen is such a tiny space.

The night before Angelo steps up after no one else does to be in charge of taking orders. When they get to the concession stand though, he freaks out a little and starts handing out order pads. Kevin gets up in his face and tells him that’s not going to work. They have a little tiff and eventually Ed volunteers to cook Angelo’s dish so that the other is free to take orders. In Angelo’s defense I understand that when you are in a situation where no one wants to give in (because they are all thinking of themselves), you might feel pressured enough to volunteer. Kevin’s reason for getting pissed off, that Angelo shouldn’t have said he’d do it if he wasn’t up for it, is pretty lame. Why didn’t he step up then?

Everything goes smoothly and the lines begin to form. Most of the orders are for Tiffany’s meatball sandwich and Kelly’s crab cake BLT. They also get to feed three players from the Nationals who are big fans of the meatball sandwich and Ed’s shrimp and corn risotto fritters with jalapeno aioli. But what really matters is what the judges think.

Ed wins this round again. He may have lost the trip to Paris but he can take his girlfriend to Australia with this latest victory.

What the judges didn’t like, though, was Amanda’s grey tuna tartare and she gets eliminated for it. For the most part I agree with Ed’s sentiments that she’s been lucky to have made it this far. I think she made lots of mistakes in execution and also lacked the creativity to create new innovative dishes if last week’s French onion soup told us anything.

It came down to her, Kevin, Kelly, and Angelo. Kelly’s crab cake was good, Angelo’s beef was tasty but the bread got soggy, and Kevin’s shoe string potatoes got soggy as well and his little piece of chicken on a big skewer was dangerous. The judges made the right call to send Amanda home.

I predict Kevin will get kicked off next week. Tune in to see if I get it right for a third time or if I strike out and someone else gets let go. Either way I’m still hoping for a double elimination. Anything to make this season go by faster.

For more on Top Chef, click here. You can follow Poptimal on Twitter @poptimal.

Season 7, Episode 11: Making Concessions (originally aired August 25, 2010)

Wednesdays at 10/9C, Bravo

Photographs courtesy of Bravo and David Giesbrecht.