Top Chef Review: It’s all too much to embrace as a human

In the final high stakes quickfire, the chefs are tasked with creating a dish to pair with a particular wine. Guest judge Dana Cowin of Food and Wine magazine, named Angelo and Tiffany the best, with Kevin and Kelly at the bottom. Angelo’s foie gras won, and he gets to go on an all expense paid trip to London. Looks like he’s got his mojo back.

Padma also announces that the final challenges will take place in Singapore and there’s five chefs left with only four spots available. Who makes it to the final four will be determined in this final DC elimination round. The contestants visit NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center where they discover that they are to create a dish that can be eaten in space. Vickie Kloeris (NASA’s Manager, International Space Station Food System and Space Food Systems Laboratory) gives some guidelines to not make their food too sweet, watch their portioning, and that spicy is good. The winner not only has a spot on the final four, but will also have their food reproduced and sent to space for astronauts to eat.

The chefs serve their food at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center to guest judge Anthony Bourdain, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, astronauts Sandra Magnus and Leland Melvin, Vickie Kloeris, Padma, Tom, and Eric Ripert. Gail, I’m guessing is off filming Top Chef: Just Desserts at this point in time.

Bourdain funnily takes a shot at Ripert whom he strongly disagrees with concerning Ed’s Moroccan themed dish. He’s also a big fan of Angelo’s short ribs. Otherwise everyone is pretty happy with all the food with the exception of Tiffany’s dish. It wasn’t awful but they did have more negative things to say about it compared to the others.

Speaking of Tiffany, she gets into a trouble when her mussels get frozen and she is forced to change her game plan. But does it hurt her in the end? Indeed it does unfortunately. The contestant that seemed to be the one to beat ends up getting sent home because the judges liked her dish least. Valiant effort throughout the season and she was by far the nicest and most drama-free competitor. I really hoped she would make it to the finals.

I think it came down between Kevin and Tiffany to get kicked off. I’m sad to be wrong, but I understand that the judges felt that her dish didn’t come together. Kevin’s was so boring and uninspiring but he executed well. Thus that’s the kicker, Tiffany was kicked off because the sauce lacked acidity, the pepper skins were bitter, and the tomatoes were mealy. If we look at their overall performance I think Kevin should have been sent home.

Tiffany is in tears as Padma says her name and she realizes how close she came to the finals. It’s sad to see her go. At least she gets to go to France and has won twenty thousand dollars.

“I feel like I made love to this dish!” so claims Angelo at judge’s table. I understand that this was said out of his passion for cooking, but is the show still painting him out to be the weird one? Me thinks yes. But he actually wins the elimination round with his ginger short ribs and receives a brand new Toyota Avalon along with Bourdain’s new book.

“It’s too much to embrace as a human to tell you the truth,” he says then it cuts to his hand stroking the key muttering what sounds like, “Thank you Jesus.”

In this episode we learn all about Angelo and his relationship to Asia. There were a lot of quirky little details that makes me scratch my head a little and I believe that the show producers still want me to think that this guy is a little strange.

Here’s a list:

-       Angelo feels Asian inside

-       He is recently divorced; I believe his ex-wife is an Asian woman because of a) he says he has a kid from that marriage and we see a picture of him holding an Asian baby and b) he talks about how her family were big on “saving face” and wanted him to be a doctor or lawyer.

-       He owns an Asian themed restaurant

-       He mainly creates Asian themed/inspired food

On top of the new things we learned about him in this episode, let’s not forget he’s also engaged to a woman in Russia whom he’s only met a few times, the whole Tameka flirting that I’ve written about before in previous reviews, and his worship of prominent chefs as a child.

But on the whole I was happy with the elimination challenge because it was something new and I can understand why Tiffany was kicked off even though I wish it had been Kevin instead.

Since the finals are in Singapore, Angelo appears to have a great advantage. Will he continue to do well or will he crack under the pressure? I just don’t know folks.

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

Season 7, Episode 12: Gastro-nauts (originally aired on Sept. 1, 2010)

Wednesdays at 10/9C, Bravo

Photographs courtesy of Bravo and David Giesbrecht.