Top Chef All-Stars Review: Restaurant Wars: One Night Only

Top Chef kicked things up a notch this week with everybody’s favorite challenge, Restaurant Wars. This isn’t just any regular Restaurant Wars challenge though, this is a trendy “pop-up” Restaurant Wars challenge. A pop-up restaurant being a restaurant that is only open temporarily, for a night or for two months. Also adding a little spice into the mix is that this is the only elimination challenge that all of the all-stars have participated in previously. Most of them, like Dale, didn’t have fond memories about it. And for the first time ever, they are letting the diners decide the winner.

The Quickfire challenge took the all-stars to Eric Ripert‘s Le Bernardin, where they met Justo Thomas, who expertly butchers hundreds of pounds of fish a day. It was an amazing thing to watch Justo fillet two fishes in under 8 minuets. They mention that when he goes on vacation it takes three sous chefs to cover for him. It’s like he has superpowers or something. If fish ever start attacking us we are going to be glad we have Justo Thomas on our side.

For the challenge the contestants were given ten minutes to fillet two fish. Except for a few minor errors everybody did a fine job, after all, these are the all-stars. The four best fish butchers, Mike, Dale, Marcel and Richard then had to make a dish out of the remains of their filleted fish. That leaves pretty much just the head. Dale boasted that he had been doing “head to tail cooking before it was cool,” (which was weird because I didn’t know it was cool) but Dale backed it up with his two winning dishes: fluke back fin sashimi with cucumber, and fluke liver sauce and bacon dashi with salt roasted cod collar.  You could probably guess that Anthony Bourdain loved that he used the fish liver. Mmmm-mmm fish liver.

Dale won the Quickfire challenge and got to pick the teams for Restaurant Wars. He picked wisely with Richard, Tre, Fabio and Carla. In another clever move, Dale chose Marcel as the other head chef and Marcel assembled a team of Angelo, Antonia, Mike and Tiffany. Dale was rather smart initially here because: 1) He didn’t want to be on the same team as Marcel, and 2) Marcel is his own worst enemy. Marcel’s team was doomed from the very beginning, mostly because Marcel was leading it.

For the elimination challenge both sides had to come up with a name, a theme, and a menu for their restaurant.  Marcel initially wanted to call it Medi because they were going with a Mediterranean theme. It’s not the most creative name but it is better than what they ended up with, which was Etch. Why it’s called Etch is never fully explained. Tiffany, who also needed to work the front of the open air restaurant, hastily created the first course of shaved asparagus salad with a chorizo dressing and salt-cured egg yolk. Angelo added a fish crudo with grapes. The second course involved Marcel’s monkfish with olives and parsley foam alongside an inspired pork belly and octopus by Mike. The third course consisted of Antonia’s ricotta gnudi with oxtail, while Mike and Angelo collaborated on a lamb chops with honey dish. For dessert, they served peaches with coconut foam and powder whipped up by Marcel, a dish Anthony Bourdain called “a thumb in the eye.”

The other team’s restaurant, Bodega, utilized a market theme.  Hand made potato chips started things off for the creative and cohesive menu.  The first course had a “canned tuna” theme that included raw tuna belly with fried chicken skin prepared by Richard, and Dale’s bacon, egg and cheese on focaccia. The second course included Richard’s fried codfish with brussels sprout sauerkraut (Sproutkraut) and a mouth watering pork shoulder with cheese grits by Tre. For dessert Fabio created an amaretto cheesecake and cappuccino mousse and Carla made a blueberry pie. Fabio also was on his game directing the servers and pretty much running the restaurant. It was pretty impressive even though I find his accent a little too much to handle sometimes.

Food and Wine editor in chief and diner Dana Cowin hated Etch and loved Bodega. Almost all of the other patrons agreed with her feelings. This was bad news for Marcel because, for the first time ever, the diners were choosing the challenge winner. 17 out of 76 diners preferred Etch over Bodega, and the judges really put Marcel and the rest of his team in the fire, laying into them pretty harshly.

Thankfully, unlike other reality shows that stretch the “judging” out to unbearable lengths, Top Chef keeps it pretty short and sweet, even though their critiques are occasionally brutal.  This week they let Marcel go, if you haven’t guessed already, and he really has no one but himself to blame.

It is nice to have one of the more unpopular chefs let go so early in the season so that we, as the viewing audience, don’t have to take another week of foam, complaining, or bandannas.

For another opinion on this week’s episode, read “Losing the Jerk” by Zarna Patel.

Season 8, Episode 7 “Restaurant Wars: One Night Only” (original air date Jan. 19, 2011)

Wednesday 10/9c on Bravo

Photos courtesy of Giovanni Rufino and Bravo TV