Top Chef: Deviled Eggs?!

Arianne is really lucky that she won immunity with her cream of cauliflower (no butter!!).  Speaking of her dish, I love that she mentioned what a great way it was to get kids to eat cauliflower without bothering to mention all the heavy cream she mixed into it.  What good is the cauliflower when they’ve just consumed three cups of heavy cream?  Anyway, getting back to the challenge itself, she is lucky lucky lucky!  Deviled eggs are not TOP CHEF.  Deviled eggs are made by people with absolutely no experience with cooking because it doesn’t require ANY skill.  As long as you can boil an egg, you’re good to go.  Arianne makes me believe that I can be on Top Chef because I make one hell of a meatloaf.  What’s that?  Eugene made meatloaf in a previous challenge? Ok, now I’m positive that I could have been on this season of Top Chef!  What the hell is going on?  One last thing, when the front runner (Stefan) is making chicken pot pie, you know something is up.

Top Chef: And then there were two….

Yes, I realize that there are technically three people left in the competition, but I am not the kind of person to be bothered by technicalities.  Lisa’s presence in the final episode of Top Chef will in no way effect the outcome of the show.  Her presence serves only one purpose–to annoy the other contestants and viewers endlessly.  I wonder if the producers let her stick around because of her poor attitude (you should at least congratulate me) and ridiculous accusations (someone sabotaged my rice!!).  I thought the show was about finding the most talented chef, not finding the most self-absorbed and MEDIOCRE chef.  Lisa is mediocre at best, and that is why I feel confident that she will not stand a chance in the final against Richard or Stephanie, who combined have something like 10 wins (quickfire and elimination).  I am not sure if the scoring takes into consideration past performance, but how can you ignore that many winning performances?  This leads me to the question of how Lisa is still standing.  She has, to my knowledge, only won one elimination challenge and been in the bottom at least five times.  Why would the judges continuously keep her around despite such poor performances?  How can they explain sending Dale, a highly skilled chef (and kind of a jerk) with multiple wins, home over Lisa?  How can they explain sending Antonia (another chef with multiple wins) over Lisa (for undercooked beans!)?  I hate when reality shows keep annoying people around to boost ratings.  That has to be what they’re doing, right?  It’s the only explanation that remotely makes sense.  At least when they kept people around for ratings on Project Runway, the person (I am referring to Santino Rice) actually has talent.  Santino was definitely in the bottom 3 many times on his season of Project Runway, but he also had some winning performances as well. 

I could go on about how Lisa doesn’t deserve to be in the finals, but instead I am going to focus on who will win Top Chef 4.  Will it be Richard or Stephanie? 

Finally, I will end this post with my favorite quote from the latest episode (courtesy of Richard):

“”You won the f—ing bronze medal. Congratulations.”

Top Chef: Is a final four necessary?

Let’s not kid ourselves.  We all know that the title of Top Chef is between Stephanie and Richard. Antonia might be a dark horse, but Lisa is just a joke.  As the judges so lovingly pointed out, she’s been in the bottom five times and on the verge of elimination the last 3 episodes in a row.  I am not sure how she has managed to dodge so many bullets in the past three weeks, but she won’t be dodging anything in the finals.  How many times have you heard the judges say that her cooking has lacked flavor and passion?  She’s going to need a lot more than chilled, (congealed) butter shrimp to legitimately challenge the other three.  She already had her miracle when the judges chose to eliminate Dale instead during Restaurant Wars.

Top Chef: Snitch!!!

This episode consisted of varying degrees of “competitiveness” ranging from allowable and understandable (Spike) to downright wrong (Lisa).  Let’s address Spike’s behavior first.  I will say that he focused a little too much on how to screw over the other contestants, but the advantage that he gained from winning the quick fire challenge almost implied that it would allow for him to make it more difficult for the other chefs.  You would be naive not to pick at least one thing that you know others would miss sorely.  Chicken breast was an excellent choice.  That being said, I would have used the rest of my shopping time to focus on executing a great dish and not worry so much about what others might need or want.  Spike was also called out by Lisa (we’ll get to her unforgivable behavior later) for misleading his customers (police officers from the Chicago PD).  He thought that having only 2 lunchboxes out at a time would give the impression that they were popular and selling like hotcakes.  I don’t know why that bothered Lisa because ultimately it’s the judges’ decision on who wins and goes home–not the police academy.

Now to the most hateful chef in the history of the show—Lisa!!!  It’s interesting (and ironic) that the whole episode Lisa was claiming sabotage (SABOTEUR!!).  Apparently, someone purposely turned her brown rice all the way up to high so that the outer layer would burn while the inside remained uncooked.  It was stupid of her to insist that for the simple fact that the show is taped.  Their every move is taped!  Even if someone did turn her rice up to high, how could she prove that it wasn’t an accident.  The kitchen is sheer pandemonium during the elimination challenges, and anyone could have accidentally brushed by the knob.  EVEN LISA HERSELF COULD HAVE UNKNOWINGLY DONE IT! (Points of redemption to Dale for pointing that out.)  You would think that Lisa would have felt so wronged by the alleged sabotage that she would not try to sabotage another chef.  Wrong!  It took her exactly 2.2 seconds to throw Andrew under the bus for not using a whole grain.  What’s funnier about that is that the judges were fully aware of that and did not need her to point it out to them.  When those words came out of her mouth, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  Would someone stoop so low as to call another person out for not having a whole grain?  How would she have liked it if Jennifer and Stephanie called her out during improv week for not using polish sausage even though they were told to make “drunken polish sausage”?  Last time I checked chorizo is not the same as polish sausage. 

What do you think about Lisa?  Do you think that all is fair in food and the competition?  Or do you agree that Lisa was just a plain bitch for calling out Andrew?  Truth be told, Andrew is insane, but I am going to miss him and his manic behavior. 

Top Chef: A week late…

I am one week behind on Top Chef, so this doesn’t concern last night’s episode.  That also means that this is a no spoilers zone–I won’t be posting anything about last night’s episode (largely because I didn’t watch it yet), and you won’t be posting any spoiler-ish comments.  Expect serious consequences if you do. 

Now that that’s out of the way, I watched the episode where they cook for the Meals on Wheels Celebrity Chef Ball, and while none of the dishes stood out, it was still an interesting episode in the end (literally).  We had backstabbing, yelling, screaming, and even damage to furniture!  I’m not so sure what pissed of Richard’s twin (can’t remember her name).  I understand that her significant other was told to pack her knives, but she seemed to take it badly.  Zoi deserved to go home, if not for the under-seasoned and underwhelming mushrooms, then for her attitude problem.  Every time she goes before the judges table, she gets defensive and extremely disrespectful.  She also looks like she is about to burst into tears at any moment.  Anyway, back to Richard’s twin (still can’t remember her name).  Why did she take her anger out on Spike?  If anything, Spike was sticking up for her dearly, departed Zoi.  What started out as an argument between Spike and Antonia turned into a brawl involving the aforementioned AND Richard’s twin, Lisa (kind of), and Dale??  Does this make sense to anyone?  As far as I remember, Lisa didn’t say anything other than “You’re only making it worse,” to someone (I think Spike).  She didn’t raise her voice at all.  In fact, it was more of a muttered phrase.   That’s when Dale lost it, probably because he couldn’t handle Lisa winning the trip to Italy over himself.  Let’s be honest here, the only person on the winning “Fire” team who deserved the trip was Stephanie.  She made the shrimp, which was the most important part of the dish.  For Dale to be so livid over Lisa winning the trip seemed so unfounded because all he made was a chili pepper salad thing.  In my opinion, her cooked to perfection bacon was probably much more difficult than chili pepper salad or whatever the hell he made. 

Yes Dale, Lisa is rather negative, but you are also quite ridiculous in your own right.  What’s with the ridiculous “street” act.  Why do you need to act so “gangsta”?  You’re a freakin’ chef, not a rap star or hip-hop mogul.  Doesn’t it make you sad that there’s a Dale this season?  Whenever I hear “Dale” I think of last season’s beloved Dale. 

The good Dale

Top Chef: That’s one ugly dish too many

Is anyone out there surprised that Erik was told to pack his knives?  Honestly, I thought chefs were supposed to make good and good looking food.  From the very first episode, every dish he made has looked utterly disgusting.  Does anyone recall what his poor excuse for a soufflé looked like?  To be fair, he did refer to it as “glorified nachos”, but couldn’t he have prettied it up even just a little bit?  I think he should have gone home that first night, but I am not complaining too much because salty shrimp scampi Nimma deserved to go home too, for both the aforementioned salty shrimp scampi and her poor attitude.  Anyway, Erik got the boot last night for his soggy corn dogs and possibly for the ugly taco he made during the quickfire. 

                  

Would you eat these?