By Miss Alli
This week, the role of Keckler's intimate knowledge of food and cooking will be played by my familiarity with cereal and Lean Cuisine. But that's okay, because this week's episode is mostly about people acting like idiots, and that's sort of the universal language. In the Quickfire, Ted Allen judges a bunch of monochromatic plates, concluding that Betty's plate of green didn't measure up, but Michael's study of orange was a big success, despite the fact that he's nursing a pulled wisdom tooth. The elimination challenge is an elaborate dinner in which each cheftestant prepares a course based on one of the seven deadly sins. The good: Sam's angry ceviche, Elia's proud chicken, and particularly Mike's envious fish thing, which is the big winner. The bad: Marcel's inadequately lustful cherry dessert, Ilan's inadequately gluttonous chocolate bog, and Betty's really unappetizing roasted soups, which are -- as Colicchio points out -- certainly lazy enough, but kind of gross. Despite the fact that Sam, Betty, and Ilan spend the entire episode tormenting and picking on Marcel to the point where he actually becomes sympathetic, Marcel's foam doesn't get him sent to pack his knives. Instead, Betty, who started out looking like a fun, enthusiastic goofball, goes home a bitter, mean jerk. Not a good week for cheftestant behavior.
READERS' NOTE: I am not a chef. Dinner last night was a Lean Cuisine BBQ Pizza, and breakfast this morning was a mini-bagel with whipped cream cheese. I certainly can cook, but you are undoubtedly going to find my vocabulary lacking and my viewpoint peasant-like. It's safe to say this will be your first recap written by someone who has occasionally had Cheez-Its for dinner, and I have to admit, it's making me feel very inadequate.
Anyway, in news of other people's crippling insecurities, we find the cheftestants in the apartment the day after Mia axed herself, and Betty is just stretching and waking up, yawning to Elia that seven of them are left. Elia interviews that it was awkward for her to be there when she had barely avoided elimination very recently, and only courtesy of Mia's very silly gesture. She says she's not sure what Mia was thinking in auf-ing herself, but she's just glad to still be in the game. One would think. She suggests that it's like "being reborn again," and for a minute, I fear that Elia has found Jesus and is going to tell us all about it instead of making food, but happily, this does not occur. I don't think I'd want to see religious-themed appetizers. [Several incredibly offensive jokes omitted.]
Glad ForceFlex bags get a glorious, adoring, semi-porny, Cybill-Shepherd's-face-on-Moonlighting kind of close-up that probably earned Bravo a few thousand bucks. The music grows tense, and we move to the apartment kitchen for the Great Skillet Skirmish Of 2007 (So Far). Ilan is doing something with the taking out of trash, and Marcel has fried himself a couple of eggs and is now dropping some bread into the toaster. "How'd you sleep?" Ilan asks. "Great," Marcel responds. "I always sleep great," Ilan adds, and you can already tell that he is absolutely spoiling for a fight. Ilan points imperiously at the pan in which Marcel's eggs are sitting, and he says, "You want to take those out so I can make myself an egg?" Any time someone starts with "you wanna" instead of "would you," you know that he's trying to start a fight. It's why you don't hear people saying, "Would you like to have a piece of me?" Marcel pauses for a minute and says of his eggs, "I kind of want to keep them warm so I can put them over the toast." Ilan considers this for a minute and then announces, "You're very selfish. Anybody ever tell you that, Marcel?" Marcel earns a little of my stingily distributed love by actually answering the strictly rhetorical question, and rather cleverly: "I think Betty told me that, like, a week ago." Boy, I loved that. It's like he's either incredibly dry in humor, or he has a brain issue that keeps him from interpreting anything other than literally. Ilan explains in an interview that he thinks Marcel is cocky and "full of himself," and "comes off as if he's better than everybody else."
Of course, Marcel does come off that way, and has certainly made an ass of himself on several occasions. But keep in mind that the particular kitchen argument we are currently viewing is the result of Ilan being asked to wait to make an egg long enough for Marcel's toast to be done. Toast. He's not roasting a turkey, he's not making a soufflé, and he's not constructing a seven-layer trifle. It is toast. Walk across the kitchen, scratch your nose, and walk back, and it will be all over. Happens automatically! Ilan goes on in the interview to say that in the last challenge, Marcel seemed "offended" about not being considered a leader of the team when they won. I do remember that. And it was stupid. As for Marcel, he tells us that being cooped up with people and away from your family will make things emotional and cause fights. I'm sorry, that's entirely too rational. He will have to go back and get himself another, more dramatic approach. As Ilan puts his egg onto a piece of toast (selfish!), Marcel says to him, "You broke your yolk; you disappoint me." Ilan's response? "At least I'm not a virgin." Oh, Lordy. I'm not defending Marcel's stupid broken-yolk insult, which just fed the hostility that was already being dished out and coming right at him. But when somebody says something that's kind of specific to the moment, and you respond with some sort of irrelevant grand insult, you're always the one who looks bad. It's like, "I hate that tie." "Oh yeah? Well, you didn't graduate from college." No tie is bad enough to make the tie-wearing person lose that exchange.
Anyway, Marcel chuckles at the "virgin" remark, and then we move over to Michael, who is sitting around talking about his hopes for a short Quickfire, lest he have to run and spit up blood. He explains in a chipmunk-cheeked interview that he had to have a tooth pulled yesterday. And he looks it, let me tell you. If you saw him on The Smoking Gun, arrested for stealing his wife's underpants, you'd be like, "Huh. He looks like he had a tooth pulled yesterday." Mike also implies to Cliff that it was a pretty slipshod tooth-pulling, akin to having your hair cut by your mother using a bowl. He is totally growing on me, and has definitely come a long way since Snickers and Cheetos. But I don't really appreciate the fact that he's making me think about having my teeth pulled with pliers. He explains that he wants immunity so that he can sit out the elimination challenge and nurse his pain. I kind of don't blame him. Lying down cures many ailments.
And now, we adjourn to the Kenmore Pro Kitchen for the Quickfire. Padma is there, and she "introduces" Ted Allen, who's kind of beyond introduction at this point, as the guest judge. Cliff tells us that he loves Ted. Me too. I miss the days before Queer Eye was strangled or whatever happened to it. The first thing Padma explains to the group is that from here on out, winning the Quickfire no longer gives you immunity. So much for Michael's plan to get a sick day. Padma goes on to say that cooking involves "at least four" of the five senses. Presumably, she's not sure you always hear your food, which means she's never heard M&Ms calling her, making her luckier than many of us. She says that for the challenge today, they'll each be assigned a color, and they'll design their dish "around" that color. You'll notice that she doesn't say that every single thing on the plate has to be the same color, Betty. They'll draw knives for colors. Ilan gets red. Michael gets orange, Elia white ("What am I gonna do with white?" she despairs), Sam gets yellow, Cliff gets purple (explaining to us that he's color-blind, so picking out purple things will be interesting), Betty gets green, and Marcel gets brown. He tells us he wasn't so happy about brown as a theme color. He claims that brown is not "vibrant" or "beautiful." Apparently, he knows little of chocolate. Or coffee. Or anything that's been caramelized. Okay, that's even stupider than Elia not knowing what to do with white. Betty rubs her hands together about having green, and even more about Marcel getting brown. I mean, who could fail with green, right? ["I'm always amazed that none of these people ever express reservations at the raised expectations of getting the 'easy' option. Ilan does the same thing when he draws 'gluttony' later. You're just not going to get any slack if you screw up 'green.' -- Joe R]
It begins. Ilan explains that he usually starts with the taste of food as the base, so it's kind of weird to start with the appearance. Marcel offers the insight that the speed of the Quickfires is always challenging and forces you to keep moving as fast as you can. Betty burbles that the challenge, to her, was "all about green." And you have no idea yet just how much she means this. She goes into this weird "the greener the better" thing that's just suggestive of a certain unquietness of mind. Betty's kind of gone round the bend of late, is my feeling. Cliff explains that he knows third-hand that eggplant is purple, so he's trying to match the color of the eggplant, even though purple doesn't look purple to him. One of my good friends is red-green color-blind, and I always really wonder what those colors look like to him. Do they both look gray? Do they both look like what green looks like to me? It's kind of fascinating, and I know I won't ever understand it, really, but Cliff is definitely at a disadvantage here. He implies that the eggplant looks black, so maybe red and green would both look gray? Anyway, Michael explains that he went with salmon, because while it starts out pink, it winds up orange. Which is quite true, and rather clever. He's also doing carrots. Batter-fried carrots, it sounds like. I can't say I've ever had batter-fried carrots. Padma rushes in to say there are five minutes left. Betty assures us that she was running around making this "beautiful green plate." Well, it's a plate. And it's green. So she's 66 percent dead-on.
Marcel, unsurprisingly, gets the thoroughly frou-frou idea of serving his dish on a bowl with "an essence of coffee." In other words, the "essence of coffee" won't be in the dish; it will be around the dish, presumably for the smell. I find that entire concept extremely strange; serving something with your dinner that you're supposed to smell but not eat. But then, it is Marcel and his something something gastronomy something, and who am I to argue? He carefully places a few coffee beans delicately in the bottom of a bowl, then sprinkles ground coffee in a line along the side of the plate. And then he goes to pour a little coffee into the bowl from a French press, but the top flies off, and the sludge of grounds and coffee goes all over the place, ruining the carefully arranged bowl and flooding the counter and floor. Wow, that's a nightmare if ever I saw one. But it is a little amusing to see him arranging individual coffee beans, and then... this. Coffee soup. Anyway, with only a few seconds to go, he mops off the side of the bowl to leave the sludge in the bottom, then he cleans the counter and floor, which I'm thinking must be required, because otherwise, why bother? I have to think that giant coffee flood is going to have a much stronger smell than the "essence" he had in mind. But anyway, everyone is plating, plating, plating.
And now, Padma and Ted return. Ted first speaks to Ilan, who has made a very red plate of steak tartare with giant red taro chips. I thought I saw them described as beet chips somewhere, but taro is a different thing... right? (Cheez-Its! For dinner! I'm saying!) The whole thing looks red, that's for sure. up is Betty, whose green plate is very, very green. Not really a vibrant green, though. It's a fairly nondescript veggie green, and it's all the same color, and there aren't any variations in texture or anything... it looks like a houseplant. Her idea is a "green zucchini tamale," which amounts to a hollowed-out zucchini filled with green beans and a sort of a spinach-basil pesto thing. Oh, and it's garnished with lime, for no apparent good reason other than that... that's green also! Ted wants to know if this is a dish she's made before, and she says it isn't. And of course it isn't, because you would never make this, other than to prove you can make something that's a totally uniform shade of green. We then move on to Marcel, whose brown dish is a steak-and-egg breakfast. It's a little stack, consistent with Marcel's love for precious little arrangements of food that look like buildings in Puzzletown. There's a piece of steak on the bottom, then a big crouton, then a carefully trimmed egg. Oh, and on top? A coffee foam. You know what steak and eggs do not require? A coffee foam, that's what. He was so close to making something that was, other than the shape, non-precious. And then: foam. The other cheftestants chortle at the foam, and Sam tells us that he thinks it's getting a bit "redundant" with the foam concept. He claims that in nine episodes, Marcel has made nine foams. Marcel explains that the coffee sludge is for aroma. I think he should definitely, definitely have ditched that once it turned into sludge rather than "essence." A sprinkling of coffee is a very different thing from resting your plate on slop.
Elia has made a Dover sole filet with an egg. Ted says nothing of this, really. Cliff introduces his purple dish, explaining about the color blindness and saying that Marcel actually offered to help him find purple things, but he turned the help down. It seems foolish, because of all the things that are obnoxious about Marcel, I don't believe he would have told Cliff that cherries were purple or anything. In any event, what Cliff wound up making is red snapper with eggplant and "a pickled beet and blackberry compote." That sounds... kind of gross to me, I admit. I realize I'm kind of a Neanderthal here, but if you offer me fish with pickled beets and fruit, I'm going to cringe. I can't help it. I'll just have Cheerios, thanks. Ted likes it, though, so it goes to show you what I know. Sam's yellow breakfast includes "a duo of muffins," which is one of those phrases that just sends me right over the edge. And of course, rather than either one of them looking like a muffin, they're both cutesy-poo little slices of muffin -- one lemon, one corn. I really, really would rather just have a corn muffin. Anyway, the muffins are stacked with cheese and an egg yolk, so it's really kind of a duo of McMuffins. Alongside that, there's a fruit salad. Ted likes the combination of sweet and savory, and I admit that in the eating, I would probably very much enjoy that breakfast. Tooth-hurting Michael made salmon and carrot chips, which has the advantage of looking like something you might actually eat on purpose, Betty. Padma and Ted especially like the carrot chips. I like a contestant unpretentious enough to make a snack.
Asked to give his reviews, Ted says that his least favorite was Betty's. He tells her that green should have been the easiest color to work with. ["See?" -- Joe R] He also calls out the very sloppy presentation, in which the beans were just sort of slopped all over the place. "It looked like something you raked up, not to be unkind," he says. Betty tightly says through her grin, "Well, you are," and then she drinks her water, because she can barely keep herself from losing it all over Ted Allen, which she knows she shouldn't do. Seriously, lady, green beans lying on half a zucchini does not look delicious. It looks like cooked vegetables lying on top of each other. In an interview, Betty complains about the time constraints (which: half an hour? Come on), insisting that her dish was very tasty and, she stresses, completely green. I want to remind you that as far as we know, there was no instruction that the dish be entirely, uniformly the same color. The color theme was sort of the inspiration/parameter, rather than an end in itself. If you wouldn't order a big plate of zucchini and green beans in a restaurant, then having it be green doesn't mean it's something anybody would or should want to eat. Ted turns to Marcel, saying that his idea was kind of cool, but the "moat of coffee beans" was gross and "looked dirty." Probably because it was the result of making a mess. Marcel takes it like a man and doesn't explain, which I dig. Ted says that aside from its redness, Ilan's tartare didn't have much going for it, and he thinks maybe he got carried away stressing the red theme. Ilan whines that this is his first trip to the bottom three in a Quickfire. Apparently, the math has not occurred to him that as the number of people narrows, somebody has to wind up at the bottom who's never been there before. And guess what? It's him! Couldn't have happened to a more deserving person this week. He calls it "disheartening." I call it "richly deserved, karma-wise."
In better news, Ted thought Sam's dish was the prettiest. He thinks Cliff did a good job, considering that there isn't that much purple food to choose from. He also thinks it was clever of Michael to pick the pink fish that turns orange. And the carrot chips were, of course, delicious. Michael smiles, and you can see what looks like a gaping hole in the side of his mouth, and ew. The winner is... Michael. Man. Now it's really too bad there's no immunity. Sam says that it was good to see Michael get his first win, and claims to have been happy for him. I'm sure it's all relative. Happy it wasn't Marcel, I would certainly believe. Michael interviews that beating strong players Sam and Cliff was great, but not getting immunity was less great. You can tell he wasn't kidding when he said that he just wanted to take the damn day off and soak his teeth in vodka.
Padma explains to the cheftestants that their challenge involves "inspiration." The inspiration here is that the seven of them will create a seven-course dinner inspired by the seven deadly sins. Cliff immediately loves it. He comes very close to rattling them off accurately, except that he leaves out gluttony and repeats "envy" as "jealousy." They'll work here for three hours, then they'll pack up and go elsewhere to present a dinner party for Debi Mazar and friends. And Ted is sticking around, because Gail is off blowing on her nails or something. They'll draw knives to find out what sin they get. Michael pulls lust. Sam gets anger. Elia pulls pride, Ilan gluttony, Cliff greed, Betty sloth, and Marcel envy. It turns out that Michael's reward for winning the Quickfire, even though he doesn't get immunity, is that he can swap his knife -- "lust" -- for any one he wants. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), he decides to switch with Marcel and take envy instead of lust. Marcel thinks this was crazy, because lust is "a gold mine." I'm sort of inclined to agree that envy is more conceptually challenging than lust, for which you can probably make something extremely rich and beautiful and be done with it.
When we return from commercials, Ilan reminds us about the nature of the challenge. They start talking as a group about who's going to do what, and Marcel would like a few minutes to think before they have the group discussion. He's clutching the pepper mill, incidentally, but it's like nobody has any respect for tradition anymore. Marcel says he's not "totally set" on anything, but Ilan says he's "totally set on dessert." Note who's the first to show inflexibility and me-me-me-ness in this scenario here. Marcel thinks he might want to do a dessert, but he's not sure they should do two. Basically, they seem to be offering Marcel a choice between going sixth and going second, and he's taking a minute to think. And it's like because they all took what they wanted and he took too long to pick between his TWO CHOICES, he's the asshole. Like, boo hoo, Betty. Ultimately, Marcel settles on going second to last, and says he'll be doing something sweet. Sam tells us that Marcel's "aura gets him in trouble." That's interestingly nonsensical. Sam and Ilan have a little talk off to the side, in which Sam tells Ilan that Marcel is scared to make something that probably won't stand up to Ilan's awesome dessert. Oh, yes. I'm sure that's it exactly. Marcel interviews that he thinks two desserts is okay with seven courses, but obviously, it sets up something very competitive between him and Ilan, considering that they already can't stand each other.
Marcel talks to Elia about his plans, and because they involve chocolate, she suggests he find out whether Ilan is also doing chocolate. Ilan provides a dictionary definition of "smug" when he smirks that Marcel is "slow" with plating and cooking, and that beating him out will be "a piece of cake." Knock-knock-knock. What's that sound? Oh, it's what goes around! And it's coming around! To dinner!
Wild Oats Market. It's shopping time. The budget is $150. Per... person, right? I assume so. Elia tells us that she found some organic chickens, so that made her happy. Ilan says that he was extremely lucky to get gluttony, which he considers "the easiest," so he's going to make something totally awesome. I believe him, don't you? Michael wants to do a dish with imitation crabmeat and real crabmeat, because the fake crab wants to be a real crab. That's... intriguing, although I don't know about serving the fake crab at a dinner party, and who's going to get it? With a little assist from Sam, he comes up with the idea that a trout would logically envy a salmon, which is bigger and more popular. So he goes with the trout and the salmon. I have to say, that's an intriguing idea. And weirdly, I can kind of feel that, in that the salmon is a big old restaurant fish, and the trout is kind of a camping-trip fish. Once they're all checked out, it's time to head to Charlie's Fixtures.
Charlie's Fixtures, you see, is the place where they shop for stuff like dishes, because apparently, they have to... bring all the dishes to the party? Whatever, I'm not a caterer. They paw through boxes of dishes and glasses. Betty has decided to create a "trio of slow-roasted soups," because apparently, she thinks these represent laziness. And she's serving them in flutes, because what's better than a hot soup chugged from a champagne glass? I have to say, even I would have immediately known what was wrong with her presentation idea, in that it was bound to become a sloppy mess in the glass. Have you ever had a fruit smoothie in a glass? You know how the glass looks at the end? Not elegant, is how.
Ilan is checking out, and the lady behind the counter spontaneously announces that she'll give him a discount. Sam assures us that this is customary for chefs shopping at supply stores. Marcel raises, very calmly, the fact that they're not really supposed to take discounts. He's totally being an on-camera apple-polisher, but he's also probably right, which you can tell because it results in Sam calling him a "cheesy fuck." As Marcel himself checks out and apologizes for not accepting the discount, Sam is over to the side talking to all his peeps about how much he can't stand Marcel. Meanwhile, Marcel is talking to the camera about how much he doesn't like being talked about behind his back. Sam decides to start a big fight in the middle of the supply store, telling Marcel how nobody likes him, nobody wants to hang out with him, and so forth. Nothing makes you look good like screaming in public. Cliff tells us that Marcel is being "tolerated," in spite of being a "Napoleonic know-it-all" (heh), and then Sam goes into a profanity-laden rant in the store (classy!) about how Marcel is a gnat and so forth. For his part, Marcel chuckles that he thinks it's all kind of funny how Sam got the anger sin, and here he is having a flip out right in front of everyone. Sam lectures Marcel that he'll "get a lot farther in this competition" if he just is quiet and keeps to himself. I'm not sure how that follows, but... all right. I think Sam would have a much better argument if he would just shake his head and walk away. You never win when you care and the other person doesn't.
We leave Port Charles and make our way to the Kenmore Pro Kitchen. Prep begins. Sam tells us that he's Sicilian, and Sicilians get angry. Not to stereotype or anything. He's doing a spicy shrimp ceviche with chili popcorn, which sounds pretty tasty, but he's apparently associated anger with hot and spicy food. It's fine, but not especially inventive, to my eye. Betty says that she hasn't ever done the soups that she's doing for this dinner. The graphic tells us her soups are carrot and fennel, red pepper and beet, and white onion. I'm not sure any of those sound incredibly exciting, much like her big green plate of vegetables was just a big plate of vegetables. As Betty pushes her soup through the big cone strainer thing (here's where I am not Keckler), Ilan tells her that it needs to be thinner. For Michael's part, he thinks Betty needs to "get off the soup," since she already did the Friday's thing with tomato soup, and people are going to start thinking she's kind of one-note.
Cliff has decided that greed means "overly bountiful," so his idea is to make a bouillabaisse with lots and lots of seafood and a Thai curry broth. His idea seems to be that the bouillabaisse will be kind of overstuffed, like a chicken noodle soup with too many noodles. Only with fish. (Oh, shut up.) Elia is just really pleased by the lack of restrictions in this challenge, and interestingly, she's responded to this total freedom by deciding to do an incredibly simple dish -- roasted chicken, which she is preparing by slathering it with butter. She also seems to be preparing some tomatoes for roasting. Marcel says that for lust, he's doing a cherry tart. Yes, step up and use all your cherry/lust/tart/sex/virgin jokes right here, because they'll only cloud your vision from here on out. The graphic adds that it will have cherry gelee and cherry foam. And whipped cream and chocolate, but really, it's all about the foam, undoubtedly. He explains to us that he's "not a very lustful person," but he thinks lust goes with food. I'm not sure what it means not to be a very lustful person, or to specifically bring that up about yourself, but it's a good way to get teased. Let's see if that materializes! Ilan says that because gluttony is so easy, he "should go home right now" if he can't do a good job with it. Agreed! He's starting with some little funnel cakes, which are an interesting idea. Funnel cake is delicious, and I can imagine funnel cakes being part of a really cute dessert, but even I could have told you that you don't want to deep-fry funnel cakes and then carry them around in Gladware for hours. The best things like that in the entire world are at the Minnesota State Fair, and you know why? Because they fry them right in front of you and hand them to you. In fact, that's why the state fair mini-donuts are so good. They fry them right there, pull them out, put sugar on them, and hand you the bag of them while they're still too hot from the oil to eat. If you took those state fair mini-donuts, and you put them in Gladware, and you carried them around for three hours, they would no longer be any good. Ilan should know this. He apparently does not. His graphic calls this "Decadent Chocolate Dessert With Fried Funnel Cakes." That is weirdly nonspecific, except for the funnel cakes. I don't know who comes up with the names, but it's... yeah, it's weirdly nonspecific. "I still haven't decided quite what I'm making," he interviews, "but it's going to be awesome." Boy, that's the way all great projects start, isn't it?
Colicchio comes in for the sniff-and-sneer. (A genius turn of phrase, incidentally.) He asks about Michael's face and hears about the tooth extraction. We also learn that Michael is making trout and salmon with basil aioli and asparagus. See, that sounds like food you might actually eat on purpose. Colicchio nevertheless kind of makes a dubious face. He then moves on to Ilan, who reveals that the "decadent chocolate dessert" is a super-dense chocolate cake with the funnel cake besides. I think the two-cake idea could kind of have worked here, the idea of a cake with a donut on the side representing gluttony. It does have a certain Homer-Simpson-y charm. Of course, it's all in the execution. Colicchio talks to Marcel about the fact that he's also doing a dessert. He seems particularly vexed by the fact that both desserts have chocolate, although Marcel stresses that the focus of his is the cherries, not the chocolate. I enjoy a good dessert as much as the person, but I think I wouldn't want two, if I'm being honest, unless one is really straight-up fruit, pretty much, which a cherry tart with all this flibbety-floo isn't, really.
Elia hucks her chicken into the oven as Colicchio says that they have about an hour and a half to go. Things are sliced and chopped and grated. Ilan is making a giant pan of brittle of some sort. With 20 minutes to go, Marcel gently (really!) points out that he's been seeing the refrigerator not closed quite a bit, so he'd like people to be sure they're closing it. Ilan now gives an interview in which he looks so hilarious that I almost can't get through the description. He's got... he's got a lime-green do-rag on, and then he has a hoodie on with the hood pulled up. It's just... it's hilariously awful, and it's awfully hilarious. It's like he's dressed up as a bad-ass for Halloween. He also tells us that Marcel "needs to work on his people skills." And Ilan, the smoothie, is just the one to educate him. He calls out to Marcel that "cherries are supposed to reduce your sex drive." I did find one study that supported that proposition, believe it or not, but that doesn't make Ilan any less of an asshole. Because really, within reason, you know what's lustful about dessert? The mood it puts you in. If the dessert is beautiful and luscious and makes you feel pampered, the fact that it contains cherries is not going to kill your sex drive. Furthermore, you know, it has been my experience that there is a correlation between how much people talk about their frequency and skill in the area of sex and how much good sex they're having. And that correlation is inverse. I have a strongly held belief that "I am great in bed" guy is almost never great in bed, and "I love foreplay" guy means "when it is received by me," and "you need to get laid" guy needs to get laid. This entire approach to insulting other people just never makes you look like sexy. And the more you focus on it, the more pronounced the effect. So when Ilan adds, "Maybe it's because you've never had sex," the effect is basically complete. I can only assume from the two mentions in this one episode that Marcel has at some point told the rest of these people that he's a virgin, which was a horrible, horrible mistake, but which tends to suggest he's not all that embarrassed about it.
Marcel finally gets tired of this and says, "What the fuck's your problem?" Sam and Ilan trade bully gloats and Ilan says, "Maybe you should have fought to stick with envy." "Maybe you should shut your fucking mouth," Marcel tells him. "Oooooh," Ilan mocks, apparently not noticing that he is the one making himself look like a puss in this situation. I mean... by the time you're an adult, the person who starts flinging personal insults is usually the person who cares more, and as stated earlier, the person who cares more pretty much loses by definition. If we're insulting each other, and you care and I don't, then it doesn't really matter which of us is better at it. I still win. Ilan is obsessed with Marcel at this point, and so is Sam. Marcel is more obsessed with the food, not like he doesn't care at all about being picked on, but he cares much less than they do. That basically means Marcel wins, you know? Marcel says in an interview that if anything, the business with Ilan is motivating him. An exaggeration, but still.
Things are poured and packed for the trip to wherever they're going.
Back from commercials, the cheftestants bring their wares up to this huge house with a gorgeous kitchen and dining room. Cliff explains that it's important for them to all stick together and work as a team to make the entire dinner come off. Shortly, Ted and Padma and the rest of the guests approach the house. Debi welcomes everyone to the party. There's also a guest judge, whose name I can't catch, no matter how hard I try. I told you I was a peasant. Cliff also says that Debi is "cute as a button." Sam says that he recognized "the guitarist from Extreme." Really? I mean... really? He is storing a lot of data in there. There's also a woman from The Sopranos, which I haven't ever been able to get into, so I'm of no help to you there. ["Ah, Charmaine Bucco. You wonderful, shrill harpy." -- Joe R] As the meal gets underway, Marcel volunteers to serve the wine that goes with Sam's course, and he checks with Sam first. Remember, this is Sam who absolutely fucking screamed at him in public earlier. Marcel does not think, apparently, that this needs to destroy the dinner party and make everyone unsuccessful in what they're all trying to do. I think it's a great strategy move for Marcel to get out there early, incidentally -- the guy's a decent schmooze in a certain way, and it's pretty much always an advantage to get yourself on the radar early. As Marcel pours the wine and introduces himself to Debi, he says that the service started off well, with everybody helping. Back in the kitchen, while Marcel is working, Betty and Ilan knock fists over a vow to have it be Marcel who goes home .
Everyone helps serve Sam's ceviche, which is appealingly presented in what look to me like pairs of dessert glasses, one with the ceviche in it and one with the popcorn. Debi finds it "fantastic." Betty, however, is back in the kitchen trying to "plate" her soups, which consists of squirting them into champagne flutes with a squirt bottle. She can't get it to work, and she's getting the insides of the glasses all gross. She should realize -- or she should have realized sooner -- that this icky look is how the glasses will immediately look once people start drinking the soups out of them. But she doesn't, of course. Everyone is helping, but the problem is that as soon as the glasses even jiggle, they slop the soups around in the glass, and it makes that gross buildup on the inside of the glass. Sam says in an interview that he didn't think this was a great idea, but he acknowledges that he didn't tell this to Betty. She explains the soups to the guests, and you know how they usually have the beauty shot of each dish to show you what it is? Even in the beauty shot, the soup looks gross, sloppy on the insides of the glasses. It just can't be done neatly. The other reason I thought this was stupid is that to me, champagne flutes exactly say "elaborate," which is the opposite of slothful, in a sense. If you were going to do this, you'd serve them in... what, rough stoneware mugs or something, right? Something that looks like you just threw it together. There's nothing lazy about crystal. It's imbued with the fact that it involves careful unpacking and careful handling and hand-washing. I don't think she could have picked a worse way to present these soups, honestly. Colicchio immediately says he doesn't like the texture, and the guest judge agrees. Ted points out that the soup wasn't strained properly, and that's part of why it's so thick and hangs on the side of the glass looking icky. Colicchio finally acknowledges that hey, at least it's lazy in its way. Ouch.
In the kitchen, Michael asks Sam to go out and introduce his dish, because Michael's face looks pretty nasty, and he thinks it will be unappetizing to look at him when you're about to eat. Sam agrees. Michael does tell us that he's really happy with the way his food turned out. But when Sam gets out there to speak for Michael, Colicchio is having none of it, and the other guests join him in demanding Michael's appearance. Michael emerges from the kitchen and explains about the tooth. He also explains that the trout is envious of the salmon. That looks really good, I have to say, with the sautéed vegetables and the lemon-thyme beurre blanc. I would eat that for sure. Everyone digs in and immediately loves it. "Our Michael did this?" Colicchio asks, and Padma confirms. "He should get his tooth pulled every day," Colicchio suggests.
Back from commercials, Cliff is setting up his bouillabaisse. He presents it and explains about greed. The thing is, it's not like it's overflowing the bowl or anything. I mean, I get why it might be good, but I don't really get why it would be greedy. Neither does Debi, and when she asks, Cliff says, "The amount of seafood is, uh, quite succulent." What a bad answer. Wow. The guests eat, and Ted says that the broth is his favorite part of a bouillabaisse, and he's not crazy about one that intentionally has less broth. It's not so much greedy as it is miserly, which is an unfortunate misfire.
And now, Elia and her chickens of pride. As soon as she says it's roasted chicken, there is applause from people who are happy to see something they recognize. She carves the chickens tableside, which people seem to enjoy. Everybody seems very pleased with the chicken. Ted comments to the guest judge that he spends his life trying to get good at roasted chicken, and that this is a good one. Debi calls it "clear, uncomplicated, and nourishing." In other words, "I'm glad she didn't serve it in soup spoons or some shit like that."
Marcel is working on preparing his dish, and while Michael offers to help him, he says he's okay. In an interview, Marcel says that if he has time to do things himself, he doesn't like too many people around hovering over him. We watch as he pipes cream between two little wafers, puts some cherries on top, and adds the cherry foam. The foam, the foam! He turns over to Elia the job of putting a schmear of chocolate sauce on every plate. "Betty," he says, "please take out this bowl of cherries." There is then a voice that says, "Marcel, hold up for one second." "Holding up," Marcel responds. Padma's blog revealed that the "hold up" voice is a producer, who tells the cheftestants to wait so that camera shots can be set up, so that's why they need to wait. "Marcel, I'm starting," Betty announces. "No, don't go!" Marcel calls out, because the producers have told him to wait. As you can imagine, Betty freaks out in her interview about how incredibly rude this was and so forth. And somehow, this shows "what the guy is made out of." Yes, because he failed to speak politely to you after you didn't listen to the producer and Marcel was trying to keep from screwing up the shot. He's made of cooperative reality-show contestant, in this instance. Ilan continues to pump this up, saying in disbelief, "He starts barking? Barking at us?" Ilan announces that the plan is to refuse to serve Marcel's dish. "Come on, you guys," Elia says, frustrated. "No. No!" Ilan insists. Elia tells us she feels bad for Marcel, "because he's built so many enemies."
Marcel comes back to the kitchen and looks for help with serving, but everyone is chilling on the patio. He asks if they can help serve, and Ilan's all, "You want to apologize to Betty first, for barking at her?" I wonder if Sam apologized for screaming at Marcel before Marcel helped serve Sam's dish. I wonder if Ilan was planning on apologizing for all the "Fuck you, virgin!" bullying before he expected any help serving his shitty dessert. "Never snap at me again!" Betty, ironically, snaps. "Say 'I'm sorry' to Betty right now," Ilan demands. "I'm sorry, Betty," Marcel says, quite nicely. "Yeah, I really believe you," she snots back. Okay, so... Ilan demanded the apology by blackmailing Marcel with the ruining of dinner. And Marcel apologized perfectly nicely. And then Betty told him to go screw. You can just tell how the momentum is going here, that Ilan and Betty have no idea how this is going to come across. They're coasting on the idea that they're going to come off as the good guys, and Marcel as the villain, and that everyone's going to cheer every move they make to put him in his place. They have no idea, you can tell -- no idea -- that they're coming off like petty bullies, and that they're making at least some of us feel bad for Marcel, even if we normally can't stand Marcel. Because being know-it-all-y and having poor social skills is irritating, but it's not as bad as being a mean bully and ganging up on one guy to amuse yourself.
Marcel explains his dish to the diners, calling lust his favorite of the sins. I have to admit, I see the cherry foam, but I don't know what the gelee is. I have a feeling it's the other thing on the plate besides the chocolate sauce schmear. It's like Jell-O, right? Okay, then I get it. I don't like this kind of presentation, by the way, where things are painted on the plate. I find it too precious, and as soon as you start eating, you mess it up. Sopranos lady has a suggestion: Marcel should have fed them the cherries. So, because she's basically asking, he heads over. Not only does he feed her a cherry, but he then drizzles chocolate sauce into her mouth, which is pretty bold. Back in the kitchen, the rest of the cheftestants are watching through the doors, and you can tell there's a tiny part of Sam that can't help weirdly admiring this display, as much as he doesn't like Marcel. Like, you have to admit, the kid has something, as much of a little freak as he is. "Are they saying bad things?" Ilan says hopefully. "Come on," Sam redirects. "Let's go on your plates." See? Did you see that? Just for a second, Sam's humanity sneaked out, and he gained a tiny bit of perspective, and it made him impatient with Ilan's assy behavior. When Marcel gets to the kitchen, he's creeping around in exaggerated embarrassment, and Elia asks him if she actually just saw him pour chocolate down that lady's throat. He confirms that he did.
Unfortunately, as nice as the spectacle was, Ted Allen has noted that "Marcel is into foam," and Padma says they get foam from him every week. Debi Mazar, in a comment I simply cannot believe she made up spontaneously, says, "I just feel like the dish was prepared by somebody who hasn't had as much sex as he really needs to, to make a dish to make you really feel like you want to fuck." It's a great line, and everyone laughs, but I do not believe it. Come on. "This tastes like a virgin made it" is not credible from somebody who doesn't know the back story. Ilan, meanwhile, has his funnel cakes out on a tray. He interviews that he's taking a risk by taking the last course and doing pastries, which is kind of a switch from his earlier position that he got incredibly lucky and deserved to be booted if he messed it up. Elia and Sam help Ilan taste his funnel cakes, and everyone agrees they're too crunchy. It turns out that he warmed them in the oven, and I just don't get it, because if you've ever warmed up waffles or pancakes in the oven, you know this -- they toast, basically. How did he not know that the funnel cakes would toast in the oven? The same way he didn't know little fried cakes weren't make-ahead, I guess. What I really don't get is why he didn't just take the batter with him and fry them in the kitchen. Unless they weren't allowed or something, that just seems so obvious, since he's going last and would have had plenty of time. Elia suggests that if he really wants to serve the funnel cakes, he could dip them in simple syrup. That's probably better than crunchy, but it's not going to restore them, and again, it won't last -- they'll be syrup-covered crispy things at first, but then they're going to wilt.
Ilan serves his dish to the guests. He calls the chocolate cakes "extremely decadent," and he just basically keeps on telling and telling instead of showing, explaining just how gluttonous and decadent the dessert is. And then he does this: "I'd actually like to remind you all: cherries are actually supposed to drop your libido. So this'll bring it up. Enjoy!" Wow. That was incredibly tacky. That was, like, groundbreakingly tacky. Ilan tells us he's proud of the food, and doesn't think there will be a problem.
Problems. "Everything's too wet," says Sopranos lady. Ted points out the floppy funnel cake and how it should be crispy on the outside, and Debi says it was just plain too rich. Good parts of this dessert seem to be going uneaten. The cheftestants come out and are applauded. I don't think the guest judge said one thing. Debi thanks them for the great meal, and Padma thanks Debi and the guests, and she says the cheftestants made them all proud.
And now, judges' table. The guest judge says he thinks the challenge was a hard one, and the cheftestants did some interesting work. Asked what he thinks was weakest, he calls out the desserts and the soup. He singles out Michael's envy fish, on the other hand, as particularly good, saying it was simple good food. Who knew that mattered? Ted calls it "the one I just wanted to inhale." Padma says it was more elegant than the perfect roasted chicken, although they all go on to say very nice things about the chicken as well. Colicchio thinks she should have acted more full of herself about it. Can't get balance on that particular quality, can we? He also says he dug the ceviche and popcorn from Sam.
They bring Elia, Michael, and Sam to the first table. They're informed that they're the three best. Padma asks Sam about the popcorn, and Colicchio says he really liked it. Ted says Elia "did chicken proud," and the meat was good and moist and well-done. Ted says it had "soul." Colicchio tells Michael he should take Vicodin more often. Ted compliments him on how well cooked everything was, and how great the fish tasted. The guest judge compliments the flavors. Or the "flay-wers." Or something. He announces that the winner of the challenge is... Michael. Sam and Elia take this well, and Michael says he was proud of winning both challenges this time around. Padma tells them to go back and send in Marcel, Betty, and Ilan. The winners go back to the waiting storage room and fetch the losers.
Loser table. Padma says they were the least favorites. She starts with Ilan, asking if he knows why he's here. He blames the funnel cake, and Colicchio wants to know why he even served the cakes when they turned out so badly. Ilan attempts to blame Elia, saying she told him to dip them in syrup. He tries to change the subject by asking them if they liked the brittle and the cake, and in a moment I just love, Colicchio makes it clear that they were only okay, too. Ted says it was at least good to have the crisp brittle when the remainder of the dessert was, as people pointed out, soggy. Ilan tries to congratulate himself for taking risks, but Colicchio wants to talk about the part where he "slammed Marcel's dish." "You slammed my dish?" Marcel turns and asks. Ilan insists that he was just trying to be playful and funny. "Whatever. C'est la vie. I don't care. Let's talk about the food," Marcel says. He's clearly more bothered than that, but at least he has the dignity not to get into it.
I'm not sure Ted Allen is totally down with Marcel being in the bottom group, because he goes out of his way to say how beautiful he thought the dish was and how much he loved the taste of fresh cherries. I think he would have had Cliff and his unsatisfactory broth in this spot. But asked to talk about weaknesses in Marcel's dish, Ted just thinks it wasn't "lusty enough." Ilan smirks. Oh my God, WE GET IT, stud. You've had half the population of your city. WE GET IT. Padma, on the other hand, wants to talk foam. As in, what's with the foam? Over and over, foam foam foam. The guest judge didn't think the foam was "belonging to the dish." Marcel doesn't say much, or what he says, we don't see.
Betty says that the first thing that she thought of for sloth was slow-roasted vegetables. Colicchio asks her a question that's never good news, which is whether she tasted everything before she served it. She says she did. He questions her texture, saying it wasn't smooth, and wondering if that was on purpose. She says no, and says she put it through a China cap (THAT's what it's called!). Colicchio also wasn't wild about the combinations of flavors, and the guest judge thinks it would have been better as a simpler set of soups. Asked who she would send home, Betty says, far too eagerly, "I would love to see Marcel go home." That just makes it way too obvious that it's personal, and you invalidate your own opinion before you even start. She says that the gelee "had no flavor at all." Ilan, too, says he'd send Marcel home. He agrees with Betty that there was no flavor in the gelee. Marcel points out to the other two that he made the gelee from 100 percent juice, naming the brand he used and asking if they actually know anything about it. "Check your palates; get 'em tested," he says. They kind of deserved that one. He tells the judges that other people clearly have personal issues with him, but he doesn't consider it a personality contest. Asked who should go home, Marcel picks Ilan, saying the dessert was generally a sloppy mess.
The judges deliberate. Back in the back room, Ilan gleefully tells the others that they bickered back and forth about "how much we all hate Marcel," and Marcel tells Elia that they both said his dish was the worst. Ilan is still smirking his ass off about how the gelee had no flavor, because Ilan really, really didn't notice that who was going home was completely between him and Betty, because the judges clearly didn't hate what Marcel did anywhere near as much as what they did. Marcel tells Ilan that he's lost whatever small respect he had for him before, but Ilan cuts him off to bellow that he's wanted to smack Marcel across the face since the first day. Well, that's adorable. "Why don't you fucking go to a new school, learn some shit, go to France, go to Spain, go travel, go relax, go learn how to use some fucking salt, paprika, come back to me, you know, come to New York, maybe I'll show you how to cook a little bit." Big talk from a guy who just served floppy, syrup-soaked funnel cakes and claims to have had no idea that it was going to happen that way. Marcel looks untroubled. "Until then, shut the fuck up, keep making your foams, and go cry in a corner." Oh, dear. Ilan really, really has no idea what's happening here. Because the thing is... Marcel doesn't cry. He doesn't get upset. That's why Ilan hates him, is that Marcel doesn't really care what Ilan thinks, or he's very good at acting like he doesn't. He is truly arrogant, in that other people dissing him only makes him think they're stupid. I don't think this is getting to him all that much, and it's certainly getting to him less than he's getting to Ilan.
The judges are discussing. Colicchio points out that the three dishes were the worst of a generally good lot, and that all three of them had issues. Padma complains that "the funnel cake was limp and flaccid." Take that, virgin-hater. Basically, they all hated Ilan's dessert very, very much, and they liked almost nothing about it. They all pretty quickly conclude that Marcel's wasn't really that bad, and Padma really liked the gelee. Colicchio thinks it's really gross how Betty and Ilan attacked that dish as the worst when it clearly wasn't, and Ted thinks the personality conflicts are tiresome. They do agree it wasn't lusty enough. On the topic of Betty's soups, everyone agrees the texture was terrible, and she should have put them through a chinoise instead. I have to say, even Wikipedia knows the difference between a chinoise and a China cap. Also, Colicchio thinks the flavors were nothing to write home about.
They call the three losers back in. Colicchio talks about the challenge, and about the fact that they each "committed a culinary sin." Ilan's dish sucked. Marcel's dish wasn't lustful. Betty's soup was bad and gross-looking. Padma announces that the person going home is Betty. Ha! Ilan and Betty hug. Marcel looks at Betty, prepared, I think, to offer something gracious if she wants to look at him and make eye contact, which she doesn't, because she's embarrassed. Betty tells us that she was "blessed" to be with these people, but she's very unhappy that she didn't last longer than Marcel, because she thinks she deserved to. She just knows she's talented. "I am a winner!" she says. Even though she's totally not a winner. She came in seventh. But don't tell her.
time: I return to Lean Cuisine, and your recapper returns to you.
The judges are discussing. Colicchio points out that the three dishes were the worst of a generally good lot, and that all three of them had issues. Padma complains that "the funnel cake was limp and flaccid." Take that, virgin-hater. Basically, they all hated Ilan's dessert very, very much, and they liked almost nothing about it. They all pretty quickly conclude that Marcel's wasn't really that bad, and Padma really liked the gelee. Colicchio thinks it's really gross how Betty and Ilan attacked that dish as the worst when it clearly wasn't, and Ted thinks the personality conflicts are tiresome. They do agree it wasn't lusty enough. On the topic of Betty's soups, everyone agrees the texture was terrible, and she should have put them through a chinoise instead. I have to say, even Wikipedia knows the difference between a chinoise and a China cap. Also, Colicchio thinks the flavors were nothing to write home about.
They call the three losers back in. Colicchio talks about the challenge, and about the fact that they each "committed a culinary sin." Ilan's dish sucked. Marcel's dish wasn't lustful. Betty's soup was bad and gross-looking. Padma announces that the person going home is Betty. Ha! Ilan and Betty hug. Marcel looks at Betty, prepared, I think, to offer something gracious if she wants to look at him and make eye contact, which she doesn't, because she's embarrassed. Betty tells us that she was "blessed" to be with these people, but she's very unhappy that she didn't last longer than Marcel, because she thinks she deserved to. She just knows she's talented. "I am a winner!" she says. Even though she's totally not a winner. She came in seventh. But don't tell her.
time: I return to Lean Cuisine, and your recapper returns to you.