It's a good thing the winner didn't get a feature in Gourmet magazine, right? Quickfire Challenge judged by Tyler Florence and sponsored by cookstr.com: Create a dish inspired by three keywords chosen at random in 30 minutes. The bottom three are Robin with a curry hash, Eli with a mushroom ceviche, and Jennifer (!) with caviar-topped scallops. The top three are Mike I. with a raw mushroom salad, Kevin with a Vietnamese salad, and Michael V. with a yuzu curd dessert. And the winner is… Kevin! Who admitted that he's pretty much never cooked Asian food before, so bully for him. For his prize, he gets to choose between immunity or $15,000, and he takes the money.
Elimination Challenge: Work in pairs to create a family-style dish for an at-home dinner party for a group of chefs and the judges. The dinner will be served in the Top Chef house. There's limited space and limited appliances, which leads to some issues with circuit breakers for the team of Mike V. and Ash, which then leads to a dish that has undercooked pancetta surrounding overcooked halibut. It's also interesting to see which teams create a true collaboration (Jen and Kevin) and which ones have one chef taking the lead and the other following (Mike V. and Ash, Mike I. and Robin). The dishes served are:
Eli and Ashley: grilled spot prawns with red beet crème fraiche sauce, gnocchi, and kale.
Robin and Mike I.: marinated mushroom and pickled Asian pear roll with seared tuna and scallop.
Laurine and Bryan: halibut with sherry-chorizo vinaigrette, yellow corn cake, and avocado mousse.
Kevin and Jen: BBQ Kobe beef with cardamom, tomato, and ginger broth.
Michael V. and Ash: pancetta-wrapped halibut with egg yolk ravioli, asparagus, and fennel salad.
The top teams are Laurine and Bryan, and Jen and Kevin. While all get praise, the judges decide that Jen and Kevin's dish was the best, and the sauce was the greatest part of that dish. Since Jen made the sauce, she is the winner, and she also gets a $10,000 gift card from Macy's.
The bottom teams are Michael V. and Ash, and Eli and Ashley. The judges uncover that Michael V. did all the work and Ash acted as a sous chef. They have lots of criticism of Ashley's uncooked prawns and Eli's cooking of Ashley's overly salted gnocchi as well. In the end, the judges decide that Ashley had a hand in two bad dishes, and she gets sent packing.
It's morning in the house, and Eli and Michael V. are making breakfast for everyone. It doesn't look like anything too fancy: bacon, fried eggs, some other unidentified food. But it's still a nice gesture. Ash interviews that he sometimes feels inadequate because he didn't go to culinary school, but some of the other chefs, like Michael V., don't act like typical culinary school grads anyway. And also Ash wants to prove that you don't need culinary school to succeed. Based on his performances so far, which have included many trips to the bottom two, he's not doing so well with that. I don't think it's necessarily a factor of going to culinary school or not, but it may be that people who are really serious about becoming chefs tend to go to culinary school?
Michael V. explains that he has two daughters, 5 and 9, and he needs to do well in the competition or else he will feel like his time away from them was wasted time. Whoa. I would never have pegged him as a dad. He's only 30; he had those kids pretty young. In other tales of epic struggle, Jen is not feeling well this morning. Hungover? Just tired out? She explains that she's worked sick many times and she just wants to make it through the Quickfire. I hope she's hungover and not the type of sick that is contagious, because I definitely wouldn't want to eat her food if she's coughing germs all over it. Jen tells Ashley that she's about to throw up. I'm still voting hangover.
Quickfire Challenge. The chefs arrive in the kitchen, and are greeted by Padma and Tyler Florence. What the fuck is Padma wearing? It's a silky green jumpsuit that looks like it was left over from Cher's Vegas show. But it's not something you would wear, you know, if you weren't on stage. Which I guess she is, in a sense, but not really. The cheftestants do their typical interview love-fest on Tyler Florence, although you can kind of tell that they don't REALLY respect him, because he's a TV chef. I mean, he's not Hubert Keller or something. Plus, he endorses a chain restaurant and he's achieved mainstream success. HERETIC! Burn him! I honestly don't care one way or the other, and I've never eaten his food, so who knows? But I do find the food snobbery that surrounds this show kind of hilarious because it is, you know, on television.
Anyway, the Quickfire is sponsored by a cooking website that didn't pay me to promote them so I'm not going to, but basically, you can search for recipes by keyword. And because they're in Vegas, they're going to use a slot machine to assign each cheftestant three keywords. And it's a high stakes Quickfire, but we don't know the stakes yet. So hopefully, it's not elimination because that would be a mean last-minute announcement.
Each cheftestant comes up and pulls the slot machine's arm, and we start to get a taste for how dumb the keywords are. It seems to be a word that describes a mood (romantic, stressed (?), blue, etc.) and then a word that describes a flavor (spicy, tart, cheesy, umami, etc.) and then a type of cuisine (Latin American, Asian, etc.). But some of the mood words make no sense. Stressed? How do you make food that is stressed? That is just dumb, especially for a Quickfire, where you have very little time to ruminate on what stressed food might be. We don't get to see everyone's words, so I won't list them out here, but I'll explain them when I list the final dishes made. Also, one of the flavor words is cheesy, which doesn't seem to fit the category very well.
Various cheftestants try to explain to us what umami means. Eli goes right for the mushrooms, since one of his words is umami, and he interprets it as meaning "earthy." And then everyone else who has umami wants mushrooms, but Eli is loath to give them up. Mike I. is freaked out because he's never cooked Asian food, and that's his assigned style. Ashley has Middle Eastern, which is out of her comfort zone, but she's feeling more confident since she's been in the top recently. Robin is also confident after winning the last Quickfire, even if she knows her fellow cheftestants hate her. Jen is sick. Don't know if I mentioned that. She's not confident in her food as a result. They are really pushing the Jen no-confidence thing lately, and I've noticed that a lot of the other cheftestants don't put her in their top four, even though she's won a lot of challenges. Sexism? Hard to say.
Time to eat! I'm going to put each dish in its own paragraph for clarity.
Mike I. had stressed, umami, and Asian. So is he supposed to smush some mushrooms and then stir fry them? This is why, among many reasons, I would fail on this show. Anyway, he made a raw mushroom salad with yuzu emulsion. He doesn't explain how that fits his keywords, and the judges don't ask, that we see.
Laurine had romantic, tart, and Latin American. See, her words kind of make sense. I can see how a dish could be romantic. Anyway, her interpretation was crusted goat cheese salad with orange jalapeno vinaigrette and hibiscus flowers. I don't know how it tastes, but I think it fits her theme.
Ash had tired, tart, and Italian, so he made "pantry" pasta puttanesca. He doesn't talk much about the ingredients, so I'm not sure how puttanesca is tart. There's another mound of pasta to it, but he doesn't say what that is, and they don't ask. So you know he's not winning.
Michael V. had adventurous, tangy, and Asian, so he made a yuzu curd with whipped Greek yogurt and seaweed cracker. I guess it's adventurous because he made a dessert, but I'm not sure how Greek yogurt fits into the Asian theme. Tyler likes the flavor combination.
Eli has stressed, umami, and Latin so he made a mushroom ceviche with avocado marble. I still don't get stressed and no one is explaining it to me. Tyler kind of pulls a face when he tastes it, and Eli shrugs like, "Maybe it wasn't stressed enough."
Kevin had stressed, spicy, and Asian, so he made char-grilled pork with Vietnamese herb salad. He explains to Padma that he has never really cooked Asian food before, but presumably he's eaten Asian food, so at least he understands the flavor profile, right?
Bryan had adventurous, crispy, and Asian, so he made seared scallops with bok choy and tempura beads. And that's adventurous because...of the tempura beads? Which I assume would just be little hunks of deep-fried batter? Tyler points out that it's a kind of general Asian, whereas Kevin chose a specific Asian cuisine.
Robin had stressed, umami, and Middle Eastern, and she made a root vegetable hash with cumin and curry oil. I don't know enough about umami to judge if she fulfilled that keyword, and I've already made my feelings about stressed pretty well-known. So did she at least make a Middle Eastern dish? Padma points out that curry isn't really Middle Eastern. And Padma would know, being born in India. Robin kind of babbles for a minute before admitting that Padma is right.
Ashley had blue, cheesy, and Middle Eastern. Weird that she's the only one who got those first two words, no? Tyler laughs that it's a pretty tough combination. She made feta pudding with sumac dusted halibut. All of those words kind of gross me out, both individually, and together.
Jen had adventurous, nutty, and American, so she made Maine diver scallops with pistachios and salmon roe. And she even explains how each component fits each keyword, so that makes me happy, even if the judges don't seem impressed.
Tyler is ready to announce his favorites and least favorites, but first acknowledges that it was a difficult challenge. His least favorites were Robin, because her dish wasn't Middle Eastern, Eli, because he drowned out the umami flavor with citrus, and Jen, because he didn't think her dish was adventurous. I thought other dishes met their keywords less successfully, but maybe if I'd heard their full explanations, I would feel differently.
Now for the favorites: Mike I, whose food was "fresh and delicious," Kevin, who made a cuisine he'd never cooke
d before, and Michael V., who had a great flavor combination. And the winner is...Kevin! So what was the high stakes? Kevin gets a choice: immunity, or $15,000. Kevin decides to take the money, and Padma is FIRED UP. Probably because it might introduce an element of drama, if he ends up in the bottom three and he could have saved himself. Except it's Kevin, so you know he won't end up in the bottom three, so the drama is kind of nonexistent.Padma explains that they will be going home for a special dinner party in celebration of "the at-home chef," at their own home. And that's when they'll find out about the Elimination Challenge. So they head home.
So they all get back to the house and discover that the food has been really stocked up in the kitchen at their house. The fridge is full, and the pantry is full. And Padma is there! She invites them outside where it's crazy hot, so she can explain the challenge. Jen interviews that it's kind of exhausting to have twists every day, but whatta you gonna do?
Elimination Challenge. Once everyone is outside and sweating, Padma gives some speech about "tough economic times" and "home cooking" and Macy's. There are a bunch of famous chefs (Tyler Florence, Nancy Silverton, Govind Armstrong, Takashi Yagihashi, and Tom Douglas) holding grocery bags. The cheftestants will be paired up and given the contents of one of the grocery bags. They have three hours to create a family-style dish for the dinner party.
Mike I. is dismayed to hear that he's paired with Robin. Ash is a bit intimidated about working with Michael V., since he thinks Michael has a lot of good ideas and Ash isn't sure how he'll be able to fit into them. Ashley is pleased to cook with Eli, due to his experience in restaurants.
The cheftestants all sprint back inside. Mike I. actually takes a digger and trips Eli on his way down. But they have to cook in the house, and there really isn't that much cooking space, so people are left to prep in places like the dining room and the rec room. Mike I. interviews that he was "livid" about having to work with Robin, but he decided to just do his own thing and not worry about her. So he only wants to work on a team when it's with one of his beloved Volts, huh? He's not confident enough in his own ability to lead by talent? Meanwhile, Michael V. makes the executive decision for his team to cook using electric woks and a hotplate or something, since there's not enough stove space.
Kevin and Jen are together, which is such a dream team. They go through the grocery bag they were given and discover mostly Asian condiments, so looks like Kevin is making Asian food once again. Meanwhile, Eli and Ashley look through their ingredients, and Ashley suggests gnocchi. I feel like this is becoming Top Gnocchi for her, and she's just kind of forcing it into dishes where it doesn't necessarily work, but Eli is on board.
Mike I. asks Robin if she's ever worked with Asian before. Robin says she has, and Mike admits that he really hasn't, and there are a lot of ingredients he's unfamiliar with. And yet, Mike has decided that the best way to deal with the situation is to just make his food and ignore Robin and not let her contribute. So we'll see how that works out.
Kevin and Jen discover Kobe beef ribs in their bag. You know, what all of us eat at home in these hard economic times. Jen seems to be feeling better, which doesn't make me stop thinking she just had a hangover.
Ash interviews that every time he has a suggestion about what they should cook, Michael comes up with something even better and makes him feel dumb. Not on purpose, but he's just saying that Michael is a way more inventive and creative chef. So Ash's decision is to just go with what Michael wants to do. As long as their food turns out tasty, that could work. As long as their food turns out well.
Mike I. interviews that he's letting Robin do things that won't affect the final product and throwing out all her food. What a dick. I mean, I get that Robin can be super annoying, but in the real world, you don't get to pick your co-workers generally, and sometimes you have to suck it up. She's not THAT bad.
Colicchio shows up to see what's doing. Eli and Ashley explain their dish. Tom is worried about putting prawns on top of gnocchi, but doesn't tell them to change it. Mike I. admits that he's unfamiliar with a lot of the flavors, and he's all "I" this and "me" that, and Tom pointedly asks Robin if she's familiar with the flavors, which she is. up, Tom finds Michael and Ash prepping on the glass dining room table. Michael explains the concept of their dish, and Colicchio points out that their dish relies on really good timing. Michael isn't worried.
In his post-interview, Colicchio says that it's tough to have so many chefs sharing a small space. He points out that Kevin gave up immunity, so he's at risk, and expressed doubt again about putting prawns on top of gnocchi. Colicchio thinks this challenge will rely a lot on timing at the end, and the chefs who can figure that out will do well.
Michael V. is working on cooking his fish, so Ash runs outside to set the table. So he didn't do any of the meal planning and now he's really not doing much of the cooking either. Meanwhile, Ashley is cooking the gnocchi and the prawns, so I'm not sure what Eli is doing.
The music lets us know that something bad has happened. Michael started cooking his pancetta-wrapped halibut. Things seemed to be going well, so he stepped away, and his hot plate blew a circuit. So obviously, the fish stopped cooking, and I think it was a while before he noticed. Michael explains that, with fish, you can't cook it a bit, and then stop and start again. Michael and Ash try to figure out how to salvage their dish, but neither seems hopeful.
Mike I. continues to make it all about himself, as he claims that Robin is burning HIS tuna, and he's stressed and he's worried and blah blah blah. Instead of being a human being and perhaps talking to Robin about how she's cooking the tuna, he just complains and whines and whatever. Sick of him.
Ashley interviews that Eli oversalted the gnocchi, and she's worried, but it's not like you can UNsalt them at this point. Ash and Michael know that their fish is overcooked, but given what happened to them, they're lucky it's not raw or rubbery.
After a commercial for Macy's, the cheftestants bring out their food and introduce their dishes, which are:
Eli and Ashley: grilled spot prawns with red beet crème fraiche sauce, gnocchi, and kale.
Robin and Mike I.: marinated mushroom and pickled Asian pear roll with seared tuna and scallop.
Laurine and Bryan: halibut with sherry-chorizo vinaigrette, yellow corn cake, and avocado mousse.
Kevin and Jen: BBQ Kobe beef with cardamom, tomato, and ginger broth.
Michael V. and Ash: pancetta-wrapped halibut with egg yolk ravioli, asparagus, and fennel salad.
The judges help themselves to the food, and there's not much talk as they dig in. Some of the chefs point out that Michael's pancetta was slightly undercooked, even chewy, while the fish was slightly overcooked. Tom doesn't like the pairing of egg yolk and halibut either. Bryan and Laurine's halibut is said by all to be better than the other halibut dish, based on how it's cooked and the flavor profile.
Now it's time to bitch about Ashley and Eli's dish: it looks pretty, but the gnocchi was overly salted, and the prawns were undercooked. Oops. Jen and Kevin's beef is great, and Jen's broth adds a great smell and flavor to the dish. And finally, Tom reports that Mike and Robin didn't seem to work well together, and yet their dish turned out pretty good, so he can't fault them too much.
The cheftestants sit around and wait for the verdict. Eli keeps talking about how awesome their dish's concept was, and even Ashley seems kind of annoyed with him. He does seem like the type that would need constant validation. Michael frets over whether his halibut was overcooked, and Ash interviews that if they get called out, it was Michael's dish, but admits that perhaps he was blinded by Michael's skillz and didn't oversee the dish as much as he should have. Bryan tries to comfort his brother and assure him that the dish is fine, but Michael ain't having it, because he knows that he sent something out that isn't as good as his usual standards.
Weird interstitial. Mike I. sits there and rolls his eyes while Robin just talks and talks and talks and cleans up their workspace. He could help her clean. Then he wouldn't be subjected to her for so long; once their space is clean, he could go kiss up to the Volt brothers some more.
Judges' Table. Padma comes in and asks to see Laurine, Bryan, Jen, and Kevin. They are immediately told that they are the top two teams, and then the judges try to figure out which team member was responsible for which component, since the winner is individual. On their team, Kevin was responsible for the meat and Jen was responsible for the tomato broth. For the other team, Laurine explains that Bryan did the fish and came up with the concept for the chorizo vinaigrette, while Laurine executed that and the polenta/corn cake. Tyler announces that the winning dish is Kevin and Jennifer's beef, and the best part was Jennifer's sauce, so she wins. And she gets a $10,000 gift card from Macy's. That is so much better than the prize Kevin got last week. Jen points out that it's her first Elimination Challenge win, too.
The winners send in the losers: Michael, Ash, Eli, and Ashley. Once they are gone, Kevin wants to talk about Michael and Ash's dish, to try to understand what went wrong, but Bryan kind of blows him off and says that he doesn't want to talk about someone else's dish behind their back. He kind of sharply says to Kevin: "You didn't try it, did you?" Kevin seems chagrinned. I get what Bryan was saying, especially since it's his brother, but he could have been less of a dick about it.
In front of the judges, Michael starts right up by saying that he knows his fish was overcooked and explains about the technical problems. The judges don't care about the technical problems. Tom thinks they picked the wrong type of fish to start out with. Ash feels like Michael is being attacked a bit and steps up and says that he thought the dish's concept was great and better than anything he could ever come up with. He even says that working with Michael was "like washing paint brushes for Picasso." Dude. You basically just told the judges, "This guy is a way better chef than I could ever even hope to be, so if you're going to send someone home, send me." Then again, he also kind of told them, "I didn't have much to do with this dish, so if you hated it, send him home." Tom points out that Ash just said he kind of sucks, and Ash says that he realizes that even a better chef can make mistakes in execution, so he thinks his own skill in execution will take him far. Except he's made mistakes in execution in the past.
Moving on to Ashley and Eli, Tom asks Eli to talk about what was good with the dish. Eli liked the concept of beets with prawns. Toby adds that the prawns weren't cooked, and Ashley takes responsibility for that. Padma points out that Eli is responsible for the dish they sent out too. Toby thinks gnocchi is a little heavy for an outdoor summer meal, and Ashley is forced to agree. She tries to explain that she knew they were overly salted without coming right out and saying that Eli was the one that salted them. Eli still thinks it was a great dish and doesn't get it, while Ashley is practically crying because she knows their dish was bad, and it wasn't entirely her fault, but she also has some integrity and doesn't want to screw her teammate over. And of course, as far as we know, Eli doesn't step up and take credit for his mistakes.
Back in the Stew Room, Ash chuckles that he might have talked the judges into sending him home. The judges discuss this very thing, and wonder if Ash was even at the level of Michael's sous chef, or lower. Back in the Stew Room, Michael thanks Ash for saying such nice things about him. Colicchio thinks Michael is obviously responsible for the dish, and the dish had problems. In the Stew Room, Michael agrees with the judges about the technical problems not being an excuse, because if equipment fails in your restaurant, you can't go out to the patrons and use that as an excuse for bad food. Then again, in a restaurant, you could presumably remake the dish or offer a substitute. So I don't think Michael and Ash should get a pass, but I think it should be taken into account.
The judges talk about Ashley and Eli's dish. Tom points out that Ashley was responsible for most of the dish, having had a hand in the prawns and the gnocchi both. They sort of suss out that Eli was probably responsible for oversalting the gnocchi, though. So for both teams, it comes down to figuring out the worse sin: taking on more responsibility and then serving a bad dish, or serving as a sous chef and not abdicating responsibility for the dish as a whole?
The bottom four come back out to face the judges. I wonder how long they are made to stand there and stare at each other until production gets their establishing shots. Tom points out that team challenges are difficult but usually it is one person responsible for a dish's failure, even on a team. Ashley was responsible for the undercooked shrimp, and had a hand in the gnocchi. Michael was responsible for a concept that was only okay, and overcooked halibut. So who's going home? Ashley is told to pack her knives and go. Michael lets out a breath and looks incredibly relieved. I'm bummed that Ashley made such a comeback in the past few weeks and is going home ahead of Robin, Ash, and Eli, all of whom I think she is better than. Also possibly Laurine. Well, she wasn't going to win, so I guess it doesn't matter in the end. And I still hate her hair. And her tuxedo T-shirt. But she was starting to grow on me.
Watch Ashley's exclusive exit interview video.
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