By Kim
Quickfire Challenge: Guest judge is my sweetheart Isaac Mizrahi? Have you seen Unzipped? You really, really must. Now, it's not only a great movie, but totally a time capsule. Anyway, the challenge is to make a plate that will be judged on presentation and aesthetics only. The judges won't even taste it. The judging is hilarious because the chefs clearly don't get Isaac and he just rips into them. I don't blame them, because it's not their goal to make beautiful plates, but it's funny to watch. The winner is Blais, who makes a really cool-looking frozen black and green and white…thing. I didn't like that the ingredients totally didn't matter. I think the dishes should have been required to be edible, at least. I just got the best idea. They should have made the CHEF take a bit of the finished product to prove it was edible. Or have the chefs taste one another's dishes. That way the judging wouldn't be influenced by the flavors, but we would know if they were edible. I am a genius. So anyway, Blais gets immunity.
Elimination Challenge: Cook an Italian feast for the Pellegrino family, which owns Rao's, the famed New York Italian restaurant. They are each assigned either antipasti (starter), primo (pasta), or secondi (meat). The guest judges are Lorraine Bracco, and various members of the Rao's staff and family.
Antipasti
Carla: minestrone soup with basil oil, tomatoes and homemade focaccia. The soup is great, but nothing outstanding.
Antonia: mussels with fennel, white wine, garlic and parsley ciabatta. The judges find that it brings up warm family memories, and they can't stop eating it.
Tiffany: polenta terrine with Italian sausage, roasted peppers and kale. It gets rave reviews from the diners.
Primi
Mike: spicy calamari, fresh rigatoni in tomato sauce. Mike's rigatoni are undercooked, which he knows but runs out of time.
Dale: fresh pasta, pancetta, Brussels sprouts, chanterelle mushrooms and pecorino romano. The judges don't like that there's no sauce and nothing to pull the components together.
Tre: grilled vegetable risotto, marinated tomatoes and fresh basil. The judges think that he didn't feature the risotto enough.
Secondi
Fabio: pollo alla cacciatore polenta al pecorino. The judges have nothing but praise for him.
Angelo: sautéed pork chop, cherry peppers, green olives, tomatoes and pancetta. The judges think he had a little too much garnish, and it was too complicated.
Blais: fresh pancetta cutlet, broccolini and pickled cherry tomatoes. The judges liked how simple it was.
The top four are Antonia, Carla, Fabio and Tiffany, and the winner is Antonia for making a family-style dish. The bottom three are Mike, Dale and Tre. Mike knew his pasta was undercooked. Dale is told that his dish wasn't properly pulled together with a sauce. Colicchio gives Tre a lesson in how risotto is supposed to be creamy and spreads out. Ultimately, Tre is sent packing.
Read up on who's who among the All-Stars, discuss the episode in our forums, then watch Mike scramble to finish his pasta, below!
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After Marcel's elimination, the cheftestants sit around in that one bar they go to after eliminations and discuss how Marcel was well-trained, but he made one mistake and was sent home. Shit just got real! Not really. It got real when Jen was sent home so early. Anyway, Tre is the one that makes this observation. Foreshadowing or super foreshadowing? Mike is regaling everyone with how he settled Marcel's hash during Judges' Table, and to my shock and dismay, Mike is being loud and annoying! What? This isn't the Mike I know and love! (This is exactly the Mike I know and don't love.) Antonia is totally on my side; she is ready for Mike to go home. Me too, girl!
The cheftestants walk into the kitchen to find Padma and Isaac Mizrahi standing there. Angelo lets us know about his passion for fashion, as evidenced by his continued penchant for dressing like the Good Humor man with all the white pants all of the time. Fabio wondered if they would have to make a dish and then wear it. He gives a hilarious head shake as if to say, "I know that makes no sense, but Isaac Mizrahi being a judge also makes no sense." It only makes sense if you are a Bravo executive who realizes that no one ever talks about (or watches) The Fashion Show and so you need to put Isaac on a show that people actually watch to promote his own show.
Isaac (who I love dearly) talks about how his new collection was inspired by his Xerox machine. I know this sounds like nonsense, because it is, but have you seen Unzipped? Isaac is crazy and weird but adorable and endearing, and it's also a fantastic mid-'90s time capsule with tons of celebrity cameos. You should watch it. I will never say a bad word about Isaac because of it. Anyway, Isaac and Padma put a lot of work into convincing us that food and fashion are related, which is a stretch, and then Padma says that they won't be tasting the food today. Instead, they have to make a dish that will be judged purely on aesthetics. Okay, this challenge is kind of bullshit. I don't have a problem with a dish being judged purely on aesthetics, but I think it should have to be edible. In the recaplet, I suggested that the cheftestants should have to taste one another's food, just to prove that it's edible, and then the judges can decide based on aesthetics. It's like those cakes that look amazing and like works of art but taste like crap: not interested. Carla drops the bomb that she used to be a runway model in France, and that's what led to her getting into food. I actually knew that because I just watched a random old episode from her season -- I think it was the one where Jamie was eliminated -- and she mentioned that. I wish they would show a photo of her walking the runway. That would be awesome.
Fabio likes to focus on flavor over presentation, so he's not a fan of this challenge, but his inspiration is "a beautiful woman walking in the rain trying to don't get messed up by the water." That is the most specific inspiration I have ever heard and it has nothing to do with food. I love how Fabio's brain works. Blais says that the difficulty is wrapping your head around the fact that you don't have to eat the food. I don't even know how chefs of their caliber would do that. Anyway, Blais is using dry ice (shocker) to make black ice cream, since Isaac always wears black. Antonia isn't even cooking, just building a plate based on The Giving Tree. That book is bullshit. Way to teach kids to be a martyr. That's healthy. Anyway, Dale is basing his plate on a picture of street graffiti that he just bought his girlfriend, and Tiffany is basing hers on nature. Angelo used to want to be a food stylist, so he's sure he knows how to make food look pretty, and he's inspired by Roberto Cavalli and his use of crocodile skin. Ooooohkay. Fabio laughs that Angelo's dish looks like a bag of vomit, and it totally does. A vacuum-sealed bag of vomit. WTF? And then time is up.
Carla is up first. She has made borscht and sandwich with lattice of cucumber. She's taken half a cucumber and hollowed it out and put it on its end, then poured the pink soup inside. Then there's a tiny round triple decker beet sandwich, on top of a round lattice of cucumber strips. It's cute! I think she could have used more color contrast, though; it's a very green plate. Tre has a plate of smoked salmon, beets, curry noodles, and food coloring. He basically just put dots and lines on the plate, and Isaac says that he can appreciate the abstract style. But it looks like finger painting. Isaac doesn't say that last part. I'm editorializing.
Fabio has written words on his plate, which seems like cheating. He wrote "Style for me is not wear a cool dress or own pieces out of the newest collection of a great designer. My style is the way I'm living my life every day." Should he be dissing designers' collections like that, when the judge is a designer? Just asking. And then the plate itself is very confusing. There's an orange stripe with three lumps of raw tuna that I guess are supposed to be the women walking? And mushrooms for the umbrellas? But it looks like the whole plate is melting? Because he drips lemon juice over the top? Fabio has a weird fetish for pretty women getting rained on or something. That's what I get from this. Tiffany calls it "some bull crap." Heh.
Dale has made a mélange of various ingredients scattered on a plate. It's a mess. Isaac totally nails it when he says it looks like Dale finished cooking and served the dish, and what we're seeing are the scraps left over. Dale's pissed at that assessment, but it's true. Mike says he was inspired by Padma's dress, which is super ugly and bright yellow. So Mike has a plate with egg yolk, cantaloupe, and a bunch of other crap on it. It inspires Isaac to go off on a rant about how delicious raw eggs are, especially when they don't have salmonella. Love him.
Blais has made a really interesting looking plate with black chocolate ice cream, menthol crystals, herbal salad, and mint ice cream dots. It looks like a post-apocalyptic pile of rubble. At least there's some artistry to it. Isaac thinks it's sophisticated. Antonia made a tree with some lentils on the plate. Isaac likes the concept but he thinks the nuts are out of scale, which they are. They're like half the size of the tree. Blais whispers to Dale that they think there's a koala bear in Antonia's dish, and then he and Dale mime being a bear eating leaves, which is funny.
Tiffany went less conceptual and more actual food with a tiny bowl of white almond gazpacho and then a tiny pile of rye crumbs that look like dirt with tiny flowers in it. It's pretty, but a little too minimalist for my tastes. Isaac loves the colors. And then we come to Angelo. He painted the word crocadile ([i]sic[/i]) in chocolate on the table and then has placed his vacuum-sealed bag of vomit on top of an overturned bowl. I know this isn't supposed to be edible, but how would you eat that? And why would you want to? This is horrible on so many levels. Isaac thinks the writing looks like Charles Manson or something. Brilliant.
Time for judging! Isaac thinks it was fun and challenging. His least favorites were Dale, who used bad colors, Tre, who didn't go far enough, and Angelo, for obvious reasons. The favorites were Fabio, who made it look both appetizing and beautiful, Carla, whose dish looked handcrafted and perfect, and Blais, who used color well. The winner, who made the most beautiful dish that looks appetizing, is Blais! So he has immunity from elimination now.
Padma introduces the Elimination Challenge by explaining that they'll be cooking a famed NYC restaurant where you can't get a reservation, and owned tables are passed down to family. It's obviously Rao's, but the cheftestants all look puzzled. Anyway, they draw knives that say Frankie No, Junior, or Dino the Chef. Tre says that it seems like these are Mafia names and it makes him think about either chopping off fingers or digging ditches. I think Tre is a little confused about how the Mafia offs people. Chopping off fingers? Isn't that the Yakuza? Digging ditches? I don't even know. Anyway, in walk Frankie Pellegrino (Frankie No), owner of Rao's, his son Frankie Jr. (Junior), and Dino, the chef (Dino the Chef).
Frankie No explains that Rao's has been in his family for four generations, and the challenge is to cook a dish inspired by Rao's, and the Italian food created by his family. Padma explains that they will be divided into three groups. The first group, antipasti, has to make a starter or an appetizer. The second group, primi, will make a pasta dish, and the third group, secondi, will make meat or fish. The groups are just to determine what each person will cook; they aren't competing within their group only, or against each other in teams.
The groups break up to talk to one of the guys from Rao's about what to make. Dale, Mike, and Tre meet with Junior to talk about the pasta course. Junior tells them that they can use dried pastas, and they do so in the restaurants. That will be important. Tre asks if risotto is cool, and it is. Mike is trying REALLY hard to let Junior know that they are both Italian. Meatballs! Sunday dinner! Kitchens! Italy! That's their conversation. Mike asks if they've evolved the traditional dishes at all, and Junior says they've very much stuck to their original menu. I kind of wish Marcel were still in the competition just to see what in the hell he would make for this challenge. I pride myself on my Italian food (especially for a non-Italian) to the point where, when my husband and I go out for Italian, he often says afterwards that he wishes we had just stayed home and I had made dinner, because it would have been better. Granted, we don't eat at Rao's, but that's something, right?
Antonia, Carla, and Tiffany are all doing the antipasti course, so they are talking to Dino, the chef. Carla learns that most of their dishes for this course are cold, except for soups. Antonia is the Mike of this group. Breaking bread! Sunday dinner! No rushing! We get it. You're Italian.
So that leaves Blais, Fabio, and Angelo to talk to Frankie No about the secondi course. Fabio dominates the conversation, talking to Frankie No about Italy and food. Finally Blais asks about Frankie's aunt, and Frankie says that she was a master of reducing recipes and making them simple, breaking them down to their essential elements. That's bad news for Angelo, the kitchen sink cook.
Shopping! Haven't missed this segment. Although we do get a few pictures of Mike and his Italian grandmother, who is adorable. It reminds me of a photo my husband has of his grandmother's family. There were like fourteen brothers and sisters, and the parents. They're all wearing black, and looking very stern and angry. And they are all nearly as wide as they are tall. They were a stout people, is what I'm saying.
The cheftestants return to the kitchen, where they have two hours to prep. Antonia explains that she's Italian. Sicily! Father! Meatballs! Guilt! Dale has never cooked Italian professionally, but he does cook it for his girlfriend. What gets more mentions this season: Dale's girlfriend or Fabio's turtle? Because, seriously. Dale, you have a girlfriend. Way to go. Anyway, Dale is making fresh pasta, and you know he can make the hell out of some noodles. Mike is also making fresh pasta: rigatoni. Tiffany doesn't give a shit if Fabio, Mike, and Antonia are Italian. She thinks her five years experience working at an Italian restaurant will help her make it through.
Tre remembers winning with a risotto dish in his season, but he's planning on making it less traditional this time. That's a great idea, since Junior mentioned that their food is totally traditional. TRE! What are you doing? Antonia mentions that you need to toast the rice well for risotto and Tre has like three inches of rice in skillet for toasting. That's not going to work. Thin layers, Tre. Multiple batches. Come on! Mike doesn't like being the favorite. He'd prefer to be the underdog. Well, he's never my favorite (except maybe when he was yelling at Marcel) so that's not a problem.
The day, the cheftestants arrive at Rao's to cook. Carla, Antonia, and Tiffany are cooking first. Carla is making minestrone, which seems risky. If you are serving minestrone to Italians, that better be some damn good minestrone. Tiffany is making a polenta terrine, and Antonia is making mussels. That makes me nervous too; it seems like there have been a lot of shellfish disasters on this show. And then Tiffany's polenta starts on fire. Like blackened tray with ashes on it. I hope she made extra!
The judges arrive at Rao's: Padma, Tom, Bourdain, and guest judge Lorraine Bracco. Lorraine remembers coming to Rao's with Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta. Name dropper! Then again, she's worked with some serious names. I'd be dropping them all over the place. There's this Italian place we went to a few weeks back, and it has caricatures of famous Italians all over the walls, and I counted three different spots with the cast of the Sopranos. They have a version from the first season, then another version from the last season, and then a wall with all the people who died on the show with halos over their heads. I wonder if the Italian American Defamation League has something to say about that.
Time for the first course! They're serving family style. The other diners are Joe, the restaurant manager, and Nicky Vest, the bartender, who is wearing a vest like they would sell on QVC. It's sequined and colorful. I kind of love him.
Anyway, Carla served minestrone soup with basil oil, tomatoes, and homemade focaccia. Bourdain thinks it walked the line between old and new very well, but one of the diners thinks it's a soup you could find in Wisconsin. That statement outrages Lorraine Bracco. Wisconsin? They don't have good Italian food in Wisconsin! It's all cheese and bratwurst and football out there! Tiffany serves polenta terrine with Italian sausage, roasted peppers, and kale. Colicchio points out that she called it Italian sausage, whereas real Italians just call it sausage. Jeez, what is with the Italians and their need to prove how Italian they are all the time! Annoying. They all love the polenta (or as Frankie No calls it "polenda"). Antonia made mussels with fennel, white whine, garlic, and parsley ciabatta. The judges find that it is confident and brings up warm family memories, and they can't stop eating it. Colicchio has to tell yet another story about his family. Great story, Colicchio.
Meanwhile, the primi group of Mike, Dale, and Tre start cooking. Tre thinks his flavor profile is tight and he wants to emphasize the vegetables. Mike is worried about making his pasta; you have to cook fresh pasta last minute, or it will crack, but his pasta isn't finished and there are only a few minutes left. Will he make it? Mr. Italian-American?
Mike serves spicy calamari, fresh rigatoni in tomato sauce. The judges note that the pasta is undercooked, and Junior reports that he did tell them that they could use dried pasta. If Mike had, he'd be a lot better off, although I do wonder if Colicchio would have called him on it, since he was mad previously about someone using canned beans. Dale made fresh pasta, pancetta, Brussels sprouts, chanterelle mushrooms, pecorino romano. The judges don't like that there's no sauce and nothing to pull the components together. They figure that he cooked everything separately and then just tossed it together at the end. Dale mentioned that he cooks this dish for his girlfriend and Lorraine cracks that her boyfriend wouldn't get laid for that dish. Oh, ho ho ho. You are so bawdy, Lorraine Bracco. Tre made grilled vegetable risotto, marinated tomatoes and fresh basil. The judges think that he focused too much on the vegetables, and the rice suffered for it. Bourdain says it's a dish you would use to cover up a body. In fact, Bourdain is outraged at the group overall for fucking up the pasta course completely.
Finally, the secondi group starts cooking. Blais points out that Fabio always looks like he's not going to finish on time, and Fabio even admits that he might not have left himself enough time. Angelo wants Fabio's approval for his food, because he doesn't really feel comfortable cooking so traditionally. I have to say, Fabio's chicken looks amazing, and it does get finished on time.
Fabio made pollo alla cacciatore polenta al pecorino. The judges like that it's Old World, and Bourdain thinks that the polenta helped him forget how bad the course was. Angelo made a sautéed pork chop, cherry peppers, green olives, tomatoes, and pancetta. The judges think it was too busy, and didn't feature the pork enough, which makes sense, since Frankie No talked about how his aunt kept the dishes simple with a few important ingredients. Blais made a fresh pancetta cutlet, broccolini, pickled cherry tomatoes. The judges liked how simple it was, and delicious. Frankie No concludes the meal by praising the brilliance of Colicchio and Bourdain, and also Lorraine Bracco. Nothing about Padma, though. Hilarious. Meanwhile, Mike is in back talking about how pasta was al dente, and he knows that it was al dente, and he hopes the judges didn't get any pieces that were undercooked. Is he delusional or just in denial?
Weird interstitial. Mike shows Dale and Antonia how to make gnocchi, and Antonia admits that she actually learned something. I really thought Mike was going home after that segment.
Stew Room. Mike is dissing Tiffany's antipasti, because it wasn't a plate of meat and cheese. After this judging session, can everyone just agree that Mike is not an expert at anything? Padma comes in and asks to see Antonia, Carla, Fabio, and Tiffany. Mike thinks that must be the bottom, because they all had their food made ahead of time. Oh, excuse me. I didn't know this was Top Chef a la Minute. My bad. I thought the dishes were judged on how they tasted, not how they were made. What an idiot. Blais, student of the show, is worried that they called in bottom first last time, so they wouldn't do it twice in a row. He needs to take some anti-anxiety medication.
Judges' Table. These four had the best dishes. Tiffany starts crying, and Padma asks why she's so emotional, and Tiffany says it's been up and down, especially after last week's Marcel-saster. Colicchio praises Antonia for leaving a good thing alone, and keeping it simple. Lorraine Bracco loved that Carla put the Parmesan in the soup. Colicchio thinks Fabio cooked his chicken nicely, and Bourdain says that his polenta cheered Bourdain up after the course. Lorraine gets to announce that Antonia is the winner. Antonia couldn't be more proud, but Fabio can't believe he lost, especially since he thinks that Antonia made a French dish. I love the looks on everyone's faces when Antonia announces that she won: shock, dismay, anger. Mike says again that Antonia's dish was really easy. It doesn't MATTER! It tasted good and it fit the challenge. When are they going to get that? And frankly, a perfectly steamed mussel is NOT that easy. Gah. The sexism among some of the remaining male chefs is killing me. They can't believe that a GIRL could cook good food. Now I want one of the women to win the whole thing. I would have been fine with Blais or Dale, but fuck them.
Anyway, the bottom three are Dale, Mike, and Tre, all from the execrable primi course. The pasta fucker-uppers. Mike tells the judges that he knows his pasta was bad and undercooked, and he feels terrible about it. Bourdain tells him the pasta was tough and improperly sauced. Mike explains that he didn't use boxed pasta because the standard was so high. Colicchio tells him that his pasta had too much egg in it, which is interesting because it's the first we've heard that the problem might have been in the mixing and not the cooking. It wasn't that Mike managed his time improperly; it was that he screwed up the proportions of the ingredients, which is a bigger sin in my mind. Dale knows that his pasta wasn't great either. Colicchio says that there wasn't enough sauce either, and Dale says he felt rushed at the end and didn't finish properly. Lorraine thought the dish was just blah and bland. Tre thinks that the risotto was cooked properly and the problem was that his vegetables were cut too big. Colicchio says he's wrong, and that the risotta should spread on the plate, and not stand up stiff. Tre claims he was trained differently but Colicchio isn't having it. Then Tre says that it looked stiffer because of the serving dish he chose, but Padma points out that when they spooned it onto their plates, it should have spread out. Nice try, Tre. No dice. Bourdain adds that putting the textural issues aside, the garnish and vegetables were too much, and overpowering, and they couldn't taste the risotto enough.
The losers head back into the Stew Room. Mike is sure he's going, but so is Tre. Back at Judges' Table, Colicchio says that Italian food should be simple and not showy. Bourdain wonders if Tre has just never eaten good risotto, which is ironic since Tre won for his risotto previously. Dale's dish was bland, and when they show the picture of it, it looks completely dried out, like he cooked egg noodles and put them on a plate and then let it sit there and dry out. And Mike had bad pasta, as we all know by now.
The bottom three are called back in to hear who's going home. Colicchio runs down their problems. Mike made undercooked pasta, and the sauce was fine, but it can't make up for the bad pasta. Tre's garnish couldn't make up for bad risotto. And Dale's pasta was too dry. So who's going home? Mike is seriously praying silently while they wait, and finally Padma tells Tre to pack his knives and go. Mike knows that he was really close to going home. Tre vows that if he ever makes risotto again, it will spread. Everyone is sad to see Tre go, because he is awesome. Too bad he and Carla are married to other people, because I would love to see them make some babies. They would have the happiest babies with the best laughs of all time.