Yay! It’s Top Chef time! We getta watch people make mind-blowing food before our very EYES! This is also their 10th anniversary show, so I’m expecting big things,  Padma and Tom!

It’s road tripping time; the chefs are headed back home. There’s a little talk about Wesley and his dry lamb, for my money Bahstah Carl is next with a target on his back.

Karen is riding high after her win and making it into the top 10, woot lady! It’s really a two horse race, though, Kwame and Jeremy. And that’s just being kind to Jeremy.

Speaking of our young Kwame has a great idea for his first date with Padma: “little cheese,  little wine, a Yorkie. Surprise, I got you a dog! That’s not weird, right?”. Errr.

Quickfire Challenge time and it’s with Antonia Lofaso, a Top Chef alum with two restaurants, one of which is a block away from Phillip’s.

She says she threw up before each and every Quickfire challenge; it’s a good luck charm. Sure!

The challenge is to create a dish in fourteen seconds using only 10 ingredients they find in the Top Chef kitchen.  Wow, I was so close! 20 seconds each to grab an ingredient.  What they grab:

Phillip: prime new york beef

Isaac: chicken (Marjorie’s like wtf, man? We have a protein!)

Chad: jalapeño pepper

Jeremy: salt (preach!)

Marjorie: rice vinegar

Karen: olive oil

Kwame: garlic (yasss queen!)

Amar: Mushrooms

Carl: tomatoes

Jason: celery (everyone but especially Karen boos and hisses – herbs, son!)

20 minutes to cook!

Isaac isn’t even using the stupid chicken, pffts Marjorie, and nicely says in Interview that ol’ hillbilly Isaac ain’t gonna fare too well from from now on: he’s not refined enough. I guess it doesn’t matter how you say that, still a big FU. I just remember Candice on this season of Project Runway, so concerned about Ashley Nell Tipton and her unfortunate ready-to-wear background. You know what Ashley and Isaac should think about all that loving concern (trolling)?

 

I don’t even curr, cuz lookit that KITCHEN!!! I DIES!!

Jason lurves his celery and he just doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Amar side-eyes Jeremy making raw food AGAIN while Jeremy bitches about Bahstan using all the tomatoes. Play nicely;  bros!

Challenge time! The dishes:

Kwame gets a little shade for picking for himself first and the team second and bish please. Everyone uses garlic. Everyone used the celery, too, including Karen that was so pissed about it: she used it TWO ways.

Judging time! In the bottom are Isaac (ugly looking) and Karen (unfocused), maybe she WAS spending too much time thinking about what she didn’t have. Hmmm

In the top are Jeremy and his not-raw-fish but raw beef; my bad, and he BEAMS when Chef Antonia compliments his slightly warmed carpaccio tops. Amar’s chicken and mushroom dish is also a contender for immunity. The winner is: Jeremy!  Yay!

Now for the real challenge!  It’s been 10 years since Top Chef’s first season; lessee what was different: MySpace was the top website, which means I must post this Tom Hardy Myspace Awesomeness

Tom-Kat got married, and we get to see everyone’s flashbacks!  Jeremy was in a band and had hair! Bad, bad hair that he misses. Also the ladies

Antonia suggests that they use personal experiences to make it really special. Well, Kwame is 25. 10 years ago he was 15 and PLEASE don’t go back to that, K. He doesn’t want to, either,  that was the beginning of the deterioration of he and his father’s relationship.  Can you imagine if Angelina had made it this far? Everything would be soaked in Malibu and smell like stolen cigarettes.

Whole Foods shopping time! Marjorie reminisces about herself a decade ago; just having graduated culinary school and working with Mike Isabella.

She’s making a very green dish, green curry plus lots of other green things. That turns out to be a problem, because in all of Whole Foods, they don’t have any lemongrass. I don’t even know how that’s possible. Bahstan Carl was rocking his first management job back then and not handling it very well. Jason was head of a restaurant that made a really complicated trout dish (??) and he was being a crazy raging bitch apparently. Then he found his voice: hurray!

They’re back to the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel, yay, it’s like home! Karen talks about 10 years ago; she was wildly in love with her girlfriend and making pasta; they lived in a shitty apartment but were planning to move to Italy at any moment. Awww Karen was cute!

Not that she’s not cute now, but we can’t see her teef here, soooo. The group is having a great time, all laughing and joking and everyone is drinking. Chad is a recovering alcoholic, though; he quit drinking 18 months previously and has since lost 60 lbs.

I can’t tell the difference, but I think Chad is a fox anyway. Ten years ago he was also very young, and self-centred in that way we ALL were, now he wants to win Top Chef for his family.

I thought everyone was getting along really well, but Jason is also turtling a bit. There are a LOT of big personalities on this show and I can see how he’s reacting to that by getting quiet.

Jeremy is one of those big personalities, yo yo yo! He’s making lobster ravioli, from then his mom met her birth mother for the first time.

Isaac, well, of course he was still dealing with Hurricane Katrina 10 year ago.

He’s making straight up Cajun food: gumbo with duck crackling and something else with cayenne. Marjorie has discovered that grilled lemon tastes just like lemongrass, yay that! She says 10 years ago she would have just cried and I am really glad she’s come this far. She’s a tough cookie.

Carl says ten years ago he talked Tony Maas into hiring him, it made him what he is today and he will always be grateful. He looks a little like Joel McHale, hey?

Chad was in the Marines 10 years ago, of course, right after 9-11.

After his discharge, he ended up staying with his grandfather in San Felipe and trying some fresh shrimp that blew his Marine chef mind. He’s also making ceviche.

In walks Tom and Disguy: Isaac says he’s Michael Voltaggio and he won Top Chef Season 6. He’s a bad mammajamma and I don’t know what that means. Is that Cajun for motherhumper? Which is Canadian for Motherflipper, which is Australian for I CAN DO THIS ALL NIGHT, MOHOS! But let’s not! Let’s see what everyone is making!

10 years ago, Phillip was dating a Peruvian girl and more ceviche. He was doing okay until he tells Tom and Michael that he can’t cook what he wants, he’s just trying to learn the judges palates so he doesn’t get sent home making this mediocre food. Tom just looks at him, but Michael suggests he concentrate on making good food first and go from there. I have to say, I’m really impressed with Tom; he doesn’t flex much, but nothing gets by him either.

Amar’s dish is an homage to his mentor Chef Gerry Hayden, who is very sick. That makes Tom choke up a bit and it’s a poignant moment. Kitchens are like families and when one is down, everyone feels it.

Kwame is making Jerk Broccoli and um. Sure! He hasn’t talked to his dad in 8 years and that’s hard, dude. He’s not loving this reliving the past and it’s messing with his concentration; he’s cutting his fingers and almost burning himself.

Tasting time! A table full of the Los Angeles restaurant elite await, including a BUNCH of Top Chef alumni.

The dishes:

Marjorie did a seared halibut; the judges commend her for her lemongrass fix

Chad’s ceviche (the first of many!) is well liked

Issac’s dirty gumbo doesn’t do as well, the judges didn’t like his presentation so mebbe Marjorie wasn’t just throwing shade, mebbe she was expressing a legit concern.

Jason’s poached trout TANKS due to lack of seasoning, even with his hastily added finishing salt

Karen’s pasta is okkkayy

Amar makes everyone worry about Chef Gerry with his lobster dish

Carl’s does much better than I was expecting and I think I was wrong all along: Jason will be the next to go.

Phllip does horribly with his ceviche

Jeremy’s lobster ravioli with salmon confuses everyone. Y SALMON 2 BRO? Padma says it’s a good thing he has immunity and it looks like he swallows his tongue

I don’t know about Kwame’s jerk broccoli over cornbread pudding and neither do the judges. Richard calls it a vegetarian ripoff of shrimp and grits, ouch. It looks truly terrible

The chefs hang out in the back and Kwame has a great sense of humour; I just don’t know if right now is when I would want to be yukking it up, with being on the block for sure and all.

Judging time! Tom says something that stands out for him: usually at this point in the competition, someone goes home for a good dish, but tonight someone will be going home for a bad one. Not having bad dishes are Marjorie, Carl and Chad and the winner is: Marjorie! Yay! She’s not so green any more and she don’t need no stinking lemongrass anyway! Two time winner, y’all!

In the bottom are Kwame, Phillip and Jason. Oh no, I think Jason is going to cry. He’s lost his joy of cooking and man. They send him home. It was his time, I know that, but I really liked my Seattle Sweetie Jason Hawke.

Gbye, Chef Gerry. You meant a lot to Amar, Tom and I’m guessing a whole bunch more yet.

See everyone next week for some more Top Chef-yness. We oot