Top Chef: "Show Your Craft" - Episode 502

We're at week number 2 for Top Chef, the fancy-pantsiest show on television now that Project Runway's off for the season, and man, what the hell happened? Remember last week when Tom was praising the new cheftestants and telling everyone how excited he was about the upcoming season? Yeah, well, this week he told them that their performance set American cuisine back 20 years. Harsh. Does someone need a hug? Or a new book deal, perhaps? More Top Chef after the jump...

 

I love it when Top Chef panders to the unwashed masses and incorporates a food into a challenge that 'normal' people eat, don't you? Before you get all excited about Gruel Week, though, let me burst your bubble. It was hot dogs this time around, and you could practically hear Stefan and Fabio's fans back home in Europe scoffing at the very idea of it. I envision monocles dropping out of eye sockets and into glasses of expensive champagne even as I type this. As Top Chef is prone to do, though, they kinda sorta made the concept of using such pedestrian fare into high-minded piffle by asking some established chef-type person with some vague connection to said foodstuff to guest-judge the episode. Donatella Arpaia was their choice this time around, and if you don't know who that is, then you probably eat a lot of hot dogs. Just sayin'.

 

That wasn't Top Chef's only guest this week, though, as they also trotted out Angelina D'Angelo, owner of D'Angelo hot dog stands in Queens, NY. Angelina was kept mainly in the background of the Quickfire challenge, and I'm guessing that was because she made her fortune selling food that people actually want and can afford to eat on a regular basis. Angelina kicked off the 45-minute Quickfire challenge of making a signature hot dog for Donatella and Padma to try, and as usual, their time started now.

 

The ideas for signature dogs were plenty - make your own sausage (Fabio, Hosea), combining store-bought hot dogs and rice paper as part of a ridiculous 'sushi dog' concept (Jill), putting a little international spin on things by combining lots of different flavors from all over the world (Radhika and Stefan), and even the age-old tradition of leaving a little bone matter in your freshly-ground beef hot dog and nearly killing a judge with it (Jaime). Time was up before you knew it, and after a tasting session, Padma and Donatella announced Radhika's lamb-infused Indian hot dog as the winner, rewarding her with immunity for the upcoming Elimination Challenge.

 

The Elimination Challenge broke down as such - the remaining 15 cheftestants would break up into 3 teams of 5, and each be assigned one of three courses in a 'New American Cuisine'-themed meal for a small crowd and the judges. Each team member would be making their own dish as part of that course, thereby showcasing their individual talents a bit more clearly. Not only that, but they would be preparing and serving this meal at Tom Colicchio's restaurant Craft. With Tom overseeing things in the kitchen as they worked. Yikes. If all that wasn't oppressive enough, the crowd they would be serving to were 50 rejected applicants for this season of Top Chef. Double yikes. Remember last week when I said there's nothing worse than a New York foodie? Well, I believe I've proved myself wrong. A New York foodie who is also a chef that has been told they're not good enough is far, FAR worse.

 

Quite frankly, the resulting dishes were all over the damn place, but my personal favorites were Jamie's appetizer of a chilled corn soup with mint, Jeff's southern chicken and chorizo cornbread entree, and Richard's wildly gussied-up version of a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich for dessert. Far more interesting were the failures, however. Hosea, dude, bro, pal - you're at Whole Foods. The wildly diverse and insanely fresh seafood section is RIGHT THERE. Why in the HELL would you buy canned crab? Jill bought an OSTRICH EGG for her dish, for chrissakes. You would've fared better buying a two-day-old pre-wrapped tuna salad and tossing it to Padma to eat with a spork. Ariane's lemon meringue martini certainly looked good, but the fact that she must've dumped a box-and-a-half of sugar into it by accident and nearly killed Padma in the process kinda ruined it for her. While it wasn't exactly a failure, how exactly the hell was Fabio's beef carpaccio 'New American Cuisine'? Beef carpaccio has been an old-world European tradition since before Hitler was calling the shots. What did he do, stick a miniature American flag on a toothpick in it?

 

It's judging time, and the top three spots went to Carla's apple tart with the weird slice of cheese sitting next to it, Fabio's beef carpaccio, and Jamie's chilled corn soup. Despite the fact that the dish had basically nothing to do with American cuisine at all, Fabio pulled out the win for himself and Team Appetizer. On the low side of things, Jill's ostrich egg quiche, Hosea's canned-crab salad, and Ariane's lemon meringue martini were analyzed to see which of them most warranted this week's boot. Ariane took a serious blow when Padma told her how she had to spit out the cherry at the bottom of her martini because it was too sweet, and I was surprised to see Tom refrain from leaping over the table at Hosea in his chastisement for using canned crab. I thought sure Ariane was done for at this point, but because this is Top Chef, Jill got the boot for laying an egg with her quiche. It was a bad dish, yes, but her mumbled, stuttered, Sarah Palin-esque defense of it was even worse. Personally, I think she was high. Goodbye, goofy-yet-attractive Amazonian woman.

 

After Patrick's boot last week for using an ingredient he had absolutely no idea how to prepare, you'd think she would've avoided that herself by... Oh, nevermind. These people never learn anything. Besides, Jill's boot wasn't really all that surprising, was it? This is what the judges do when they want to keep things 'interesting' - they boot the person that doesn't deserve to go. Sure, both Jill's dishes sucked, but Ariane practically made Padma puke, for chrissakes. I'm fairly certain that every time Padma gets near vomit status, an angel starts to cry. Poor, poor Princess Padma. A songbird in white silk robes will be along shortly to tend to your every need.

 

LEFTOVERS - 

 

I found it hilarious how quickly Padma and Donatella put down their hot dogs from Angelina's cart after they'd taken their obligatory bite. Bam! The table practically rattled under the sheer force of it. Wouldn't want to take on any extraneous calories, now would we girls?

 

WTF was up with the rejected applicant chef guy who told his tablemates that he didn't put any butter or animal fat into his dishes? I'm gonna take a wild stab here and say that's probably why you didn't make it on the show, dude.

 

Two-time champ from last episode Stefan didn't get anywhere near another win this time around. However, his halibut, ravioli and micro-greens entree could've been in a textbook, one that practically every person on this show should read. Light, simple, classic, and very much to the point, my mouth was watering just looking at it. My advice to the Finnish wunderkind is to quit trying to go showy with novelty items like the 'World Dog' and start kicking ass with dishes like the halibut. This isn't a catering competition, dude, and there's simply no need to try and appease the yahoos. You're still my favorite, so turn it up a notch and blow the rest of these chumps out of the water like I know you're able to.

 

Watch out, soccer moms at Whole Foods! Here come a wild and crazy gang of chefs, and they're gonna rob the place! AAAAAH! Jeff, get over yourself.

 

A Stefan/Fabio romance at this point is inevitable. There was more kissing, touching, and slapping between the two of them on this episode than most people get on their wedding night.

 

-littlebigmouth.