Andrew is eliminated on Top Chef Chicago

I love Top Chef. I’ve enjoyed the show since the first episode of season 1. However, I’m starting to wonder about the challenges that are being presented to the chefs this far along in the competition. I’m not sure they are appropriate for the talent level remaining in the competition.

We begin with the Quickfire and a familiar face as the guest judge. Sam Talbot, a finalist from Season 2 of Top Chef would be the guest judge for this week. I guess that Ilan or Marcel from that season weren’t available. Or how about one of the chefs who actually won the competition in any season? Not that I don’t like Sam – I just wonder why they didn’t ask Harold, Ilan or Hung to serve as a guest judge.

Sam gives the chefs their challenge for the Quickfire – to create a modern, “sexy” salad with 45 minutes to do so. From what the chefs said making a salad is a lot harder than it looks, but 45 minutes? When almost every other Quickfire in any of the seasons was 15 or 30 minutes in length, this seems kind of excessive. Lisa is arrogant in her commentary on the other chefs – she said that a lot of them have a simple and basic approach and don’t really deserve to be there. Big talk for someone who’s been in the bottom three in the last few challenges. Stephanie has issues yet again in the Quickfire, this time she doesn’t finish plating her salad. She forgot the artichoke chips for the dish.

The bottom three in the challenge were Richard, Stephanie, and, surprise, Lisa. I laughed at this point because she had some big talk for ending up with one of the least favorite salads in the challenge. The top three were Spike, Antonia and Dale, and Spike was named the winner. He doesn’t get immunity, but he will get a big advantage in the elimination challenge.

Padma and Sam bring out a large tray of fast food items, saying that they are the typical lunch order for the officers and cadets of the Chicago Police Academy. She also says that two of the biggest health challenges facing Americans are obesity and diabetes. The elimination challenge was to create a gourmet and healthy boxed lunch for the officers and cadets of the police academy. It had to be hearty, nutritious and delicious and had to contain at least one ingredient from the following food groups: whole grains, lean proteins, fruits and vegetables.

Spike’s advantage for winning the quickfire: a 10 minute head start on shopping and the ability to select one item from each category that no other chef would be able to use. Spike says that everything is strategy from this point on and that in his opinion the ability to p*ss people off was way better than immunity. His strategy was to select ingredients that would make it difficult for the competition to be successful. He picks chicken breast, tomatoes, bread and lettuce.

The chefs were given two hours to cook and pack the food and then bring it to the police academy. There they had to create labels to instruct the officers how to prepare the meals in the microwave.

Andrew states that he is an “expert” in nutrition and decides to make sushi for his dish. Dale picks an Asian dish again, reminding me of Ilan in season 2. Ilan always cooked Spanish food. One of the other chefs said that this will bite Dale in the end, but it didn’t affect Ilan so why should it hurt Dale? Lisa is doing a stir fry dish with brown rice and shrimp. The brown rice takes a while to cook so she starts it right away and said she checked it every 8 to 10 minutes during the cooking time. Andrew tells Lisa that shrimp might be a bad choice because they are high in cholesterol. Lisa doesn’t seem too worried about it because in her obsession with the rules of the challenge she notes that cholesterol is not a component. The dish needed to be low in carbs, sugar and fat.

With less than a half hour to go Lisa goes and checks her rice. She realizes the burner is turned up too high so the rice is not cooked right. She immediately said that someone did it intentionally to her, that it was sabotage. Stephanie said in her behind the scenes interview that it wasn’t sabotage, that it was a mistake and what Lisa wanted to do was blame others to cover the mistake. Dale basically said the same thing by calling this bull.

Dale and Stephanie are called back to the judges’ table as the top two dishes. Stephanie made a hearty soup while Dale prepared his Asian style dish. Dale was the winner, and as such won two tickets to a winery in the Napa Valley along with a bottle of their Merlot wine.

The bottom three chefs were Andrew, Lisa and Spike. The judges had a few complaints with each dish. Andrew’s dish was not hearty and lacked a whole grain. Andrew at first said that he didn’t use a whole grain to show the judges something different, but then admitted he lost his rules sheet before he even got to the market. Spike’s dish of chicken salad was strange and not that good. The judges didn’t think he utilized the tomato, lettuce or bread in his dish and that in selecting these ingredients he was more concerned with putting the other chefs at a disadvantage rather than using them for the benefit of his dish. Spike got kind of mouthy with the judges, a trend that we’ve seen quite a bit this season.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Padma asks Lisa if she knew why she was there, and Lisa sarcastically says you tell me why I’m here. Colicchio said that many things on her dish were not cooked well, and that she advertised this dish as stir fry and it was more like a steamed dish. Lisa immediately plays the blame game, saying that someone “f*cked with her rice”. Ted Allen asks if she was positive that this was indeed sabotage. Colicchio says ok, even if the rice was sabotaged your shrimp wasn’t cooked either. Lisa never answers this criticism.

Padma then asks if anyone has any thing to add. Lisa jumps right on that bandwagon saying that Andrew didn’t follow the rules so he should be sent home. Later in the stew room Andrew reminds Lisa that he tried to help her by pointing out the cholesterol issue with the shrimp and says there is no honor in Lisa.

The judges said that they won’t take sabotage as an excuse for Lisa’s dish because there were many problems with it. Spike’s problem was a failure of the imagination. Andrew’s dish had no whole grain, but even if it had a whole grain it wasn’t filling and he took an arrogant view of the challenge and didn’t think it through. In the end it was Andrew who was eliminated.

At the very end of the show when we see highlights for next week we learn that in fact Restaurant Wars have not been cancelled and we’ll see it next show. Come on, make up your minds. Last week there would be no Restaurant Wars, next week we’re going to have it. Lisa, Dale and Spike are going to make it interesting. In fact it would be extremely interesting if the three of them were on one team. The chefs have got to be untrusting of Lisa, knowing that she doesn’t stand behind her dishes and will blame them or throw them under the bus as quick as looking at them with the judges. Dale has issues with playing well in the sandbox. And Spike all but said it’s every man for himself and he’ll do whatever he needs to do to win.

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