Jen is eliminated from Top Chef Chicago
Is it me or does it seem as if the producers of Top Chef are running out of challenges?
The quickfire challenge tonight had the chefs creating a dessert. Big surprise there, a dessert challenge. Guest Judge for this week was Johnny Iuzzini, well known for his talents as a pastry chef. The winner of the challenge would not only get immunity from elimination but also a special reward – the only chef from season 4 of Top Chef who would have a recipe in the Top Chef Cookbook. Padma tells the chefs that if they don’t have a recipe they should improvise – a hint about what was to come later in the show.
The judges thought the dishes of Spike, Mark and Antonia were the worst. Iuzzini told Spike he admired the fact that he did a soufflé, but it just wasn’t successful. The top three chefs in the quickfire challenge were Dale, Lisa and Richard, with Richard winning the challenge and immunity from elimination.
Padma tells the chefs they were going out that night, to watch the Second City improv show. Now they had to figure that something was going on…..the chefs don’t get sent on fun things without a challenge being involved. This was the case as well. At one point in the show the actors ask for suggestions from the audience for words in the categories of emotions, colors and ingredients. As soon as they said the word ingredients the chefs knew this was all about the challenge. And it was – the elimination challenge was to create a five course meal for the cast of Second City based on the following courses:
Yellow love vanilla
Purple depressed bacon
Magenta drunk Polish sausage
Green perplexed tofu
Orange turned on asparagus
The chefs were told to pair up and figure out among themselves who would work on what course. They decide to draw numbers out of a hat to determine what team would cook what course. Here’s how they paired up with their course inspiration:
Spike and Andrew: Yellow love vanilla
Mark and Nikki: Purple depressed bacon
Lisa and Antonia: Magenta drunk Polish sausage
Richard and Dale: Green perplexed tofu
Jen and Stephanie: Orange turned on asparagus
Everything is going all right for the prep. The chefs notice a table set for dinner in the kitchen so they figure that’s where they’ll be serving dinner. Dale goes back to find something when he realizes that all the electrical appliances had been removed from the kitchen. Andrew said this could be a problem since he and Spike were making soup, but he said that people were making soup long before they could puree the ingredients in an electrical appliance.
With about one hour or so left in prep time Tom Colicchio comes into the kitchen with another curve ball. The chefs would be serving dinner at their house, so they had 20 minutes to pack up their food and head there, with one hour to cook at the house. This was not a professional kitchen, but a residential one, so challenges were presenting themselves there. However, this did not play a role whatsoever in the final outcome of the challenge.
The favorite dishes of the judges were created by the teams of Spike and Andrew and Richard and Dale. The winning team was Richard and Dale, and they each received $2,500 in cookware as a special bonus for winning the challenge. The bottom two teams were Antonia and Lisa and Stephanie and Jen.
Antonia and Lisa had such disdain for Polish sausage and came right out and said they would never serve it. Iuzzini tells them he would have cooked the sausage in beer to capture the spirit of the challenge. Their flaw was not incorporating this major ingredient into their dish. Jen and Stephanie’s dish, in the words of the judges, was a train wreck. They had too much going on and the dish lacked finesse. Again they were criticized because asparagus was secondary in the dish and it should have been the focus of the dish.
In the end the judges admitted they had to get very nit picky to determine the losing team. They stated that they had to go with the dish that was their least favorite and that was the one created by Jen and Stephanie. In the end it was Jen who was eliminated and told to pack her knives and go.
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April 27th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I do not think it was fair to eliminate the team who followed the rules. Maybe if they did not use the asparagus at all they could have come up with a better tasting dish.
April 28th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I agree with you 100%. I mean if you’re not going to enforce the rules of the challenge then why should anyone follow the crazy parameters they establish for them.