Sara N. eliminated on tonight’s Top Chef
Is it me or are we seeing the same challenges from season to season on Top Chef, recycled with a slightly different twist? Wasn’t there an ice cream quickfire challenge in season 2? Didn’t we see a party where the chefs had to cater it from a mobile kitchen that season also? So my question is this: were these challenges so fantastic that they had to be brought back, or is Top Chef starting to run its course and become stale?
Like I mentioned above, the challenges this night were similar to ones in season 2 with a different twist. For tonight’s quickfire challenge, the contestants had 45 minutes to create add ins that would complement Cold Stone Creamery’s sweet cream ice cream flavor. Most of the chefs went the route that you would think, selecting items that were sweet. Casey added some kind of hot sauce (and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, only that it made guest judge Gavind Armstrong shudder) while Hung used a cauliflower foam with his ice cream. Huh? Armstrong found these two creations to be his least favorite. His top two were Dale and Howie, with Dale’s peach cobbler winning the challenge and giving Dale immunity.
Did you stop to wonder how different tonight’s elimination challenge might have been if Howie won immunity instead of Dale? Just a fleeting thought on my part.
Padma tells the chefs to go and get ready for a night on the town, that they were off the hook for the time being with the elimination challenge. The chefs get all prettied up (both the men and the women, and boy did CJ clean up nice!) and head outside to see a limo waiting for them. The chefs make a toast, having a great time until they pull up outside Café Nikki to see Padma and Armstrong waiting for them with a knife block. Their challenge was to begin right then – to create late night snacks for people who had been partying all night long. Dale was given the night off (and a bonus – a private four course dinner with Armstrong) and the rest of the chefs were pretty jealous. The remaining eight contestants pulled knives to determine teams. The black team was made up of Hung, Sara M., Tre and Brian while the orange team was made up of CJ, Sara N., Casey and Howie.
The black team worked well together, and listening to Brian at judges’ table you could see they really thought about the challenge when planning the menu and their strategy. The orange team was all over the place. You could just tell that they didn’t want to be working together (or at the very least on a team with Howie) and it showed in how they functioned. No one communicated with each other, until the judges’ table when everyone was on the lookout to CYA. Howie goes after Sara right away – you could just tell that this was his strategy, to throw a sacrificial lamb out there and hope the judges went for it. Casey jumped right in, saying she had no idea about the problems with the cooking of the hamburgers and had she known she would have stepped in to make sure they were cooked. Colicchio makes a comment that Howie is very assertive after the fact, and he was right on. Howie was passive when he let Sara make the milkshakes with ice (which Colicchio hated) and didn’t say a word about the pace at which she worked during the challenge, but was quick to blame her for the team’s loss.
In the end the judges said that both Howie and Sara were responsible for the team losing the challenge but sent Sara home. I guess Howie makes for better controversy than Sara. You could see it right at the end – I don’t think the producers could have choreographed a more perfect picture. When Sara left the kitchen the camera pans over to the remaining chefs. All the chefs are sitting together on the one side of the room, with the exception of Howie. He’s all by himself on the other side.
Silly me…..I thought Hung would be the chef everyone loved to hate this season!
[tags]top chef, television, bravo, tv, reality, food, topchef, reality tv, top-chef, cooking, chef[/tags]
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