Steven is kicked off Top Chef

This week was all about the client –giving the client what they want. Both the Quickfire and the Elimination challenges this week had to do with a wedding reception. The remaining five contestants had to create a menu and a cake design (and a sample appetizer) for a wedding reception and the couple would choose the winner. All but Dave had these really crazy and elaborate menus –as Dave stated they had no idea what it would take to create 100 of each of the dishes for a large wedding reception. Lee Anne won the challenge and her menu would be the one served at the wedding reception 16 hours later.

We got to see a lot of insight into how the contestants would deal with different situations. First, all the food for the reception was purchased in a supermarket. The quality and/or selection of foods available was not up to standards. But I’ll give the team high marks for using a boxed cake mix – they realized that baking was not a strong suit of any of the candidates so they went the easy route. I’ll also give credit to Tiffani for not being afraid to tell Chef Tom yes they were using a box mix and why they were doing it.

Next, we got to see how the contestants would work together to make this wedding reception successful. Dave was really good in the way he was working and helping everyone out. All the chefs except Steven were pitching in to help each other. I think this fact played a role at the Judges’ table this evening.

I’m not sure what was going on with Steven, but he seemed to be more interested in telling the wait staff how to serve the wedding and how to serve the wine. Last week Chef Tom told him he needed to be a Chef and not a sommelier – a fact Steven seemed to have forgotten. He messed up telling the kitchen to get the beef course ready when the guests were not ready – they were going to make toasts. Overall, Steven was just not into the menu or the process.

Steven should have been eliminated last week instead of Miguel on the restaurant challenge. I’m glad the judges got rid of him and not Harold or Lee Anne (I thought it might be Lee Anne this week because of the failure of the menu and the poor quality of food.). The judges seemed to want to give the benefit of the doubt to the people who actually were working this week as chefs and not as front of the house service staff.

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