Top Chef Chicago: Manuel is Eliminated

I’m going to begin this post with an observation on the previous winners of Top Chef. The introduction has been re-cut so we see shots of Harold, Ilan and Hung, previous winners of the show. All three of them are skinny. A long time ago I worked with a chef who told me never to trust a skinny chef because they don’t eat what they cook. I wonder if that is true or not.

Tonight’s quickfire challenge had the chefs creating a vegetable plate that had to demonstrate at least three culinary techniques. Guest judge Daniel Boulud said that technique is key to any chef’s success. Apparently Richard and Ryan had worked with Boulud before but he assured the other chefs that this would not play into his decision. His bottom three chefs were Nikki, Lisa and Manuel while the top three were Dale, Richard and Zoi. Dale won the challenge because according to Boulud he showed them something amazing. Winning the quickfire challenge gave Dale immunity for the elimination challenge.

The knife block comes out and the chefs pull knives to determine the course they will cook for their elimination challenge: create a six course dinner for film critic Richard Roper. Roper was hosting the party in honor of actress Aisha Tyler. Each course had to be inspired by a movie. Dale, as winner of the quickfire, could choose whatever team he wanted to cook on. Here’s the teams and the movies that inspired them.

1. Richard, Andrew, and Dale – Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
2. Spike and Manuel – Good Morning Vietnam
3. Jen and Nikki – Il Postino
4. Ryan and Mark – A Christmas Story
5. Antonia and Zoi – Talk to Her
6. Lisa and Stephanie – Top Secret

For the most part the teams worked well together with no direct head butting. Spike admitted he gave in to Manuel on the choice of fish for their spring roll, that he would have rather used another kind of fish. An interesting thing happened for the first course when they were plating their dish. They were using Richard’s little electric smoker when it broke after three dishes. The guys did improvise and figured out a way to smoke the rest of the fish and were successful in their dish.

The judges thought that the teams who created their dishes based on the Willy Wonka movie and the Top Secret movie were the most successful. The judges picked the Willy Wonka team as the winning team, saying their dish was perfectly executed. Richard was declared the winner because he took the leadership role on the team. He had said earlier that he had been taking a back seat and decided to step it up this time, knowing that he would be responsible for the dish be it successful or unsuccessful.

The bottom two teams were the teams who used Talk to Her and Good Morning Vietnam as inspiration. The main complaint with the team from Talk to Her was that the dish didn’t live up to their explanation of why they chose the movie. Antonia goes into more detail while at judges’ table and Padma said why didn’t you explain it this way to us at the dinner. Colicchio said that if they had used this explanation at the dinner instead of the one they gave they wouldn’t even be in the bottom two. The judges thought that the team of Good Morning America had the idea for the dish before they picked the movie. Colicchio said the dish was one you could get in any local Vietnamese restaurant.

The judges said that even though the story didn’t match the dish for the team from Talk To Her it was still a good dish so they were safe. Spike was criticized as leader of the other team for the direction he took the team. Manuel was criticized for sitting back and following Spike’s lead. Manuel ended up being eliminated for this reason.

It was interesting to see the conversation among the chefs tonight. Zoi and Spike had some major problems with the fact that the Willy Wonka team was named as the best team, making catty remarks about the dish. While it didn’t seem like food I would eat it was certainly creative. Next week looks even more interesting in terms of the dynamic between the contestants. It seems that we’re going to see our first confrontation.

Also, I have noticed that Stephanie, Richard and Andrew are floating near the top of the pack. Are these the three chefs to beat?

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