Top Chef Chicago: Zoi is eliminated

The first four weeks of Top Chef had all the contestants getting along, at least for the most part. Last week we saw the beginning of some discord, some anger, jealousy and whatever but this week…..whoa!

The theme of this week’s show was good taste. In order to test the palette of the remaining contestants Padma and guest judge Ming Tsai (Chef/Owner of the Blue Ginger restaurant) did a blindfold taste test for the quickfire challenge. They presented each chef with a pair of ingredients, a higher end product and one of lesser quality. The chefs had 20 seconds to identify the higher quality products. The chef with the lowest score of the quickfire was Stephanie, while Antonia won the challenge and got immunity from elimination.

Tonight’s elimination challenge was to create the first course for the Meals on Wheels Chicago Celebrity Chef Ball. The chefs pulled knives to determine what teams they would be on, and each team would create a dish for 80 guests. The theme of the ball was the four elements – earth, water, fire and air – and each team had to create a dish inspired by their element. Here’s the teams:

Water: Andrew, Richard, Mark
Air: Jen, Nikki, Ryan
Earth: Spike, Zoi, Antonia
Fire: Stephanie, Lisa, Dale

Usually when you see a team challenge one of the teams will have issues in getting along. This time two of the teams had problems playing well together in the sandbox. Team Fire, made up of Lisa, Stephanie and Dale and team Earth, made up of Spike, Zoi and Antonia had problems from the start. Lisa wasn’t happy with the original concept of the dish that Dale and Stephanie put forth, and then had a negative attitude during the prep time and service. Spike didn’t stand up for himself when Zoi and Antonia said that they shouldn’t serve a squash soup. He said that sometimes you need to just step back and compromise, a statement that was shocking coming from the mouth of Spike.

Team water was pretty cocky and confident, sure that their dish would kick butt. As they are plating the dish Andrew realizes that some of the salmon still has scales on it. In Andrew’s words leaving scales on fish is like leaving the head on the fish – you just don’t do it.

The judges picked team fire as the winning team, with guest judge Ming Tsai picking Lisa as the winner. She did some glazing technique on her bacon that Chef Tsai said he hand never seen before so he picked her as the winner. She also won a trip to Italy. Dale is all bitter about the win, saying that all she did was cook bacon.

The bottom two teams were Water and Earth. The judges said that leaving scales on the fish is a cooking 101 error, and Richard is sure that he is going home. The judges said that the dish created by earth was bland. Spike said that he wanted to do soup, and Chef Tsai said that would have been genius. He did want to do soup, and so did Zoi, but Antonia was really against the idea. Colicchio said the reason they were in the bottom was not because they did beef but because the dish was bad. The judges sided with the diners and said that the dish created by earth was the worst, and since the worst part of the dish was created by Zoi she was sent home.

We see the goodbyes and right after we see her leaving the room Spike tells Antonia that she should have taken a back seat on the team since she had immunity. She said that wouldn’t happen. Spike said they didn’t do soup because she said she wouldn’t do it, and Antonia argues with him saying to see it on film, she never said it. Dale takes the opportunity to vent his anger towards Lisa, saying that she got to complain and moan and he didn’t want to hear it. Jen goes after Spike for putting Antonia under the bus, saying he shouldn’t have done it to a teammate. Spike said that the reason Jen is going after him is because he survived and Jen (her girlfriend) was sent packing her knives. Jen gets po’d and kicks over a chair.

It’s getting interesting……………

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