Top Chef Masters: Rick Bayless Advances
This week’s “Top Chef Masters” was all about French attitude, thanks to chef Ludo Lefebvre. The other chefs were Rick Bayless, Cindy Pawlcyn, and Wilo Benet.
The Quick Fire Challenge was to cook with food of a certain color. Cindy drew a yellow knife, Rick drew a green knife, Ludo drew a red knife, and Wilo drew a – well, I cannot remember, but he cooked salmon, so maybe it was pink. Ludo forgot to plate his tomato then the waiters forgot to take his beet juice for his tartar. However, the judges didn’t think the beet juice helped. They said it only made it look like blood – not appetizing! Ludo received 3 stars, Cindy received 3 ½ stars, Rick received 4 stars, but Wilo won the Quick Fire with 4 ½ stars, even though he left his metal circles on his salmon.
The challenge was to cook street food with unusual proteins. Wilo got beef hearts, Cindy got tripe (stomach), Rick got tongue, and Ludo got pig ears. Ludo told Rick he was going to make a quesadilla and seemed a bit offended when Rick, a chef who specializes in Mexican food, chose to make a taco. Cindy decided to make menudo and Wilo made a traditional Puerto Rican street sandwich.
Ludo got frustrated because he ran out of time preparing stuff and even though Rick offered to help, that just seemed to tick him off even further. He also had no quesadillas ready when the “door” opened at Universal Studios. People, including the judges, had to wait for his quesadillas.
However, he beat Cindy with 16 ½ total stars compared to her 15 ½ stars. Jay felt Cindy’s menudo was under seasoned and James gave her a dismal 2 ½ stars. However, Wilo beat out Ludo with 19 ½ stars, despite James giving him 3 stars. James was a tough critic tonight! Rick won easily with 22 ½ stars. His charity was a farmer’s foundation.
Read these other great entries
June 25th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Wilo drew an orange knife. I thought it was pretty funny that they commented that Michael won this challenge in season 2 drawing orange and cooking salmon with carrot chips. Wilo created a salmon dish with some carrots as well.
Chef Bayless just seemed to really enjoy the challenge and cooking overall. Of the three chefs who have made it to the champions round so far I think he and Chef Keller are pretty evenly matched and both have a great shot at winning the grand prize.