Bravo
Spoilers for last night’s Top Chef DC coming up:
When Padma announced the theme of the elimination challenge on the “Foreign Affairs” episode of Top Chef—each contestant picks a different country whose cuisine to make—I dreaded the twist I was sure was coming: “Now, please pass your choice to the chef on your left.”
Top Chef has become weirdly enamored of this twist lately, in which it introduces an element of luck (the chefs draw for the order of choice), then turns it into randomness, in the process upending the planning or pre-thinking the chefs had already done. It makes more dramatic TV, I guess, but it doesn’t seem like a better test of cooking.
The twist didn’t come, and so I thought the challenge would be a solid test of all the chef’s skills without too much random dumb luck involved. The countries given were by and large not obscure cuisines—Mexico, India, Japan—so you’d think any of the chefs could get at least the basics of any cuisine’s flavors, and thus be working on a level playing field.
Turns out I was wrong. And it baffles me. Forget a chef: how is a reasonably experienced eater in America in 2010 not going to be familiar with Indian food? (And how embarrassing was it for Kevin to have to admit that in front of Padma?) I’m a layman cook at best but I know at least a thing or two about Brazilian food—rodizio, feijoada, &c.—you’re telling me Stephen, who cooks for a living, had no familiarity with it? (Here, at least, I think we were seeing a trick of editing, since his final dish of flank steak with chimichurri and black beans was at least in the ballpark, if totally unimaginative.) And Amanda—trouble with France? Sacre bleu!
“I’m going home—unless someone else’s is terrible,” Amanda said. Good news, Amanda: three of them were! Though Stephen, Alex and Ed would have been justifiable eliminations, it was Stephen who sabotaged himself with his rice, ensuring that Alex’s Keystone Kitchen pratfalls will survive another week.
Meanwhile, Tiffany managed to pick up a twofer, winning both the Quickfire and the final challenge—despite being unfamiliar with Ethiopian food—by sticking with a simple strategy: pick a basic set of the country’s flavors and produce something you’d want to eat. It’s approximately 500 degrees and humid in New York City and yet she made me want to plop a poached egg on a plate of spicy goulash, while she paid for her wedding with the $10,000 prize for her Mexican dish. That’s a whole lot of tamales.