Thoughts on last night's episode of Top Chef. Not Suckah-free Block Party.
Okieee...tacos. Upscale taco. Sort of a contradiction when you think about it, but you can upscale anything when you get your brain around it. I'd be scared as hell to do an upscale taco for Rick Bayless. Manoel is sad that his elaborate Spanish pronuciation gets him NOTHING and Spike, the weird hat wearing hippie gets top honors for his soy sauce pork taco. Andrew, I'm not happy to see, is still choosing to do meth during Quickfires-or he has to go to the bathroom REAL BAD. No chalupas? Sadness for mainly "traditional" tacos, Mark's looks good on the website. (here's what you do. Slice polenta 1/4-1/2 inch slices, deep fry with sage. Top with shredded spicy pork, cotija, green apple, mango, tomato, chipotle, jicama slaw-do the Suzanne Goin romesco-call it a day! Deep fry rice or wonton wrappers...something) Richard wins for his non-taco taco. Suckahs!
Rick Bayless has to put the non-taco taco on his menu at Topolobampo. Suckah. It's actually quite drama-free the arrangement of the groups. Team RedTide and Team Blue(Balls). Of course Zoi and Jen are on a team together-[insert generic lesbian joke here], cause then they can share chef clogs more easily. And feel each other up, to the disdain and fear of middle America conservatives. Team BlueBalls is: Stephanie, Richard, Nikki, Manny, Antonia, Mark, & ... Team RedTide is: Spike, Andrew, Erik, Ryan, Zoi, Dale & Jen. Spike must have been a stock trader in one of his many past lives; he plays the law of averages by avoiding Richard, who has immunity. Dale avoids Nikki like the plague. Good call my friend. No blueberry mushroom cheese debacle.
omg..who is Lisa? Ohhh...the OTHER lesbian. Ok. Got it. She's got-er the last member of BlueBalls ie. Team Sexy WHAT? Chefs-you are driving me up a wall..
They drive around Chicago in color coded Gadget mobiles. Dale the lone Asian and Chicagoan knows his 'hoods. "4 Vietnamese restaurants are coming up!" Instead they pull up to a leafy, tree lined, stretch of suburbia. You must go and beg these nice Chicagoans for their food...door to friggin' door. Suckahs. That must be hard on some people-chefs do not work front of house. Dats why they in kitchen-cause they curse and sweat and do meth..whoops. Team RedTide strategically sends the 'Pretty Boy' Ryan in with Lisa(?) of all people. He gets them some pretty good stuff. While Team Sexy's (sigh...)Nikki and Antonia lay waste to a very high end - but rarely used kitchen (if the newness of the fixtures is to be believed) to the horror of it's owner. It's almost like Nikki and Antonia were all, "Can we take this?" pointing to her newborn child and planning to cook it with fava beans and a nice chianti. Spike and Andrew make sure one small family will NOT make it through Armageddon by purposely demolishing a Costco funded pantry. Ah, television cameras make home invasion so accessible. Residents-you have been pwned-Suckahs.Day of challenge: Yes, Spike & Andrew continue their 'bromance' by trying to drive each other's heads into the wall in the boy's dorm. Why do we spend like twenty minutes filming/watching this Bravo? Trying to tie it into "Make me a Supermodel?" Stephanie is all, "I'm ready to go COOK motherf#$@*%s! I'm sitting here in mah orange pants. I got done with my abwork 40x faster because Valerie wasn't drooling on my crocs. HAUUTE QUEEZEEN!"
Unfortunately, the teams have to prep AND cook on the same day. So what happened to those lost hours between 5pm & 5am the day before? Is it because nobody is as cute as CJ? Or they didn't do weird eating palate testing contests? Spike walks around with his shirt off all the time!
Menus: BlueBalls - Paella, Mac & Cheese, Fresh Fruit "Cobbler" with sugar cinnamon wonton crisp, Mexican chocolate sauced ribs, Pulled Pork sammies, bean salad, boring ass spinach salad, inside out cookie. "Sexy" Drink. (Tom C: "What makes it sexy?" Nikki: "Lavender." I laughed like Satan with Tom. "This WILL bite you in da ass at judge's table! Sexy is Padma's sweat! Sexy is mah breakfast eggs! Sexy no is lavender. Lavender is 'soothing' according to a billion air freshener/Calgon products.") At least there are no blueberries stuffed into mushrooms topped with cheese. Suckahs.RedTide - MiniSliders (redundancy much?), Corn dogs, two different sangrias, mini hand torched s'mores (Spike + hand held incendiary device. He'll be asking Richard for that eucalyptus soon), taco salad, pork tenderloin skewers, a 'dip' bar, Waldorf salad, and pasta salad
Pasta-freakin' salad? Uh...you guys raided panties-I mean pantries (but who knows WHAT Spike and Andrew did at that poor lady's house besides take her wartime rations from her bomb shelter) from around this rather well-stocked neighborhood and Zoi has to make pasta salad? I mean...there was pork loin! (ooh...pork loin. I take the pork loin from you OLD MAN! and your ranch dressing too. that was seriously sad. I wonder if they had to go out to dinner after that) Notice Spike's strategic product placement? KC BBQ sauce, it will make an appearance in our lovely block party lunch! By the way, read Ted Allen's blog on the Bravo website to see him ream both teams with a spike (the tool, not person) for treating the neighborhood folks like a bunch of yokels. They're all upscale foodies and the mayor actually lives there. Sure, make one or two things for the kids, but don't dumb down your food, it's Chicago not Nebraska. Good real food is appreciated everywhere by everyone. Don't be stuck up y'all. Suckahs.
UNRELATED TO ANYTHING NEWS: If you're reading the Top Chef Website, just genuflect for a moment, on just how friggin' pretty Lee Anne Wong is.
Cooking is uneventful. Nikki uses Velveeta for her mac and cheese (I thought it was government cheese at first) and gets worried about it setting up. Uh-NEWSFLASH! A shitload of people use Velveeta for mac and cheese, because it stays oddly liquid, it's like plastic or something. Both teams take initiave on working well together, tasting all the food and trying to get along. Mark and Richard are oddly subdued. Maybe because this is more like a real cooking environment instead of a competition, they can mellow. Stephanie fries wonton wrappers-good girl. Dale is pissed on a soapbox AS USUAL, complaining that Team RedTide is going too low-end. He will be making high end pork shish kabob. Dale...get over it. On initial viewing, the judges seem to take to the food well. Even Colicchio, who is bereft of snarky comments for the moment, maybe he got wasted on Pabst or just sauntered over to the dudes who were bbq-ing on the other end of the block (Did you see that? That was a pretty good idea. Iron Chef - Block Party! Winners get to throw Spike in the dunk tank) Padma ignores sexy drink to eat a hand torched marshmallow...sexily. She drops it on Ted Allen's Prada shoe - OOH SNAP! Girlfriend owes Queen Ted a new pair of brogues. Team BlueBalls does full service line, RedTide lets people get it themselves-so they can you know, smoke out in the back of the red Gadgetmobile and drink the residents' beer. BlueBall's Manny LETS Bayless know, hermano a hermano, that they're MEXICAN chocolate sauced ribs-which actually look damn good. Mexican yo! No Colicchio-RedTide did not STEAM the sliders. Jen's gonna rip you a new one while she points out the skid uh...grill marks. Shrimp and chorizo taco salad sounds nasty. RedTide deems themselves winners (Suckahs), chug the rest of their sangria, play b-ball, drop kick Spike and enjoy some beers while Team Sexy packs up their shit and sweats unnecessarily.
Judge's Panel: Team RedTide looks shocked, appalled and mortified as their competitors are called up first to Judge's Table. I swear I hear a beer bottle breaking. Andrew looks like he's going to take someone out-not Spike. Good thing Valerie left or I would tag her as a prime target. Since the only girls he can blame on his team are lesbians, he knows better than to go there and just pouts. Team BlueBalls ie Sexy WINS! by a hair. As much as I agree with Judges Panel for telling Richard his paella was actually pilaf-attend any one of the 4 million buffets out there that serve 'paella' and that's what you're going to get. If there was crispy rice anywhere, you'd probably get some octegenarian complaining that he has to clean his dentures of rice particles. Bayless points out the brick of mac & cheese. Colicchio likes nothing they served, but Stephanie gets points and wins the individual challenge for her fruit dessert (anyone hear a 'ringer' here?) RedTide is up and they express nothing but the aforementioned shock and disappointment. Andrew and Spike are sure that they have won because they were better entertainers. It's called TOP CHEF suckahs.
Unfortunately, the judges tag 3 SF chefs: Erik 'Papa Souffle' (that's adorable, it's his WWF tag team name), Ryan (can't make a classic dish to save my life) for his watery Waldork salad and Zoi for her boring pasta salad (when the judges mention you can get something better at Safeway, I actually wince). In the end, Erik is tagged out for his soggy corn dogs and the reasoning ("they gave us 12 packs of hot dogs!") behind them. Buh-bye Papa Souffle, come back to Circa! Next week...I wasn't paying attention.
Here is my question: better to impress judges or your customer?
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