Last week offered an exciting Top Chef two-fer: The season finale of Top Chef Masters, which quietly asserted itself as perhaps my favorite episode in franchise history (as I wrote in that blog, it was like watching a real-life, extended cut of the climactic meal in Big Night), and the premiere of this season’s Top Chef, which introduced new blood, a new city, and lots of new gambling-themed gimmicks. So it was perhaps inevitable that Week Two would be a big comedown for your friendly recapper, because I’m already wrung out from last week’s finale/premiere double bill and because I’m looking at a chaff-filled 16 contestants clogging up the screen. Who are these people? Why should I care about them? Could someone wake me when the six or seven who clearly have no chance are finally eliminated.
All right, enough whining. I press on.
Tonight wasn’t a terribly memorable hour, with a couple of rote challenges and not too many juicy developments. If it’s remembered for anything, it will probably be the mild controversy about the bachelor/bachelorette party Elimination challenge, which didn’t sit well with Ashley, who’s a lesbian and therefore not happy having to honor an institution in which she and others gay and lesbians (including two others from this season’s group) cannot legally take part. I really don’t feel like dipping my toe in this issue—the obnoxious comment board flare-ups over Ted Kennedy’s death have been unsettling enough for one day—but Ashley’s objections were surprisingly strong and perhaps flipped the script a bit on “defense of marriage” types who are always fretting about how the institution” is threatened.
Otherwise, this was pretty ho-hum. Most of the downtime was spent on Jesse, who was given the dreaded early focus, which in the past would be a sure sign that she was headed home. (Now that the editors seem wise to viewer awareness of telegraphed exits, it’s gotten to where the early focus is a sure sign that a person is staying. You just can’t win!) The trouble with Jesse, according to the judges, is that she’s smart enough to recognize her dishes are flawed, but not skilled enough to keep from putting out crappy dishes. This might keep her ahead of the other chaff for a week or three—after all, there are still 15 who could potentially do worse, including a few sad souls put out garbage without realizing it—but her days seem numbered at this point.
The Quickfire did the Vegas thing by bringing out a craps table and having the contestants (incidentally, here’s my promise to you: I will never use the word “cheftestants”) roll the dice to see how many components they need to use in their dish. (Salt, pepper, and oil don’t count.) My original understanding of the challenge was that the chefs were allowed no greater a number of ingredients than what they roll, but I guess they had to use the exact number, so a few were actually irked to roll high numbers. Whatever the case, the ingredient restrictions didn’t have much bearing on the final result, though the time restrictions did: Laurine rolled lowest with three, but her asparagus, leeks, and lemon soup cruised. However, nobody seemed to have enough time to cook anything through, so the worst dishes were botched proteins like Jesse’s mushy (un)seared scallops and Ashley’s very rare lamb. Once again, Jennifer C. and Kevin asserted their frontrunner status by landing in the top three, but it was Michael V.—the tattooed, risk-taking, self-styled rock-and-roll badass of the two brothers—who took it down with a “nitro gazpacho” that mixed a classic soup with newfangled, ultra-scientific, um, cold-o-sity.