Welcome back to season 12 of Top Chef where all it takes to be interesting is completely changing the dynamic of the entire show.
To be honest, when the episode began, a significant amount of trepidation existed as we focused again on Gregory, the most boring contestant in a house full of boring contestants. Gregory is so well-meaning and unimaginative that even his hobbies are boring. Tonight we learn that he is an ultrarunner, which means that sometimes he is boring while running 50 miles at a time.
Things were immediately more interesting when we enter the kitchen, despite the special guest judge being a man named Jasper White who owns restaurants or something. Also despite the challenge being making chowder because it’s Boston and of course. At this point it feels like this season has already constituted of roughly six chowder challenges but that’s probably not accurate. Most importantly, this was another SUDDEN DEATH QUICKFIRE which you should have suspected when you saw your DVR had taped for an hour and 15 minutes. The chefs were instructed to make a unique chowder and most of them took unique to mean “unique to clam chowder” not “unique to the style of food you make every goddamn episode.” That meant that Katsuji made a Mexican chowder, Gregory made a Japanese chowder, Melissa made a Thai chowder, and Katie made a completely misguided gross chowder. Which is to say that everyone played to type.
Since everyone played to type that meant that Gregory won because it was a quickfire challenge and that’s essentially all that ever happens in quickfires this season. Where things finally got interesting was once it was determined that Katie’s black tea sourdough chowder abomination was the loser, the previously eliminated chefs were marched in and able to choose amongst themselves who would challenge Katie for the opportunity to re-enter the contest. In what was a decidedly charitable move, (And why shouldn’t they be charitable? They would all had the opportunity for redemption via Last Chance Kitchen.) the eliminated chefs decided that George should challenge Katie. George, for those of you who may not remember, was eliminated halfway through the first episode of the season and is best known for being previous Top Chef contestant Mike Isabella’s business partner. Which is another way of saying that he was definitely going to be a formidable opponent with something to prove.
Katie and George had 45 minutes to create a tasty rabbit dish and it’s unclear whether the challenge was concocted around “magic” puns or whether that was something that came after the fact. Regardless, George defeated Katie handedly with his rabbit loin and barley risotto besting her braised rabbit leg.
Immediately, the energy on the show shifted as the remaining contestants were unsettled by George rejoining the group. The heart of this discomfort lay not in George being an overwhelming talent, which is yet to be determined, but rather in the fact that because of his mind-bogglingly early dismissal in the season, the chefs had no idea what to expect from him. This uncertainty is good for show energy because it’s difficult to be boring while people are feeling so uncomfortable.
Also zigging where the show would typically zag is the fact that this week’s Elimination Challenge fully incorporated the judges in a new and fun way. One advantage that ABC’s The Taste increasingly has over Top Chef (beyond continued use of Anthony Bourdain) is the fact that on that show the judges are fully integrated into every aspect of the episode. Gail and Tom, Padma and, hell, even Richard are often the most interesting part of any episode, in large part because they are known entities in an environment where even halfway through the season, we don’t know the competing chefs that well. It’s a wise move to lean harder on the judges, especially in seasons where the contestant pool seems a bit unremarkable.
The challenge itself entailed the chefs cooking for a group of 75 foodies and superfans right in the Top Chef kitchen. The twist would be that after a knife draw assigned them to a particular judge, the chefs would only be able to cook from ingredients purchased for them from Whole Foods by said judge. Some of the chefs seem more into the challenge than others with Adam in particular being wary of being assigned to Richard, as he then went into detail about how Richard would inevitably fill the pantry with molecular gastronomy bullshit. (Which he did.)
Cheap entertainment as it may have been, watching the judges scramble around in Whole Foods was decidedly amusing as it went about exactly as you’d expect. Padma was a bit out of her depths and depended on the kindness of strangers. Tom was a direct yet charming bully. Gail was insightful and clearheaded. Richard was flighty and impractical. And everyone picked on Richard. Theoretically, despite being the whipping boy for the rest of the judges, Richard should have had the advantage in the grocery store, seeing as he’s been in that particular position on not one, but two separate seasons. He had literally made the Whole Foods trip dozens of times. Also interesting was to observe how each judge had a different strategy. Some tried to pick ingredients that suited their chefs. Some chose according to how they wanted to eat. And some were total dicks and insisted on including liquid nitrogen.