Every season of Top Chef needs a villain, and in Seattle, it has to be smug Stefan. Or wait, is it over-exuberant Josie? Maybe excessively mustachioed Josh? Or John, who always seems to be wearing his glasses two inches above his eyes? The truth is, a lot of the cast members on Top Chef: Seattle have had some seriously unlikeable moments. This week, the divisive contestant is Josie. After her antics at the berry festival last week, any kind of tense personal interaction would be magnified. But her sniping at Micah coupled with a poor performance in the challenges means that Josie is well on her way to becoming Top Chef Grinch.
Quickfire Challenge:
The chefs awake to a summons: Go collect their ingredients at a shellfish farm outside the city. Clomping around in the mud, collecting the freshest and briniest of oysters, our intrepid chefs return to the kitchen with big net bags full of delectable shellfish. Emeril and Padma meet them with the rest of the challenge. Each chef has to prepare a dozen oysters for Emeril. Five must do a hot preparation; five must do a cold one.
Josie begins her streak of bad luck here, when she manages to break her sauce for the oysters and overwhelm the whole dish with chorizo. Bart also lands in the bottom, and John’s oysters had “no pop.” That’s Emeril for “you forgot to kick it up a notch, bub.” On the winning end of things are some now familiar victors. Lizzie, with her red currant preparation, stole Emeril’s heart, and Brooke triumphed despite getting some bits of shell in the dish. But it was Micah who pulled out the win. I suspect it’s because he compared Emeril to God, but it’s possible that his oysters were just that tasty. It’s good that he got the win, because soon afterward, Josie yelled at him for being “in the closet.” It’s poor form on her part, particularly after Micah helped her out of the mud during their oyster hunting outing.