It only took six episodes, but season twelve of Top Chef finally produced an episode that felt like an actual episode of Top Chef. And all it took was forcing people to cook in the dirt.
“The First Thanksgiving” was actually far from the first Thanksgiving episode the series has produced but it was certainly among the best. For the first time, Boston was able to provide actual culinary context for each challenge and the episode was all the better for it.
The episode itself opened with plenty of good riddance-ing from the remaining contestants over last week’s elimination of Aaron. Shockingly, he was not very popular among his peers. Can’t imagine that’s ever come up for him before. Adam then is featured talking about the chefs who he views as competition and names, literally, half of the remaining contestant pool. He’s not wrong with many of his choices, Doug, Gregory, Mei, with wild card Katsuji. But he includes Melissa on his list and it feels like a complete misread. Melissa is fine but she’s definitely middle of the pack material, which is a precarious place to be with only nine remaining chefs. Nothing is said about Gregory’s big mouth at Judges Table which is, honestly, a huge disappointment.
All of the chefs are surprised when season one runner-up Tiffani appears in their kitchen and bade them to follow her to a mysterious second location. (As she does not appear to be a hippie, they oblige.) To the audience’s surprise, the second location is actually kind of awesome. Despite being yet another instance of product placement, forcing the chefs to harvest cranberries was remarkably entertaining to watch and informative in a non-stifling way. Ever wonder how cranberries are grown and harvested? Well, now you know. Also, one should never underestimate the hilarity of watching non-athletic people run. Also, it is additionally hilarious to watch said individuals attempt to run in water.
To no one’s real surprise, those chefs who are moderately athletic or nimble garner the advantage, which entitles the first four contestants to fill their baskets with cranberries the opportunity to cook during the Quickfire Challenge with high-end ingredients. Those chefs include Katie, Adam, Gregory, and Doug. Katsuji does not come close to qualifying but he doesn’t get special recognition for flopping around like a beached carp after the race’s end.
And just what does that Quickfire Challenge entail? Well, the chefs, once again safely ensconced in the comforting walls of the Top Chef kitchen, are asked to prepare a unique dish highlighting cranberries that is suitable for any time of year. They can choose from a small pantry, with the winners getting high end materials and the losers getting inferior product, and the use of any number of OCEAN SPRAY cranberry products as well as their freshly harvested cranberries, also courtesy of OCEAN SPRAY.
The Quickfire is intriguing because cranberries are not a simple ingredient to work with and featuring them without relieving them of all their signature tartness takes a delicate hand with flavor profile balancing. Undoubtedly the best aspect of this challenge, however is how Hannibal-ish everything looked. Cranberries have the best color and with so many chefs incorporating the cranberry glaze schmear on their plates it gave the appearance of a particularly gore heavy dinner. Ultimately, the chefs produce a number of unremarkable dishes and Katie, of all people, walks away with immunity for her, frankly, brilliant cranberry borscht. While I suspect this will be the high point of Katie’s Top Chef experience, good for her for tackling such a difficult product and making something sing.
Which leads us to the Elimination Challenge, which finally manages to thematically integrate Boston (or, at least, the greater Boston area) in a very organic way. Located 40-some miles from Boston is a recreation of a 17th century pilgrim village called Plimoth Plantation. The chefs will be expected to work together to create a traditional Thanksgiving meal using only the ingredients that could be naturally found at the location and items the pilgrims would have brought over on the Mayflower. As well as the judges, the chefs will be feeding descendants of both Mayflower passengers and Wampanoag tribe members (the local tribe in attendance at the first Thanksgiving) which is pretty awesome all around. The chefs are clueless as to what ingredients and utensils they’ll have to work with until they arrive and that alone is fascinating. It’s always a good challenge when the contestants go into a situation completely blind and have to create on the fly.
Once they reached their destination and took in what they were working with (wooden spoons, cast iron pots, fire pits, spit sets, and a beautiful, if limited, outlay of natural ingredients) they got down to cooking. These are the best challenges on Top Chef as they really reveal the breadth of a chef’s ability, not only to be imaginative and understand how ingredients work together, but also to understand the limitations of their methods of preparation and adapting as necessary.