Top Chef Recap - Restaurant Wars!

Well, it happens every year and the always anticipated Restaurant Wars went off last night on Top Chef. Rick Moonen of Top Chef Masters and Rick RM Seafood at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas was the guest judge for this episode.

The High Stakes QuickFire Challenge started it all off and set up the two teams that would eventually go into Restaurant Wars against each other. After drawing knives, Michael V and Jen picked teams. Michael picked his brother Bryan, Eli, and Robin. Jen's team was Michael I, Larine and Kevin. The challenge was to tag team a dish. The two twists were, except for the first to go, everyone was blindfolded and the team members could not talk to each other! How hard was that going to be? The only communication allowed was that each team had a minute to decide the order of chefs. It was up to the first person to choose the dish and get it started and then each subsequent chef had to decide what to do next based on what they saw when they got to the cooking station. I thought it was very cool!

Jen's team won and split $10K. Then they were given the option of taking the money or letting it ride on Restaurant Wars where each team member would get $10K if they won. They let it ride. That would turn out to be the first of a number of bad decisions that team would make.

Each team had $3000 to set up their menus. The advantage they had was that they didn't have to worry about setting up the front of the house as each team got to use Moonen's restaurant which is multilevel, so as the winner of the QF, Jen's team (Mission) picked the second floor, which was more of fine dining environment and the other team (Michael V's Revolt, a play on the chefs's names) took the more casual first floor setting.

Right off the bat, Jen decided, "no dessert". She said every team that tried dessert went home. Not sure that was a great decision. I think that was a cop out. They should have taken a dessert on. A Top Chef would do that. The other team produced two desserts which were very well received including Robin's pear dessert, which was the favorite of many.

Larine (Mission, Jen's team) and Eli took the front of the house positions. Say what you will about Eli and I don't care for him, he's got the gift of gab, so I think he was well suited for that part. Even though the two were taking on the FOH tasks, they were also responsible for a dish each.

Michael's team seemed to have it all together even though there was some tension between Michael and Bryan and Michael and Robin. They got past it to have a very successful service. With Eli seating and schmoozing, Revolt, although that was a horrible name for a restaurant, was anything but revolting.

Jen's team lost it quickly. They got "in the weeds" early and never recovered. Jen wound up steaming clams and mussels as each order came in rather than doing that task ahead of time and that really put her behind the eight ball. Eric Ripert, her mentor of five years, would have been surprised at how poorly she managed her station. Kevin undercooked lamb and if you've ever had lamb that was too rare, it's one of the most unpleasant dining experiences you can have. Undercooked lamb was going out and this after Larine declared that she would send food back if it did not meet the standards. Larine really fell flat at the front of the house even after volunteering for the task. She was not as engaging as Eli. Where Eli carefully and expertly explained each dish, Larine basically dropped the food and ran away. Eventually, Padma had to lasso her in to get a description of each dish. Not good. The evening fell apart for team Mission and they wound up losing Restaurant Wars. You could see how dejected they all were. They each realized that any one of them could be sent home for the myriad of poorly executed dishes that went out.

The judge's declared that Team Revolt ran the best restaurant of anyone in the six seasons of Top Chef and that's quite an honor. Though the team won, a single winner was picked from the four. Michael V got that honor as he was clearly the leader and driving force behind the success of the operation. For his win, and to the consternation of his brother Bryan, he won $10K, which he quickly and generously asked if he could share it with the rest of the team. Since it was his money, as Tom stated, he had the freedom to share the winnings, which he offered to each of his chefmates. Bryan, who was seething, refused the money. He felt his brother ran an unprofessional kitchen (with the way he treated himself and Robin) and got rewarded for bad behavior. That was the only downer to the whole evening for Team Revolt.

When Jen's team came to Judge's Table you could see how down they were. Each member wore worry and defeat on their faces. Each team member got vilified for one thing or another they did wrong, except that Mike I avoided any major criticism and he seemed safe. What he did was not spectacular, but it wasn't great either.

In the end, the judges felt Larine disappeared during the entire task and I think also, in the back of their minds, they must think the other team members (Jen, Kevin and Mike I) are stronger than her, which I agree with. So, Larine went home.

Restaurant Wars is so popular because you get to see each chef in the environment they spend the better parts of their lives in, a professional kitchen. The planning, the buying, the preparing. It's all so fascinating to see what goes into making a restaurant run successfully or not so successfully. It is also interesting to see how "competition" changes how each chef approached their chosen profession. When a "win" is on the line, will they perform as well as they do day in and day out when getting good food out on time is the win they are striving for? The dynamics of a contest really affects each person differently and in the end, the winner is the one or the team that can put the competition or the game to the side and let their experience and skill carry them to a positive end.

TOP CHEF MASTERS - Semifinal Recap

Last night was the next to last episode of Top Chef Masters. It was a good one!

As they have done the entire season, they brought back a Quick Fire Challenge from the past and they saved the best (or hardest) for last - Blind Taste Test! Even the seasoned (pardon the pun) chefs were apprehensive about having to identify twenty items without seeing it. Hubert Keller even remarked that you experience food with your eyes first, so blind folding each cheftestant would hamstring them for sure. All of them were not all that confident.

Michael Chiarello went first.

I like the way they edit each person's turn to make it look like they are doing a bad or good job. That was fun.

In the end Michael identified the most products, seven! He couldn't identify Hoisin Sauce ("I have no idea what that is." he said) and, surprisingly neither could Anita Lo. So, he went into the Elimination Challenge with five stars! Hubert and Rick Bayless were tied for second and were awarded four stars and Anita Lo rounded out the group at three and a half stars.

The Elimination Challenge brought back past cheftestants; twelve in all. The "Masters" had to quickly interview and then, starting with Michael, pick a team of three sous chefs. They each picked one chef until all twelve were picked. Fabio from last season was picked first by Michael, of course. Their Italian sensibilities matched perfectly. Once the teams were picked, the task was to create a buffet for two hundred guests and they got down to planning menus.

From the beginning it was obvious that Michael, unlike the others, was going to dictate every move everyone made. He made the point that they were competing for $100K and he wasn't going rely on someone else getting the win for him. He was going to make sure everything got done exactly the way he wanted it. It made him look heavy-handed, while the others were more relaxed and delegated more of the responsibility to the other team members even to the point of taking menu suggestions from them. Hubert, who had Richard Blaze, Mr. Molecular Gastronomy, on his team, even allowed Blaze to make avocado ice cream using liquid nitrogen, a technique that Keller had no experience with. It was a hit!

At the beginning of the challenge Michael had a run in with hot head Dale Talde from Season 4. Michael, who had a question about who was using what refrigerator, called Talde young man when addressing him. Sacre bleu! Well, Talde gets all uppity with Michael and goes after him, yelling at him and almost calling him out. But Michael, the class act that he is, just takes it and lets the incident die down and the challenge continues.

On the day of the challenge the chefs get into the kitchen and start to cooking. In walks Kelly Choi and everyone knows something is up. Kelly informs the group that they have to pack up and move to a different location; a hotel. When they get there, they immediately are told that the buffet will be outdoors on a patio in full sun. Anita is floored by this decision as she has centered her buffet on a raw bar and she has no way to protect her food from the blazing sunlight. She's worried. On top of all of that, each chef had to chose one of their three sous chefs to let go. This forces each chef to jump in and do more to ensure the success of their dishes. Chiarello is the complainer in the group, Anita is the worry wort, but Rick and Hubert methodically go about their business to get the food out and looking great.

In the end, I have to give top honor to Hubert. He and his "staff" pulled off eighteen, yes eighteen dishes. Amazing output and each and every dish got high marks. Rick and his team also did a fabulous job putting out a Mexican feast that everyone loved. Michael, after all the drama and complaining and angst, had some good dishes, but on the main dish, swordfish, the judges didn't like it's "furry" quality that came about because his electric carving knife broke and the knife they used to cut the fish tore it rather than sliced it cleanly. Picky? Yes, but this is Top Chef MASTERs after all and these guys have been to the party once or twice, so the bar is set higher and for good reason. Anita, alas, succumbed to the heat and the sun and her buffet was not so successful.

Hubert wins the challenge by garnering five stars from each judge. An amazing accomplishment. He beat Rick Bayless by half a star. Michael came in third and Anita was sent home, setting up the finals for next week.

For the final, it looks like they are bringing back each season's winners, as well as Tom and Padma to do the judging. That should be awesome! I'm looking forward to it. Come back next week for the season ending wrap up!