Top Chef Power Rankings, Week 1: Didja Taste The Soup?

Season 21 returns, without Padma or quickfire immunity, with added "Midwest Nice."

Mar 21, 2024

Welcome to The #Content Report, a newsletter by Vince Mancini. I’ve been writing about movies, culture, and food since the aughts. Now I’m delivering it straight to you, with none of the autoplay videos, takeover ads, or chumboxes of the ad-ruined internet. Support my work and help me bring back the cool internet by subscribing, sharing, commenting, and keeping it real.

—

Hello there! Hi. If you subscribed here for thoughtful essays like this and movie reviews, trust: I’m still going to do those. But another thing I’ve been doing for a long time is recapping Top Chef. I have too much time invested to quit now, and the truth is, for some odd reason I have more fun writing these stupid recaps than just about anything. I hope you read on even if you don’t care about the show, and if I manage to trick you into watching the show just to better enjoy my stupid jokes about it, so much the better. Can’t stop won’t stop.

—

Top Chef is, for lack of a better word, back. The show has returned for its 21st season, which means that it’s old enough to drink, a bittersweet development in light of having lost their most entertaining drinker, Padma Lakshmi. We’ll all miss Champagne Padma, but she put in 17 years on this show, has a bunch of other shows, and is most likely disgustingly rich (in addition to being a model, author, and TV host, her daughter-daddy is the brother of the founder of Dell computers), so I get it. There are only so many nights one can spend bickering with Tom Collicchio about the ideal temperature to serve vichyssoise. (Not that I wouldn’t jump at the chance, but I am not disgustingly rich, just disgusting).

Anyway, to recap: Padma? Out. Kristen Kish? In.

The Top Chef season 10 winner is another fashion forward foodie and former model of Asian descent (Korean, in this case), and thus probably seemed like an obvious fit. So far Kish seems perhaps a little too put together, not quite as willing as Padma was to get kind of drunk and purr thinly veiled sexual entendres. Hopefully with time she’ll start to let her hair down. That’s a pun, see, she has very high hair.

She also grew up in Kentwood, Michigan, right across whatever great lake that is from Wisconsin, where this season’s show takes place (Michigan? Probably it’s Lake Michigan. Not looking it up).

That’s right, we’re going to Milwaukee!

It took all of 10 minutes of screen time before the lone Milwaukee-based chef invoked the concept of “Midwest Nice.” “This Midwest Nice shit is 100% legit,” he said in a sure-to-be-reused soundbite.

Oh good, I love when Midwesterners act like they invented the concepts of courtesy and passive-aggressiveness. I’ve never lived in the Midwest but Midwesterners bring up their own nice wholesome dorkified family valuedom so often that I’m convinced they’re all serial killers. You guys saw how this worked out for Ellen, right? Have you noticed celebrities with the most wholesome images always turn out to be the biggest sickos (and vice versa)?

I’m mostly only teasing because I love you, Midwesterners. Spread my ashes in a cheese vat.

Other new developments? Quickfire Challenge immunity is gone!

Contestants who won the first challenge in the show traditionally had immunity in the second challenge. Now, a win in the Elimination Challenge wins the contestant immunity in the next Elimination Challenge, the following week. This does seem a little more fair, since the Elimination Challenge seems more “real” than the Quickfire, which is often just an excuse for some spon-con. This new system could help mitigate the good-chef-having-one-bad-night problem, while keeping chefs from staying on the show just because they were the best at making a cheffed-up comfort classic using only repurposed Totino’s Pizza Rolls or whatever. I mean get that bag, but the viewers don’t really care how much you can “elevate” a Triscuit. I’m still going to eat them raw straight out of the bag like a crumb goblin.

How did the contestants themselves take the changes? As contestant Danny Garcia put it, “now it just gives you more incentive to keep cooking gangster food all the time.”

Damn, is food gangster? I’d like to see what that judges table looks like for that one.

(I’m so sorry to anyone trying to understand that stupid joke, but here it is).

(*flying by in biplane*) AAAaaaaaaaaaannnnyyyywaaaaayyyyyyyy….

This episode had a single challenge. The contestants were broken into three groups, decided by knife draw.

TEAM TOM CHALLENGE: Make a whole roast chicken (light meat and dark meat).
TEAM GAIL CHALLENGE: Make a stuffed pasta dish.
TEAM KRISTEN CHALLENGE: Make a soup.

Of the three, the soup challenge had to be the easiest. Roasting a whole chicken is easy to do, but hard to do well, and making a stuffed pasta has a million variables but at least allows you to make corrections on the fly. Making a good stuffed pasta requires having made it before (ahem), whereas making a good whole roast chicken mostly seems to involve time (brining, dry brining, marinating, whatever), which the contestants didn’t have. I’ve tried to do a non-pre-seasoned roast chicken a few times and it’s never come even close to a rotisserie chicken from Costco. That should actually be a challenge: blind chicken taste test head to head with Costco. I bet you Costco is winning that most of the time.

I digress, but the losers in each group then had to face off against each other in a final “just make a good plate of food” finale challenge, using only the leftover ingredients and with a 20-minute time limit. Damn, man, I could barely make avocado toast in 20 minutes. Let it never be said that this show is easy. (I kind of hate the time limits, give these fuckers 72 hours of prep time for every dish, I say).

POWER RANKINGS

15: (Eliminated) David Murphy

Whoops! I got my pictures mixed up. Sorry about that. Here’s David:

Nope! That’s not him either. Dangit! I’m going to have to take this computer to the shop:

THAT’S David. Finally.

AKA: Trademark. Seurat. Hopalong Howie. Big Buck’s Super Stereo Chef. Coco Chanel.

We’re calling David “Trademark,” because between the cowboy hat, the Jeffrey Dahmer Elvis glasses, the Hawaiian shirts, and the copious jewelry, Trademark seems like he has too many of them. Does David wear rings on his index finger? You can’t see it in this picture but you know he does We’re calling this guy Coco Chanel because he should’ve removed one accessory before leaving the house. We’re calling this guy Seurat because he arranged all his sauces in dots, pointilist motherf*cker. (That one is for the art history majors).

Trademark did himself no favors this episode, introducing himself by insulting Tom’s “hat game” (not wrong, but impolite) and then doubling down by saying how much he “hated pasta” multiple times. Talk about a brave stance that will win you zero points. And yet! By the end of the episode I actually felt genuinely kind of bad for David. He managed to combine abrasive styling and needlessly contrarian opinions with a golden retriever-like personality. And then seemed understandably crushed when he was the first to get sent home. Rough! Relatable!

Of course, Trademark did seem to bring it upon himself with his almost universally bad decisions, from choosing to make stuffed gnocchi in the first place to saving the dough part for the last minute. Let your dough rest, fool! And let my eyes rest while you’re at it!

Then in the second elimination round, he paired a green curry sauce with a charred cilantro sauce, which sounds to me like putting guacamole on avocado toast. Yes I know I need to find a new basis for analogy besides avocado toast, but you know what I mean. That was a baffling decision. I guess for David’s sake we should call it “putting a hat on a hat.”

Shoulda done a crudo, man! That shit always works.

In the end, that hat-on-a-hat sauce decision was probably over-analyzed by the judges and editors, when really, the simple fact that he over salted his dish (to the point of attempting to wash his shrimp off in the sink to mitigate it) was probably the main reason he got sent home.

Anyway, I selfishly hope Trademark does well in Last Chance Kitchen because it feels bad to end up empathizing with someone you initially hated reflexively for their clothes. At least he pronounced “gnocchi” correctly.

DISH: Mushroom Stuffed gnocchi with speck and chicken liver gravy.

REVIEWS: “It wasn’t a gnocchi and it wasn’t really stuffed.”

14: Amanda Turner

AKA: Daria. Milton. LAN Party. Grimace.

Chef Amanda was the other most memorable contestant this episode, a self-described biracial nerd who loves astrology and calls herself “a witch.” She sounds like Daria or Steven Root from Office Space and doesn’t really open her mouth when she talks. Which is why I’ve dubbed her Grimace (the facial expression, not the McDonald’s mascot).

Amanda was in the Team Kristen challenge and cooked up a chicken and dumplings dish. Not really a “soup,” in my opinion, but probably one of my top 10 favorite dishes of all time so I’ll allow it. She unfortunately paired that with a “citrus gremolata,” which is one of those food things I pretend to know but actually don’t. (Gremolata: “gremolata is a green sauce made of chopped parsley, lemon zest, and garlic. It is the standard accompaniment to the Milanese braised veal shank dish ossobuco alla milanese” — good to know, I’ll probably forget again though).

Gremolata…. gremolata… gremolotta salt in that, anyway.

Grimace knew her gremolata was salty right away and tried to remediate, which does seem like a point in her favor, but then why serve it at all? Just leave it off! No one is going to get a bowl of chicken and dumplings and go, “Whoa, no citrus gremolata?! What the fuck!”

To her credit, Amanda handled that second elimination, cooking up some sort of crudo thing that judges always love on this show. My gut says she should be a lot higher than 14 but I have to judge her on the performances at hand.

Dish: Chicken and Dumplings with Citrus Gremolata

Reviews: “The gremolata is really salty.”

13: Laura Ozyilmaz

AKA: Screentime. Yogurt Soup. Who?

I don’t think we got a shot of Chef Laura in the main part of the frame until about 40 minutes into the show. And even then, her chyron just said “Laura,” like the editors were afraid of misspelling her last name. It’s like even they forgot she was on this show. (Something about the way she’s holding her two fingers in that picture makes me think she’s going to sock me in the shoulder if I look at them).

Laura made a yogurt soup, which sounded kinda good, but apparently wasn’t. So it goes.

Dish: Yuvalama Mint Yogurt Soup with Bulghur Meatballs, Morel and Maitake Mushrooms.

Reviews: “It was like two different soups put together.” (Inside of you are two soups…)

12: Valentine Howell

AKA: Shovelbeard. [Whatever the biracial Jamaican equivalent of “Paddington Bear” is]

Valentine is a big ol’ teddy bear of a man with a head full of dreads and a big beard shaped like a shovel. Which is why I have nicknamed him— okay this nickname is probably pretty self-explanatory. The camera loved Shovelbeard in ep. 1, during which he explained all about his eclectic upbringing and his mixed Italian-American/Jamaican roots. A Rastafaritaliano, if you will.

Shovelbeard sounds and looks pretty cool, though the judges seemed thus far unimpressed with his food. Part of me thinks this is way too low to rank him, but it seems bad that the half-Jamaican guy performed badly in a chicken challenge. Too many shishitos, bro! “A Night of Too Many Shishitos.” Holy Shishito, Where’s The Meat?

Dish: Roasted Harissa Chicken, Corn Puree, and Warm Shishito Salad.

Reviews: “That chicken is just buried in extra stuff.” “Look how much more shishito is on that plate than chicken.”

11: Kaleena Bliss

AKA: Khaleesi? I dunno, man, struggling here.

Chef Kaleena got one of the first soundbites of the show, in response to Kristen Kish’s introduction. “She’s adopted from Korea, just like me.”

That got Chef Kaleena’s backstory out of the way right out of the gate. And then… well, was pretty much it for Kaleena story. I think she accidentally mis-racialized chef Kenny at one point? I guess her chicken was dry? Bummer, man.

Dish: Roasted Chicken with Spiced Curry, Corn, Shitake and Lobster Mushrooms.

Reviews: “I found Kaleena’s chicken to be the driest.”

10: Kenny Nguyen

AKA: Pho Butter. Rockne. The Gipper. Knute… Spatchcockne? (No, too far.)

When Chef Kaleena asked “am I the only Asian chef?” Chef Kenny piped up, revealing that he’s Vietnamese but admitting he’s “Sort of racially ambiguous.”

I’m calling Chef Kenny “Rockne” and “The Gipper,” because with this chinstrap beard and pulled back hair on top he always kind of looks like he’s an old-timey football player in a leather helmet. Mm’yeah, looky heah, it’s time you tasted some banh xeo, see?

Anyway, Pho Butter landed in the bottom three after the initial elimination challenge, which might make the 10 slot seem like a stretch, but the loss was mostly because he didn’t actually get his dark meat on the plate. First time dealing with the clock, it seemed like a more forgivable mistake than dry chicken or serving oversalted gremolata, blah blah blah. What can I say, “pho butter roasted chicken” sounded good as hell so I’m giving Kenny the benefit of some doubts.

I can’t stop saying “pho butter.” Btw, if I ever open a Pho restaurant, I’m calling it “Pho Cure Mother.” S’a good play on words. Think about it. Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?

Chef Kenny also came in second in the second elimination challenge, with a cabbage and shrimp salad that the judges loved, but dinged him for his chopping. Tom found a cabbage core in it and acted like he wasn’t going to sleep that night. Come on, they had 20 minutes! You want perfect knife cuts in 20 minutes? I could barely have sex 16 times in that amount of time!

Dish: Pho Butter Roasted Chicken with Coconut Carrot Mashed Potatoes.

Reviews: “No dark meat. That’s a big miss.” “The warm spices on that chicken I thought were delicious.”

9: Savannah Miller

AKA: Savannah Miller. Boots. Peepers (she kinda has big eyes? I dunno).

Savannah Miller is wearing boots in her promo image. She has a background in Japanese food. She looks just like a girl who lived across from me in college but you guys probably don’t know her so that’s no help in the nickname department. Anyway. Savannah! She’s sure a chef on this show.

Dish: Roasted Chicken with Avgolomeno Sauce, Chicken Skin Gremolata, and Potato Puree.

Reviews: “The white meat was some of the moistest I’ve tasted.” (Ugh, Padma would’ve made this sound SO sexual). “The sauce was just too watery.”

8: Kevin D’Andrea

AKA: L’Kevin. VousTube. Mec Perfect (that’s French for Dude Perfect, which is a YouTube show, I looked it up).

L’Kevin was a finalist on Top Chef France and holds the distinction of being the only chef wearing tighter pants than Trademark in his promo photo. I kind of have to show you the whole thing uncropped just so you can see it:

You think he has to monte those with butter before he puts them on? Probably. Oh hon hon hon!

He also has fresh white kicks and hair fluffier than a teen influencer. He looks like French YouTuber, hence the name “VousTube” (realizing now I probably didn’t have to explain this one either). He even said “Let’s goooo” at one point. Do you guys know any French plays on e-boys or Zoomers? This is one Zoomer-ass Frenchman.

Anyway, VousTube was in the Team Gail challenge and made a dece-looking squid ink raviolo with lobster and shrimp. Only, he committed the cardinal sin of too-thick dough, so I’m a little torn on where to put him here. “Make the dough thin enough” was kind of the whole ballgame here and Gail basically said as much. Come on, homme, you had UN TREVAIL!

Okay, that’s all the French I’ve got.

Dish: Squid Ink Raviolo Stuffed with Lobster and Shrimp.

Reviews: "I thought it was really tasty." "There's a lot of flavor in his dish." "The pasta was really thick and felt a little weighted."

7: Alisha Elenz

AKA: Avril.

Alisha had a little rockabilly bow on her head. She looks punky in a Hot Topic kind of way, and I dig that about her.

Avril made some ricotta gnocchi, or ri-CAWT-uh NOAKy, as they apparently say in the Midwest (Avril is from Chicago, per her bio).

I understand that gnocchi can be made from ricotta instead of potato, but then why do we need “gnudi?” Can we just agree that gnocchi = potato and gnudi = ricotta from now on? Gnocchi, gnudi, let’s gnall the whole thigngn off.

Anyway, Chef Avril made some GNUDI stuffed with mushroom bechamel, which sounds kind of like an Italian soup dumpling. I don’t know if it worked, but I support the concept wholeheartedly. That’s some good thinkin’. The bow must be workin’.

Dish: Ricotta Gnocchi Stuffed with Mushroom Bechamel, Truffle Goat Cheese, and Preserved Lemon.

6: Rasika Venkatesa

AKA: Party Nerd.

Rasika is bespectacled and very put together, but seems like she has a bit of a punk streak. She made an Indian dish with ground beef, for instance. I like her. Her dish looked good but the judges said it “wasn’t a pasta dish,” which feels like one of those quibbles of nomenclature that Top Chef judges get hung up on from time to time (I don’t care what it’s called, tell me if it’s good!). But considering I just bitched for a paragraph about gnocchi and gnudi I suppose I shouldn’t talk.

Dish: Keema-Stuffed Kozhukattai with Kurma.

Reviews: “I loved the flavor profile.” “It wasn’t a pasta dish.”

5: Dan Jacobs

AKA: Handsome Dan. Kermit. Frames. Bizarro Jordan Peterson. (Jordache Peterson? Gonna need to workshop this one…)

Dan is the only chef who works in Milwaukee for this season set there, so he’s quickly become the show’s de facto Wisconsin sherpa. He was the chef with the “Midwest Nice” soundbite in the beginning of the show. I feel a little bad for Dan for bitching about it; he doesn’t get to control what throwaway thing he says gets used as an expository soundbite. I’m assuming he meant it as in passive-aggressive rather than “we’re actually all very nice here” but it’s a little too early to tell.

About halfway through the show it hit me that Dan’s voice sounds exactly like Jordan Peterson’s. After that I couldn’t unhear it. Every time he described his fennel broth I reflexively thought he was about to start crying about the plot of the Little Mermaid. I’ll admit I haven’t been able to incorporate that quality into a good nickname yet. Whatever, people liked his soup. Good for you, Dan.

Dish: Tomato and Fennel Broth with Seafood.

4: Charly Pierre

AKA: Carmen.

Chef Charly is a fella with a collection of colorful head scarves, hence why I called him Carmen. It’s not my best work, but I liked Charly enough that I almost had him in the top three even though he didn’t even win his round (which was soup, the easiest). During one of Charly’s interviews, my wife (*Borat voice*) turned to me and said “he seems so genuine.”

She was right, and so Charly seems like an early frontrunner for fan favorite. He also cooks Haitian food, and as Gregory Gourdet proved, Haitian food plays on this show. (It’s always funny to me to compare the food cultures of islands originally colonized by France, like Haiti, to the ones original colonized by England, where canned corned beef is invariably considered a food group).

Dish: Corn and Ham Soup with Pickled Shrimp.

Reviews: “You gave us corn soup and it has a ton of corn flavor.”

3: Danny Garcia

AKA: Grok. Brooklyn.

Danny was the guy who described the new rules as “more incentive to keep cooking gangster food.” I’m calling him Grok because that sounded like something Elon Musk’s AI bot would’ve said. Sorry again about the out-of-context expository soundbite thing, Danny.

There was some big drama about Danny’s slow-cooking chicken, but he built some kind of “hot tub time machine” (classic Grok) and it ended up working out fine. Danny’s chicken ended up being the favorite, and the chicken challenge was arguably the hardest. That was more than enough to put him in the top of these here rankings (which are incredibly scientific).

Dish: Fines Herbes Roasted Chicken, Brown Butter Sherry Vinaigrette, and Carrot-Miso Puree.

2: Michelle Wallace

AKA: Pitmaster. The Oracle (remember The Matrix? God, this sucks).

I don’t have any great nicknames for Michelle, who is a barbecue pitmaster and apparently the oldest competitor in the competition (though you’d never know it from looking at her). The editors believed that Michelle was sweating over having to cook stuffed pasta even though she hasn’t made it in years. That she’s ever made it at all despite being characterized as “just” a barbecue chef seems to hint at some hidden layers (her bio says she’s a culinary school grad and James Beard nominee among other accolades, not surprisingly. She’s probably made a lot of pasta in her life).

Anyway, false modesty aside, Michelle knew enough that getting the dough as thin as possible was job one, and took home the win. Dish looked good as hell too.

Dish: Ricotta and Lobster Stuffed Pasta with Charred Corn Sauce and Chorizo.

Reviews: “I love the thinness of the pasta.” “She made the best pasta of anybody.”

1: Manny Barella

AKA: Manny. El Cid Vicious.

In all honesty, I was thinking of nicknaming this guy “Manny” (and wondered if that would be racist somehow) before I even found out that his actual name is Manny. In my head, all Hispanic guys who look like they could kick my ass are named Manny. They didn’t explicitly say so, but from his old photos, Manny looks like he was a bassist in a punk band, and also looks like dabbles in grappling and/or rugby. Which is to say, my exact demographic. He also made green pozole, which is one of my favorite foods and things to make (it’s a lot like chile verde, only with hominy and more watery — hopefully Manny doesn’t kick my ass for that comparison).

Manny is from Mexico and cooks elevated Mexican cuisine, noting “if you want crunchy tacos, if you want cheddar cheese, I am not your guy.”

I totally get it, but also, crunchy tacos rule. I don’t care how non-traditional they are. (This crunchy barbacoa taco I had at Tacos Juan in Guadalajara a few years back stands out as one of my favorite tacos, and I’ve had a few).

Anyway, Manny seems cool. And it’s about time a Mexican chef finally won this show, so winning the first episode is a good start. I feel like the only reason a Mexican chef hasn’t won is that the best, most traditional Mexican food takes like three full days to cook. Pozole in a soup challenge almost feels like cheating, but it’s smart cheating. I support it.

Dish: Green Pozole with Chicken and Charred Salsa Verde.

Reviews. “It is just packed full of comfort but you made it so elegant.”

RESULTS

Gail Challenge (Stuffed Pasta): Michelle*, Rasika, Alisha, Kevin, David**.

Tom Challenge (Roasted Chicken): Danny,* Savannah, Kenny**, Kaleena, Valentine.

Kristen Challenge (Soup): Charly, Manny*, Dan, Laura, Amanda**.

*Group Winner. **Group Loser.

Challenge Winner: Manny.

Eliminated: David.

Phew. That is a lot of words about Top Chef. Thank God there are fewer contestants every week.

Thank you for reading The #Content Report, By Vince Mancini. This post is public so feel free to share it.

The #Content Report, By Vince Mancini