Top Chef Power Rankings Week 3: Butter On The Dance Floor
You better not spill the food. DJ, gonna take this goddamn chef right down.
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A few years back there was a show promo on Food Network, I’m not sure whether the actual show ever aired or what exactly it was called — I think “EXTREME CHEF,” or “EXTREME COOKING” or something like that — but I do remember the hilarious promo. Which saw chefs hurriedly trying to plate foods in front of giant wind fans, during lightning storms, while dealing with extreme temperatures or perturbed animals, etc., like they were being tortured by an angry God. It was incredibly stupid, one of those Food Network-type shows that felt like it was created by someone who hates food.
Anyway, I bring all this up to say that there were times, ways to view it through an unkind lens, that this week’s Top Chef sort of felt like that. I’m going to start a conspiracy theory that the producers actually deliberately greased up the kitchen floor during prep, and, just when they’d nearly gotten the guy with the degenerative disease to break a leg from a fall (I assume they would’ve just taken him out with a shotgun if he hadn’t been able to continue, racehorse-style), they pushed the chefs out the kitchen door into baking sunlight to immediately be attacked by a swarm of pre-angered bees.
Ha ha sorry, guys! We never thought this would happen when we scheduled that bee pheramone-themed challenge at the honey farm!
I’m exaggerating for effect here, but the point was that the elimination challenge looked pretty rough. It was hot, it was outside, there were bees, they had to prep on a slippery kitchen floor, and everyone decided to make croquettes for some reason. Personally I prefer the more highbrow Top Chef drama, of bitchy judges nitpicking incredibly arcane preparations (“you call this calf spleen ‘lightly pummeled,’ you idiot? you have the fists of an ox!) over these kinds “low delights,” but I get it. You don’t need to know anything about food to appreciate drama like “chef fall down” and “chef scared of bee.” It’s fine to be broad once in a while, I guess. The oinking masses need their slop too, as I always say.
Anyway, this third installment of Top Chef’s Milwaukee-based season (season 21!) all started with a challenge dedicated to Wisconsin’s “Door County.” Which, we learned, is a region apparently known for its cherries. The chefs would be asked to pair Door County cherries with “unusual” ingredients (marshmallows, yellow mustard, canned fish), which they would select by choosing doors on a big model, Advent Calendar-style.
Choose the door to celebrate Door County! It was the perfect challenge to celebrate the Midwest’s famous spirit of being crushingly literal. The other week, my stepson drew Michigan for his 50 states project, which is how I learned that Michigan’s state motto is “Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice.” That’s apparently Latin for “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.”
Only a state in the Midwest would have a state motto that’s just a literal description of its own geography. “Hey, kid: you like peninsulas?”
Anyway, doors.
The guest judges for this challenge were Clea Duvall, who I’m not going to knock because she’s a competent actress who I’ve enjoyed in a handful of roles, but I do have to say that I’m fascinated with the sheer arbitrariness of which actors Top Chef finds to guest judge. That’s a free coffee table book idea for you. (Anyone remember when guest judge Zooey Deschanel revealed that she was a gluten-free vegan who was allergic to soy? Craft services hate her.)
Joining Duvall as guest judge, it was Top Chef season five and eight alum, Carla Hall. Now I don’t want to say Carla Hall looks like a human muppet, but…
If I was better at gifs I would combine this screencap with the Oprah/bees gif somehow. Carla Hall is a regular on a few different Food Network shows, which helps explain the “bigness” of all her reactions. A chef being a Food Network regular is sort of like being an actor on a Disney Channel or Nickelodeon Show. I think they shoot you with a cattle prod if you don’t ham it up to the max and just randomly scream some times. Are YOU GUYS having FUN!?! …A NEWWWWW CAR!!!!
After that, it was time to celebrate Wisconsin’s other famous export: cheese. All of the chefs were assigned a cheese via random knife draw, then had to create a dish highlighting that cheese for a hundred diners at the Wisconsin Cheese Fest.
I’m honestly a little pissed that the Wisconsin Cheese Fest wasn’t a little more… I dunno… cheese fest-y? These hogs wear cheese on their heads to football games when it’s negative 40 out for crissakes, you’d think there could’ve been a little more pageantry. Give me the Creed tribute band shrieking “HELLO CHEESEFEST!” before launching into an incredibly earnest rendition of “Higher.” I dunno, something.
There might not have been so much pageantry, but the challenge was not without some drama. Dealing with the heat, plus the bees, plus the greased up floor, helped to separate the cream from the whey, so to speak (or the cream from the guey, if you’re from the San Joaquin Valley like me). Holding Cheese Fest on the hottest day of the year was a stroke of genius. Nothing more refreshing on a sweltering day full of sunshine and bees than eating 13 plates worth of cheese, am I right?
And we wonder why Padma quit this show.
RESULTS:
Quickfire Top: Savannah. Rasika*.
Quickfire Bottom: Charly. Kenny. Alisha.
Elimination Top: Kaleena. Michelle*. Dan.
Elimination Bottom: Kenny**. Manny. Kevin.
*Winner. **Eliminated.
POWER RANKINGS
Rank, (change from last week)
13: (-1) ((Eliminated)) Kenny Nguyen
AKA: Pho Butter. Lil Ngayne. Leatherhead.
Alas, poor Pho Butter… I knew him well.
We love our most chill competitors on this show — Sheldon Simeon, Melissa King, Amar Santana. But Pho Butter may have crossed some kind of chillness Rubicon, where he desperately need a cup of coffee or a kick in the butt, whatever, in order to become a top competitor. Just didn’t seem to have that motor, as we say in the sports world.
This was something of a surprise elimination, at least judged within the narrow parameters of this specific challenge. Much was made of the fact that nearly everyone at Cheese Fest chose to make a croquette, and Pho Butter was one of the few that didn’t. You might naturally figure that the chef with the worst croquette would’ve been the obvious choice to go home above the guy who made a bad something else.
And yet, Pho Butter’s decision to make a “crab rangoon salad” to highlight his cheese, which was gorgonzola, seemed… ah… bad.
Crab rangoon, reimagined as a cold salad, served on a fried wonton or whatever for a hot day, actually sounds like a not-terrible idea. But then you add gorgonzola to that mix and suddenly it doesn’t sound so great anymore. Doesn’t strike me as a refreshing salad kind of cheese, but what do I know.
There was also some slightly unclear drama over whether the judges actually got the cherry relish that was supposed to go with the dish, or if Pho Butter ran out and just had to spoon relish juice over it instead.
Gorgonzola, crab, relish juice… a lot of these sound pretty unappetizing together, don’t they? Anyway, I hope Pho Butter does well on Last Chance Kitchen, because if nothing else, “Pho Butter” is my favorite nickname this season.
DISH: Crab rangoon salad with Gorgonzola creme fraiche crema, luxardo cherry relish, and rice paper chip.
REVIEWS: "I don't taste a lot of the cheese." "I didn't get the cheese at all." "It was a celebration of so many things, but I didn't get what they were."
12: (-4) Charly Pierre
AKA: Carmen. The Creamy Bandit.
Charly keeps making food that sounds great, but I’m trying to think of a dish he’s made so far that the judges actually seemed to like, and I’m drawing a blank.
This episode was no different. Charly landed in the bottom three in the quickfire for trying to pair cherries, chocolate, and golden beets (didn’t sound that bad, but I really love beets), and narrowly stayed out of the bottom three in the elimination challenge for his “underseasoned” yucca croquette with canela cheese and tomato-mango sauce (again, it sounds good to me).
But all that was secondary to Charly’s place at the center of this week’s drrrrraaaaaaa-maaa. It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-moment, but it was actually CHARLY who spilled some cream in a high-traffic corner, which Laura later slipped on, spilling her own soup, which Dan slipped on in turn, spilling his gnocchis. It was like the barf-o-rama in Stand By Me only for spilled dairy!
Poor Laura ended up taking the blame, but it was clearly Charly who drew first cream.
To paraphrase William Carlos Williams,
I have spilled
the cream
that was on the floor
on which you
were probably slipping
spilling your soup
and scattering your gnocchi
forgive me
it was slippery
so creamy
and so loose
DISH: Yucca croquette with Canela Cheese & Tomato-Mango Sauce.
REVIEWS: “The croquette itself is underseasoned.” "Here is an example where the cheese is quite mild, but the yucca is heavy.” “I didn't taste the cheese."
11: (-2) Kevin D’Andrea
AKA: Le Kevin. VousTube. Un Trevail. Monsieur Brie-st.
It seemed like Le Kevin had finally turned a corner this episode, when the Top Chef France finalist served up a black garlic beef tenderloin with a “poele” of cherries and garlic (literally “stove,” I think, I still don’t get it) that landed him in the top three in the quickfire. Then later, when he pulled brie in the elimination challenge (a FRONCHMON getting BRIE? SACRE BLEU!) it seemed like it should be smooth sailing for the VousTube-air.
Only, non! Monsieur Brie-st (like Mr. Beast, get it? I was pretty proud of this one) was instead undone by the heat. The softest cheese turned out to be a tough draw in the hottest heat, and so Le Kevin ended up having to double-bread his triple-creme brie. Which works out to something like six creme-breads per square croquette! That’s too many!
I thought for sure he would be going home, having turned in the worst version of the thing almost everyone else also made. I’m left to assume that they must like Monsieur Briest a lot to leave him in the comp after that.
DISH: Brie Croquettes with Mornay, Ham, & Truffle.
REVIEWS: "The truffles overpowered the brie." "I really want to say something positive about it and it's just not coming to me." "This could be the worst croquette we've had so far."
10: (-4) Laura Ozyilmaz
AKA: Yogurt Soup. Zed. Z-Squared. Ozyilmandias. Oz-matazz. The Wizard of Ozyilmaz. The Gnocchi Martyr.
Every year there’s a chef that pops all over the rankings in the early episodes because they never make the top or bottom three in any challenge and so they’re almost impossible to handicap. That feels like Oz-matazz right now. I had her high based on a hunch last week, and her food kept sounding good, but the negative reviews of her dish this episode left little room for interpretation.
Oh, and of course she got blamed for Charly’s creamy floor disaster when she was really a victim! How dare you! Free Oz-matazz! Those spilled gnocchis are not on you, girl.
DISH: Gouda Reserve Potato Croquette with Peach Mostarda.
REVIEWS: "I think it had too much roux." "I got zero mustard, zero spice out of it at all."
9: (+4) Kaleena Bliss
AKA: Nickname. Khaleesi. K-Bliss. B-Train.
I’ve been a little lukewarm on K-Bliss, mostly for the same reasons as Laura. The show is desperately trying to give us something to hold onto for her, complete with a nice little editing package this week showing B-Train on video chat with her partner. At the end, she finally got a top three finish!
And yet, the thing I remember most was her desperately trying to explain why she loves cheese. “It’s ooey, it’s gooey, it’s stringy…”
Christ, it’s hard to come up with adjectives to describe cheese besides “cheesy,” isn’t it? Cheese is great because it’s so… uh… cheese-like, you know?
Anyway, Kaleena finally wound up in the top three this week, for her mac-and-cheese-based “play on Alfredo.” Which is exactly as Wisconsin-sounding a dish as I’d imagine at Wisconsin Cheese Fest. Mmm, don’t you just love a nice summer Alfredo sauce with extra cream?
It clearly played though. I’m not sure if that’s a point in Kaleena’s favor or a knock against her.
DISH: Bellavitano mac & cheese with merlot mushrooms and bread crumbs.
REVIEWS: "She really took a cue from the cheese." "She made a very tasty dish."
8: (+3) Alisha Elenz
AKA: Avril. Mrs. Skin. Croqueta. Shari Aioli.
Another chef who always seems to land in the middle, punky spunky Avril revealed that while she works in the Midwest, her food is inspired by “Coastal Spanish cuisine.” And so croquettes were right in her wheelhouse. Only, she ended up choosing to make them the same week that everyone decided to make them. Ugh! I wish she’d write an angry mall punk song about it! WHY YA GOTTA GO AND MAKE CHEESE SO COMPLI-CATED…
Anyway, Alisha’s fried balls looked pretty good. Holy jeez, I woulda put those Spanish balls right in my mouth and gargled. She also served them with a Sherry Aioli, which is a decent name for a punk bassist.
DISH: Ham and Brick Cheese Croquettes with Sherry Aioli.
REVIEWS: "Another really nice fried ball." "It's really well balanced."
7: (even) Savannah Miller
AKA: Funko. Peepers. Sporty Spice. Fryer Tuck. Big Pun.
Savannah feels like the queen of the middle-pack chefs right now. I wrote down “Fryer Tuck” as a nickname because she had her ears tucked into her headband, but then she defied me by not cooking a croquette. She did say in the quickfire round that “winning five thousand dollars would be the CHERRY on top of this challenge,” and between that and trying to make “Win-consin” happen last episode, I’m going with Big Pun.
Big Pun made the top three in the quickfire despite a chicken liver mousse that never set, which is honestly pretty impressive on this show. A mousse not setting is usually a killer. Nobody likes a loose mousse!
She landed outside the top three once again in the elimination challenge, but I honestly thought she should’ve gotten a lot more props for doing home-made tortillas for her quesadilla.
DISH: Avocado, Hatch Chile, and Roasted Corn Salsa.
REVIEWS: "There’s lots to critique on her dish but I still liked it." "Too much cheese."
6: (+4) Amanda Turner
AKA: Daria. LAN Party. Milton. Grimace.
This week, Daria said into the camera, “People tell me I sound like Daria,” before cackling a particularly terrifying laugh. (It was an amazingly terrifying laugh, I love Daria’s scary laugh).
Shit, does that make me a hack for nicknaming Amanda “Daria?” Whatever, joke’s on you, I already knew I was a hack.
Anyway, Amanda is pretty clearly the quirkiest chef in this competition, and despite a dearth of wins, she keeps racking up positive reviews. Like this week, for her “Mount Raclette Arancini with Mornay & Dijon sauce, and Fig and Olive Gremolata.”
Wait, Grimace doing another Gremolata? And it was well received? GREMOLATA REDEMPTION ARC, MUCH?!
Anyway, Amanda keeps getting not-that-much screentime in spite of her obvious quirkiness, the editing of the show leading me to believe that they’re saving the most entertaining Amanda stories for later in the show. Which presumes that there is a later for Daria, which is why I keep bumping her up in the rankings. I don’t think she’s quite top-third material yet, but she’s the last “middle-of-the-pack” chef before we get into it.
DISH: Mount Raclette Arancini with Mornay & Dijon sauce, Fig and Olive Gremolata.
REVIEWS: "I like that mornay move." "It's very French." "I'm almost getting Cuban sandwich vibes."
5: (-4) Manny Barella
AKA: Manny. El Cid Vicious. Brawny. The Curdler.
My favorite Mexican punk rock wrestler (still wild assumptions at this point, but I’m still making them, because I am brave) did a shitty poutine this week, which makes me sad, because I love poutine. I like to rip on Canadians (and on British people by extension) for loving their soggy, brown foods, but the God’s honest truth of it is that I love a damn gravy. My fellow Americans, and especially Californians, could use more gravies in our foods. Especially gravy-soaked starches. Biscuits, potatoes — I don’t care! I like when something soaks up the gravy! The better to give you more gravy flavor!
Unfortunately, Manny tried to do use a croquette as his gravy vector, and as Le Kevin also learned, croquettes are hard to make in hundred-degree weather. The judges made a big show of ripping on Manny for not doing anything to his cheese curds, and I wonder what might’ve happened if he had just made a straight-up poutine with regular french fries, and maybe just done a curd gravy with curds on top and some crunchified curds for texture. Maybe some microgreens for added cheffiness? Feel like that could’ve been a hit.
But hey, hindsight is veinte-veinte and all that, as they say in Meh hee co. Manny’s poutine was also overseasoned, apparently. In fact it kind of seemed like the judges mostly hated it from top to bottom and yet still didn’t kick him off, which only makes me more confident in assuming that Manny is still one of the favorites.
DISH: Potato Croquette with Gravy & Cheese Curds.
REVIEWS: "I just wish that they would incorporate the cheese curds." "It's really salty." "The gravy's good." "There's no effort to incorporate the cheese curds." "I didn't think we were gonna get just out-of-the-bag cheese curds."
4: (even) Danny Garcia
AKA: Grok. Squeaky. Brooklyn. Stretch.
Opening this week’s show with a package about Danny’s penchant for running half-marathons did nothing to tarnish his portrayal as the most fastidious of the chefs. Even his facial hair somehow looks too-clean.
I have Danny fourth right now, but he honestly could go higher. I was kind of shocked when he didn’t end up in the top three this week — his dish, some kind of cheddar cheese churro situation, stuffed with more cheese and sitting in some kind of cheese sauce, honestly looked good as hell. A stuffed doughnut, but make it cheese? Absolutely, man. Inspired. I would eat that so messily that Danny might puke. (something something your mom joke)
DISH: 15-year cheddar fritter with a cheddar-lime mornay. and cheddar foam.
REVIEWS: "Way to start off." "Danny’s batter is beautiful." (Padma would’ve made that one sound so porny) "Tou can taste all the different parts of cheese."
3: (+2) Dan Jacobs
AKA: Handsome Dan. Froggy Fresh. Kermit. Frames. Jordache Peterson. The Gipper.
I like how the show was like, “hey, check out this loudly-dressed guy with statement frames” and then 1.5 episodes later was like “psyche! He actually has a degenerative disease and wears leg braces!”
Anyway, Danny is getting all the sympathy points, now that everyone knows about his condition and he almost split open his dome from slipping on cheesy soup and spilled cream. A guy shouting “Oh no, my gnocchi!” while hitting the floor in a hail of flying dumplings would’ve been so much funnier if we weren’t also legit worried for his safety.