Top Chef Power Rankings, Week 8: Restaurant Wars Classic
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of restaurant war! Spoiler alert: the team you probably assumed was going to lose lost.
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Restaurant Wars! It’s Top Chef’s signature challenge, in which the chefs split into teams and conceive, cook, and serve a full restaurant concept in a single night (or at least, they serve like five dishes worth of a restaurant concept in a single night).
If you’re not stupid, you start brainstorming your Restaurant Wars concept the second you’re chosen to be a Top Chef contestant. And then 12 weeks later, some asshole on your team is like “what if we did a fast-casual vegan gelateria?” and your team agrees and your idea is blown and then you’re screwed. Something like that.
In introducing the challenge, new host Kristen Kish brought up the fact that she initially got sent home for a Restaurant Wars challenge herself, all the way back in season 10. (This before returning to the show through Last Chance Kitchen and winning and then killing Padma Lakshmi to assume her host powers). Tom asked Kristen what she would’ve done differently if she had it to do again, and Kristen answered “Uh… choose different teammates?”
OHHHH SNAAAAAP.
That’s the kind of direct experience mixed with personal honesty Kristen Kish brings to the show in general (it’s nice, though I do often miss Padma’s tipsiness and dick puns).
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Flashback to Kristen’s season that the show only briefly touched on:
Kristen Kish’s original Restaurant Wars team consisted of her, Brooke Williamson (who went on to win season 14), Lizzie Binder, and Josie Smith-Malave. Kristen took on the executive chef role, chose a “reinterpreted classical French” concept, and called it “Atelier Kwan.” Her team ultimately lost to Stefan Richter, Sheldon Simeon, and Josh Valentine’s “Modern Filipino” concept, Urbano. A lot of people thought Kristen’s teammate Josie should’ve gone home for her weak prepping, subpar execution, and bad ideas. But Kristen was the losing team’s major domo so she took the fall instead. Everyone who thought Josie should’ve gone home instead felt redeemed when Kristen cooked her way back into the competish and won. Remember when the arc of the universe bent towards justice? Those were the days, bro. Okay, now you’re caught up.
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Anyway, last year, the show tried to shake up Restaurant Wars a little bit, having the chefs take over an existing restaurant with an existing infrastructure and staff. Which meant: no chef playing front of the house manager, not much décor planning, and no trying to herd a group of stoned temp banquet waiters, Party Down-style.
Interesting thought, but that was arguably more like Tasting Menu Wars than Restaurant Wars. This year the show went back to basics. Take over a space, name it, one chef takes on FOH duties, and try to convince the stoned waiters to serve your food good for four or so hours. That’s Restaurant Wars Classic, baby!
Was there bickering? …Eh. Did chefs orders get messed up and blame each other? …Kind of. Most importantly, was Tom Colicchio there, and was he bitchier then a mestruating sheik? Oh you bet your beurre-blanc he was.
Ah, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, the chefs split into teams. I kind of like it when they choose captains and then the captains choose their teams, pick-up basketball style (with the inevitable cutaway to the last-chosen chef vowing to prove all the haters wrong). But this time Kristen Kish just told them “split into teams.” At which point some chef sought out specific teammates, and others just kind of looked at the closest chef to them and reluctantly shrugged. “Sure, whatever, this fuck face seems fine.” (This is the How I Met Your Mother story I plan to tell my son).
They arranged themselves into: Laura, Soo, Manny, and Kaleena on one side, aka the “fuck it, who’s closest to me” team, with Dan, Danny, Amanda, and Savannah, aka the “how can I Moneyball this competition” team on the other.
As the winner of the previous challenge, Michelle got to choose which team she wanted to join. Now, if you’ve got Laura and Kaleena on the same team on one side and Dan and Danny on the same team on the other, the choice seems pretty obvious, and Michelle didn’t upset any expectations. She chose team Moneyball with Dan and Danny. I’m not going to calculate the win totals for each side because I’ve already reached my research quota for this week’s rankings doing an unnecessary season 11 flashback, but I’m fairly certain the math bears me out here. Grr, math bears!
Anyway, at this point in the show, I thought to myself, “Well, it looks like Laura or Kaleena is probably going home.”
Spoiler alert, I was not wrong. That was five minutes into a 75-minute long show, by the way. One could make a case that this episode was a smidge anti-climactish.
Yeah but still! It had some fun moments. In fact, this was my favorite shot sequence:
Chef Danny, dutifully preparing his tea cocktail:
Tom Colicchio, upon seeing said tea cocktail:
This year’s Restaurant Wars seemed to reveal an important aspect of restaurants. Even if you’ve got a great concept and a great menu, the consistency with which you cook and serve that menu matters as much or more than anything else. I mean, I could make you a great plate of pasta over whatever; I absolutely could not make it 200 times at the same precise level of quality and speed. That part is hard. And as a diner, when you get subpar food, all you remember is that you paid $30 or whatever for disappointment. The chef doesn’t get to come out and say, “Aw, bummer, man, 90 minutes ago that halibut saddle was perfect.”
Anyway, the judges, in two teams (with past contestants Kwame Onuwache and Stephanie Izzard guest judging), tasted each restaurant in two different groups. Surprise surprise, they came away with wildly different experiences. Which is to say, it went basically the way you imagine it might go for restaurants trying to open in 24 hours: good ideas, with some kinks to be worked out. Work out those, kinks, fellas! Get good and kinky with it!
THE RESTAURANTS:
Channel: Dan, Danny, Amanda, Savannah, Michelle
Concept: “A seafood(ish) concept named for the waterways that connect us.”
Dos by Deul: Manny, Soo, Laura, Kaleena
Concept: A Mexican-Asian fusion, named for the two Korean and two Mexican chefs cooking.
Concept rating: Both of these are slightly opaque, vaguely upscale-sounding gibberish names that would fit right into the gentrified Sodosopa neighborhood in South Park, right next to Historic Kenny’s House (related: my friend who’s a developer says they like to name the new streets in his developments after fancy cheese). I’m calling it a wash. They both kind of suck but I’d still eat there if the dishes sounded good. (That being said, I would gladly walk over hot coals to avoid ever having to say the phrase “Dos by Deul” out loud. That name is about as melodious as the sound of a water buffalo being slaughtered).
THE DISHES
CHANNEL
Course 1
Smoked walleye, labneh, potato cake, harissa (Dan)
Chawanmushi with scallop, maitake, ikura (Savannah)
Course 2
Fried catfish with dirty rice cake (Michelle)
Play on New England Clam Chowder with clams, carrots, Old Bay and thyme. (Danny)
Vegan Gumbo Z'Herbes with Kombu. (Amanda)
Course 3
Jasmine tea and citrus gelee with buckwheat crumble. (Danny and Amanda)
Maple Cremeux, blueberry, pistachio, and caramel. (Dan)
DOS BY DEUL
Course 1
Beef tartare in a green goddess cilantro sauce with rice cracker. (Laura)
Melon and dungeness crab aguachile with bamboo and tostada with furikake. (Kaleena)
Course 2
Rice cakes, salsa verde, Chinese sausage and pepita. (Soo)
Miso butter-poached shrimp, kimchi jicama, and bok choy. (Manny)
Course 3
Beef tenderloin with mole negro, mushrooms, and black garlic. (Manny)
Pork tenderloin with pico, black bean and onion purée. (Team)
Menu rating: Channel, easily. The fried catfish sounds better than anything on DBD’s menu, and even not knowing what chawanmushi is or enjoying scallops (the one food I don’t like), most of DBD’s menu just sounds kind of dull, outside of Manny’s mole negro.
THE RESULTS
Channel won. Shocker, right? Assuming Dos by Deul wasn’t doomed from the start (which I think they kind of were), the two most important decisions, in my mind, were:
1. Dos By Deul choosing not to do a dessert.
Sure, no one wants to cook a dessert. But here’s the thing about desserts: they’re forgiving. You can kind of just throw as much sugar, butter, and cream at them as you want and no one will complain. No chance Tom Colicchio is ever going to judge a brulee or a crumble as unmercifully as he does a pork tenderloin, are you insane?
2. Danny pre-writing Channel’s menus.
A lot of the best ideas seem obvious in retrospect and this was one of those. You don’t have to worry about as much getting lost in translation when the tickets are multiple choice.
Winner: Dan.
Eliminated: Kaleena.
POWER RANKINGS
Ranking: (change from last week).
9: (-1) ((Eliminated)) Kaleena Bliss
AKA: Khaleesi. K-Bliss. B-Train. Hall Monitor.
Kaleena, living up to her Hall Monitor name this week, jumped at the role of expediter (aka kitchen boss). That came back to bite her in the ass when her team lost, more for general reasons than for specific (which usually means the boss is going home). If the pork tenderloin had been a specific chef’s idea, that chef probably would’ve gone home instead. Incidentally, that pork was supposed to be a pescado a la talla, but they ended up not having time to shop for fish and chose pork tenderloin instead.
It’s hard to overstate how terrible an idea that was. Pork tenderloin is super easy to dry out and mis-season, and even on its best day never really blows your mind. It’s the kind of dish you eat at a wedding in a cream sauce and go “that was fine.” Speaking solely from a political standpoint, if Kaleena had isolated the pork loin as the defining problem and figured out how to declaim responsibility, someone else might’ve gone home. But it turns out Khaleesi is no Little Finger (or something like that, I hate myself for this analogy).
If you’d asked me who went home this episode, without me watching a second of it, I would’ve said Kaleena or Laura. To make matters worse, Kaleena’s only solo dish was an aguachile, which has to be fourth or fifth aguachile someone has attempted this season. You’d think they’d stop trying to make a damn aguachile happen after the third or fourth time the judges hated it. (In fairness to Kaleena, I am more partial to the idea of a dungeness crab version of it than any of the the others, but putting melon in there torpedoed that idea. A finicky texture without enough flavor contribution — bad idea! Maybe jicama and/or water chestnuts in keeping with the Mexicasian theme? Just spitballing here).
Anyway, RIP, Kaleena (more on that at the bottom).
8: (+1) Laura Ozyilmaz
AKA: Yogurt Soup. Zed. Z-Squared. Ozyilmandias. Oz-matazz. The Wizard of Ozyilmaz. Wild Pistachio. Ruthless. Gamebred. The Sphynx.
Laura seemed like an odd choice of front-of-house manager for Dos by Deul, given that she seems more sphynx-like and slightly inscrutable than wildly friendly. That being said, DBD didn’t have as obvious a choice for FOH as Channel. Monday Morning Quarterbacking it, I think I would’ve gone with Manny. A jolly Mexican bear who looks like he likes to wrestle? Definitely that guy. I’d wrassle him.
Oz-matazz ended up cooking, er, preparing, a beef tartare in cilantro green goddess sauce (zzzzzz). That looked tasty enough, and a few people commended her sauce work, even if Tom had a bee in his bonnet this week about the rice cracker vessel. Boy did he seem to hate all the crudo vessels this week. It’s true, it’s hard to keep those things crunchy over the course of a long service. Unlike your mom’s pubes (I’m so sorry for this).
Anyway, what do you say about Laura? Not much. At the very least, she seems more wily than anyone else still left in the competition. Part of me hopes that she manages to gaslight Dan enough to make it to the finale. That would be a coup. A coup, I say!
7: (even) Savannah Miller
AKA: Funko. Peepers. Sporty Spice. Fryer Tuck. Big Pun. Bell Curve.
Savannah might break a record for the least amount of screen time for any chef this far into the competition, which is really flipping the script on the normal media conventions vis a vis white women.
But Bell Curve snuck through the mushy middle of the competition yet again with a scallop chawanmushi (zzzzzz) that the judges mostly liked. Minus the chewy mushrooms, anyway (not against it, myself). At this point I’m honestly desperate for Savannah to do something interesting. For the love of God, call someone a snake or hide a pea puree! Are you here to make friends or not?!
6: (even) Manny Barella
AKA: Manny. El Cid Vicious. Brawny.
Manny seemed like he was on the cusp of getting sent home this week, which would’ve been bullshit of the highest order. Justice for the Mexican Wrestling Bear! Manny had the best dish on his team this week (the beef tenderloin with black mole) and was essentially correct about all his team’s worst decisions.
He tasted Kaleena’s aguachile and concluded, “it needs more acid.” The judges’ eventual verdict? “It just needed a little more acidity.”
He tasted the marinade for the pork and concluded “it’s not salty enough.” Multiple times he wanted to add more salt. The judges eventual verdict? Bland and underseasoned. Sure, Manny’s butter-poached shrimp was kind of a boring idea that didn’t entirely fit the theme, but he was also the only one on his team to cook two solo dishes. The judges acted like his beef tenderloin wasn’t Asian enough, but did they forget the black garlic part? It says right there in the second sentence of the Wikipedia entry, “the process is of East Asian origin.”
Game, set, match, you finicky buttholes.
If Manny was guilty of anything, it was bad politicking. He also had far and away the best line of the episode: “Trying to force a dish on the menu is like a fart. If you have to force it, it’s probably shit.”
That is just magnificent wisdom right there. (Sidenote: I’m pretty sure half of Mexico’s idioms are fart-based. That’s just what you get in a country with so many beans).
5: (even) Amanda Turner
AKA: Daria. LAN Party. Milton. Grimace.
Daria had arguably her team’s most creative dish, the vegan gumbo z’herbes with kombu as the seafood element. In return, she received Tom’s most inscrutable backhanded compliment: “It doesn’t really eat like a gumbo, but it’s tasty.”
This raises an important question: what does it look like when a gumbo “eats like a gumbo?”
I wish Amanda had been executive chef and that she’d chosen a concept based on Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft. Like, you have to order from a specific menu based on whether you’re dining as a Cleric or a Paladin.
Okay, the obvious stuff is out of the way. Here’s where the rankings get interesting.
4: (-1) Danny Garcia
AKA: Grok. Squeaky. Brooklyn. Stretch. Hype-bot. Subsidy.
I might be sandbagging Danny a little on account of his bland competence. Two weeks ago he may or may not have won by passing off a dish from his old restaurant as his own. I desperately wish some of that Instagram drama would make it on the show, but instead Danny, merely grabbed the Zoomer baton from Le Kevin and shouted “Let’s goooo” every time something good happened. That’s facts, bro. No cap. Bet.
He cooked up a carrot-forward take on a deconstructed clam chowder this week, cribbing from his own carrot-based cookbook. The judges mostly seemed to like it, except for Tom, who managed to find fault with nearly everything this week (it’s why we love him). I like to poke fun, but I really wish we would’ve gotten more screen time for how much Tom absolutely hated that sparkling buckwheat tea welcome cocktail (which in Tom’s defense does sound like absolute ass). Tom absolutely going in on a bad tea is exactly why I still watch this show.
Still, impossible to deny that Dan is a favorite in this competition. And arguably was the MVP of his team for pre-writing the menus. He’s exactly the kind of meticulous pain in the ass every team needs, and has the exact personality you would expect from someone with that manicured of facial hair.
(paywall)