Top Chef World All-Stars Power Index, Week 10: Hello, Thali
The Top Chefs worked with preserved fish, made some Indian food, and even squeezed in some time to mourn DA QWEEN. Awww, David Beckham fish 'n chips!
After the pure, distilled EXCITEMENT of last week’s Restaurant Wars, this week’s Top Chef World All-Stars episode was mostly back to business as usual, settling in before the home stretch to the finale. There was a quickfire, an elimination, some chefs screwed up some rice, while others forgot to season. Which is to say: Classic Top Chef! (We were one botched gelee away from hitting all the Top Chef tropes — oh no, my panna cotta!)
Kicking things off, guest judge Tom Brown of Cornerstone showed up to introduce the quickfire, looking like a cross between Canelo Alvarez and the British F-Boy from White Lotus.
That F-Boy is named Leo Woodall, by the way. Which I believe is actually British for “Lukas Gage.” So cruel what his character did to that “I only have one facial expression” girl.
Sorry, I digress. While the theme of White Lotus (never trust a British guy) does seem tangentially relevant here, Canelo Gage was there to introduce a challenge based on the British breakfast classic, kippers — which, we learned, is a butterflied herring preserved in salt. I’m told English football hooligans used to eat it before belching on their mates as a foreplay ritual. (U wot, mate?)
The challenge was all about preserved fish (with different versions from all over the world joining the kippers on stage), which humans ate tons of in the thousands of years prior to the advent of refrigeration and Totino’s Pizza Rolls. As Chef Sara quipped “I could smell this challenge before I could see it.”
This would seem to prove by adage that Chef Sara also dealt the challenge, but no one called her on it. Wait, smelt… dealt… hold up, is preserved fish actually the origin of the “whoever smelt it dealt it” rule? We’re making so many connections right now.
“Your task,” Padma explained, “is to create something new and inventive with these polarizing delicacies.”
“Yeh, and if any a you’s cunts get cheeky, Oy’ll ‘eadbutt ya!” added Brown. (Okay, I made that bit up, he was actually very pleasant. Still, I feel like we’re approaching the upper limit of how many chefs named “Tom” can appear on the same show).
After being graded on how well they rehydrated their stinky fish, Padma asked the contestants to pile into their BRAND NEW BMW X3s for a field trip. “This is so cool!” exclaimed Ali, while looking at the BMW’s navigation system, a capability smart phones have had for almost 15 years now. So subtle with the product placement, this show. (Also, car designers, for the love of God, stop trying to make me learn your bespoke navigation system. Just make a convenient slot to plug in a phone and be done with it!)
The field trip turned out to be to Flor Indica, which to this Californian sounded a thousand percent like a dispensary, but was actually an Indian restaurant. There they met Asma Khan, who presented the chefs with thalis, a traditional round platter of individual mini-bowls of Indian food, which does seem like the ideal way to eat. Honestly, it seems like India has things pretty well figured out when it comes to food.
Khan described the goal of a good thali, which she said was to have a lot of flavors that aren’t complementary, but actually contradictory. Together, she said, they would be “like an orchestra.” Hmm, are the instruments in an orchestra contradictory or complementary? Seems like we’re maybe stretching semantics to their breaking point here.
THEIR CHALLENGE: To make their own thalis, representing the six basic flavor profiles: Sweet, salty, bitter, sour, heat, and pungent. Which, again, makes me want to quibble with the semantics of “pungent,” and whether that’s actually distinct from the others. In any case, they would have 2.5 hours to prep and cook, to present to a panel of Indian food experts and writers.
And they’d have to do it right inside the Top Chef kitchen, because London was otherwise “practically shut down” over the death of the queen (pegging this show’s production at September).
What followed was a short montage of somber mourners, shots of British landmarks, and fluttering Union Jacks. Now, maybe I’m an ugly American for saying this, but did we really need all this fuss about the queen on an American food show? (And on a show dedicated to Indian food, no less?) A very old woman died, it’s not exactly 9/11. Would we make a special montage if, like, Jimmy Carter died? No, that’s an imperfect analogy, Jimmy Carter was an actual political leader. This is more like if the voice of Chester Cheetah died.
Anyway, RIP to a real one. Show more corgis next time.
Results
Quickfire Top: Buddha, Amar*, Ali.
Quickfire Bottom: Sara, Gabri.
Elimination Top: Sara, Ali, Amar*.
Elimination Bottom: Victoire**, Gabri, Buddha.
(*Winner. **Eliminated.)
Rankings
7. (even) ((Eliminated)) Victoire Gouloubi - Top Chef Italy Finalist, Season 2
AKA: Al Dente. Minute Rice. Steven Seagal. Three’s Company. Pulp Fiction. Backstory.
Has there ever been a more reliable indicator of a Top Chef’s impending elimination than a shot of them telling the camera, “I didn’t season X dish because…”?
Stop it! No further explanation is going to fix this! Season it. Pretend you seasoned it. Wave a bouquet of smoking lavender flowers in its general direction, but whatever you do, don’t say you didn’t season it and then try to justify it. It’s not going to work! That never works!
You knew Victoire was sunk right then and there. Apparently she thought the kachumber salad she ate at Asma Khan’s wasn’t seasoned, and was just trying to recreate it. All the other mini-dramas — like Victoire not being able to eat much Indian food because she doesn’t like spicy things, her overcooked rice — was window dressing. (At least her rice was overcooked this time, for Al Dente, we call that growth). I get the sense that inexperience with the language played a big factor here. If even I’m questioning the semantics of a challenge, imagine how confusing it must be for someone who only started speaking English seven months ago.
That being said, Victoire has seemed not long for this competition for at least three episodes, and now she finally she goes home (er, to Last Chance Kitchen). It’s hard to blame the judges for arguably keeping her on too long — nobody wants to eliminate the contestant who says things like “With money I can make a culinary school in Africa. It’s not for me to buy a lip gloss.”
6. (even) Gabri Rodriguez - Top Chef Mexico Winner, Season 2
AKA: The Black Pearl. The Mongoose. Wile Y. Coyote.
Gabri dodged a bullet this week. You don’t expect a Mexican chef to struggle so much with beans (wait is that racist? for the record I said it with a soft B), but Gabri burned first his black beans and then his lentils, and everything was kind of a rushed disaster after that. Being a fabulous Tasmanian Devil in the kitchen cuts both ways.
It’s hard to know what was even my favorite pronunciation of Gabri’s this week, from his enchanting renderings of everything from “tuile” to “dehydrated prawns.” Probably it was the one in his native language, “encacahuatado sauce,” which is arguably the best word I’ve ever heard. (“Cacahuates,” aka peanuts, was always my favorite Spanish word). “Encacahuatado sauce” really has everything — staccato percussiveness, just a soupçon of phlegm, and even a little “caca.”
Anyway, Gabri borked almost everything this week, from last-minute scallops (replacing the planned foie gras he didn’t have time for, thanks to the burned bean debacle) to un-strained tamarind chutney. In the end it was the kachumber salad that saved his ass, which Gabri turned into a green mango, cucumber, and passion fruit salsa. A pashcungo salad, if you will.
Encacahuatado!
Kind of sounds like a Harry Potter spell, doesn’t it.
5. (even) Tom Goetter - Top Chef Germany Finalist, Season 1
AKA: Meekus. Sprockets. F-Boy Tom. Spotted Ox Hostel. Funnybot.
Tom’s weird facility for Indian food (supposedly learned from the Indian chefs on his ship) has been his saving grace more than once this season, so it seemed like the Indian food challenge this week was setting up his big comeback moment. Instead, the judges balked at his too-aggressively-spiced dal (“In a thali some dishes should be the heroes and some are more supporting”) and loved his halwa dessert, leaving him with a sort of mixed review that landed him right in the middle — neither on top or on the bottom.
Seeing as how there were seven chefs remaining in this episode, and the challenge had a top three and a bottom three, Tom’s middle was a middle of one guy. He also landed in the middle in the quickfire, which was a middle of two (the other was Buddha). I don’t know why it’s so much funnier that it’s the mischievous German guy standing on the sidelines hoping in vain that anyone will mention him, but it is.
“But my play on dal, did you not sink zey ver vicked? Ach!”
4. (-1) Sara Bradley - Top Chef Season 16 Finalist
AKA: Party Mom. Reebok. Sassparilla.
Sara was treated to the most brutal edit of the week, juxtaposing Ali saying “Salt? Why would I add salt to preserved fish?” with Sara gleefully pouring salt straight from the box (onto something we couldn’t see). This was followed a few minutes later by the judges immediately reaching for the water after eating Sara’s quickfire dish.
That landed Sara on the bottom (her first time there? someone fact check this, my editor died), but after having a cry over missing her kids (always a reality show favorite!) Party Mom roared back to the top three in the elimination challenge, presumably leaking milk the entire time. “Sara's cauliflower is by far the best that we have tasted yet,” raved the judges. “I loved her khachumbar as well.”
The mixed performance does make her a little hard to rank. My gut says that Sara is just behind Amar, but Ali technically had two top three finishes this episode, so I kind of had to go with the scoreboard there.
3. (+1) Ali Ghzawi - Top Chef Middle East And North Africa (MENA) Winner, Season Three
AKA: RRR. Maui Wowie. The Strain. The Ghizza. Muhammara Ali.
The unofficial Papi-Habibi team kept rolling this week, with top finishes for Ali and Amar in both the quickfire and in the elimination challenge. Yet this episode seemed to cement Ali as the junior member of that partnership (you can tell Amar is the “Daddy” just looking at them). In any case, I do wish they would coordinate the wrist bangles they both wear, wouldn’t that be adorable? (Papibi?)
Anyway, the Jordanian heartthrob put in another solid effort this week, with the best rice of the group (which you sort of expect from the Middle Eastern guy), a solidly received tandoori beef, and “the most Indian chutney we’ve had,” according to the judges.
That was a classic mango chutney, which Ali said he learned directly from some Indian chefs. The judges seemed to cosign its authenticity, raving “this just takes me back to the school canteen.”
That this is considered a compliment just goes to show how much American cafeteria food sucks complete ass compared to virtually the entire rest of the world. In Bill Buford’s book about living in France he wrote about how his kid’s school didn’t repeat a single dish for an entire semester. The French are maniacs about food, nothing but respect.
Anyway, I feel like I’m sandbagging Ali a little bit on account of I look at a lot of his dishes and just think, “Wait, isn’t that just another dip? Is this Top Chef or Top Dip?”
But I can’t argue with the results.
2. (even) Amar Santana - Top Chef Season 13 Finalist
AKA: Big Sleazy. Laughtrack. Hibbert. Flava Flav. Benjamin Button.
All season long, Big Sleazy has seemed like he’s been having by far the best time, shooting from the hip, calling it like he sees it, and generally laughing his ass off about everything. It’s been impossible not to love the guy.
This episode was more of the same, with Amar shrugging his way through the quickfire challenge, telling anyone who would listen that he had no idea what the hell he was doing, and laughing at himself for it. He shrugged his way all the way to the winner’s circle for his first ever quickfire win. Just his luck it came in the first quickfire of the season that didn’t come with immunity.
At this point I was worried that Amar was going to end up getting sent home, because wouldn’t that be just like these cruel bastards to do something like that?
Instead, Amar got an extra 30 minutes to cook and we were treated to a sort of Paddington Bear montage, with Amar jovially bumbling about the kitchen, smelling Indian spices and reacting with delight or bemusement (loving the jaggery, Mick Jaggery over here). Tell me you couldn’t see this entire montage as a Paddington Bear scene.
Once again he sort of shrugged his way into the winner’s circle, with casually inspired ideas like a shrimp and crab curry and my personal choice for Best Sounding Thing Of The Episode, a tandoori sweetbreads in honor of Floyd Cardoz, RIP. Tandoori sweetbreads? Sign me the fuck up. Sweetbreads are the champagne of organ meat (your mother loves chugging organ meat).
That got him the seemingly well-deserved win, completely the single-episode grand slam. Does Amar deserve the number one spot here?? I went back and forth on this one.
1. (even) Buddha Lo - Top Chef Season 19 Winner
AKA: Moneyball. Double Down. Big Data. Buddha.
Sometimes I worry that I’m overstating how much anything rustic or family style is Buddha’s achilles heel (he did win that one challenge with “Marry Me Pasta”). That Big Feelings and What Mom Used To Make are just too outside of Buddha’s wheelhouse as one of the most cerebral chefs this show has ever seen. And then this episode comes along and seems to prove everything about that interpretation correct.
It’s not even that Buddha is robotic or clinical (hilarious to say about a guy named “Buddha,” by the way), it just seems like his strength is conceptual brilliance. He usually succeeds on the strenght of his canniness for knowing exactly what the judges want, and his ability to incorporate a bunch of different modern techniques into a coherent framework. He’s the Titan of Triangulation, The Dean of Doing His Homework. The ultimate Top Chef shark.
In the past few episodes we’ve watched him juggle two or three fantastically complex dishes simultaneously without issue, but this challenge felt like it was almost so straightforward in nature (recreate this traditional format) that it made him malfunction. Wait, what was it I just said about Buddha not being robotic? Whatever the Australian equivalent of that is (“Oh noooeeeer, me fackin circuits! Fetch us a screwdrivah, cunt!”).
He biffed his rice (“oy haven’t stuffed up a roice loike this since oy was a bloody teenagah”) and didn’t even get Padma’s curry on the platter — this despite knowing full well that this was his second chance not to screw up Indian food in front of Padma. It’s hard to even explain. Even Amar, who is constantly trying to take my job as top Top Chef commentator, whispered “that’s not Buddha” during Buddha’s critique at judges’ table.
And it’s really not! This is the same guy who found the time to test like six different banh xeo batters during a 30-minute quickfire a few episodes ago, and here he was screwing up rice? So uncharacteristic.
So on one hand, the scoreboard should absolutely dictate that Amar should have the number one spot, but on the other my gut sense that there’s just no way Buddha screws up this badly twice in a row is just too strong for that. TIME WILL TELL, as they say. In conclusion, Top Chef is a land of contrasts.
Re: your comment about Flor Indica sounding like a dispensary, my husband said, "Is it next door to Flor Sativa?"
Only because I'm keeping score at home, I can let you know that Sara did finish in the bottom of a quickfire once before: the Street Food challenge where she made so-so empanadas.