Top Chef Recap - "I eat cat food like you for breakfast", "wait, you eat cat food?"

Alright, so we’ve had a few weeks off from Top Chef. The last episode was that weird Christmas challenge thing, where even the producers were so fed up with this current crop, they had to bring in some of the old vets in a desperate attempt to keep their audience around. Unfortunately, it backfired. Seeing Marcel and The One Ball Giant, heck even overly ambitious Red, made me long for the days when Top Chef dishes impressed me and made me want to buy exotic kitchenware.

Oh, back to the grind with the Kindergarten Chefs this week. And darling Gayle of the Loud Print is gone on her honeymoon, so now we get Mr. Toby “I practice my bon mots in front of my mirror every night before I masturbate” Young. Supposedly some people in England have heard of him, at least one of the European Chefs knew his name. But everyone else was like “who?”, and then pretended to be very scared. Scared? Of that guy? Any guy who says douchy things like “this dish is like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder” is obviously a nerd who wants to be a bully. Exactly the type of bully who only needs to be stood up to in order to deflate and send crying home to Mommy. You, Mr. Young, are reminiscent of a 80s teen angst movie villain, superficial and laughable.

I mean, seriously, “weapons of mass destruction” in the crab bisque? Whatever.

What we need is to get Anthony Bourdain and Young in the same room together, and give them some raw pork to critique.

Moving on to the tailspin that is this season…the Quickfire challenge is some Diet Dr. Pepper fiasco. Make desserts without sugar, and also yes please, use Dr. Pepper. Earning a little love in my heart, most of the chefs decline that tempting offer. Except for New Jersey Cougar, who probably believes Wal-Mart is run by nice people, unions are bad, and American Idol is entertaining. Nightmare Sally built a bread pudding out of wet snail flesh she conjured from beyond the grave, and the French guest judge loved it, because the French love wet snail bread pudding (it’s a provincial specialty).

Then the Elimination Challenge (after a few more Sidekick close-ups and Aryan the Cougar (see, that’s her REAL first name) running around hopped up on 23 Flavors).
Everyone gets to cook a signature dish, family style, and the judges will blindly taste and be judgy, while the chefs look on from another room. Oh, and they broke the chefs in half, so while Team A’s dishes were being judged, Team B were judges, and vice versa. The contestants get to watch whatever nasty things their subpar cohorts have to say about them. It all seemed very high school to me, until I realized what Top Chef was REALLY doing….

See, I think every adult involved with the production of this show, judges to cameramen, realize they have a problem here. None of these chefs are even half good enough to really win. None of them compare to past winners. I’m betting the casting department has already been fired. SO, since they were all so frustrated with the quality of dishes (especially Tom Tom), they tried to be instructional. See, watch us in real time eat your crap and listen to what we have to say. Learn from us.

The ruse became obvious when at judges table, Padma kept asking them if they learned anything from watching the critiques. And someone else made a comment about how hopefully the chefs will see what they keep doing wrong and fix it.

So, and I forgot if it was B. or C. that said this, instead of finding Top Chef, now they’re trying to BUILD Top Chef.

But Bravo’s breaking the cardinal rule of cooking: “start with good ingredients.” As Marcel points out in my new Top Chef cookbook that S. gave me last night that is totally awesome, if the ingredients are good, you don’t even need to cook them, they taste great on their own. Most of these current cheese balls are beyond their expiration date, and the few that looked tasty are quickly approaching Toss Day.

Conclusion: Muppet Janice and Gene the Latin King both got kicked off. One because fish tacos are kind of lame, and the other because nobody in their right mind thinks daikon and tomato basil sauce go well together.

At least we know that Toby Young feeds his cat well, since apparently he cooks him spicy fish filets every night. That’s one (very small) point in his favor. And Fraggle Rock Carla won me over with her incredibly adult sensible response to the criticism of her dish, which saved her from going home. All the chefs should be able to respond like that, all the time, like serious professionals. This is not, after all, Rock of Love Charm School.

Edit: From Tom's blog on BravoTv.com
"As an aside, I think this was a good introduction to Toby. He's exceptionally witty and thought at first that he was being called on as a judge to use that wit and take potshots at the chefs, but he quickly realized that they were all very serious-minded about their food and about this competition, and he switched gears and began assessing the food in earnest. He's fun to work with and I know you'll enjoy him as the season progresses."

Maybe Toby didn't realize this wasn't Rock of Love either.
So we'll see...