Top Chef Recap: Remember Lisa?

Okay, so remember last season, when Lisa made it to the Top 4? And your blood boiled every time you saw her, your teeth gnashed, the little unborn babies in your ovaries cried and wailed in nightmarish terror that she might actually win out of sheer demonic influence?

Well, this season hasn’t given us many people to root for, but it certainly gave us someone to hate: Arianne, Aryan, New Jersey Cougar Housewife.

I understand that it’s not fair to hate her as a person, and mock her looks and be mean. But it’s TV, and it stops me from making fun of you, so let’s just accept that I’m a terrible person and move on. I do need to point out that my hatred (and my Top Chef Cronies’ hatred) stems from the fact she just didn’t impress us as having anymore talent in the kitchen than us. I mean, she won a couple challenges, fine. But she won every time for her ability to cook meat. Only meat. Not even the sauces or accompanying sides. And there are meat thermometers for that. Otherwise, she sucked. And she really, really liked the Today show.

Ironically, it was also her down fall last night, when she took an innocent baby lamb and beat it within an inch of its afterlife, after butchering it with the talent of a Sasquatch tearing apart a polar bear. And the new judge Toby won me over by being her executor, excusing all ass-isms he may utter from now on. When they announced her departure, we all screamed in exultation so loud, we actually woke up S.

Unfortunately, now that she’s gone, who’s the villain? Smug Boyfriend Stealing Leah? It’s just not as satisfying.

I’ll spare you the long recap of the challenges last night. The Quickfire was “make a dish out of canned pantry items”, and one of the items was canned conch, which I didn’t even know existed. The Elimination Challenge was to go to this farm/commune/restaurant place called Blue Hill that anyone who reads the NYT Food Section knows is where NY City Foodies go to jerk off onto suckling pig faces, and then learn to butcher them. So they had to create a menu of “seasonal items”. Whatever, boring. Boring food. Boring challenge. So boring in fact, that the Chicken Team won. Chicken. The most boring protein ever. Whatever, I don’t even remember who won specifically, just that Carla, Jamie and Stefan were in the top three and the judges hated everyone else.

So I think the time has come to figure out who I like for the finale. Usually at this point in the competition, I’ve got my favorites completely figured out. But it’s taken a long time this season, because no one has really wowed me, and none of them are very likeable. I mean, Hung and Marcel and Stephen, they were all mad scientists, culinary artists. They aspired to be anyway. I feel like these guys just aspire to stay employed. Anyway, here we go with my guesses…

Top 4: Jamie, Carla, Stefan, Fabio.
Possible substitution: Hosea (but I think he’s going to shoot himself in the face here soon.)

Those top 4 seem to have the most common sense and talent here. I’d love to put Radhika up there, but I just have a premonition she’s going to do something wrong. When she messes up, it’s usually bad flavor combination and nothing gets you out faster. I’ll guess her death sentence will be “too much salt”. Carla, ie Fraggle Rock Girl, has won me over so I think she’ll make Top 4, but not Top 3. That will be Jamie, Stefan, and Fabio. They have all demonstrated they have consistent technique and a wide flavor vocabulary. However if Jamie makes another scallop, I will be very very very very very disappointed.

There have been so many scallops murdered in the making of this season, they should be put on the endangered species list. I should make a Top Chef “Save the Scallops” t-shirt.



"Oh, the bivalvity!"