But More Importantly...

All Stars Big Bite

You know it just wouldn't be a true Top Chef All Stars experience without one of Padma's patented Big Bites.

Goodness Gravy, look at that fork clearance. What do we think, my little TC Crack Monkeys, just how many tennis balls would fit?

Ever Wonder?

Ever wonder what happened to the first hostess of Top Chef? Katie Lee (Joel at the time)? She was replaced after only one season.

Katie Lee was a guest judge for this episode of Top Chef All Stars, no doubt wishing for her own special Do Over Opportunity as the Top Chef Hostess. I feel perhaps a visual aid is needed to demonstrate why that's never going to happen.

Former Hostess


Replacement Hostess

Any Questions?

Bragging Rights

Time to tuck into some All Star food. We start with the Quickfire. I have to say this is one of the few times I was happy to see a team challenge, was not looking forward to checking out eighteen dishes for the Quickfire and then eighteen for the Elim. The Quickfire requirements were very straight forward, you team up with your season's chefs to make a dish that best represents your season's location. I was curious to see what came out of the first Quickfire because they are all familiar with it and there was no money at stake. Yes there was immunity but still there was wiggle room to go crazy. Seven seasons and seven cities and twenty five minutes to cook, who do we think had the advantage? San Fran, New York, Chicago and Miami offer the most range. LA, Las Vegas and DC suffer from just not having a national food identity. That's not to say each doesn't offer some spectacular food there's just no singular dish or cuisine that sets them apart. Miami you could go Cuban or Seafood. Chicago you could go meat or go molecular gastronomy. San Fran you could go local and seasonal in a nod to Chez Paniesse and Alice Waters and New York is wide open from street food hot dogs and pretzels to the delis like Katz and Carnegie, from China Town to the Russian Tea Room, Le Bernadin and Le Cirque. Let's check out how they did.
Season One, San Francisco, Tiffani and Stephen's Cioppino Gazpacho. Cioppino is a fish stew made famous in San Francisco by combining the catch of the day into a tomato and wine based stew and accompanied by a hearty bread such as San Fran's well known sour dough bread. Looks like they took quite a bit of the hearty out of it.

Season Two, LA, Marcel and Elia's play on fish tacos, Shrimp Tacos with Guacamole in an Fresh Apple Wrapper. I love shrimp and I love fish tacos in general but the I can tell you right now it looks like there's too much Guac in proportion to shrimp especially when you're using a non-traditional taco shell.

Season Three, Miami, Tre, Dale and Casey's Pork Tenderloin with Avocado Lime Puree, Tostones, and Mango Habanero Sauce. Continuing their lovefest with all things pork while they were in Miami, looks excellent as long as the pork is nice and juicy.


Season Four, Chicago, Antonia, Dale, Richard and Asshat's Pork and Black Pepper Sausage with Mustard Ice Cream. That looks like a train wreck. I only mention this because later on in the Elim there are some plating train wrecks that were harshly called out. This was not. It should have been.

Season Five, New York, Fabio, Carla and Jamie's Trio of Apple, Ginger Curried Apple Soup, Pasta with Spicy Sausage and Caramelized Apple and Rib Eye with Apple, Walnut and Blue Cheese Slaw. Because of the Big Apple. I think I heard all of NY groan at the appearance of these three dishes.

Season Six, Las Vegas, Mike and Jen's Bucatini with Bacon Lobster Carbonara. I don't care what kind of twisted Mafia logic they used to get to this dish, I'm just glad they got there. Lobster and bacon? Be still my bacon grease riddled heart. It appears that Bravo is not posting recipes (yet?) from this season but if you want to make a close version of this try Food and Wine's 2009 version by Linton Hopkins and just add lobster.

Season Seven, DC, Angelo and Tiffany's Crabcake Essence with Rockfish, Lemongrass, Jalapeño and Old Bay. You'd think I'd be all over this with the crab and rockfish but not so much. If you were following along in our comments section (and really, speak up people, I know you've got opinions) you'd know that Angelo, for some yet unexplained reason, is wandering around with his finished rockfish, all on one plate when he's bumped by Stephen coming out of the pantry.

All the pieces of his fish end up on the floor, rendering them unusable. Suddenly they have nothing to put on the plate. So Angelo grabs more fish...

...which looks more like Trout than Rockfish that comes out of the Chesapeake Bay.

So what did they serve? Unknown, the way their dish review was edited we're never shown a closeup of what Tom and Padma tasted and Tiffany never says the word Rockfish. Fascinating.

What did Tom and Padma think? The bottom four teams are LA's Shrimp Taco from Marcel and Elia for bland shrimp and a too thin apple taco shell, San Francisco's Cioppini from Tiff and Stephen, noting the overabundance of raw garlic (perhaps in a nod to the Stinking Rose, another San Franciscan restaurant icon) Season Seven's crab and fish is pinged for a tiny bit too much salt and New York's Apple Trio from Fabio, Carla and Jamie for having three dishes that did not relate to each other except that all three made use of an apple.

Carla is not surprised nor amused.

The top three turn out to be Miami's Pork, Chicago's messy Sausage, and Las Vegas's Lobster pasta dish. Tom's favorite dish of the first Quickfire? The Chicago Allstars, more than likely for Richard Blaise's Mustard Ice Cream. All four chefs receive immunity for the Elimination Challenge and that's a good thing because they will soon be facing their nemesis that laid them all low.

Foreground Spotting with Shamu

Why, Hello Girls......and hello Gail and Padma.

How do you feed Hungry Women?

Padma, after a long night at the Craps Table and not a Hardee's within 20 miles, makes a phone call to Room Service.The chefs, amazed at Padma's ability to eat at the drop of a fork, must make breakfast in thirty minutes for Padma and her guest, Nigella Lawson.Now this isn't the first time on Top Chef that the contestants have made Padma breakfast. She wasn't in bed and she was alone, gently waking Season 3's chefs as they slept.
Apparently touching the chefs was traumatic enough that this time Padma would be in bed and the chefs would be fully dressed. Still 30 minutes with anything in the hotel pantry? Should have been a piece of cake for all the chefs. But for all that time, equipment and food, the output was pretty uninspiring. Robin and Eli are the first pair to serve, Robin with blintzes and Eli with a Fried Egg Reuben Benedict with Thousand Island Hollandaise Sauce.Robin gets absolutely no feedback on her dish and Eli gets the "it's a great hangover dish" from Nigella. Frankly neither one is hitting my breakfast spot and I love breakfast.

Back in the kitchen, Michael has his big bitch panties on, complaining about how messy Robin left the station he gets to work on. Let me break out the Karmic Kitchen harmonica for a little rendition of the "Nobody here Gives a Crap" Blues. Can you tell which Voltaggio brother I favor? On the other side, Kevin is whipping up the smart choice of meat and eggs, while Michael decides to well char his bitch panties. Thank you Jennifer for keeping us from seeing what a Room Service Fire Drill looks like.Kevin gives us Steak and Soft Scrambled Eggs with Creme Fraiche, Aged Cheddar, and Green Onion. Hello! Michael decides to go international with Huevos Cubana with Banana Puree, Rice, Bacon, Arugula Salad. This one I'm not sure about with that Banana Puree. Again very little feed back from our Ravenous Room Service Wenches.

Our last pair, Jennifer and Bryan get cracking. I can't believe it, Jennifer is doing the classic Shit on a Shingle or Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast, beloved by Armed Forces around the world.She even used the classic Meat in a Jar. Once you were done with the contents, you could use the jar as a juice glass. Yes, Jennifer hit on one of my guilty pleasures. And she's serving it to Padma and Nigella. Bryan on the other hand, has gone a little more refined with his King crab, polenta and four minute egg.Nigella looks a little confused at Jennifer's offering. You know why? Because a typical English breakfast looks like this...Yes, that's baked beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and at least two kinds of breakfast meat on the plate. According to British Breakfast.org there's even more what with the fried black pudding and brown sauce (a great glutinous concoction of molasses, vinegar and oriental spices). So I don't want to see any aghast faces from Ms. Lawson at a little SOS. Save it for Bryan's dish.Jen's SoS gets no love or hate and Bryan's 4 Minute Egg with Vanilla Beurre Fondue, crab, Asparagus Spears and Corn Polenta is ruined for Nigella by the overpowering abundance of vanilla. I'm upset because no one thought to plop a greasy fried egg on top of a couple of strips of bacon on top of a huge greasy cheeseburger with loads of Ketchup and let Padma re-enact her recent Product Pimpage while lying in bed. Now that my friends, is Breakfast in Bed.With our judges dressed and hopefully fully sated, time to deliver the results of the Quickfire. For the top two Kevin and Eli are called out with Eli taking the prize for his head slapping sauerkraut breakfast. On the bottom is Robin, yet again, for her blintzes and Bryan, who probably would have won this had he not tried to pair vanilla with King Crab. Which is too bad because had he won, his recipe would have gone into Top Chef's second cookbook...Top Chef Quickfires (in stores NOW). Still it's not $10,000 which would have bought a lot of Axe Shampoo for Eli's crispy hair.His only hope now is that the Axe Shampoo Pig finds him instead.

Inspirations

I don't know about you but I find nothing inspirational about casinos, Las Vegas or otherwise. Even less inspiring is a themed casino.

However.

Feeding a husky voiced, dark tousled hair, soft white bathrobe enveloped, beautiful woman in bed? Why I'm sure I'd literally burst with inspiration.What's that? Two Beautiful women in bed waiting to be fed?Better have a defibrillator standing by because I don't think my heart could stand it.

TV Tray Quickfire

You know as great as the last Quickfire Challenge was (Tag Team Relay Race) is how pathetic this week's Quickfire turned out trying to reinvent a classic TV dinner. Time to review the classic TV dinner.I don't know what the carrots were glazed in but it was not of the culinary world, I think the glaze was more an industrial world product. How easy would it be to reinvent this into something better? Oh wait, not only do they have 60 minutes to reinvent but they get inspirational prompts.
What? Which is it? Reinvent or use TV shows as inspiration for your dish? I see crap on a plate coming. Which 7 shows did they pick to "inspire" our chefs? Sopranos, Flintstones, Gilligan's Island, MASH, Sesame Street, Seinfeld, and Cheers. Right off the bat there's an issue. Some of these youngsters have never seen these shows. Eli is even too young to have watched Gilligan's Island on Nick at Night. Mike I. has never watched Seinfeld at all? I seriously doubt the brothers have seen too many episodes of MASH or Cheers. Jennifer actually sounds like she has a working knowledge of the Flintstones. Even if all these chefs were some sort of TV freaks (what? Why are you looking at me like that?) and knew that there were iconic foodie elements to be mined, they are still limited to what's in the pantry.
Of course beef ribs would be perfect to work with for this inspiration yet there was nothing beef like or bone like for Jen to use. I guess she's left to reinvent the classic fried chicken with mashed potato dinner.Sesame Street?? Cookies? You know Robin was screwed. Was she supposed to punt on the Sesame Street aspect? Good Grief.Eli has the double whammy of having never seen Gilligan's Island nor having never eaten a TV dinner. I'm guessing he's also never had to decide between Ginger or Mary Ann. (Hint - one makes a mean coconut pie).Mike I. has pulled one of the best sources of iconic foodie TV, Seinfeld. The show is a veritable smörgåsbord of choices. The Big Salad, bobka, black and white cookie, Chinese food, risotto, hell, half the scenes were in a diner. Easy right? Except if you've never watched the show.

Dun Dun DUHHNNNNNNNNNNN

Bryan also had a good source. MASH had the classic Rib Delivery episode, the fresh egg episode or he even could have gone with Korean food. He made roulade which was more of a reinvention of the TV dinner's mystery meat aspects.
Cheers, while set in a bar, was light on food. Michael V. says he's reinventing bar food as a TV dinner.
JACKPOT! Kevin picked the Sopranos and he could have nailed this challenge with one hand tied behind his back and blindfolded.Which he did and takes the win again. Dude is seriously looking like a juggernaut.