Fondue Quickfire

Apparently we're supposed to visit the Seventies for a little melty cheese trip down memory lane with a Fondue Quickfire. In the interest of accuracy I feel some further exploration is needed.

Eagle themed kitchens were popular

Avocado was more familiar as a color choice than as a something you eat

Spice racks were often made by sons in wood shop class (again with the eagle)

Tupperware ruled the Jello Mold Market


Kids didn't go off to college with computers but with flipping popcorn poppers

So I have to say 2010 fondue pots are kinda boring and industrial. The chefs have to make the fondue more modern than your typical Seventies melted cheese and bread fondue offerings. The Twist? The chefs will judge themselves, each will vote for a best fondue and a worst fondue and no one can vote for themselves. Will they be honest or will someone try and tear down a front runner. Let's all light our Sterno!

Can you guess whose station this is?

Mike tells us that fondue parties are gay....or make you gay...or make you want to be gay...I don't know, he's not too clear on the specifics.

Dale takes a page out of Richard's Word Play book and makes a Pho-due. Now I'm not sure of the rules but there appears to be a lot of pre-cooking going on which kinda defeats the whole purpose of fondue of cooking it in the little pot. No matter, their thirty minutes are up, time to stick it in the 'Due.

Looks like Mike is getting his gay fondue vibe on with his Chablis and rainbow tat (also very Seventies). That is one powerful accent Fabio is laying down if he can score with both men and the ladies. Time to taste the results.


I had to include these two shots....because certain followers of the blog will beg like hungry puppies if I don't. So there they are. Hope you're happy, Dorothy Snarker and MS. You won't mind if the rest of us finish with the post, do you?

Antonia is horrified to learn the voting won't be in secret since each chef has a ballot with their name on it. She needn't have worried. However it seems that Fabio, Tiffany and Mike are on the bottom. Yes, I said it, Mike is on the bottom for the gay fondue challenge.

You just can't make some people happy.

Dale wins it with his Pho-Due and a three day trip to Napa...hopefully without Mike. Mercifully the Fondue Quickfire is over.

????

Someone is really going to have to explain this one to me. How does someone (an Italian someone, who considers themselves an expert at all things Italian) fail to execute the pasta for his pasta dish? Not just not al dente but severely undercooked. How does that person not get auffed when that pasta dish is served to guest judges with exquisite Italian culinary pedigrees?
HOW????????

However this was the most delicious moment of the night, watching this giant hot bag of puffery suddenly realize that yes, that was the winning group, yes, you will be in the losing group, yes, Fabio did not win the Italian challenge and last but certainly not least, YES Antonia beat you for the win. Suck on that a while.

Waste Not, Want Not

We've barely had time to shake out the sand from our shoes from the Beach Party challenge when we're whisked away to the most refined seafood restaurant in the country.


Eric Ripert's Little Temple of Seafood, Le Bernardin. Our lusty seafood adventure with the All Stars continues. Our Captain of the Quickfire, Anthony Bourdain, would like to introduce the chefs and the viewers to Justo Thomas.


Justo cuts up all the fish that's served at Le Bernardin. All of it. 700 to 1000 pounds of fish a day. Not like a 24 hour day....no, a 5 hour time slot. Not only is he efficient and steady, he has to butcher fish to the rigorous standards of Le Bernardin. We're not talking Red Lobster here, we're talking no stray bones, no bloodlines, and no scales in that mountain of fish. When you read about how many awards, stars and diamonds a restaurant receives, it's not just because of one superstar chef, it's because that chef recognizes you need to find the best of the best for every member of your kitchen team. Justo is the man who makes the most of fish delivered to his chop shop. Waste not, want not. So now our chefs face more fish cutting.


Easy right? Out of the ten chefs left, the top four will be chosen. The clock begins and they are OFF!


Tiffany, despite being the executive chef of a seafood restaurant, struggles. Fabio cuts his finger but refuses to pull a Jamie (as I am sure it will now be forever known on Top Chef) and pushes through. Carla can barely get through one fish before time is up.


Not so good. However she's got Fabio, Antonia, and Tiffany as company in the bottom rung of fish butchery. The top four include Dale, Richard, Mike and Marcel but surprisingly not Angelo. But we're not done yet. The top four have a make a dish with those fish they just butchered.


Not from the fillets but from the heads and carcasses which still have plenty of usable flesh. I love it, don't waste a thing. Use it all. It's at this point where we witness a little kerfluffle between Mike and Marcel. Mike needs a chinois and asks out loud where they are. Marcel tells him in the back. Mike takes a brief look in the back, doesn't immediately see one and comes back to ask if he can use the one Marcel has already set up. Marcel declines. Mike, still searching, asks if he can take out his super bag. Again, Marcel directs him to procure his own tools.


Finally Mike finds what he needs but the cut aways have Mike calling Marcel a dick and I'm thinking: 1) Does Mike have to have help from everyone else for the simplest of thing like straining a liquid and 2) Why the hell would Marcel help you in a non-team Quickfire with Immunity on the line? This is still a competition and Marcel's not your sous chef. Hell, he didn't have to help you out at all.

Dick, thy name is Mike Isabella.

Forty five minutes whips by and Tony and Justo are back to taste what the chefs have to offer.




For 45 minutes and fish carcasses it all looked good. Tony has almost all nice things to say except for Marcel's dish which he calls too texturally monochromatic which I think means to much soft on soft. However it is Tony, he could be experiencing an extreme pharmaceutical flashback for all we know. It was very close between all four dishes but you know that bacon dashi had to kick Dale into the winner's circle.

Immunity doesn't hurt either because it's time for Restaurant Wars!!!!!!!

Tom Gives Us a Quickie

We already know the set up of Quickfire, beat Chef Tom's time making a dish. Of course Tom's little quickie is edited to look like it was all smooth sailing. We get lots of comments in the one on ones from the chefs watching, talking about how organized Tom is, how each step is planned out. Turns out not so much. What we don't see is Tom's tub flipping over and spilling olive oil all over everything, him running back for more oil and who knows what else. Perhaps they are saving that for the Reunion show. They also don't explain this:


Seriously what is she looking at because it's not Tom and his dish. Not that it matters, the chefs now have to match Tom's time of eight minutes and thirty seven seconds. Of course no judge tastes his dish to say whether it's too salty or missing acidity or the sauce was bland. We're just to take their word that it's a good dish. Otherwise it's a straight forward Quickfire, cook a winning dish with what's in the pantry in the time allotted. No tuna tartare because if you can't make tuna tartare in less than ten minutes you don't belong on Top Chef. To add even more pressure the prize for winning the Quickfire, besides Immunity, is a car.

Wow, if that's the prize for the Quickfire, can't wait to see what the prize is for the Elim. Padma calls time and every chef but one hauls ass for the refrigerator. What did that last chef do? The smart thing, of course.

Talk about outside the box thinking, Marcel whips over to Tom's leftover fish and snags it for his dish surprising everyone including some unsuspecting (and not planning to be on camera) production people...

...who almost get a fish oil treatment up close and personal. See what I mean about Tom not having to worry about stuff like this? So the chefs get to whipping up their own quickies, not having had the two days to think about what dish they could make. Despite Tom's admonition not to, Angelo thinks he can win that car with a crudo...which is just a version of tartare. Turns out he almost doesn't have enough time to finish his dish which would have been hilarious considering it's a pile of raw fish. Who else is in the weeds? Jamie, who I think actually signed up for Top Chef Cooking Light because she's still not bringing it with her serving of ONE clam. Joining her in the weeds is Dale who I think just tried to do too much and lost it. For the most part everyone else put some decent food on the plates which in my book makes them more accomplished than Tom. The top three dishes come from Richard, Marcel and Mike. To me it's between Marcel and his fish in dashi broth, chili oil and bok choi,


and Mike's fish with black olive and caper stew.

Who ends up driving the car down the streets of New York in their very own Pimp Mobile?

That would be Mike Isabella, Car, Immunity, Happy Man.

However if he read the fortune cookie for his future it might have read:

Top Chef All Stars - It's Anybody's Game

There's quite a bit of blathering chatter on Top Chef. Sometimes it's amusing, sometimes it's mystifying but most of it is attention whoremongering. Sometimes I like muting the sound and just watching the faces. It tells you oh so much. What this particular picture tells me is that when a 7th place chef (in his season) beats out two runner ups for a car and immunity, it stings a bit.

Sweet Satisfaction

Poorly cooked Leeks +

Tom's Icky Face =

This little piggy crying Wee, Wee, Wee, all the way home.

The Devil in the Diaper

My goodness, I didn't know Pampers was pimping the last Quickfire. How else to explain the big whiny crybabies that emerged from our TV screen? What had their Pampers in twisted wad?The fact that Robin won the Angel vs Devil Quickfire with her Apple Fennel Salad vs Apple Crisp. The reason she made those two dishes was because she's a cancer survivor and eating healthy is very important to staying healthy. But like most of us, we always crave the things we can't have, so the apple crisp was her devil. The explanation made sense and was personal, her dish was simple and tasted good. Chef Michelle Bernstein enjoyed the simple flavors and execution enough to give her the win and immunity. That's all.

Not Quite.

Because she beat out Eli for the Quickfire win, Eli went all Douchbag in one of his one on one interviews. This is the quote. "That's a pretty good way to win a Quickfire, tell people you have f___ing cancer. When I had cancer I ate this and when I didn't I could eat this. Like...oh...ok. I mean weak." No dude, what's weak is your whining. How insulting. Not only to someone who is just happy to be ALIVE but also to the guest judge that you think the reason she chose Robin was ONLY because she was a cancer survivor. Brilliant. So we hereby nominate Eli for our first ever Whiny the Poo Award for General Cluelessness and Downright Douchbaggery. I think he's earned it. Now please, will someone change him out of the load he dropped in his Pampers?