Crab fat tortilla

Sexy Shota, sandy clams, and Dungeness realness

Welcome to Top Chef, Not Top Scallop, the world’s greatest Top Chef recap blog. This is a review of Top Chef: Portland, episode 12. My name is Randall Colburn and I am going to make fun of Richard Blais a lot. Read last week’s recap here. 

Note: Blame the internet, but my screener’s quality was shaky this week so my photos are grainier than stone-ground mustard. All apologies.

It’s a total cop-out but I’m a sucker for non-eliminations, the Top Chef equivalent of Oprah’s “YOU GET A CAR” episode. I shouldn’t be, as I’m someone who generally believes nothing is good or satisfying if everybody wins and nobody loses but we can have unfettered joy once in a while, as a treat. I’m also embracing it to dull my fierce annoyance and simmering cynicism over how this is the fourth elimination challenge in a row (and fifth total) where Dawn has neglected to plate an element and the judges just don’t care. “There was a missing tortilla,” said Gail during Gabe’s second course. “That counts.” NO IT DOESN’T. YOU HAVE SPENT THE LAST FOUR EPISODES PROVING IT DOESN’T.

Me writing the above sentence:

(deep breath)

(blood pressure lowers)

(blood pressure rises)

Aw, it’s happy Shota. He’s so happy! I am, too, I swear, because I can recognize that Dawn’s dishes are good even without the missing components and that I’d really like to keep seeing her cook. I wish we had two more episodes, honestly, as the prep and delivery of three four-course meals seems like a lot for an hour, especially since pretty much everything Shota and Gabe cook requires a FOOD FACT or three. That’s been a neat part of this season, though. Top Chef’s always been good for dishing up elevated versions of dishes we recognize, but the innovation that used to come from Marcel or Blais pulling out their chemistry sets has been replaced by Shota and Gabe preparing dishes that are rarely seen in the States in ways that require little to no scientific fuckery. I’ve Googled more dishes this season than any other I can recall, and it’s fun, too, to see the judges marvel at some of their techniques, as Kwame did with Shota’s crab dashi.

Along those same lines, I was moved by Shota’s story about being ashamed of his lunchbox at school and how he hopes his presence on the show can make kids be more proud of their culture and heritage. How often has a story like that been told on Top Chef? By making space for chefs to continuously push the boundaries of what Fine Dining can be, the show’s opened up the door for these kinds of narratives. If I’m being perfectly honest, I can remember gawking at the kids in elementary school who weren’t scarfing peanut butter and jelly, potato chips, and buckets of Coke. Kids mock what they don’t understand. (Many adults, too, sadly.) Anyways, all this is to say: More tofu cheddar manjūs in cafeterias, please.

Quickfire

I didn’t realize the chefs were staying, like, right on Cannon Beach and that Haystack Rock is right there. That’s pretty cool. I visited there some years back and there was a place that served tiny shrimp on white bread with melted American cheese.

On my way to Cannon Beach:

Padma and her Gloria Steinem shades wake the chefs up bright and early and, as Shota can attest, there are worse wakeup calls.

As the sun rises over Yager Creek Flats in Netarts Bay, the trio and Brooke dig up gaper clams, butter clams, cockles, and more briny little fellows. Once they’ve got a handful of good boys, it’s on them to cook up a dish in 30 minutes for Brooke and Padma. Dawn’s clam bisque and Shota’s sake yuzu butter clams are dinged for eating grainy and chewy, respectively, while Gabe wins his first Quickfire for his poached gaper and butter clams, which he models after sopa de mariscos, a style of Mexican seafood soup. “I can’t believe you did that in half an hour,” says Padma. I can. Gabe is almost too good at this whole game. No, he doesn’t win every challenge, but he’s on top way more than he’s bottom. I don’t trust chefs who don’t fail as much as they succeed. I don’t trust chefs who’ve never truly been in danger of going home. Gabe is this season’s Michael Voltaggio, basically.

Anyways, he gets an $100 advantage in the elimination challenge, meaning he gets $400 to spend instead of $300. Lemme guess: He’s gonna spend it MOLE.

Elimination Challenge

James Beard, a man better known to the foodie public for the awards bearing his name than his actual culinary achievements (should’ve franchised more, Jimmy!), was born and raised in Portland. In his honor, the chefs will prepare hot and cold preparations of Dungeness crab, his favorite food. Before they get started, Beard awardees Nina and Kwame make Shota, a three-time James Beard Rising Star Chef finalist, feel like shit by flaunting their wins.

We also get these alleged photos of Baby Beard, which I’m assuming are both fake and stolen from a Ken Burns documentary.

I thought the chefs were shopping at Whole Foods at first and couldn’t stop laughing at Dawn saying “this is a great shop” as if it was some local place. Well, it turns out it was a local shop and I just wasn’t paying attention on my first watch. (Yes, I watch all of these more than once.) It’s the Astoria Co-Op and it looks fuckin’ lovely and I take back the bitchy comments I had queued up about Gabe saying “the flour section looks good.” Seriously, though, how funny would it be if they were saying all that stuff about Whole Foods?

We get a few special guests: First there’s Alice Waters, described here as the “Queen of Farm To Table Cooking,” who virtually pops in to drop some knowledge about James Beard. Then we get Naomi Pomeroy, a trailblazing Portland chef (and Top Chef Masters alum) who’s currently navigating the pandemic shake-up of her own culinary empire.

In the kitchen, all the chefs are in Jamie Mode:

• Shota initially planned on serving crab two ways during his cold course, but his ume rice turns out too vinegary so he scraps that, much to Gail’s dismay. As such, his cold dish consists of only one nigiri roll.

• Gabe comes up with the cuckoo idea of making crab fat tortillas, but ends up leaving one off the plate. Melissa’s, I believe.

• And Dawn, well, she intended for the potatoes to be the star (and to break up the richness of her sauce), but those never make it out of the oven.

Let’s look at the dishes themselves, beginning with the cold ones:

Shota’s crab nigiri with yuzu kosho and pickled ginger

Dale: “He roasted the crab shell so you can that intense crustacean aroma, which helps bring in some sweetness and added flavor. I thought it was perfect, I just want more.”

Kwame: “Crab sushi two ways—to only give us one way, with all this time, at this point in the game, I just don’t think that’s acceptable.”

Naomi: “I can forgive based on how delightful that bite was.”

Nina: “For a one-bite dish, you really have to have the confidence. I think it’s ballsy to serve one bite.”

Gabe’s Dungeness crab and lobster mushrooms braised in crab stock with avocado yogurt

Tom: “Gabe, this is a cold preparation, why the hot soup?”

Melissa: “It’s a little confusing whether this was a cold preparation, but the star was certainly the crab.”

Tom: “Gabe gave us just a great expression of where we are in the ingredients. He worked a little of himself there in the heat. I think he did a great job.”

Ed: “I could not love this dish anymore. It was delicate and balanced.”

Kwame: “The avocado mousse was silky. It was probably the best lobster mushrooms I had.”

Tom: “I think the sauce work was really indicative of the sauce work you’ve given us all season.”

Dawn’s Dungeness crab salad with cashew soup and pickled oyster mushrooms

Tom: “This is a like a creamless crab chowder.”

Padma: “I really enjoyed the cashew sauce. I loved how creamy it was.”

Blais: “I am inspired by the combination of cashew and crab here, quite honestly.”

Dale: “The nuttiness of the cashew has a butteriness to it that complements the crab.”

Nina: “She has a really bad habit of these whimsical garnishes that don’t lend anything to the dish.”

Tom: “For me, the crab and cashew stop right there. This dish was strong enough on its own.”

Nina: “When it comes to comfort in a bowl, like a nice hug of flavor, that was definitely in that bowl.”

And the hot:

Shota’s braised purple daikon with crab, soy and sherry vinaigrette, and persimmons

Tom: “I love Shota’s dish. To have a light broth that is so crab forward. The taste of the sea water is stunning.”

Melissa: “He didn’t have to use butter and chilis that these other two dishes did.”

Nina: “The restraint that he showed in this dish—it’s the sweet crab, the beautiful brininess of this broth. I thought to me was so well balanced and I thought the other dishes didn’t have the balance he showed in that dish.”

Kwame: “I’m just so impressed by how you got so much flavor into that clear liquid.”

Gail: “You gave us a dish that was in total contrast to the other two dishes in that course. It was a showstopper.”

Gabe’s mole coloradito with crab clam stock, sunchokes, and crab fat tortilla

Tom: “The sauce is really deep and dark. It’s about crab but it’s about all the earthiness, too.”

Naomi: “The sauce for me would’ve been delicious if it wasn’t Jerusalem artichoke forward. I just felt like it took over.”

Dale: “I agree with Naomi. There is an underlying flavor of Jerusalem artichoke that is bitter.”

Brooke’s face:

Brooke: “I get a ton of Jerusalem artichoke but I love it. It gives it another dimension. My tortilla was cooked perfectly, it had enough chew to stand up to that sauce.”

Gail: “There was just a lot of intense crabbiness throughout the dish. Crab fat tortillas, that’s a big idea.”

Dawn’s Pacific coast style crab boil Dungeness crab in beer-based broth

Brooke: “This is not formal dress food.”

Padma: “Did you mean for your plates to have splotches?” (Say YES next time, Dawn!)

Kwame: “This is a delicious, delicious bowl of food.”

Blais: “Dawn’s sauce is spectacular. It’s not too acidic, it’s not too spicy.”

Gregory: “This is what Dawn does extremely well: Creates deep, homey flavors that are so extremely cravable and we can’t stop eating them.”

Ed: “My only complaint is I want something else to sop it up with.”

Nina: “We were all quiet when we were eating that dish. That’s how good it was.”

Kwame: “It was one of the best bites of food I’ve had all season.”

Shota emerges as the champ, and, per the judges’ comments, it’s due in large part to the elegance of his cooking, which is heavy on technique, specific in its POV, and refreshingly lacking in the kinds of fireworks you typically see in Western cooking. That style of cooking creates a stark contrast to Gabe’s flavors, lauded for their depth and boldness, and Dawn’s modern riffs on Southern cuisine, which makes Gail do this.

There’s something to be said for food so good it turns you into a dirty-fingered toddler who gets as much food on themselves as they do in their mouth.

Scraps

• I have horrible news. I had a trip planned for the middle of next week, so it’s doubtful my recap will be ready when the finale airs on Thursday night. Might not get it out until Friday or Saturday. We’ll see when I get a screener…

• Love Gregory calling himself “GG.” He’s the friggin’ best.

• Next time on Top Chef: Tom calls in the cavalry.