Last Chance Kitchen: Tom CARlicchio

Welcome to Top Chef, Not Top Scallop, the world’s greatest Top Chef recap blog. This is a recap of Portland’s Last Chance Kitchen, “Start Your Engines.” Read my recap of last week’s LCK here and the latest Top Chef episode here. You can watch the latest LCK here. 

Jesus Christ, what a corny-ass episode of television. Look, I adore Tom Colicchio, but can we not fold his midlife crisis into Top Chef? Yeah, yeah, I know BMW is likely to blame for this, but if I want to see a 50-something reality host strap on leather and indulge his need for speed I can watch Gordon Ramsey’s various dalliances with sport vehicles on Kitchen Nightmares.

Even worse, without Uncut Colicchio in the kitchen we’re left with Blais, a man whose eyes dim with every new inch of hair he grows. Where Tom feels authentic and natural on camera, Blais feels focus-grouped to unrecognizability—beneath his camera-ready face is such obvious desperation. He’s like the vein-head kid of trying to be “likable.” He stands in such stark contrast to Tom’s low-key charisma and Padma and Gail’s amiable polish. I really hope this wasn’t a backdoor audition for him to take over for Tom. I love Padma, but Tom is Top Chef.

Anyways, Chris enters the Top Chef kitchen and Avishar does this.

The rules are this: Tom will drive a million-dollar car around a racetrack 10 times and then return to the kitchen. He doesn’t know how long it will take him, so the chefs have to play fast and loose in their preparation, lest they finish too early or run out of time. That limbo, I imagine, is a very tough place to live in for chefs, but Chris and Sara don’t seem too stressed about it. Avishar, after all, is timing the laps so they can get a better grasp on their timetable, but, as Chris notes, Tom’s driving gets faster and more confident as he makes more laps. Blais, meanwhile, screams “TOM IS COMING TOM IS ALMOST HERE” about 5,000 times.

When Tom arrives, the chefs get one minute to plate. Blais asks how the racetrack was and Tom says “Pretty awesome, actually,” as if anybody thought it wouldn’t be.

Sara describes her beef-braised turnip dish as “umami-forward” and “meaty” and Tom makes a sly comment about its saltiness that sends Sara into an existential tizzy.

Chris chars some peppers and whips up a spicy broth that he hopes will redeem some of his under-seasoned food from the competition. (No pasta redemption for him, after all.)

Blais celebrates his dish as “bright, acidic, and very tasty,” while Tom praises the dish’s straightforwardness.

They’re clearly more smitten with Sara’s dish, however. Tom, who’s quite taken with Sara’s “quirky” cooking, lauds it as “really complex” and continues to gush over it even after she’s announced as the winner. A streak is born and I imagine Sara’s got two more LCKs to win before she’s back in the competition. I’m betting she makes it.

Her comment about it feeling good to beat Chris since she thought he should’ve gone home during Restaurant Wars rubbed me the wrong way. She biffed one dish and missed the mark on another; he biffed one dish and made a dessert that some judges said was the best dish of the night. He didn’t deserve to go home. If you factor in their individual win-loss record throughout the competition, sure, I see her point, but Top Chef has never worked like that. You’re always judged on your latest dish. Anyways, it was a revealing moment.

See you next week!