Welcome to Top Chef, Not Top Scallop, the world’s greatest Top Chef recap blog. This is a review of Top Chef: Portland, episode 11. My name is Randall Colburn and I am going to make fun of Richard Blais a lot. Read last week’s recap here.
Hmmm. Struggling with this.
Okay, so…
Consistency is one of Top Chef’s greatest virtues. Bravo’s made efforts to modernize (Twitter challenges, Logan Paul), gamify (Texas’ final episodes), and intensify (Sudden Death Quickfires) the franchise over the years, but the series has (almost) always held true to its judging philosophy:
Technique and creativity matter, but taste is the deciding factor
Talent trumps personality
Aside from the finale, contestants are judged by their latest dish
It’s safe to say Dawn’s food has consistently excited the judges more than Jamie’s—“Dawn for president!” declared Kwame last week—and, if we’re going solely by the judge’s comments, it sounds as if she and Jamie’s dishes had a relatively equal amount of faults with them. If this is where it stood, then Ed’s comment that Dawn’s gougere—a.k.a. her “crispy boy”—was the night’s best bite would’ve justified Jamie taking the fall this challenge. The problem is that not everybody received Dawn’s crispy boy and this is the third challenge in a row where essential parts of her dish didn’t make it onto every plate. Dawn’s escalating oversights were egregious enough to stir Angry Dale from his slumber: “How do you miss another fucking ingredient on a plate again,” the awakened beast bellowed. “Again?!”
Dale in happier times:
Brooke in sad times:
This puts us in unprecedented territory. Plenty of chefs have survived judges’ table after forgetting to plate a component, but nobody’s had the opportunity to do it on multiple occasions. And, no, there’s nothing in my loose judging rubric about serving incomplete dishes, but ignoring it this long feels weird! There must be consequences! In this instance, the cumulative matters! Gah!!!!! I also can’t help but consider that Jamie trying to quit last week was still fresh in the judges’ minds. Padma said she seemed “checked out” last week and maybe that memory was still picking at their brains, despite Jamie having won the Quickfire. I mean, her dish was described as “zany,” “beautiful,” “bold,” and “ambitious”; her folly, per the judges, was making fish so good it upstaged the cheese, the focus of the challenge. It makes sense to fall back on the thrust of the challenge in the face of uncertainty, but it’s not as if Dawn nailed that aspect, either—Tom dinged her for her lack of creativity in the cheese department. The crispy boy was her saving grace. And not everyone got it.
I’m torn! My first thought was that Jamie should’ve stayed, but, I dunno, she sure seemed ready to leave when they called her name. She had a fart joke ready and everything. What do you all think?
Quickfire
Gregory (a.k.a. “Greg,” a.k.a. “culinary mayor of Portland”) is the guest judge for this week’s Quickfire, which, unlike the last few weeks, is blessedly simple: Create a dish with ingredients that settlers would’ve had on the Oregon Trail without giving Padma dysentery. (Love that Greg brought up the Oregon Trail computer game, another nod to the Gen-X/elder millennial demographic this show has embraced.) There’s a veritable bounty of proteins, herbs, dried goods, and root vegetables to choose from, but no access to the pantry. The challenge here is a lack of fresh citrus, and each of the four remaining chefs struggle to find ways to work acid into their dish using stuff like lemon oil and citric acid, finicky ingredients that need to be handled with care. “One wrong move with citric acid and you can’t turn back,” says Dawn.
When you’ve made a wrong move with citric acid and can’t turn back:
(I admit I laughed when I saw citric acid and imagined dirt-poor settlers pulling out their plastic powder baggies, but, anticipating reactions like mine, the show shared not one but two Food Facts about how, yes smart-ass, settlers did use citric acid.)
Shota faces the biggest challenge, as the Oregon Trail wasn’t packed with the kinds of umami-rich ingredients he relies on. This, too, comes after an intro in which Shota, emboldened by his success so far, commits to incorporating more of the techniques he learned in Japan. Cleverly, he manages to eke out some umami by curing his salmon in jerky, but the technique ends up drying out the salmon and he’s dinged by guest judge Vitaly Paley, a Portland culinary legend Gregory calls “uncle.” (Not surprising, but the pandemic wreaked havoc on Paley’s Portland empire.)
Shota also has an adorably indignent reaction when Dawn jokes about him “pushing” her food to the back of the wood-fired oven.
I love him so much.
Dawn also ends up on the bottom for serving up a “fishy” porridge, while Gabe and Jamie get kudos for their “modern” interpretations. Gabe’s alchemy with lemon syrup and citric acid brightens his “campfire trout,” and Jamie wins for finding a myriad of textures and flavors using crispy parsnips, dried cranberries, and a walnut pepper sauce.
Padma wants her to do her celebratory gun dance, but Jamie says “I am not your puppet, madam” and enjoys her win with quiet grace.
Elimination Challenge
It’s a cheese challenge! Cheddar, specifically, as the Big Cheeses of Tillamook are located in Oregon. Though a “workhorse cheese,” as Gabe puts it, the show finds an interesting approach to it by challenging the chefs to use it five different ways in a single dish. The inspiration: “Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano in Different Textures and Temperatures,” a famed dish from Massimo Bottura, the Italian chef behind three-Michelin-star restaurant (and one-time, um, “best restaurant in the world”) Osteria Francescana. As its name implies, Bottura’s dish utilizes Parmigiano Reggiano in five different ways: a Parmigiano and ricotta demi-soufflé, Parmigiano sauce, Parmigiano foam, a Parmigiano wafer, and Parmigiano air, a literal cloud of cheese.
When you hear about the cheese cloud:
When you eat the cheese cloud:
Apropos of nothing, very into this awkward look between Dawn and Jamie:
Jamie, Gabe, Dawn, and Shota pack up their knives and depart for Cannon Beach, the coastal city best known for Haystack Rock and movies like Point Break, The Goonies, and (sigh) Twilight. “I’m ready to live my best Goonies life,” says Gabe, and that’s good enough for me. (My goodness, I forgot how many professional wrestlers are in that video.)
On the way, they try to make BMWs look cool—“Great for a long drive,” says Shota, dutifully delivering some marketing copy after turning on the seat massager—but this already exists so what’s the point?
Tom says the challenge is designed to push the chefs “out of their comfort zones,” and it’s true that none of these four chefs feel comfortable working with this intimately with cheddar. (Remember Brittanny, the “Alpine” chef? She probably would’ve killed it.)
Dawn decides to honor her hometown with a riff on the Philly cheesesteak. Gabe draws upon the classic combo of apples and cheddar, flexing some technique by hardening the pectin of the apple to ensure it can maintain its structural integrity after being cooked. Shota, again stuck with an ingredient that doesn’t lend itself to his style of cooking, whips up a cheese dashi that he’s stoked on. And Jamie, well, she’s too goddamned nice. She helps everyone else plate and, in the process, runs out of time to thin out her spiced cheese sauce, which she’s boldly serving atop a piece of sea bass.
Tom walks through the kitchen and asks:
Then he makes this face:
And, oh shit, Nina’s here! Nina rules. Should’ve won New Orleans. Show me one person who disagrees.
Okay, here’s the dishes:
Shota’s tofu cheddar manjū with cheddar dashi, smoked cheddar oil, cheddar tofu miso, and cheddar tuile
Literally everyone: “Wow. I love it.”
Padma: “I’ve never had anything like this. I love all the textures, especially that dumpling.”
Gail: “He gave us something that was just so original.”
Tom: “I think it’s really inventive. Give this challenge to a 100 different chefs, you’ll never get this dish.”
Nina: “I thought it was very beautiful [and] delicate.”
Gail: “You really went out on a limb today.”
Gabe’s cheddar oil roasted apples, white cheddar foam, cheese curds, apple bacon cheddar sauce, and cheese and apple chip
Gail: “I think it was beautiful and his technique is spot-on. I loved that roasted apple.”
Brooke: “That apple was phenomenal. It showed so much technique.”
Gregory: “It was a beautiful dish. I think he did a really good job manipulating the cheese in so many different ways, but that really bright tart pickled apple just blew everything out for me.”
Dale: “Gabe went for it. His dish is showing us why he’s here in the top four.”
Gail: “Such distinct uses of the cheese, I was really impressed.”
Tom: “My problem with the dish was it wasn’t cheese forward. The best piece of the dish was the apple. That said, I really liked the dish. It was like a composed cheese plate before the dessert at a tasting menu.”
Dawn’s cheese oil basted steak with cheddar gougere, extra sharp reserve cheese foam, soubise and cheddar sauce
Dale: “How do you miss another fucking ingredient on a plate again. Again?! All you gotta do is get 12 of these things on a plate.”
Blais: “Dawn’s dish, when you say, ‘I’m inspired by a Philly cheesesteak,’ it needs to taste as good as a Philly cheesesteak, and I think she fell short of that.”
Gail: “I love the pure cheesiness.”
Nina: “In terms of flavor and cheese, it’s really punchy. But when you look at the first dish to now, the lack of technique is a little bit lackluster.”
Ed: “Dawn’s food makes me happy.”
Kwame: “The gougere was delicious, it was so cheesy.”
Tom: “We asked you to do cheese five different ways and three of them were sauces. It was a missed opportunity to do something more creative.”
Dale: “The sauce was grainy atop of missing a component.”
Ed: “The grugere was probably the best bite of food I had all night.”
Jamie’s sea bass with crispy cheddar, cheddar spaetzle, spiced cheese sauce, cheese broth bok choy, and pickled cheese curds
Gregory: “The crispy cheese bits on top of the fish are delicious. I’ve never had that before and I think it works really well.”
Tom: “This idea of trying to work a protein in the dish was a big mistake. Could’ve been a pasta dish. But I don’t think she showcased five cheeses really well.”
Ed: “The sauce made no sense to me. All those ingredients together, it didn’t have any cohesion for me.”
Kwame: “I think this dish was bold for Jamie to do. She stepped out of her comfort zone. I think the dish was good and I’d eat it again.”
Ed: “Of all the chefs tonight, you have the most ambitious ideas. If Shota’s dish came from Japan and Dawn’s dish came from Philadelphia, yours came from outer space. But if you’re going to go out there, you have to have the technique to back it up.”
Gail: “There were a lot of zany and beautiful moments in that dish, but I found the sauce to really eat like tahini. It wasn’t cheesy at all.”
Tom: “The fish was both the best part and the worst part of Jamie’s dish.”
Big episode for Shota. He lost the Quickfire, but his performance there helped prepare us for what he pulled off here. Japanese cooking is what he does best, and at this point in the competition he’ll, come hell or high water, find a way to make any ingredient fit his POV and skillset. His ability to make such a surprising and cohesive Japanese dish from cheddar cheese would’ve been impressive even if it tasted like garbage. That it was also delicious cinched the victory for him. Gabe remains strong; his dish was more or less flawless but, like Jamie, he allowed something that wasn’t cheese to serve as the centerpiece of the plate. It’ll be a helluva fight between those two and Dawn, especially if Dawn remembers to PLATE HER GODDAMNED FOOD.
I’m sad about Jamie leaving, but the good news is that it’s more than likely she’ll return as a sous chef in the finale.
Me when Jamie returns in the finale:
Jamie when Jamie returns in the finale:
Scraps
“What is this salty discharge?” Jamie is a Seinfeld fan.
For posterity, Jamie’s fart joke: “I guess we’re going to clear out the room like I cut the cheese.”
Tom hat alert
Next time on Top Chef: Finally, someone pays tribute to obscure chef James Beard