Top Chef, pandemic-style

15 new chefs, oodles of familiar faces, and Richard Blais' extremely stupid haircut

Welcome to Top Chef, Not Top Scallop, the world’s greatest Top Chef recap blog. This is a review of Top Chef: Portland, episode 1. My name is Randall Colburn and I am going to make fun of Richard Blais a lot.

“There is not a more perfect time to compete on Top Chef,” says Chef Kiki in season 18’s opening montage. “We can come together and support each other.”

If this were any other show, I’d call bullshit. Everyone on TV hates each other. Not chefs, though. Chefs are the only good people on TV. Just look at Bake-Off. But this isn’t a Bake-Off blog. This is a Top Chef blog, and Top Chef is a show that’s sought to atone for the sins of Ilan Hall by becoming a show as tender as it is competitive. The latter seasons—Boston excluded—have by and large been defined by the bonds formed between cheftestants, their individual journeys of self-discovery, and the little glasses Tom Colicchio wears when he’s eating.

So, no, I don’t scoff at Kiki’s grand declaration, which arrives in the midst of a global pandemic that’s impacted the restaurant industry more than most. Top Chef: Portland begins with a brief montage in which this new batch of cheftestants mourn the staff members (and friends) they had to furlough, and there’s several comments about how good it feels to be back in the kitchen after months spent baking bread. (Cheftestants, just like us!) So, yes, with restaurants closed and chefs doing all they can to make a buck, now truly is the best time to compete on Top Chef. It’s likely, however, that the $250,000 cash prize won’t be going to opening a restaurant, but rather to keeping one open.

So, what does a pandemic season of Top Chef look like? Not that different, at first glance. Wisely, Bravo is fortifying Tom, Padma, and Gail with a rotating panel of notable Top Chef alums that will serve as guest judges. What I love is that, even when they’re not judging, the alums will still have a seat at the table. It creates a sense of community in a competition that’s usually swarming with people. It’s easy to forget that a good chunk of challenges see doddering groups of drooling dopes descending upon our heroes’ sad little stations. I was weirdly sad when it struck me that the chefs won’t be able to shop at Whole Foods. I love Whole Foods intrigue—sprinting through the aisles, dumping shit at the register to fit the budget, passive-aggressively asking butchers if they’re sure they don’t have 30 pounds of pork shoulder. Hell, how will we know Stephanie got the plant?

Now, they order via iPads. And, serving as yet another reminder of the current state of the world, the servers are all wearing masks and face shields. It’s clear the editors are trying to cut around them, but they’re hard to miss.

Man, you just never get used to images like that, do you? Imagine how strange it’ll be when we’re binging this season on Hulu in a few years.

Anyways…

Tom Colicchio @tomcolicchio

Top Chef time

Let’s meet our 15 chefs! Here’s a quick list:

Shota Nakajima (Tokyo; Seattle)

Brittanny Anderson (Richmond, VA)

Nelson German (Oakland, CA)

Roscoe Hall (Birmingham, AL)

Avishar Barua (Columbus)

Chris Viaud (Milford, NH)

Byron Gomez (Aspen)

Gabriel Pascuzzi (Portland)

Jamie Tran (Las Vegas)

Sasha Grumman (Houston)

Dawn Burrell (Houston)

Sara Hauman (Portland)

Maria Mazon (Tuscon)

Gabe Erales (Austin)

Kiki Louya (Detroit)

There’s some James Beard nominees in there—and Gabriel, who may be shaping up to be this season’s “villain,” was named Eater’s Portland Chef of the Year a while back. Someone claims that when they worked at 11 Madison Park it was “number one in the world,” which is such a hilariously broad claim. (I’m sure it’s legit, but one must always provide sourcing.) Top Chef viewers don’t care about awards, though. We, like Tom and Padma, care only about the dish in front of us. Right, Tom?

Quickfire

Still, we’ve gotta get a sense of these chefs somehow and, 18 seasons in, they’re still finding new ways to introduce us to them. For the Quickfire, the chefs are each given an ingredient that they said they could never live without, then randomly teamed up and forced to combine their ingredients into a cohesive dish.

I admit I laughed at the people who chose shit like “smoked trout roe” and “salted anchovies” because, Christ, are you putting those in every dish you make? On the other end of the spectrum you had Chris and Roscoe, who chose butter and rice vinegar, staples that Padma snottily tells them are already in the pantry. While it sounds like the prompt could’ve used a bit more context, I still love the concept for the challenge; it says more about a chef’s style of cooking than, say, a signature dish. Nelson, for example, chose plantains because they’re essential to the Dominican cuisine he cooks. Chris’ French-inspired style, meanwhile, relies on loads of butter, and Sasha’s choice of Meyer lemons dovetails with her brand of Italian cuisine.

It also makes for a tricky challenge, as the specificity of each item makes it difficult to blend them with others. Brittany, Gabriel, and Maria have the toughest go of it, having to mash together gruyere, caul fat, and chocolate. They still end up on top, though, thanks to a “gruyere gremolata” that sits atop a mole and a pork loin.

It’s Kiki, Sara, and Sasha that come out on top, though, their scotch bonnet peppers, anchovies, and Meyer lemons coalescing into a harissa seared halibut with a roasted hot pepper relish and a Meyer lemon and anchovy salsa verde.

Gabriel, who just moments before snapped at Maria for removing the thyme stems from their dish because he worked at Colicchio & Sons and “Tom does it all the time” (meaning puts thyme stems on dishes?), barks under his breath that they should’ve won because they had tougher ingredients to work with. Sorry, boy wonder, but this ain’t Colicchio & Sons—you’re playing by Padma’s rules now.

Gabriel comes out on top in both challenges this episode, but that attitude?

Check it, son.

(Also seemed a little weird that Gregory didn’t seem to know him, them both being Portland chefs and all.)

Another notable moment? Dawn, an Olympian-turned-chef, doing a real Jim-looks-at-the-camera moment after Jamie sauces the crispy side of their fish, a big no-no.

Jamie, meanwhile…

“Portland is obsessed with birds!” That’s how Padma transitions into discussing the elimination challenge, and it’s easily one of the funniest and most awkward segues in Top Chef history. The chefs are tasked with cooking one of five Oregon game birds—quail, duck, turkey, squab, or chukar partridge—in a challenge that will be conducted “blind,” meaning the judges won’t know who cooked what. This way, the chefs will be able to tell them “who they are” through food and nothing else.

Since they won the Quickfire, Kiki, Sara, and Sasha are granted immunity and allowed to choose the bird they want. The others, as Tom explains, need to crack open some eggs that will tell them what they’re cooking. I can’t get over how funny it is when Tom has to explain something “wacky.” He’s so tickled. “See these eggs? Ain’t no whites in these eggs! Ha ha ha, you didn’t expect that!”

We also meet our initial slate of guest judges, an illustrious group that includes All-Stars winner Melissa King, Boston/All-Stars’ Gregory Gourdet, California winner Amar Santana, California’s Kwame Onwuachi, and Chicago/All-Stars’ Dale Talde.

Oh, and…

Neat of you to wear a bird’s nest on your head for the game bird challenge, Blais, but unnecessary. In all seriousness, though, nobody has ever wanted to be a 27-year old vape store manager more than Richard Blais. I thank god every day he won season 8 All-Stars because I don’t think I could’ve handled him and Brian Malarkey on a season together. Meet-the-Deedles-ass Blais.

Even Padma makes fun of him and, sufficiently shamed, he Criscos that shit down for dinner.

Elimination Challenge

I’ve gotta be honest: This might be one of the most lackluster showings I’ve ever seen in a first elimination challenge. The standouts were striking—we’ll get to those—but a lot more duds than normal. You could credit that to pandemic rust, I suppose, but the errors just seemed extra egregious, from Roscoe’s “greasy” broth to Avishar’s bowl of diarrhea. There’s always bumps early in the season, but it’s rare that even a dud dish on Top Chef looks, well, gross. (It’s also saying something that Dawn, who ran out of time and didn’t plate a key component, wasn’t on the bottom.)

Let’s look at the losers first:

Roscoe’s duck adobo with sweet potato dumplings

Roscoe: “My adobo is my secret weapon”

Dale: “The duck isn’t cooked very well.”

Melissa: “This broth is too greasy, cloudy…”

Tom: “It’s a bowl full of fear.”

Sasha’s roasted quail with polenta and a red wine jus

Melissa: “That polenta, just so dense.”

Tom: “Not so much of a roast on this.”

Padma: “Lucky for you, you have immunity.”

Avishar’s chukar-fried chukar with pilau and fried spiced pickles

Avishar: “I don’t have anything on the plate that I like.”

Tom: “You expect a lot of flavor from this dish but it’s not there.”

Padma: “I find it hard to believe that Avishar thought that that rice was okay to serve to us.”

Tom: “After 18 seasons, we been telling them to season. You’d think they would season.”

Avishar: “It looks like shit.”

Jamie’s lemongrass turkey with Israeli couscous, sautéed rapini, and plum sauce

Jamie: “I overcooked my crap.”

Padma: “I love Israeli couscous and I obviously love curry and lemongrass, but I don’t think I like them together.”

Tom: “Turkey’s lost.”

Gail: “I can’t at all decipher who is Jamie right now at this moment.”

Roscoe gets the axe, which is too bad because I could listen to him say words like “adobo” and “delicious” all day. It would’ve also been cool to see him cook some BBQ, as he’s the culinary director at Birmingham’s Rodney Scott’s. (Him saying he works 3 a.m. to 10 p.m., though? Jesus Christ.)

See you in LCK, Roscoe. And pray that nobody ever calls your food a “bowl full of fear” again.

Me when Tom called Roscoe’s adobo a “bowl full of fear”:

On top?

Gabriel’s roasted squab with local honey, grilled plums, and jus

Gabriel: “I felt like what I put up was representative of me.”

Gregory: “Gorgeous…I love the simplicity.”

Tom: “I think the sauce is really good…the cook on the squab was perfect.”

Blaise: “This chef is letting us know they’re a fine dining chef, this is a classic pairing.”

Gabe’s chintestle-glazed duck with figs and pasilla mixe

Gregory: “I really love the flavors in this dish…I love all that crispiness from the grilling and the caramelization of the figs.”

Padma: “It ate really beautifully, like a beautiful fall meal.”

Gail: “The sauce was the star.”

Shota’s soy-braised duck breast and pumpkin white miso puree

Melissa: “Perfectly balanced.”

Gail: “It eats really well. It’s easy, it’s tender, it melts in your mouth.”

Tom: “It clearly shows us who you are.”

Sara’s glazed quail with dates and grilled eggplant coconut yogurt

Sara: “I’m pretty sure I put up the worst dish.”

Amar: “There’s a flavor explosion in every bite.”

Blais: “There’s a Pacific Northwest/San Francisco quality to this dish.”

Tom: “This chef is very confident.”

Gail: “It gave us all a bit of life.”

All four of these look incredible, and I feel like each offers ample insight into the chef. Shota, for example, showcased a Japanese technique—cooking in liquid, resting, returning to the liquid—that speaks to the years he spent cooking with Michelin-starred Chef Yasuhiko Sakamoto in Japan. Gabe, meanwhile, is intent on showcasing Oaxaca-style cooking, and his dish very much did so; chintestle is a smoked chili paste native to Oaxaca. Gabriel, despite being a baby, knew that any dish with only a handful of components has to be perfect, and it was.

As for Sara, the winner, she says she makes “grandma-style” food that’s “rustic and simple,” but, if there’s one thing that’s clear in this episode, it’s that she’s used to underselling herself. She poo-poos her James Beard nomination early in the episode, and then approaches the judges’ table convinced she’s on the bottom. Even after she wins, she assures everyone she’s sure she’ll “have some really bad moments.” Look, I relate, that’s what I tell myself every morning, but her talent is undeniable. She’s easily my favorite chef coming out of this first episode, and not just because she dropped a “holy schnikes” at one point. Very excited to see more of her “baller sauces and techniques.”

Scraps:

• They’re staying in a rustic-looking hotel, which is neat. Brittany, who specializes in “alpine” cuisine, seems almost wildly charmed by it.

• Everyone loves Shota’s laugh. Probably because he sounds like Beavis.

• Here’s another angle of Blais’ stupid hair.

• I hate it so much. Reminds me of this guy.

  

• And this guy.

• This season on Top Chef:

  

• Thanks so much for reading. I’ll be back next week for a new episode.