Skillet Doux

Craigie on Main

Squid Noodles, Lobster with Vinaigrette, Brandade Fritter	Dominic Armato

And now, a Boston restaurant that didn't disappoint.

Craigie on Main had been sitting at the top of my hit list before our arrival, when I did a little browsing to see what we'd have to look forward to in our new town. And as anybody who's spending time reading a food blog no doubt knows, when you do enough of these searches, you develop habits for parsing the information you read -- who's knowledgeable, who isn't, whether something this guy likes will appeal to you, etc. Almost every restaurant has its detractors, if for no other reason than because it doesn't have any detractors. Universal acclaim is rare, but that's what Craigie on Main seemed to inspire. So I was, no doubt, quite anxious to stop by.

	Bigeye Tuna Sashimi	Dominic Armato

Craigie on Main and its head chefly person, the highly-decorated Tony Maws, like to refer to their cuisine as "refined rusticity". And while I found our meal far more refined than rustic, I think I understand what they're getting at. Craigie on Main is one of the new breed of restaurant that's highly dogmatic about local, organic, sustainable, etc. -- all of the things that I respect, but don't particularly want to hear about unless the food's good. Restaurants like this, whether they're walking or merely talking, are a dime a dozen these days. What's far less common is to find one that takes those "Hey, we just got this from that farm over there" sensibilities and applies them to very crisp, highly refined cuisine. In that sense, Craigie on Main walks the line. Their ingredient acquisition is old-timey, but what they do with those ingredients is anything but. The room is cozy and homey and a little rustic, and every seat offers a view of the gleaming, modern, starkly white open kitchen. Many of the roots are traditional French, but the food is... well, here's what we had.

Herb-Marinated Scallop	Dominic Armato

The evening's ten course tasting menu (of course we went blowout style) was kicked off with an amuse trio, and the level of refinement of which this kitchen is capable was immediately evident. All three tastes were meticulously crafted, beautifully plated and intensely flavored -- and intentionally or not, seemed to thematically span three continents, to boot. Finely julienned squid noodles that had been dressed with nuoc cham and fried shallot were a textural delight, and despite their Eastern influences almost struck me as slightly creamy. A sliver of chilled lobster with a lime vinaigrette and chaotically-shaped rice cracker evoked, to me, the ceviches of South America. The France and Italy of old Europe were on display with the third bite, a crisp on the outside creamy on the inside brandade fritter with a midnight black squid ink anchoiade that provided a much-appreciated dirty funk to go along with the brandade's light creaminess. What can I say? I have a weakness for the defensive mechanisms of cephalopods.

	Pork Belly Tortellini	Dominic Armato

Next up was a bit of raw seafood, a slice of bigeye tuna with a myriad of accompaniments that nonetheless flowed beautifully. Topped with a small salad of red onion and shiso, sitting atop slivered avocado and dressed with a harissa rose vinaigrette, it played far less busy than it looked and demonstrated that you can throw a horde of ingredients at raw fish without getting clumsy about it. Our third dish struck me as the weak link of the evening, and that's a compliment. Sea scallops were marinated with a number of herbs, skewered, grilled and plated with charred pineapple, yuzu, a green olive puree, crispy ginger and a pile of some manner of microgreen. Perhaps the pineapple was a little strong. It just didn't feel quite as crisp as the rest of the menu. But it was still undeniably delicious, and I could not have been more appreciative of the fact that the scallops' coral was left intact. That you don't see that more frequently is a source of endless frustration to me, and it did not go unappreciated.

Spiced Pork Rib	Dominic Armato

Our next dish was pork belly tortellini with squash blossoms and summer squash jus. And given the ingredient list, those who read this blog with any regularity won't be the least bit shocked that this was my favorite of the evening, but I assure you, it's not for the reasons you think. The braised pork belly filling was actually rather muted, clearly in a supporting role. The squash blossoms were lovely, to be sure. But what captivated me was the summer squash jus. And part of the reason it captivated me so was that it seems such an unlikely object of my affection. I always think of summer squash as an unexciting throwaway ingredient on a menu -- the stuff that gets sliced and thrown on the plate with your meat, or the boring anchor of a ratatouille. But the jus was just so bold and flavorful and unashamedly Summer Squash that I completely forgot it was a pork dish until midway through. I mean, really... when's the last time summer squash stole the show from pork belly?

	Veal Two Ways	Dominic Armato

There was no muting the smoked pork rib that followed, however, as it was big and meaty and right there in the center of the dish. It was the dish, heavily spiced with a blend I won't begin to try to decipher, hit with crispy garlic and shallots and sitting atop a smear of huitlacoche. This was one of those Trojan horse of refinement kind of dishes, with which you could fool a bar food junkie into getting excited about something that was actually a complex balancing act of flavors. It was a brash, sweet, smoky, dig in kind of dish and my ladylove declared it her favorite of the evening. When some meat and potatoes fanatic (decidedly not my ladylove) says he doesn't go in for that froo-froo stuff, this is the dish you give him a taste of and dare him not to eat the rest.

Peanut Butter Parfait	Dominic Armato

And with that, the pendulum swung back to full-on French, providing us with veal two ways. Succulent, silken cheeks were drowning (in a good way) in intensely reduced veal stock, while roasted sweetbreads -- fresh and light and barely registering as offal -- sat atop an assortment of roasted vegetables, mushrooms, and an eggplant puree. It was pure, traditional meaty decadence, beautifully done. Of course, a dish that meaty carries with it a government-mandated cooling-off period, so the next offering (not pictured) was a panna cotta flavored with jasmine and rooibos teas, and topped with toasted rice syrup and candied citrus zest. It was a clean, cool, fresh and delicious transition to the more intense desserts.

	Macerated Summer Fruits	Dominic Armato

The practice of serving two different desserts to a couple is one fraught with peril. On one hand, it's always fun to be able to taste more dishes. On the other hand, if your company pulls the short straw and lands the lame dessert, the temptation to refuse the plate swap can run dangerously high. Thankfully, this was one of those perfect evenings where we both felt that we got the better end of the deal. Which isn't to say I didn't love her dessert, a peanut butter "parfait" that I put that in quotes only because I'm not entirely sure what the peanut butter component -- sandwiched between the two cookies -- was, precisely. It played a little like ice cream, but was unusually airy, light and dry. Peanut butter is so dominant a flavor that I thought it smart of them to dial it back a bit, and the filling wasn't overly strong. The big star, however, was the banana foam, a light but very wet banana modification that I'm having difficulty describing but no difficulty calling fantastic. It was one of those mind-bending "that flavor isn't supposed to feel like THAT" treatments, but handled effectively rather than as a novelty.

And while I dig the heavier desserts, my heart is usually with ones like the one I received, a pile of stunningly beautiful macerated Summer fruits (note -- peeled grape), with yogurt sorbet and peach tea soda. The sorbet may have been completely unsweetened, there more for its gentle sourness and creaminess than anything else, and the soda had some significant effervescence, providing a nice tingly effect on top of its flavor. And just in case we weren't quite ready to let the meal go (I wasn't), we received a small glass of rhubarb and hibiscus tea mousse with yogurt foam to finish.

The word that springs to mind is delightful. It was just an absolutely delightful meal from top to bottom, full of intense flavors, beautiful combinations and little surprises that were handled with such thought and care that they didn't seem the least bit gratuitous. What makes it doubly impressive is that Maws purportedly creates these complex menus daily based on what arrives in his kitchen that morning. A sure hand and keen imagination are guiding this kitchen, and one gets the sense that Maws could rock the fine dining scene if he so desired. But really, there's no reason for that. Seeing the restaurant, tasting his food, reading his writing -- you get the sense that he's exactly where he wants to be. And I hope to be there again very soon, myself.

Craigie on Main
www.craigieonmain.com
853 Main Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-497-5511
Tue - Thu	5:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Fri - Sat	5:00 PM - 10:30 PM
Sun	5:00 PM - 10:00 PM

Top Chef All Stars Dinner - Postmortem

Okay, I forgot how much I miss Stefan.

About 20 minutes in, I figured I'd probably better get a postmortem up on this one or there'd be reunion comments scattered all over the place :-)

Nothing like a little reminder of how tame the whole Robin vs. Everybody thing is in comparison to previous seasons.

This one's a little... uh... drama-centric, so I'm going to let you guys have at it.

Oh, and Fabio? The camera's never off.

Discuss!

51 Lincoln

Cambodian Style Mussels	Dominic Armato

Surprise!

We're going to save the Power Rankings for Monday, and in the interim, I'm going to take the opportunity to knock a few restaurants out of the massive backlog I've been accumulating. We have some Boston spots, a trip to Chicago, a couple of old San Francisco stops I never got around to writing up... but first, something a little closer to home.

	Tomato Jam (?)	Dominic Armato

A little while back, whilst my father was in town for a couple of days and looking to treat my ladylove and myself to a casual little dinner out on the town, we decided to explore some of the local offerings and fell into 51 Lincoln. It's been getting some rather complimentary press, a warm, laid-back and yet creative suburban joint with a chef who makes his own pastas and cures his own pork. The menu online certainly looked promising, some nice combinations, a mix of flavors, but nothing that got too far off the beaten path. So we opted to pass on the big city and see what Newton Highlands had to offer. The vibe's great. It's homey, dim (as you might have guessed from the photo quality) and cozy, but it's got a little energy. The kind of place that's great to have around the corner when you want to fall in for a nice dinner out. Provided the food's good, of course.

Caesar Salad with Burrata	Dominic Armato

We got off to a great start, and though I don't like to spend too much time on little freebies, I nonetheless feel compelled to call out the slightly spicy and sweet tomato jam that accompanied our bread. It was swimming in a dish with a good olive oil, and the tomato flavor just exploded. Yeah, it's a bread dip, but it made a great first impression. Though the menu gets around geographically, we all ended up going Italian(ish) for our starters, my ladylove with a classic Caesar and the fellas with pastas, which are available either as entrees or true primi. This first full pass at the menu was... less exciting... but still entirely enjoyable.

	Scallop Pappardelle	Dominic Armato

My ladylove's Caesar -- well, okay, there's nothing at all Italian about a Caesar salad, but its twist was that it came with a large piece of burrata atop a giant crouton, thereby barely maintaining our thematic integrity. What's to say? It was a decent Caesar. Not especially creamy, probably a disappointment to traditionalists but well-executed. The burrata, I thought, was okay. Not nearly as fresh and creamy as I might've hoped. Though good burrata is incredibly hard to come by and I'd have a hard time faulting them for this acquisition. My pasta, a pappardelle with scallops and a number of other ingredients that slip my mind at the moment, was enjoyable in a neo-Italian sort of way, even for this pasta traditionalist. The pappardelle could have had more body and the whole plate was a little busy, but these are minor complaints. Well-balanced flavors, well-cooked scallops, and a well-received dish.

Rigatoni Bolognese	Dominic Armato

The rigatoni Bolognese, for which they're apparently famed, elicited something more of an "eh..." response. It was a fairly mellow version, containing -- I'm guessing -- some veal and/or pork. It was more wet than oily, which I don't consider a good thing. But again, the flavor was solid and layered and about the only significant complaint I can make is that the pasta was a little ways on the limp side of acceptable, to my tastes. Italians aren't turning in their graves, but they're a little restless. in any case, a solid dish, even if one that I'd be reluctant to hang my hat on as a signature dish.

	Polenta Fries	Dominic Armato

Another dish for which they're known, however, is entirely worthy of the praise. The polenta fries, thick batons of creamy cornmeal fried up inside a crisp shell and accompanied by a parmesan and truffle dip, were salty and hot and delicious. They'd be dangerous if there were more of them, and the fact that they arrived in between our first and second courses only put the focus on them that much more. They disappeared in about 30 seconds. It was also about this time that the kitchen opted to send out a little sample for us, an amuse portion of their Cambodian style mussels appetizer, with lemongrass, chiles, lime and a touch of coconut milk. On this front, I was considerably less enthused. The flavors were on point, but they were weak, making it seem like the kind of Asian lite dish intended not to offend with the kind of explosive flavors that typically come out of Southeast Asia. If the regular dish is served with a pool of the broth and a little bread, it might come across differently. I can't say. But in this format, it just fell flat.

Swordfish with Sunchokes	Dominic Armato

My entree was a grilled swordfish with risotto, shaved sunchokes and a sort of lemon compote. The fish was on, crusty and nicely seasoned and the sunchokes were on, providing a nice textural contrast. The risotto was less exciting, coming across as somewhat watery and bland, wanting for both flavor and salt, which is not what you need when supporting a grilled piece of fish and a very subtly flavored vegetable. The whole dish was saved by the delicious lemon compote, which was aggressively sweet and sour and provided some bright zip that the rest of the dish desperately needed. Sadly, potent as it was, there wasn't nearly enough of it -- more of an indictment of how much needed brightening than the compote itself. There was a good dish in here. It just had issues.

	Salmon with Soy Mirin Reduction	Dominic Armato

My father's entree couldn't have been more simple, a piece of roast chicken with mashed potatoes, asparagus and a chicken jus which I didn't taste but he rather enjoyed. My ladylove's entree, however, had me annoyed from the get-go. Before I rant, I'll supply two caveats, that she was entirely pleased with her dish (in fact, it was the second time she'd ordered it, having visited for a business dinner earlier), and that on a technical level, I'm not sure I can fault the dish. But what we're talking about is a piece of salmon with a soy and mirin reduction atop julienned vegetables and rice. I mean, do we really need another version of this dish? Especially one that could not be more firmly planted right in the middle of the box? This isn't roast chicken. It isn't some timeless classic that you don't mess with. This is a dish that has catered wedding written all over it. I took one bite and thought to myself, "Really? Are you trying to further the stereotype that suburban restaurants serve boring, dumbed-down cuisine?" And it's a timid, underpowered version to boot. Sadly, it's one of the few dishes that seems to have survived the menu's seasonal transition, which indicates it might be a permanent fixture. Too bad. It's a waste of menu space.

Dessert involved some lovely sorbet and a disappointing crème brûlée. The latter looked perfectly fine, but its crust had mostly lost its crunch and the crème beneath was much warmer than it should have been, indicating that it probably sat in the kitchen for a while after being torched. Disappointing.

I came away a little puzzled by 51 Lincoln's acclaim. Some rather educated food folk have said some very nice things, but our only tack-sharp dishes of the evening were a side and a bread dip. And though execution might have accounted for some of it, this was smack-dab in the middle of the dinner hour on a Friday night, so it seems unlikely that it was a matter of the B Team not quite firing on all cylinders. This wasn't a bad meal by any stretch of the imagination. It's just that a lot of things were... fine. Suffice it to say that 41 Lincoln didn't do much to dispel that suburban restaurant stereotype. I didn’t see any compelling reason to travel for it, and if you live in the area, the only reason I can think of not to drive into the city is to save yourself 20-30 minutes in either direction. And that's not enough.

51 Lincoln
www.51lincolnnewton.com
51 Lincoln Street
Newton Highlands, MA 02461
617-965-3100
Mon - Sun	5:00 PM - 10:00 PM

Top Chef - S6E10 Postmortem

Top. Chef. Frozen. Dinners.

*facepalm*

K, gonna set that aside for the moment and talk episode ten.

Can't say I'm that surprised by the elimination. We're so close to the end now that, frankly, I think there are only two eliminations that would surprise me. A couple more that might make me sad, but only two that would come as a shock.

I love Mike V.'s food, but man, he's really outed himself as a sore loser, hasn't he?

On one hand, it's strange to see the vegetarian dishes go pure vegetable. On the other hand, I can see how some of these chefs might feel like they don't want to lean on pasta or beans or something like that. I can see how some might see that as the "easy" way out. Or perhaps everybody was afraid to make pasta with Bartolotta at JT? Too bad, anyway.

I don't want to pile on, and she doesn't deserve scorn -- she's just trying to win like everybody else -- but Robin is really starting to stick out like a sore thumb. We can't have another Lisa situation on our hands, can we? Only two more eliminations before the finals... yeesh.

Jen's tailspin is becoming really hard to watch. Got some serious thinking to do before next episode...

Top Chef - S6E9 Power Rankings

PLEASE READ BEFORE COMMENTING!!!
There's a lot of sneaky intel out there, but I'm endeavoring to keep this blog a spoiler-free zone. This isn't just for the readers, but for me, too -- I don't want to know what happens! As such, anything that's already been broadcast or has been posted on the official Bravo site is fair game for discussion. I will, for example, discuss the preview of next week's show at the end of the post. But if you've heard rumors that one chef has been hosting a lot of dinner parties, or that another chef was spotted boarding a plane to an exotic locale, please keep them to yourself... thanks!

Hey, all!

The rankings this week might be slightly abridged. I'm on vacation and don't have access to the episode for my usual second viewing.

What I can say, however, without the benefit of a second viewing is that I thought the quickfire was fantastic. The contestants seemed to think it was a little ridiculous, and it was. It didn't exactly mimic a real world situation. But it was a challenge that tested their abilities, it set them up for success despite its difficulty (evident in the final products, both of which looked great), and it was fascinating to watch. You can only have so many traditional challenges before they end up comprising half the season -- Restaurant Wars, the taste-off, the mise en place relay -- but provided they have the talent to handle it, and they don't try doing it early in the season when it's bound to be a train wreck, I heartily nominate the blindfolded dish relay as a regular Top Chef challenge. I'd love to see this one again.

My feelings are somewhat mixed on Restaurant Wars ditching the decor element. I realize this is probably somewhat out of character for me, being that I generally throw my support toward the purer challenges, and maybe it's just nostalgia talking, but I kind of feel like truly building the place from the ground up, in however crude a fashion, was what separated Restaurant Wars from any other dinner party challenge. Of course, of course, restaurant service isn't quite the same (as clearly demonstrated by the Jen/Kevin logjam) and there's the front of house element, but still, I kind of liked the idea that the restaurants they ended up presenting really were the complete package rather than guest menus served in somebody else's restaurant. Still, a minor complaint, and it's probably just because I'm getting soft after five and a half seasons.

One very, very tangential thing I'd like to address, and for anybody who's been keeping up with the comments, I apologize for the fact that this is going to be somewhat redundant. But I was really taken aback by Toby Young's blog this week. I'd recommend you give it a look yourself, but the brief synopsis is that he talks about how "in the real world", restaurant reviews aren't just about the food. Which would be an enormously ho-hum thing to say if it weren't for the degree to which Toby decided to make his point. But hey, let's look at his own words:

"This show is about finding the best cook, not the best restaurateur. But in the real world, a food critic will never base a review on food and service alone. They’re worth, at most, 50 percent of the final rating. And even that overstates their significance when it comes to assessing the overall experience. Whether you have a good time at a restaurant is dependent on many other factors, some of which are difficult to quantify. What’s the ambience like? What stage is the restaurant at in its life cycle? Has it captured the Zeitgeist? How many celebrities hang out there?"

So let's be clear. As far as Toby Young is concerned, in restaurant reviews in "the real world", the food AND service combined add up to less than half of the equation. Which relegates the food to... what, Toby... 25%? 30%? A third at most? And if it seems tempting to simply take this as a bit of hyperbolic rabblerousing, or a twisted way of making the point that even restaurant critics aren't impervious to the PR machine, he links to what he calls one of his "typical review[s]", a 672 word screed that devotes one sentence -- ONE SENTENCE -- to the description of what he ate there. He calls one dish "excellent" and the other "pretty good".

That's it.

And now, the obligatory list of caveats. I'm not suggesting Toby Young can't review restaurants however he damn well pleases. And I'm not naive enough to think that there aren't plenty of people out there who can hear one dish was "excellent" and the other "pretty good" and feel that gives them all of the culinary information they need about a place. Nor do I mean to imply for a moment that things like service and atmosphere aren't important parts of the dining experience. Heck, some of the paid reviews I've written only let me devote about half of my space to the food by virtue of their format. And if Toby Young, despite his acclaim, has found it impossible to work for a publication other than the one whose editor apparently brought him into the office, sat him down and said, "Now, Toby, we want you to write about restaurants, but whatever you do, be sure to write as LITTLE ABOUT THE FOOD AS IS HUMANLY POSSIBLE," I take it all back. It wouldn't make me any more interested in what he has to write, but at least then I could respect that he's simply doing the job he's been assigned. But somehow, I doubt that's the case. When Toby goes on to talk about how he sometimes feels as though he could write a review without even bothering to taste the food, he sure doesn't seem to be saying this ruefully, as though musing over the absurdities of the restaurant press, but rather he seems to revel in the notion that restaurants are all about PR and names and scene and buzz and the food -- well, who really cares about that?

So why does any of this matter? If you're somebody who makes your restaurant selections based on what's hot and where to be seen, it doesn't. But if you're a food nerd, it's everything. You don't need to be told how many glitzy places with mediocre food are jam-packed while other joints that turn out amazing food but are a little rough around the edges go out of business. Restaurants need the press to survive (though thankfully, they need the traditional press less and less with every passing day), they have to address those critiquing them, and the restaurant-going public, surely to some degree, takes its cues from what restaurant critics value and write about. And where do you want restaurateurs focusing their energies? Creating incredible food, or creating buzz with a hot concept? Spending money on the best EC and ingredients they can find, or spending money on mahogany instead of melamine? Point being, this mindset -- not at all unique to Toby Young but rarely laid so bare as he does here -- is a direct assault on good eating. People who write with passion and knowledge and a mission to shine a light on great food no matter where it comes from are slowly changing the landscape for the better. But much as Toby likes to savage bad food, he's actively making himself part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

It's frustrating. It's just frustrating. And the only good thing about Toby's blog this week is that the attitude he embodies is becoming less and less common. And our collective restaurant scene is better for it.

End of rant. On with the rankings. Less exciting than most of you probably anticipate, given how screwy this week's episode was, but the rankings tend to stabilize later in the season when we have a lot more historical data to take into consideration.

The power rankings are not purely a prediction of who is most likely to win, or an assessment of last episode's dishes, or a reflection of the contestants' historical performance, but rather a nebulous amalgam of all three, combined with a little bit of gut feeling, to provide a relative measure of current awesomeness.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Kevin Quickfires 3 5 0 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 3 5 1 Ugh... I hate it when I give somebody a nice bump only to have them immediately lay an egg. But I'm going to leave Kevin at number one for four reasons. First, despite screwing up Laurine's lamb, he nailed his own dish. Second, I held him out of the top spot long enough that I hate to bounce him out of it so easily. Third, show of hands, does anybody really think this was anything other than a freak aberration? Anybody? Didn't think so. And fourth, if there is one contestant who has the confidence and level-headedness to screw up like that and simply shake it off and go right back to his usual self, it has to be Kevin. I'm not going to leave him at number one just to be stubborn, but he gets a little bit of slack and he just used it. I look forward to seeing him operate at his usual kick-ass level tonight.

2 Michael V. Quickfires 1 3 1 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 2 7 1 I am, however, going to shuffle things around a little bit here. Did Bryan deserve to lose the number two spot? Probably not. But Mike V. just gave us a little reminder of why he's the most exciting chef in the field. Restaurant Wars is probably the closest thing we'll see to the finale before we get there: no gimmicks, no restrictions, cook us some incredible food. And he used that opportunity to turn out two dishes that had the judges fawning, and on the back of those two dishes, he had them declaring it the best Restaurant Wars restaurant ever. That has to count for something. And these recipes are really exciting. For his pressed chicken with calamari noodles, tomato confit and fennel salad, he first makes the sauce by reducing chicken stock waaaaaaaay down, jazzing it up with lemongrass, fennel seeds and tomato water, and mounting it with butter. The chicken gets the best of both worlds, cooked sous vide with butter, garlic and thyme, and then seared crispy before service. The calamari is simply rolled, sliced paper-thin on a meat slicer and then briefly sautéed, and the whole dish is accompanied by tomato confit, slowly intensified over two hours in an oven with olive oil, garlic, salt, sugar and thyme. Put me in the camp that's bored with "safe" restaurant preparations of chicken and rarely orders it. But who isn't ordering that? His other dish is no less exciting. Seared cod, parsley coulis, zucchini tenderloin -- some fancy technique involved in making those flavors pop, but still relatively straightforward. The mussel billi-bi croquettes, though? He cooks up shucked mussels, fennel seed, saffron, fennel, onion, Pernod and cream, blends the resulting mix with gelatin, freezes it in demi-spheres, assembles the frozen demi-spheres into full spheres, panko-breads them and deep fries them. I would really like to know what kind of a texture that produces. Anyway, as we get into the later stages, Top Chef is all about the wow factor. Everybody can execute... who can truly surprise and delight the judges? This week, the wow factor belonged to Mike V. So I'm bumping him up to number two.

3 Bryan Quickfires 0 2 2 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 3 6 0 This hardly seems fair. Bryan certainly didn't do anything wrong. He did quite well, in fact. But when put on the same team, working together with few restraints, one brother impressed while the other amazed. For this week, at least, Bryan is outpaced by his little brother.

4 Jennifer C. Quickfires 3 5 2 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 1 5 1 Well, Jennifer certainly gave us a scare, and the questions about her only seem to grow. Don't get me wrong, I want Jennifer Norris back as much as anybody, but she's lucky she's not down at number five this week. And if I really believed that she and Mike I. might be in the same league and that her recent troubles were anything more than competitive pressure getting to her, she would be. But we have to be realistic. This horseman is on the bubble. The obvious reason she's last among the leaders is the one that everybody's fretting about. She really seems lost the past few episodes. The confidence is gone and she just doesn't look like the same chef. We know the potential is there, but she's looking dangerously close to a meltdown. The question is whether this week's disaster will wake her up or break her. But even if we presume that she turns it around and gets back to her early season form, there's another thing that bothers me a little and might keep her in the fourth position anyway. As I've said many times before, official or not, there are really three primary things the judges look for in this competition. Can the contestants execute, can they create, and can they express a mature, personal style? And simply by virtue of how it shakes out, the three thirds of the season usually end up focusing on those three in sequence. The first contestants to go are the ones who make bad dishes because of an inability to cook proteins, balance flavors, season properly and such. You can make boring food extremely well and cruise through the first third of the competition, even with a field this strong. When you get into the middle, people are obviously still eliminated for technical mistakes, but you also see people getting themselves into trouble more frequently for conceptual issues, bad decisions, bad pairings, uninspired dishes, and the less creative competitors start to get weeded out. What you're left with at the end are a bunch of chefs who have good ideas and know how to put them on the plate. So what the judges really start to look for -- and watch, it's going to be even more important this season than it's ever been in the past -- is which chefs are displaying a confident, mature, personal style through their food. Who's putting their personality on the plate? In the finals, it isn't going to be enough to make a great dish. It's going to have to be a great Kevin dish, or a great Michael dish, or a great Jennifer dish. When you look at the other three at the top, their styles are very distinctive. Kevin's very ingredient-focused, a little rustic, his dishes play simple but that surface simplicity belies some very sophisticated layering of flavors underneath. Bryan straddles the old and the new, bringing MG techniques and bold presentations to very, very classic flavor combinations. And Michael V. is a wild man, bringing all kinds of flavors, wacky creativity and a healthy dose of MG elements together and somehow turning them into a very cohesive and yet surprising fine dining package. So how would you describe Jennifer's style? Seafood? Very refined seafood? Strong sauces? When -- if -- it comes down to these four, I think it's going to be easy for Jennifer, talented as she obviously is, to get lost among these very distinctive styles. And that's going to hurt her. Of course, she has to make it that far.

5 Michael I. Quickfires 2 4 0 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 2 2 Not sure how much there is to say about Michael I. this week. A commenter last week noted that he may be the most consistently-ranked contestant in Power Rankings history. He sometimes makes the judges very happy, sometimes leaves them a little wanting, but mostly continues to look like a fairly sharp cook who's most likely to be left standing if one of the top four stumble.

6 Eli Quickfires 1 2 2 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 3 1 While Eli's role in this week's episode was interesting, it didn't really have much bearing on the rest of the competition. His dish was a brined, smoked and sous vided (can that be a passive verb?) piece of arctic char with horseradish, beet and sour cream that went through a number of MG machinations. The judges seemed neither particularly impressed nor particularly unimpressed, which seems to sum up their reaction to the bulk of Eli's dishes. Full props to Eli, however, for doing yeoman's work in the front of the house. If not for Fabio completely rocking the role last season, we might have been looking at this as the most impressive performance in the most meaningless (in terms of the overall competition) role of the season. Still, though, well done.

7 Robin Quickfires 1 1 3 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 1 2 I've heard some calls for Robin to be moved up in deference to her exceptionally well-received pear pithivier. But even setting aside the numbers stacked against her, and setting aside how much trouble she's been in lately (this episode excepted), let's examine one question that's been asked in the wake of that praise and the little bit of JT jockeying that followed. How much of the dish was hers and how much was Michael's? We don't know and we're not going to. But even if I were inclined to consider the success of the dish in her ranking, I'm not sure Mike's involvement or lack thereof is a positive either way. We know the idea came about because Robin's singular win was (partly) for the apple crisp she made back in episode six. And while Michelle Bernstein seemed to really enjoy it, she wasn't exactly doing backflips over it like the judges were this time around. If it was Mike's influence that took it over the top and made it a dessert worthy of a fine dining finish, then I'm inclined to give Mike at least as much credit as Robin. And if Mike was barely an influence at all, then the only two times Robin's received top mention, it's been for variations on the same dish. Neither situation says mover to me.

8 Laurine Quickfires 1 2 1 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 2 4 Well, I suppose the upshot is that between Radhika and Laurine, we can put the "Executive Chef takes the bullet" myth to bed. Of course, I'm not so sure that front of house being the new Executive Chef is any better (or more valid). There are a lot of people who feel that Laurine got a raw deal here. Not that it wasn't roughly her time, of course, but that she may have been sacrificed for a more popular and capable chef who happened to throw up an airball this week. Everybody has their opinions, and while I don't want to kickstart this debate again, mostly because it's getting really, really old, I'll simply tell people to remember that these eliminations took place long before the season premiered, and the producers -- if they were going to nudge the judges -- could only make guesses as to who is and isn't going to be popular. I don't deny the possibility that there might have been a little cumulative judging going on here, but that's a feeling and not something I'm going to call obvious, because you're kidding yourself if you think anything can be "obvious" when you're dealing with footage that's been edited this heavily. But there are two reasons this elimination doesn't get my gander up. the first is that, frankly, I don't mind a little cumulative judging. Yes, every challenge should be on its own merits. And yes, if you have a clear loser, that person should go. But if it's a toss-up, I have no problem whatsoever with the judges sparing the chef who hasn't been in constant trouble. So whether or not they do so -- consciously or otherwise -- is pretty much immaterial to me. But more importantly, I think the degree to which Laurine screwed the pooch is getting underplayed a little bit, here. First off, what is undeniable is that Laurine was terrible in the front. Of course, nobody expects her to act like polished, professional waitstaff, but you don't have to be an experienced captain to know that dropping plates and walking away without a word is completely inexcusable. It would have been at any table, and the fact that she did it to the judges was beyond stupid. In a front of house context, that's a big a mistake as serving a raw lamb chop. Which she also did. Ahhhh, people will say, but that was Kevin's mistake! No, it wasn't. Yes, he may be the one who botched the cooking, but she's the one who let it go through -- on her own dish, no less. I think what really sunk Laurine was her conversation with Tom before service. She stood there and told him with conviction that anything that wasn't cooked properly wasn't getting by her (nor should it). She made it abundantly clear that she understood her responsibility and intended to perform it. And then she simply abdicated. So unlike Jen, who didn't have the foresight to avoid setting herself up for failure, Laurine had the foresight to know exactly what she had do to, and then didn't do it. There's no question in my mind which is the greater sin. And the end result was that Laurine's best defense was effectively "Kevin botched my lamb, even though I let him, and never mind that I screwed up everything else I did." At least Jen, despite her problems, had one semi-good dish to hang her hat on. And when you look at it that way, I think the elimination isn't so surprising.

And looking forward to next week...

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE TEN SPOILERS AHEAD

Theme for the quickfire is TV Dinners, but it (thankfully) doesn't appear that they're actually freezing anything -- rather, making some kind of dinner served in a TV tray that's thematically appropriate for the show the chef draws. A simple themed quickfire, nothing surprising there. Oh, and Jen hates what she's doing. So yeah, nothing surprising there.

As for the elimination challenge, I would really like this to be the first and the last time I find myself researching the eating habits of Hollywood starlets. Seriously, if we're going to bring in a screen beauty, can't we just bring in a good ol' carnivorous one? Stereotypes aside, I know they're not THAT hard to find. Ugh. Anyway, contradictory reports over whether Natalie Portman is vegetarian or vegan or vegan vegetarian (whatever that means) or lacto-vegetarian or vegga vegga vegan or whatever abound, and anything that may or may not have been correct at the time it was written doesn't necessarily apply to the point in time when the episode was shot, so I suppose we're just going to have to wait to see how restrictive the challenge is. It seems clear that the chefs will be teased with but not be allowed to work with Craftsteak's astounding assortment of beef, which is some serious cruelty to animals (of the human variety). Robin feels she's all over this one, and I've no doubt she thinks so, but if this show has taught us anything, it's that the cream usually rises to the top. Kevin may miss his pork fat, but that doesn't alter his ability to taste and balance and extract and combine flavors. If it's a full-on vegan challenge, that might change the game a bit. That's some seriously tricky stuff to do on the spur of the moment if you aren't accustomed to it. But if it's just a vegetarian challenge? I don't see it as much of a leg up for anybody. My money's still on Robin going home.

Discuss!!!

Top Chef - S6E9 Postmortem

Okay, Tom, that was just mean.

I had Jen's departure notes half written. She's got another life and she'd better use it.

So why's Kevin angry? Because he screwed up the lamb? Because he feels guilty over having contributed to Laurine being sent home? Because he feels Laurine got a raw deal (no pun intended) and it should have been Jen? I doubt that last one. The first two seem more in character for him. But you wonder.

I'll let you guys take over tonight. Still digesting (the episode, not dinner. Well, both, but... nevermind.)

Oh, and what a brutal editing hit piece on Mike V., making no comment as to whether or not he deserved it. And interesting that Tom's blog for the same episode praised his kitchen demeanor.

The Four Horsemen of the Chefpocalypse still ride. Breathe easy, folks.

UPDATE : Some semi-related happy news. Top Chef Masters has been picked up for a second season and all judges are returning. Thanks for the heads-up, jh!

Top Chef - S6E8 Power Rankings

PLEASE READ BEFORE COMMENTING!!!
There's a lot of sneaky intel out there, but I'm endeavoring to keep this blog a spoiler-free zone. This isn't just for the readers, but for me, too -- I don't want to know what happens! As such, anything that's already been broadcast or has been posted on the official Bravo site is fair game for discussion. I will, for example, discuss the preview of next week's show at the end of the post. But if you've heard rumors that one chef has been hosting a lot of dinner parties, or that another chef was spotted boarding a plane to an exotic locale, please keep them to yourself... thanks!

We've been building towards this for weeks. Early on, though there were some favorites, it looked like a season where just about anybody could go deep. But even though the collective talent of this season is head and shoulders above the previous five -- a sentiment that's been confirmed by the judges in no uncertain terms -- those divisions between the tiers came together pretty quickly. And not that there's been any doubt for a while now, but this is the episode that hammered it home. Judges' Table top four: Voltaggio, Gillespie, Carroll, Voltaggio. Boom, boom, boom, boom. We don't know if all four will make the finals. (In fact, Tom sure seems to imply they don't -- more below.) But from a culinary standpoint, is there anybody out there who doesn't believe these four are the ones who should be in the finals?

Aside from Eli's mom, I mean.

One thing I'm not going to address this week is Robin vs. Everybody. I'm done with it. I should have been done with it a couple of posts ago. As embarrassed as I am to say it, she's not going all the way, so I hope she's gone ASAP just so we can stop hearing about it. Who's right, who's wrong: don't know, don't care. Just want it to end.

I am, in parenthetical fashion, going to jump in on Aureole, Charlie Palmer's outpost in Vegas where this week's wine selection took place, because I feel compelled to. You have to respect Charlie Palmer. You have to. And I haven't been to any of his other restaurants. But I have been to Aureole in Vegas three times, and each and every time it was a mistake of increasing severity. I first went shortly after they opened. I'd never had a chance to eat at one of Palmer's restaurants, so this was a total gimme. We went, we ate, we were totally underwhelmed. Three star cuisine masquerading as four star cuisine with a hefty price tag. It was competent. And competent is not what you're looking for in a place like that. A year or two later on a subsequent trip we figured, hey, maybe it was an off night. It's Charlie Palmer. Let's try it again. Same result. About four or five years back, I was discussing dining options for a trip with a couple friends of ours, and I mentioned Aureole. I said I'd had two mediocre experiences there, but hey, it was a long time ago, I was but a wee food nerd back then, maybe I just couldn't appreciate it at the time, so if it really interests you, I'd be up for giving it one more shot. Mediocre meal again. One of the few times where I've experienced true buyer's remorse upon being presented with the check. I just felt like I'd been taken. Never again, I swore! I'll check out his NY operations, but Aureole in Vegas? Never again! This was the information I passed onto my brother and sister in law when they went to Vegas for their honeymoon. Go here, go here, go here, do NOT go to Aureole. They stayed in Mandalay Bay. Their first night in, they arrived late, they had no plans, they saw Aureole, it looked like fun. The result? A mediocre meal and buyer's remorse. Long story short, it's as much a function of my multiple visits as anything, and I can't say the food was ever bad, but I can unequivocally state that noplace has made me feel like I was throwing my dining dollars into a black hole quite like Aureole in Vegas. You've been warned.

That said, I like Charlie Palmer, I'd love to get to his other restaurants, I've no doubt he's worthy of his reputation (Vegas celebrity chef outposts are always a toss-up -- some capture the food, some just capture the name), and I like him as a guest judge. Too bad they stuck him with the snack food challenge. You knew it was coming. We know and love the show. It's kind of a given at this point. Once or twice a season, you'll just have to roll your eyes, grit your teeth and suffer through the product placement challenge. And I love that some of the chefs seemed to basically set their snacks aside and call it a day. "Yeah, that goes with this dish." Some made a valiant effort at working them in, and some even seemed to have met with some success, but really, I wasn't going to hold an inability to pair their dish with BBQ waffle-cut snack chips against them.

The elimination, however, boy howdy, you'd better be able to pair your dish with wine. And I say this as somebody who doesn't know a damn thing about wine. It's embarrassing to admit. I know my food. And if you give me a dish and six or seven glasses of wine to try with it, I can tell you which one works and why. But give me a bite of a dish and an encyclopedic wine list and ask me to pick something to go with it? Forget it. I'm totally useless. So it's always with a bit of chagrined envy that I watch folks who know their wine working pairings. And it's a little heartening when chefs who probably should be able to stumble a bit. And the pig. Hooray for the pig! The point was raised by an old compatriot last week that it's a shame the chefs were pulling their pig parts out of cryovac bags, indicating that this was a lost opportunity for a true snout-to-tail exercise. And I agree to a point. But I think it's also important to remember that this season is taking place in Vegas. Is there really anyplace in the Nevada desert where Lee Anne and her crew could have driven to go pick up a pig that wasn't trucked or flown in? And if it was trucked or flown in, does it really matter if it was partially disassembled first? Methinks the constraints of geography might have been at play here (though I'd love to be corrected by any folks who have spent time cooking in Vegas). Anyway, great premise, great challenge, expected results.

On with the rankings...

The power rankings are not purely a prediction of who is most likely to win, or an assessment of last episode's dishes, or a reflection of the contestants' historical performance, but rather a nebulous amalgam of all three, combined with a little bit of gut feeling, to provide a relative measure of current awesomeness.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Kevin Quickfires 2 4 0 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 3 5 0 Last week, in this case, means two weeks ago owing to my week off. But I'd already pegged Kevin for the number one slot last week, and him nailing the pig challenge only solidified his number one spot for me. If you're a numbers person, he has two more total wins than anybody else in the field, he's won three of the last five challenges and been on top of them all, and he's the only one who has never -- never -- been on the bottom of a single challenge. And if you're not a numbers person, watch how he's kicking ass with utter confidence. For the quickfire this week, he won friends with salad. But he did so by making an interesting salad. Corn, sugar snap peas, fresh herbs, tomatoes... nothing revolutionary there. But here's how he did it. He made a light creamed corn with bacon, shallot, garlic and lemon and laid that down as his base. He blanched his sugar snap peas, slathered them in olive oil and stuck them in the oven to confit (can confit be a verb?), and he did the same with the tomatoes. Then he topped it with the crushed onion strips for a little texture. And this is his interpretation of green bean casserole? And his elimination dish, yeah, it's "just a pate", but a great pate is no easy feat, and he didn't exactly slack on the creativity either. He topped it with a mushroom salad, cooking down an assortment of mushrooms, cooking them up with butter, toasted hazelnut flour and shallots, and then tossing them with a fresh mayonnaise that substituted pork fat for oil (it rocks... trust me). And he also pickled up some cherries with sugar, red wine vinegar, cinnamon and star anise to pick up a lot of the notes in the wine. I mean, yes, his food is "simple", but only in appearance. Put a little better, I think, his dishes read simply, but when you get into them they're just as complex and thoughtful and creative and refined as anything the Voltaggios are doing. He's just very non-flashy about it. Plus, he's calm, he's confident, he's only getting better as the competition goes on, he isn't letting any of the BS going on around him distract him, and he's making the kind of food that the judges won't tire of, but rather will come to appreciate more and more as we near the finish line. And that's why I'm going to go out on a limb a little earlier than I probably should and officially making Kevin my pick for this season's winner. I'll knock him down from the top spot if he deserves it, don't worry. But I'm going on record. Dude can start thinking about how he's going to spend that Macy's gift card.

2 Bryan Quickfires 0 2 2 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 3 5 0 Bryan does some amazing things and the guy's cool and focused (mostly), but he just can't hold the stop spot in the face of Kevin's charge. Which isn't to say that his streak of three top appearances isn't worthy on its own. But Kevin's just in the zone right now, if I may make some questionable use of the sportstalk vernacular. Bryan had a formidable week himself, also on top of both challenges. He did a nice job with the quickfire, and the fact that Palmer called his dish a little conventional says something about this season. The thing about Bryan, at the risk of being redundant, is that even though his technique is sometimes wild, his flavors absolutely are not. It's a matter of philosophy with him. He's not stretching your palate. He's stretching classic flavor combinations to find interesting ways to make them fresh and new for your palate. So he's going to give you steak, sunchokes, mushrooms and brown butter. He's just going to serve them with a little chive smoothie and a soy sauce thickened with soy lecithin. He's in the box flavor-wise, but even for one of his tamer dishes, he's working in some funky technique. His elimination dish was even a little more conventional, so maybe this isn't the week to be making this point, but oh well. The ribs were very traditionally braised with some mirepoix and fresh herbs and put over a bacon-studded parsnip puree. The interest for me was in his mostarda, which was a little unconventional, containing honey, fennel, onion, orange rind and celeriac. And for garnish he made a chicharron finishing salt by crushing pork rinds with Maldon salt, and he also added a little black garlic. Sounds and looks like a killer dish. I'm still a little worried about his propensity to trip. He doesn't seem to have much in the way of technical oopses, but there have been a few times when something that he seemed pleased with just didn't click with the judges. In this field, that could get him sent home. But if he hangs around and can continue cooking his food -- and he's doing just that -- he'll be cooking the final meal and will probably have to be considered a favorite along with Kevin.

3 Michael V. Quickfires 1 3 1 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 1 6 1 Michael V. is getting on my nerves a little bit, doubly so because I had such a positive impression of him while doing the preseason rankings, but despite a little stumble he's still clearly top tier. I don't want to look back to the week I missed too much, but it's still unclear to me whether he was simply stymied by the equipment malfunction, or if his theory really wasn't sound. And what I mean by that is that the judges have said in the blogs that even if the cooking had been spot on, they felt the dish had conceptual problems. What I wonder is if they wouldn't have been won over had it been firing on all cylinders. But in any case, Mike has enough of a track record that we can consider that a momentary lapse, especially since he got right back on the horse and got another elimination top mention this week. In any case, Mike's the wild man and he's showing it again. At the center of his quickfire was a tuna tartare wrapped in avocado. Topping that tuna tartare was a caramelized onion pudding that had been set with agar agar and gelatin, set in the fridge, diced and bruléed. Wait, what? His elimination was a root beer braised pork cheek, and if it sounds weird to you, it's a practice that's been picking up steam, and it works. But whatever degree of originality you want to place on that, I like that he's willing to go in that direction, and the rest of the dish looked great with a fresh truffle bun and a cherry-vanilla coulis. I want to see Mike in the finals because I want to see what he does. My sense is that he isn't quite as mature -- from a culinary standpoint -- as Kevin or Bryan, but he needs to be there because he's putting out some fantastic stuff.

4 Jennifer C. Quickfires 2 4 2 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 1 5 0 Okay, she's back to being Jennifer Carroll, if only because Jennifer Norris would have roundkicked her sickness into oblivion (if I stole that from somebody, I apologize... I can't remember). In all seriousness, I still love Jen, but I'm a little concerned about her -- buuuuuut it's a conflicted kind of concern. I'm not sure whether I should be worried about the fact that the Queen of Quickfire has suddenly bottomed out on the last two, and that she's starting to look haggard and stressed out and... well... a little neurotic, or if I should be encouraged that despite fighting off illness, she's only bottomed out on quickfires, and has topped out the last two eliminations, winning one. I do have to say that despite doing well, she doesn't seem the completely worldbeater that she did early on. Let's hope that's just the little viral beasties having their way with her, and that the swagger will return along with her health. But looking at this week, overcooked pork. Okay, she blew it. And she knew it. And really, it could happen to anybody, even though I'm sure she'd be the first to say that it should never happen to her. Of course, this also means that of the two non-braised chunks of protein she's cooked (it sounds like the meat was Kevin's responsibility last week), she's botched one of them. Is that question of how she handles non-seafood going to sneak back into-- no, no, let's not go there. Sample too small. For the elimination, I'm going to take issue with òste e còc's criticism, talking about how she removed the "importantly gelatinous skin". Obviously it wasn't that important. Palmer called it the lightest pork belly dish he'd ever tasted, and considered that a good thing. Unconventional, perhaps, but she achieved what she set out to do, and I think you can only say that a cook "should" do something right up until something else works, which is what appears to have happened here. Especially in light of a rather colorful online conversation that I let myself get dragged into over the past two days, I find that I'm just no longer interested in hearing about what cooks should and shouldn't do, and solely interested in whether deliciousness results. Traditional technique is important -- perhaps even undervalued -- but we can also get hung up on that to our detriment. Bottom line, you can't argue with results.

5 Michael I. Quickfires 1 3 0 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 2 1 Pop quiz: Kevin aside, who has had the fewest appearances on the bottom? Okay, it's not that hard when his picture is just to the left. But still, does that surprise you? Mike I. has only been on the bottom once -- the Greek salad debacle -- and that's not a tie. He's in sole possession of second place on that count. And he's been a steady performer the rest of the way, which I think clearly refutes the claim of some that he's all sizzle and no steak. Rather, it would seem he's firmly cemented his place as first alternate for the finals should one of our frontrunners stumble. And what's more, hey, he wouldn't be a bad fill-in. I mean, clearly I want to see our top four make it, but setting aside my disappointment over losing one of those top four, I, for one, feel that Mike I. would make an entirely worthy entry in the finals. I don't give him a snowball's chance of winning, but I wouldn't feel like he didn't deserve to be there. All that said, this wasn't his strongest week. His quickfire I find a little odd. It's pretty much straight-up chilaquiles that substituted the waffle chips for tortilla chips. I mean, full marks for integration of the theme, but I find the thought of snack food-based chilaquiles a little off-putting. No strong assessment in either direction. And his elimination was ground pork and bulgur wheat kibbeh stuffed with prosciutto, onion, dates and pine nuts, atop Greek yogurt with rose water and orange zest. Sounds good. Doesn't seem to be at the level of refinement of those above him. And though he throws it out there as a positive this week, I'm not enthused by the litany of ethnic foods in his Top Chef portfolio. Versatility is great, but to win this thing you have to cook your food. If he wants to have an outside shot, he needs to get back to his core and get back to it quickly. Basically, he's the guy who you can pretty much count on to make a good dish no matter what the circumstances are. Which, as I say, makes him the perfect first alternate for the Olympic Top Chef team.

6 Eli Quickfires 1 2 2 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 2 1 Another win somehow eludes the grasp of the four horsemen of the chefpocalypse and lands in Eli's lap. It's a nice, refined-looking dish. A leek and potato soup with clam and truffle, a salad of fennel, celery, cilantro and bacon, clams and sliced potatoes atop -- this is a very elegant dish, which is almost a bit of a departure for Eli, and it nets him his first win. His elimination dish is more the Eli we've come to know, using ginger ale instead of root beer for his braising soda of choice. With a carrot puree, fennel, fresh herbs and ras el hanout, it sounds like a spiffy dish and judges seemed to feel so. Too bad he botched the pairing. I'd also be happy to see Eli in the finals if one of the big four stumble. He's had some nice peaks that seem to match Mike I., but he doesn't quite seem to have Mike's consistency, so I'd have to call him the second alternate.

7 Laurine Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 2 3 It may look like a move up, but losing two contestants since the last rankings renders that illusory. Laurine and Robin both seem to be on the ropes. Who to put in the basement was a tough call, but not THAT tough, despite Laurine's terrible, terrible mistakes in the elimination challenge. Laurine's quickfire was very conventional, a grilled piece of swordfish with fava beans, mushrooms, spinach, asparagus, wine, stock, parsley, mint and lemon. Very traditional, very spring. Very Antonia, actually, is how it strikes me, but a little less refined. Certainly not enough to stand out in this crowd. The elimination, though? Total meltdown. A crime against pork. Though I'm reluctant to come down on her too hard -- I mean, you can't know everything and there will be gaps in every chef's knowledge -- but how do you not know that pork rillettes are braised in fat? The explanation on her blog makes sense. She's used to doing rabbit rillettes, where the rabbit really is typically braised in stock and later blended with fat. But still, there's a part of me that wants to say that even if it was reasonable for her not to know this by training, shouldn't she be able to divine that by instinct? Presumably she's eaten pork rillettes, from the way she talks about it. Did she really think that braising pork in stock and then blending with fat was going to achieve that end? Troubling. In any case, it really was a four alarm disaster. She even resorted to blending in butter to try to get the consistency right. Let's just say that I think Ash was probably a cumulative elimination this week. But that said, Laurine has met with success at times, and she's staying frosty, and -- bonus -- everybody doesn't hate her. Even though Robin's the one with the win, I have to give the nod to Laurine.

8 Robin Quickfires 1 1 3 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 0 2 Robin's under siege and on life support. I mean, she seems like a fine cook. Everybody is at this point. And in other seasons, I think we'd be considering her and Laurine outside shots for the finals. Her dishes both seemed fine... the corn and avocado mousseline, the pork chop with sweet potato, apple and fennel roulade and cherry-coffee demi. But when you hold her dishes up to the folks nearer the top, they just look clumsy. And perhaps that's the case only when judged comparatively, but it's an inescapable truth. Right now, even if she cooks her heart out (and I mean generally speaking, not Restaurant Wars specific), Robin's going to be on the bottom. There's just no way around it. She's put out some good food, but it isn't that she's landed in the basement so much as the basement has caught up to her. Next week is Restaurant Wars, and hey, anything can happen in Restaurant Wars. But if she survives next week, barring shocking meltdowns from some of the others, she'll be a goner shortly thereafter. And for those who fear a Lisa scenario and the Robin vs. Everyone BS carrying over into the finals, don't worry. It won't happen. Lisa survived long past her time by always being a touch better than somebody else who screwed the pooch. But this crowd is too strong and too consistent to provide Robin (and Laurine) with that kind of opportunity.

9 Ash Quickfires 0 1 3 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 0 4 Can I just say that Ash might be the single most refreshing contestant that has ever been on Top Chef? Watch his exit interview. Seriously, he's just so personable, so likable, so easygoing, so subtly funny, so modest, and he keeps everything in perspective. It's really too bad he wasn't a better cook. And I don't mean that in a snarky, insulting way. He made the same assessment of himself, in one of the most refreshing exit interviews ever. No excuses. He was outcooked by better chefs, plain and simple. The only thing I find unfortunate is that you get the sense -- and he's said this, too -- that we never really got to see his food. And the fact that he didn't lean on that as a crutch after the fact is admirable. But if he won't say it, I'll say it for him. I bet we didn't get to see Ash's true potential on Top Chef, and that's too bad. Of course, I don't know that his true potential would have allowed him to survive more than a couple more episodes anyway, but at least he wouldn't have looked so lost over the past few weeks, and maybe we would have been able to enjoy having him around a little longer. So long, Ash. Sad to see you go.

And looking forward to next week...

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE NINE SPOILERS AHEAD

Okay, the quickfire looks awesome. Blind relay? Love it. It's challenging without being crippling, and it should be really, really interesting to watch. Looking forward to it. Restaurant Wars? Well, we'll see. Tom closed his blog with some vaguely ominous comments that seem to suggest a surprise elimination is on deck. Maybe it's a red herring. Or maybe we're just paranoid because it's Restaurant Wars. One thing I do think is that the Robin and Michael V. blowup has been exaggerated. In the online video they get into it, but they also seem to quickly get it out of their systems and move on. Get the win, get the win, get the win. So I wouldn't read too much into that little spat. But our teams appear to be Robin, the Volts and Eli vs. Kevin, Jen, Mike I. and Laurine. I'm thinking the latter is actually the stronger team for Resturant Wars, especially since harmony and collaboration are so key and, well, with the Volts and Robin all in the kitchen together, it just seems like the sniping and bickering potential is high. Eli's clearly FoH (suit and all), and if he's on that team, smart move staying the hell out of the kitchen. My best guess is that Kevin, Jen, Mike I. and Laurine win, also because I see their styles meshing a lot better. And I just don't see either of the Voltaggios botching their dishes in a restaurant scenario, so as long as there isn't some kind of complete structural meltdown in the kitchen -- and with Bryan there I don't see that happening -- it comes down to Robin or Eli. Robin's on borrowed time and the judges know it, so unless Eli totally screws up FoH, I'm guessing Robin goes and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

But as usual, who the hell knows?

Discuss!!!

Bolognese Sunday

Ragu Bolognese	Dominic Armato

The best kind of Sunday.

UPDATE : As requested...

	Dominic Armato

Top Chef - S6E8 Postmortem

Damn, damn, damn. And I was going to talk about how Kevin was totally going to rock the pig challenge. Ah, well... you don't get credit after the fact. That's what I get for slacking.

And moments after uttering one of the funniest lines in Top Chef history (seriously, the delivery killed me), Ash is toast. He needed to go. I smell a bit of a collective effect figuring into this particular elimination. I thought Laurine was going home for crimes against pork. But as much as I liked him, Ash was due. Overdue, really. But it makes me sad. I thought he was one of the funniest and most personable folks I've ever seen on the show.

On the other end of the spectrum, not that I want to delve too deeply into the Robin vs. Everybody train wreck 'cause, you know, that stuff drives me insane, but this episode sure seemed like a reminder that there's more than one side to every story. It's like Rashomon with scallops. I'm not saying it excuses some of the behavior we've seen, but it certainly makes it a little more understandable.

And, as if our top four couldn't distinguish themselves any further, there they are... one, two, three, four. If they can survive four more times, we'll have an epic finals to end all finals. But if there's anybody who thinks that's how it'll shake out, as much as I'd like to see it, I'll gladly take that bet. Then I can use cash money to dry my tears when one participant in our perfect finals doesn't make it.

Restaurant Wars, baby! RvE (Robin vs. Everybody) comes to a nasty head! With Captain Valium, no less! And rankings. No way I'm dropping the ball on a call like that again.

A Brief Hiatus...

Hey, all!

It pains me to do this, but I'm up to my neck in work this week, and I just can't devote the necessary time to the rankings. So I'm going to use my once-per-season get out of the rankings free card this week, and come back next week.

Thanks for your understanding, and I'll have the postmortem tomorrow as usual.

Back shortly!

(P.S. Kevin was totally going to be #1, and Ash stays in the basement.)

Top Chef - S6E7 Postmortem

Ah, well. It was a good run.

It can't always be the weakest link to go. Had to happen sooner or later.

Like others, I'm bummed to see Ashley go. I liked her food and I liked her. And I regret the fact that I didn't manage to get to Branzino when I was in Seattle last month (not that I got much of anywhere other than the convention center).

Two episodes back, I said I'd feel a little better about Jen if she made a flatiron steak that rocked Tom's world, and lo and behold, she did it. Last episode, I said I'd feel a little better about her if she won an elimination challenge, and lo and behold, she did it. So what would make me feel a little better about Jen next week? If she snatches Tom out of his seat and busts out a killer tango? If she stays up all night sculpting geologic formations out of mashed potatoes? If she lands a massive roundhouse kick to the side of Mike I's head? What do you think? I'm taking suggestions.

Gush much, Ash? I like Ash, but... wow. He won't be living that one down anytime soon.

Anybody else notice that Jen seems to be the only one who addresses Colicchio as "Tom" rather than "Chef"?

More thoughts I'm forgetting... I should really write this stuff down while I'm actually watching the episode.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S6E6 Power Rankings

PLEASE READ BEFORE COMMENTING!!!
There's a lot of sneaky intel out there, but I'm endeavoring to keep this blog a spoiler-free zone. This isn't just for the readers, but for me, too -- I don't want to know what happens! As such, anything that's already been broadcast or has been posted on the official Bravo site is fair game for discussion. I will, for example, discuss the preview of next week's show at the end of the post. But if you've heard rumors that one chef has been hosting a lot of dinner parties, or that another chef was spotted boarding a plane to an exotic locale, please keep them to yourself... thanks!

Hard to believe we're halfway to the finals already.

With Ron's ouster, seven of the 17 original contestants have been eliminated. Six more, and it's time for the finals. Traditionally speaking, when we get a week off, I like to kind of take a breath, look back over the entire season, reevaluate everybody and do a version of the rankings that is less focused on recent performance and more focused on who has demonstrated that they can win it all.

Making this week doubly perfect is the fact that... well... I'm running a little behind. I was away from home and lost my internet connection on the night I'd planned on doing the rankings, so I had little choice but to focus on all of the previous episodes. As such, while I apologize for the lack of specific commentary on the Penn & Teller episode, consider this week's rankings a little halftime state of the union. There are three very distinct tiers of contestants, and it's not hard to find those breaks. The maddening part is deciding how to shuffle the contestants within those three tiers.

The power rankings, ordinarily, are not purely a prediction of who is most likely to win, or an assessment of last episode's dishes, or a reflection of the contestants' historical performance, but rather a nebulous amalgam of all three, combined with a little bit of gut feeling, to provide a relative measure of current awesomeness. This week, however, we're focusing mostly on who has a chance to advance to the finals and win.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Bryan Quickfires 0 1 2 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 3 3 0 Somewhat frustratingly, Bryan had an off week after I moved him up to number one. But again, this week we're weighing recent performance a little less, so I'm going to leave him right where he is. Bryan has still pulled down more elimination wins than any other chef, he's putting together delicious, wildly creative food, he clearly has a unique and mature style, and his winning over judges who are ordinarily inclined to be overly critical of his brand of MG. Really, the only mark against him is that he's been a little weak in the quickfires, with only one top mention, no wins and two bottom mentions. He seems to be at his best when he can take his time and be thoughtful and meticulous, which is what's going to comprise the bulk of the challenges that matter. Most eliminations don't put the chefs under quickfire-like pressure, and the finals format generally plays to Bryan's strengths, giving the chefs everything they need to show off what they can really do. Of the top tier, I still think he's the one who's most in danger of a surprise elimination on a quirky challenge, but he's routinely taking down the competition on the big challenges and for that, he earns number one this week.

2 Kevin Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 2 3 0 Hot on his tail, however, and more of a 1A as far as I'm concerned, is Kevin. Kevin's won two of the three eliminations Bryan hasn't, he's had more success in the quickfires, and perhaps most impressively, he hasn't been on the bottom... not once. As my preseason sleeper, I couldn't be more thrilled with Kevin's success. His style is much less flashy than the other top tier contestants, but it's no less thoughtful, and he's exceptionally good at articulating those thoughts. What's more, it's a style that's a little more suited to current culinary trends, and right in Colicchio's sweet spot. It's brainy food that plays simple, and the consistency Kevin has shown thus far suggest that he'll be there slugging it out at the end.

3 Michael V. Quickfires 1 2 1 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 1 5 0 Michael V. snagged that last elimination win for his Air Force pork belly, but most impressive about Michael V. is the regularity with which he's sitting at the top. We've had 12 challenges so far, and he's been on top of seven of them. He's coming off another strong week, and though he's exhibited some frustration with the goofier assignments, he's still risen to the challenge. Even if it didn't win, this past week's deconstructed Caesar was technically stunning. He can bring some serious fireworks and he should also be there at the end.

4 Jennifer N. Quickfires 2 4 0 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 0 3 0 Of course, last time out, I said that I wanted to see Jennifer prepare a flatiron steak that rocks Tom's world before calling her Jennifer Norris, and... well... she kinda forced my hand. Jen, like Michael V., has been on top of seven challenges, and like Kevin, she's never been on the bottom of anything. Primarily, she's been the Queen of Quickfire, topping the first four and winning two of them. But of the top tier, she's the only one who has yet to pull down an elimination win, and for that I'm going to put her in fourth. I enjoy the metaphorical roundkicks as much as everybody, and she's clearly cream of the crop along with Kevin and the Brothers V., but immunity is already gone and the eliminations are more representative of the late-season challenges. Plus, while she's gotten an incredible amount of praise, she doesn't seem to have landed one of those dishes that absolutely floors the judges just yet. I'll feel better about her once the judges' eyes roll back in their heads and she pulls down an elimination win or two.

5 Michael I. Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 2 1 And with the fifth position, we leave the top tier and enter the chunk of contestants who look like they could sneak into the finals if (when) one of the frontrunners stumbles. Sitting atop this middle tier, I have the controversial Michael I. I've said a lot about him recently in the comments, but to recap, I'm not sure I understand why some are so down on him. I don't like to lean on the numbers too heavily -- it's about a lot more than the numbers -- but you can't completely discount them, either. Compare Michael I. to the rest of the field not named Kevin, Jen or Voltaggio. He has more top mentions than anybody. He's tied for the fewest bottom mentions. And until Robin's duo earned a quickfire win this past week, he was the ONLY chef outside of the top four to win ANYTHING. Plus, despite claims that he's riding people's coattails, he's put together a number of solo dishes that have earned heaps of praise both on camera and on the blogs (and you can now add Lee Anne to the list of those giving favorable critiques, who called out two of his solo dishes as standouts in her catch-up blogs). No, he's not top tier, but I think some people are too quick to discount him. If any of those above him stumble, he appears to have the talent to jump right into the void.

6 Ashley Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 2 2 Ashley seems to be a popular choice to put atop the MOTPers, and I'm on record as believing she had more to show during the weeks she was struggling, but I'm still not quite prepared to let her leapfrog Michael I. She seems to be getting her feet under her and has put together two highly praised elimination dishes in a row, but let's also not forget that she was on the brink of elimination two of the three weeks before that. Another week or two like the past two -- depending on what Mike I. does -- and I'd say she's on deck for the finals. But I still say she's been too shaky too recently to put her there right now.

7 Eli Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 2 0 I will, however, put Ashley ahead of Eli, who hasn't gotten into much trouble, but also hasn't -- in my estimation -- quite hit Ashley's peaks. I'd actually say Ashley's more likely to disappear next week than Eli. But where Ashley keeps improving, I kind of feel like we're already seeing Eli's best, so looking forward I have to put him a little lower. I firmly believe he's in the middle tier that has a shot at the finals, and we know he can put together some great dishes, but right now, of the three MOTPers, Eli is the one I'd be most surprised to see cooking in the final episode.

8 Robin Quickfires 1 1 1 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 0 1 After seven, there's another break, and for our final three I think the only question is how long they manage to hang around. I put Robin at the top for a few reasons. First, to give a little respect to the fact that she's one of the only two chefs outside of the top four to win a challenge. Second, based on her recipes and some positive blog comments, she seems to be the most capable of overstaying her welcome (of course, it seems the rest of the cast has decided she already has, but we're not going to get into that). Third, of the bottom tier, she's been called out on the bottom the least. In short, she seems to be the strongest of the weak, and I expect she'll probably hang around for a few more episodes, and maybe even outlast a couple of the MOTPers.

9 Laurine Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 1 2 Laurine, I have a hard time getting a handle on. She's actually gotten the most top mention of the bottom tier, and she's put together a couple of good-looking dishes, but she hasn't wowed with anything and I'm just not seeing a distinctive style of any kind, which pretty much guarantees she won't be going deep. Even with her bottom tier compatriots, you might be able to pick their dishes out of a lineup. But with Laurine, it's almost as if her style is "caterer", which doesn't bode well. Contrast with the successful caterers of last season, whose dishes had some personality. Of the remaining contestants, Laurine has shown us the least to get excited about, so I have her one notch above the basement...

10 Ash Quickfires 0 1 2 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 0 2 ...only because Ash looks like he's barely hanging on, making both technical and mental errors left and right. Leaving the potatoes off his deconstructed shepherd's pie may or may not have been a good move. It's hard to guess if the judges would have reacted any more positively to gummy potatoes than they did to no potatoes. But what possessed him to put them in the food processor in the first place? Also, he butchered his protein yet again, serving horribly undercooked lamb. Plus, in the quickfire he only served one of his two custards, and even that one didn't come out right. The guy has thrown together a decent dish or two, but he's screwing up left and right, he's on the verge of elimination, he seems to know it and this knowledge seems to be compounding his troubles rather than spurring him to fight his way out of the basement. Of course, anybody can screw up at any time. But right now he's looking like the odds-on favorite for the next ouster.

11 Ron Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 11 Eliminations 0 1 2 I'm sad to see Ron go, partly just because he was kinda fun to have around and partly because he was utilizing a lot of flavors that the others weren't, but there's no questioning that it was his time. The guy was just in over his head at this stage of the competition. It seemed all along that thinking on his feet wasn't one of his strong points, so anytime he couldn't settle in and apply something he seemed to know well to the challenge, he turned out dishes that were flat or flawed or both. He was getting lost, and the paella was a perfect example. He didn't really follow the challenge, he didn't make it interesting, and he didn't make it good. Makes the judges' decision kind of easy, I think.

So there it is, the three tiers. I'm a little surprised by just how clearly they're defined. I'm sure there will be some quibbling about the positioning within the tiers, but I doubt anybody is going to come out and say that so-and-so belongs among the leaders rather than the MOTPers, or so-and-so doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell at the finals and should be in the bottom tier. And I find that remarkable. Really, the drama over the next six weeks will boil down to whether any of the leaders blow it, and if somebody does, who's poised to take their place.

And looking forward to next week...

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE SEVEN SPOILERS AHEAD

The theme of the previews definitely seems to be that the chefs are being shoved out of their comfort zone by some rather narrow, random assignments. This actually seems to play to Laurine's strength -- nondescript versatility -- so she might be okay. Mike I. is made out to be in serious trouble, working with ingredients he doesn't understand at all, which is very dangerous. Jen was in a similar position last week -- working an assignment that really threw her for a loop -- and her skill pulled her through with flying colors. So I guess we get to see if Mike I. really can run with the big dogs or not. That aside, we're barely shown anything at all. Can't say I have any idea what to expect. Which means it'll probably be interesting.

Discuss!!!

Stay Tuned...

Hey, all!

Since there's no new Top Chef this week (tonight is a rerun of last week's Penn & Teller episode), I'm taking a little break and (hopefully) getting caught up on some other food writing.

Look for the rankings on Monday!

UPDATE : Hey, all... sorry about the delay. I'm traveling in a bit of an internet no man's land at the moment, and I wasn't able to get online when I'd planned on working on the rankings. But I'll be home tonight and should be able to knock them out for tomorrow morning. Thanks for your patience.

Top Chef - S6E6 Postmortem

And we were having such a nice little drama-free season.

Apparently the pile-on-Robin has begun. Maybe she's unfairly being ganged up on because everybody feels she should be gone. Maybe she's one of the most irritating people on the planet to live with and her cooking is an excuse. Don't know, don't care. Here's hoping this little dustup dies a quick death. I'm not holding my breath.

Hooray for Penn and Teller! A little superfluous, sure. But a fun Vegas tie-in to a fun culinary theme.

Toby's back. And he's far less irritating than he was last season, for which I give him credit. After grossly misjudging what was going to fly on the show in the early going, he's clearly trying to adjust. Doesn't stop me from wishing he was Jay Rayner, though.

Speaking of Jay Rayner, he made an unannounced and amusing virtual appearance today to talk about the judging of Top Chef Masters. As if I didn't like him enough already.

I love that Jennifer was beating herself up and preparing to pack her knives over a top four dish. LOVE it. I also note that she cooked a rockin' flatiron steak for Tom. Buried in pasta and dressed with tomato sauce isn't exactly what I had in mind, but nonetheless, I believe that means I'm now obligated to call her Jennifer Norris.

And if there were any doubt, I imagine that just about clears up the notion that the neckerchiefs weren't supplied by the producers.

Man, this is going to be a tough week for the rankings.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S6E5 Power Rankings

PLEASE READ BEFORE COMMENTING!!!
There's a lot of sneaky intel out there, but I'm endeavoring to keep this blog a spoiler-free zone. This isn't just for the readers, but for me, too -- I don't want to know what happens! As such, anything that's already been broadcast or has been posted on the official Bravo site is fair game for discussion. I will, for example, discuss the preview of next week's show at the end of the post. But if you've heard rumors that one chef has been hosting a lot of dinner parties, or that another chef was spotted boarding a plane to an exotic locale, please keep them to yourself... thanks!

Of course, the season six cast would feature seafood on a desert ranch.

Seriously, this is getting a little absurd. Our chefs have now produced 128 dishes, 47 of them have been seafood, and that's including the escargot and cactus challenges. Of those 47 seafood dishes, 14 have been ceviches/tartares/crudos, and this episode featured half of them. Makes you wonder if the judges are going to sit up and take notice at some point.

I'm feeling a bit of vindication on the judge front this week. Tom's blog dropped a little nugget that made me very, very happy:

"We also just take note of whether, as with all great chefs, a personal style is emerging in a consistent way, or whether they’re just all over the place. Often we’ve seen a chef come in with a particular style and then, part-way through the competition, begin mimicking everyone else. These chefs tend to flame out; they don’t make it to the final four, and, frankly, they’re not yet secure and mature enough as chefs to be there. We do look at originality, as with Bryan’s winning take on chips and guacamole in Episode Two, or Kevin’s bacon jam, which was utterly original, different, and very, very good. I knew exactly where Bryan’s dish for Joel Robuchon came from – he adapted a dish from Thomas Keller – but he did make it his own."

I've been saying for two seasons now that flavor and execution isn't enough. When you get past the technical, when you get past the tasty, and when the judges are trying to separate the real winners, what they're looking for is a chef who articulates a mature, personal style -- whatever that style may be. I don't believe any of them have ever said it so plainly before, but it's nice to see.

Also, hooray for the return of Lee Anne! Better late than never, though she does drop the incredibly troubling news that this season will be her last. The challenges took on a markedly more mature tone when she came aboard, and I hope she's taught them enough over the past few seasons that they can either continue her fantastic work or choose her replacement very carefully. Also interesting is that she obviously shares everybody's enthusiasm for season six, making it sounds as though she going out in a blaze of glory with the field reaching the kind of heights she'd only dreamed of:

"Yes, Vegas would be hard. But it would be spectacular!!!! Look at the judges we have this season! We’re making food television history!!! Wait’ll you see the last episode before finale! Jeebus, yes, I can leave in peace, knowing the show has finally reached a pinnacle level this season. It’s what I’ve always wanted for it, and I am very proud of TC...

...The talent this season is scary. I can’t tell you just how excited I was to try some of the food this time around! As you can see by now, we have some pretty bad-ass contenders, far and away the best I’ve ever seen on the show. The food porn didn’t last long, that’s for sure."

So there you have it. It's not your imagination, folks. There's something special about the season six crew.

Sadly, this particular episode was kind of a throwaway for me. I dig the quickfire just fine, but my knowledge of cacti is borderline nil, so that pretty much killed my enjoyment thereof. And the elimination resurrected what I've long thought was Top Chef's greatest challenge sin: "Plan and shop to cook a dish, but for all you know you're going to be cooking with a bic lighter and a spork!" I don't understand what's so wrong with just telling them that it's going to be a cookout and they're going to have campfires and a bunch of cast iron. I bet the food they ended up with would have been more appropriate. Is the shocking reveal of teepees and fire pits so critical that it's worth borking the challenge to get it? So we end up with two ceviches, which were wildly inappropriate, but how can I blame Mattin and Ron for thinking -- as they reach for that succulent raw pork -- that with a mystery heat source, perhaps it would be best to pick something that can be prepared with nothing more than a knife and a bowl? And then it turns out that the "fire pits" are really rustic-looking gas grills, which makes the entire thing a farce to begin with. It could have been a fun, straightforward challenge where we see how they handle an upscale cookout. Instead, we're debating ceviches and refrigeration. I don't see how that's a good thing, even if it's in the name of "seeing how the chefs adapt".

Upshot, though, hey, a little interest in the rankings this week! Just when this season was starting to look like a snoozer for the TCPR, we get to shake things up a little bit, starting at the top...

The power rankings are not purely a prediction of who is most likely to win, or an assessment of last episode's dishes, or a reflection of the contestants' historical performance, but rather a nebulous amalgam of all three, combined with a little bit of gut feeling, to provide a relative measure of current awesomeness.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Bryan Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 3 3 0 It's a big jump, but how do you keep Bryan out of the top spot now? It was easy to maintain the status quo when the top tier all had the same number of wins, but now Bryan's taken home two consecutive elimination wins, not to mention three of five. And the exclamation point is that he did it very simply this week, with a dish that completely bypassed his usual whiz-bang style. He was up to his usual tricks with the quickfire, a halibut and cactus ceviche cured in lime, jalapeno, ginger and cilantro, served with cactus tempura and a coconut pudding sorbet. But that elimination dish was straight-up seared pork loin, marinated with paprika, cumin, garlic, thyme, rosemary and shallot, served atop a very basic polenta enriched with butter and mascarpone, served with some dandelion greens softened with butter, onion and lemon zest, some roasted mushrooms and rutabaga glazed with chicken stock, vinegar, sherry, honey and butter. There's a lot of depth going on, but it's a very simple prep with very harmonious flavors. I still worry that Bryan's style is most vulnerable to a sudden, unexpected flameout, but hopefully the fact that his wild techniques are underpinned by classic flavor combinations will give him a bit of a buffer should he get himself into trouble at some point. Regardless, he's earned the top spot for now.

2 Michael V. Quickfires 1 1 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 1 4 0 Voltaggio the younger, however, went a completely different direction. He got himself into a little trouble in the quickfire, dressing diced cactus and poblano peppers with lime and coconut, rolling them in avocado and topping them with fried vegetable chips and a coulis made with cactus fruit, orange and vanilla. With the elimination, however, he took the cookout and freaking bent it to his will. He was supposed to adapt. He refused. And he won, turning out a restaurant dish completely incongruous with the surroundings that still rocked the house. It's a funky little dish, too, that throws seared, miso-cured cod on top of a brick of lime-marinated watermelon, and the whole thing is topped with a chilled dashi that's perked up with ginger, shiitake, orange, lemon, lime, scallion and tomato. Let's review: miso cod, watermelon, citrus and tomato. And the judges loved it. This is one of the most intriguing dishes I've seen all season. He seems to have gotten a little pissy about this week's challenges, which is unfortunate, but he sure responded well.

3 Jennifer Quickfires 2 4 0 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 0 2 0 A quiet week for Jennifer who, with some chorizo in her nopales and a touch of duck confit hiding under her snapper, is edging closer and closer to cooking that elusive chunk of meat. Her salad of fried cactus and chorizo with a chorizo vinaigrette seasoned with garlic, shallots and sherry vinegar escaped official notice, as did her elimination snapper over a slaw made of daikon, carrot, bok choy, scallions, mint and duck confit, dressed with a soy vinaigrette and sauced with spicy tomato water, even if the latter dish got some on-air compliments. I know it started as a joke, but the lack of an actual piece of meat is actually starting to get a little odd at this point. Can we maybe make this a midseason goal, Jennifer?

4 Kevin Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 1 2 0 Kevin keeps doing his thing, and also has a quiet week. His quickfire was a simple smoked pork loin and corn cream with some not-so-simple treatments of cactus. First there was a relish of sorts, nopales braised with figs, chiles, tomato paste and veal stock. Then he topped it with a cactus marmalade made with sugar, lime zest and juice reduced until syrupy. His elimination dish got a lot of nice comments, and folks were surprised it didn't make the top three. Seared duck and tequila-marinated lime were paired with a mole of anchos, cocoa, banana, garlic, onion, figs and raising. Then the whole thing was topped with pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Sounds like a nice dish, good comments -- must've just missed.

5 Michael I. Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 2 1 Some people are really down on Michael I, and I just don't get it. Personality-wise? Okay, I get it. But food-wise? There are a lot of people who seem to feel that he should currently be near the bottom and I just don't see it. So let's address this a bit. First off, can we agree to set aside that Greek salad? It was so out of bounds as compared to the rest of his food that I think it's safe to call it a goofy aberration. So looking at the rest, we know he's a good cook. Whoever's calling the shots, he's turning out crisp food. So the argument basically boils down to whether or not he's a good chef, with some saying he's shown very little creativity and has been riding others' coattails. For starters, he now has three top mentions -- one of them a win -- while cooking solo (in fact, he's the only one other than the top four to win anything). What's more, who's to say that the top four are all cooking their own food? With the exception of Kevin, they've all worked with some serious big-time chefs. Who's to say some of their biggest successes aren't dishes they've simply banged out on the line hundreds of times and dusted off one more time when it seemed appropriate? (See UPDATE, below.) Heck, many believe that's exactly how Ilan won season two. I agree, Mike I. isn't top tier. But he's met with more success -- both co-op and solo -- than everybody I have below him, he's made some crisp-looking food, and he has a pretty clear personal style. I don't see how I could justify putting him much lower. Yeah, the gyro was a little uninspired, but it was safe and, as mentioned, I'm having a hard time dinging people for that. Meanwhile, he busted out a really interesting cactus and tuna ceviche with a cactus fruit puree and a pipian sauce made with garlic, shallot, jalapeno, cilantro, parsley, lime and pumpkin seeds. Salt-curing the cactus was a really neat approach, and he seemed to be one of the very, very few people present who could handle the ingredient. Can we give the guy some credit, here?

6 Eli Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 2 0 Quiet week from Eli, so he stays put. Even when he isn't gaining recognition, I find his work interesting. He was the only chef to take the cactus in an Asian direction, making a scallop ceviche with lime, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, sambal, cilantro, mint, Thai basil, carrot, onion and cashews. His elimination was a real snoozer, I guess -- seared tuna on toast with sun-dried tomato mayo, pickled shallots and radishes, onion and romaine. But as mentioned, I'm kind of handing out passes for this week's elimination.

7 Ashley Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 1 2 Finally, Ashley makes a little noise. I know a number of you were with me in thinking that she was capable of breaking out, so it's nice to see that perceived potential fulfilled. She's still too close to that double-bottom episode, so I'm not bumping her that much, but consider the groundwork laid for improvement. I LOVE that she stuffed doughnuts with cactus fruit jelly and was disappointed that it didn't catch any recognition. And her elimination dish looked really nice. Avocado mousse, crispy lardons, wilted romaine with cherry tomatoes, corn, lime juice and butter, topped with a perfectly seared piece of halibut? Classic flavors, new package, appropriate to the surroundings. Good call, well-executed. Most telling, however, was the fact that the judges were emphatic that this was her best dish of the competition to date. In short, Bryan just absorbed her best shot (so far) without flinching. Surprising? No. But noteworthy. I hope she can build on this, but nobody get carried away.

8 Laurine Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 11 Eliminations 0 1 1 The middle-of-the-packers continue to be a consternating mess, but even though it means a three position jump, I'm going to go out on a limb and bump Laurine to the top of the pack this week. The pasta salad debacle is quickly fading into a distant memory, and she had a strong week, pulling down top mention in both challenges. Though the cactus wasn't as featured as he would have liked, Tim Love seemed rather enamored of her pork chop, which was marinated with onion, garlic, achiote, ancho chile and orange juice, grilled and set over a sweet potato puree with sour cream, and topped with a salad of grilled cactus, apple and corn with jicama, cilantro, lime and tequila. Love seemed similarly enthused about her elimination, sautéed arctic char with a simple tomatillo salsa, potato and sort of a grilled Southwestern succotash. I said last week that I wanted to see something out of her, and she delivered. So we'll go with the hot hand and move her to the top of the MOTPers.

9 Ash Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 0 1 Technically speaking, Ash is moving down two spaces, but it's more a function of people moving around him than anything he's done. That said, it wasn't exactly a strong week for him. His cactus "grilled cheese" didn't sit well with Love, but in Ash's defense, he was deep into his recipe before realizing that he had no tortilla press to work with, and that hurt him. His elimination dish was boring, but I'm sure it tasted fine -- a grilled chicken paillard with vegetable succotash. I'd elaborate, but it won't make it sound any more interesting. Trust me. Still, he's been competent. We'll keep him out of the basement.

10 Robin Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 0 1 Robin, however, has now been on the block two weeks in a row. I don't think that's an entirely fair assessment of her abilities, but I can't gloss over it, either. Last week it was making one of the least-strong escargot dishes (and I phrase it that way because Tom didn't seem particularly offended by any of them). This week, it was partially for a muddled dish, but mostly, it seems, for serving turned shrimp that she never bothered to taste. (Taste. Your. Food. Do we have to tattoo it on the backs of your freaking eyelids, people?) Still, some of her recipes have looked interesting to me and for reasons I can't quantify she seems slightly less worthy than Ron when it comes to this week's elimination bait. Which I guess puts her in the MOTMOTP (sorry).

11 Ron Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 1 1 Ron ends up on the bottom twice this week, and is looking like the odds-on favorite for the next elimination. What strikes me about Ron is that a number of his dishes seem weirdly incomplete -- a few ingredients thrown together but not especially integrated. Take this week's quickfire. Chunk of swordfish seared with ancho. Salad of avocado, mango and crab with salt and pepper. Simmered cactus juice with butter. Components served side-by-side. There just isn't a dish here. It's a collection of ingredients. Admittedly, this phenomenon seems to manifest mostly in quickfires, so maybe he just has issues with time. And he isn't in any danger when it comes to quickfires. But all the same, while in seasons past he could have hung on for a while like this, right now he's feeling like the weak link (even if his tuna tartare with coconut milk, cilantro, jalapeno, cumin and Chinese five spice does sound kinda interesting).

12 Mattin Quickfires 0 2 0 Last Week: 12 Eliminations 0 0 2 It was time. Amusingly, his cactus dish was the first interesting thing he's done. But the Basque chef who never cooked anything Basque (shades of Lisa and her Asian focus) made a ceviche dish that was worse than you think. Gail's blog confirmed what I mentioned in the comments last week. When it comes to a ceviche, if your knifework isn't consistent some pieces cook while others are left raw. It's a very basic thing that's embarrassing for a chef to overlook. But more surprisingly, this was a pseudo-trio. Yes, there were three fishes. And yes, each was finished with a different garnish. But the cure itself? The same lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper -- and that's it -- for all three. Just trying that is grounds for elimination, as far as I'm concerned. That's not failing by overreaching and trying to do too much. It's expecting to impress just because you're plating three of something. Bad, bad call.

UPDATE : So I finish the Power Rankings, I go to warm up a bottle for the littlest one, I'm standing in the kitchen waiting for the warmer to beep, and as my eyes cross my copy of Eric Ripert's new book, On The Line, my thoughts go back to what I just said about Michael I. and how much originality is really cruising around. So I flip to the recipes section. What's the very first recipe listed? Wild Alaskan and Smoked Salmon with Apple, Celery and Baby Watercress and Jalapeno Emulsion. Sound familiar? That'd be Jennifer's top quickfire from episode two. Its creator? One of Ripert's cooks, Soa Davies. First, I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with this in the least. Second, I think most if not all of the contestants do this to some extent. You're in a competition, you have to think quickly, you know of a dish that suits the challenge, you're fighting for survival... of course you're going to bust it out. Third, this is the only recipe I could find that resembled anything Jennifer has made (though she's been very mussel and clam heavy and there's none of that in this particular book), and it could be the only one that isn't her dish. But the point I make is that you can never really be sure. Doesn't make it any easier to evaluate where these people stand, but that's how it is. Hopefully, over the course of the season, those who rise to the top can only lean on established favorites so much. And if anything, this only illustrates the importance of keeping them off-balance a bit. All I'm saying is that if you call out Michael I. for riding coattails, bear in mind that other favorite contenders may be silently doing the exact same thing at times.

And looking forward to next week...

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE SIX SPOILERS AHEAD

Penn and Teller! Okay, I'm jazzed. I've loved Penn & Teller since I was a kid. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that sucks about Penn & Teller is that they develop their tricks so slooooooooooowly that their show's practically the same now as it was when I first saw them as a kid. A great show it is, though.

Sorry, I'm done. Actually, thematically speaking, they're perfect guests. We aren't shown anything about the quickfire, but the elimination apparently involves deconstruction, and it appears that the chefs don't get to choose the dish they're deconstructing (or perhaps they choose from a limited list). This is a really interesting challenge for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that "deconstructed" has become a dirty word in culinary circles. Anybody can take a dish apart. And for a while, everybody did. But to do so in a way that's meaningful is no small feat. The line between bringing a new angle to a dish and simply breaking it down into its components is a fine one. The Voltaggios should do well. Even though it isn't Kevin's thing, he seems to be a pretty cerebral fellow who puts a lot of thought into the construction of his dishes and articulates it well, so I bet he'll do something interesting. Here's hoping the "Jennifer In Trouble" trailer is a total red herring (my guess). And having now seen the trailers, I feel pretty good about having Ron in the basement. Half of his dishes are already deconstructed!

Discuss!!!