Top Chef Power Rankings

Top Chef - Season Five Postmortem

Stick a fork in season five, folks, it’s done.

Having now had a week to digest the finale, I’m considerably less bummed than I was. Yes, it was somewhat anticlimactic and yes, I would much rather have seen Stefan or Carla win, but having checked out Hosea’s recipes for the final meal, I feel even more strongly that he fully earned that win. Every dish looked delicious, every dish was creative and interesting, and every one hit a level of refinement that Hosea hadn’t managed to hit all season long. In fact, after checking out the recipes, even if Carla and Stefan had both been on, I’m convinced that this still would have been a fight. Hosea’s final menu was the kind of food that gets me excited about Top Chef.

What’s frustrating to me is that if he’d been making this kind of food for the rest of the season, I actually would have been behind him. Many are crediting Blais for Hosea’s performance in the finale, but I find the confidence with which they say so disappointing. First, there were no glaring weaknesses in Hosea’s menu, and he wasn’t just sitting on the sidelines sipping a beer and letting Blais cook in his name. Second, from the first half of the finale – when he was working solo – it was clear that Hosea came prepared. The dude cooked a great meal, worked in the flavors and traditions of New Orleans in subtle ways even when he didn’t have to, and won the title on merit. Deal with it.

That said, I am still frustrated, but not because Hosea won. I’m frustrated partially because it felt like a completely different chef was dropped on us at the last minute, but mostly because of what that says about Top Chef’s format. We’ve been touching on this for a couple of months now, but with the full season in the rear view mirror, we can look at it with a little perspective. It’s a hard thing to ensure you’re not looking back with rose-colored glasses, but it sure feels like this crowd was kind of hanging back and playing it safe, didn’t it? Hosea wasn’t one of the worst offenders by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt our fears were confirmed by Fabio a couple of weeks back:

”The problem is that for the whole season the judges are keep asking us to amaze them with incredible food. They have been telling us that playing safe is not going to get us anywhere and they prized poached eggs and roasted chicken. Lately who is winning the challanges has been doing panna cotta, seared scallops, mousse, and grits. With all due respect for those people, how amazing is a panna cotta or a plate of grits. They have to decide where they arestanding because this year it seems like that the more safe you play the further you go. I'm happy I do simple food and this is what is good for me but I dont know how amazing the food is till the end of the competition; all the chefs are playing very safe, and I dont think that he will laugh at me."

This from the guy who, despite looking pretty lackluster for most of the season, was one elimination away from the final showdown. The thing of it is, maybe Fabio actually was a whole lot better than he showed, and maybe he was simply playing it smart. But if the smart thing to do was to lay low, not get eliminated and then wait until the very end to show your true ability, and if more contestants are figuring this out, then Top Chef has a problem that needs to be addressed. Was this a function of this season’s casting, or are the contestants just getting wise, or was it simply a matter of how the season unfolded? I think all three – or a combination thereof – are possible.

With the full season now in review, I agree that this seems like one of the weaker casts. Or at the very least, it didn’t have the wow factor that some contestants from previous seasons have provided. I don’t think the gap is as vast as some like to claim, and I don’t understand the amount of disdain that it inspires, but this certainly wasn’t like last season when Blais, Stephanie and Dale could all uncork a jaw-dropper at any moment, and Antonia could always be counted on to provide a simple, beautifully executed counterpoint (up until she was eliminated, that is). And as dominant as Stefan was for most of the season, and as much as he impressed me, there was still always something just a little safe about his food. There’s nothing like competition between titans to drive them both to greater heights. Think the home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa (okay, bad example). This season, it felt like Stefan and Jamie was the closest we got to that kind of exciting one-upmanship. But even then, the fire didn’t seem as fierce, and when Jamie went down Stefan genuinely seemed to lose some of that drive, and it showed in his food. I wonder if this lack of a dominant duo or trio wasn’t an intentional choice on the part of casting. Indeed, when it looked at the midpoint of the season like anybody could win this thing, that was pretty exciting. But I think what we’ve learned is that Top Chef needs those sickeningly talented chefs – two or three of them – who are so driven to lay it all on the line that they see every challenge as an opportunity to astound, safety bedamned. They may leave the field in the dust, and we may lose a little suspense about who will make the finals, but I think the show is better for it.

Or maybe the contestants are just getting smarter. They saw Lisa sneak into the final by always being better than just one other person. They’ve seen highly talented chefs go down in flames because they flew a little close to the sun. If this is happening, I’m not sure there’s a direct remedy. You can’t make contestants work against what they perceive to be their self-interests. But you can influence their perceptions.

Which brings us to the path this particular season took. Unfortunately, I think Ariane’s early success may have been the season’s biggest problem. I don’t mean to suggest that she wasn’t skilled and shouldn’t have met with some success. But whether it was the wins themselves or the manner in which the judges awarded them, they seem to have inadvertently left the crowd with the impression – possibly a true one! – that the way to win Top Chef is to reign in your more creative, distinctive ideas and just execute, execute, execute until the very end, when you can show us what you can really do in the last couple of episodes. That certainly seems to be the message Fabio took from the early judges’ tables. The tricky thing is that I’m not suggesting the judges erred in rewarding Ariane’s simple but solid offerings rather than her creative but flawed competition. Good is good and it deserves to win if the wilder and wackier elements can’t rise to the occasion. And to be fair to the judges, one of Ariane’s early wins was awarded by Martha Stewart and another was awarded by the cast of the Today show. But next season, here’s hoping the judges make it clear from the start that they’re not going to let people coast. The judges – Tom especially – like to come down hard on the chefs for overreaching, and it’s valid criticism. But I bet that point can be made without making the crowd scared to reach at all, and here’s hoping they find a way to do that next season.

One thing I definitely don’t support is the idea that past performance should count. If it’s a really close call and the judges are trying to find some space between two chefs, sure, they should give a break to the one who’s been performing well and I suspect they do just that. But without the knowledge that anybody can go home at any time, the second half of the season becomes less of a competition and more of a coronation, when the leaders can coast and the others have no chance of catching up. Another sports analogy, I’m sorry, but the best team doesn’t always win. And if it did, the season would be boring. I fully understand the frustration when a favorite makes one dumb mistake and goes home, but I think the alternative is far, far worse.

My only other complaint this season was that we were again treated to wonkiness in the finals. Attention Top Chef producers: PLEASE JUST LET THEM COOK FOR THE FINAL CHALLENGE. Yes, we understand twists and gimmicks. We know they’re necessary to inject some variety and excitement, and we even like them when they aren’t absurd. But this is the final episode. You don’t need to generate excitement. We’re already invested in these people. What we WANT is for them all to cook the meal of their lives and for the chips to fall where they may. Otherwise we’re left with this vague feeling – both this season and last – that the final competition was a letdown. There’s nothing more exciting than a victory hard-fought and earned against competitors who are at the top of their game, and nothing more deflating than a victory by attrition. You should be setting the chefs up for success and striving to achieve the former, not kneecapping them and risking the latter.

But all of this, of course, obscures what I thought was otherwise a really, really wonderful season. These chefs were granted an unprecedented level of freedom and flexibility to cook their food, and the fact that they rarely took advantage of it was really a shame. There were a few markedly gimmicky challenges, but they were few and far between and a vast improvement over previous seasons – particularly in the run up to the final episode. The three episodes leading up to the final challenge may have been the best stretch the show has seen, with great challenges, excellent guests and – to give credit where credit is due – a fine job by the editors in making us care about these people. Also, I loved the level of camaraderie we saw this season. The vibes were so positive that even the “villain” was impossible not to like. In some ways, all of this makes season five all the more frustrating. So many things went right that it was disappointing to see them waylaid by a couple of glaring problems. My fear is that the producers will learn what I believe to be the wrong lesson from the season, and that we’ll see a wackier, nastier cast and stranger, stupider challenges in season six. But here’s hoping they see that a couple of little tweaks are all that are necessary to bring us another season four.

Either way, I’ll be watching.

It’s been another fun season, folks. Thanks to everybody for participating, thanks for all of the support and kind words, and thanks to the cast, both those who commented publicly and those who wrote me privately, for taking the time to bring an insider’s angle to our discussions. I think we have a fun thing going here, and I’ll definitely jump right back in as soon as we have a cast for season six. In the meantime, for those who have only started reading recently, this IS actually a normal food blog most of the time, with recipes and restaurants and cookbooks and everything, though I can’t blame you for thinking otherwise. I’m more than ready to get back to actual food that I’m actually cooking and tasting, and while my feelings won’t be hurt if you all disappear until next season, it’s always nice to have company when we aren’t talking reality TV :-)

Thanks again, everybody... discuss!

Top Chef - S5E14 Postmortem

Huh.

Frustrating, really.

Frustrating to see Carla abdicate.

Frustrating to see Stefan sunk by a couple of poor decisions.

Frustrating that we had to wait until the final episode to see this kind of food from Hosea.

(And from the look on Tom's face, I'm not the only one frustrated.)

I don't question that Hosea made the best meal of the evening, and that's how it goes. If you can't bring it in the finale, you don't deserve the title. But still, it's like he just hung around and hung around and hung around and then got his best shot in at just the right time. It doesn't make him unworthy, but it makes for a less than satisfying finish.

Gotta digest this one for a while. Wrap-up next week.

UPDATE : A quick update because I can already see where this is going. Yeah, it sucks, but how does it make sense to blame Hosea or Casey or the show? Blame Carla for not taking control of her own menu. Blame Stefan for freezing his fish and making a cliche for dessert. We can argue until we're blue in the face about whether not considering previous performance is a good or a bad thing (and I'm sure we will, especially now :-), but nobody robbed Stefan or Carla. They robbed themselves, plain and simple.

UPDATE II : God help me, I'm already starting to feel sorry for Hosea. The guy outcooked the favorites in the final episode and I'm as frustrated as everybody, but you'd think the twist was that he poisoned Julia Child. You guys are out for blood :-)

UPDATE III : I'll be curious to see how everybody feels about this season once we've had a chance to step back for a week. Up until Restaurant Wars, it was the WORST SEASON EVER. Then it got really good in a hurry and I saw a lot of people last week declaring it the BEST SEASON EVER. Now, it seems it's back to being the WORST SEASON EVER again for many. But as much as I prefer not to get caught up in the opinion rollercoaster, I am kind of amused by the poetry of it. After all, if the chefs are only as good as their last dish, it's somehow fitting that Top Chef is only as good as its last episode, eh? :-)

UPDATE IV : Incidentally, can we finally put to bed all of the conspiracy theories regarding the producers manipulating the judging process? I mean, really, what producer in his/her right mind would have orchestrated THIS outcome???

UPDATE V : Wow. Apparently things have taken a turn for the kooky. If it's a genuine quote, and if it's anywhere near the target (Blais' facebook status appears to suggest that something, indeed, was afoot in saying that Casey got a bad edit), it's another good reminder of how little we see. Which also raises a point that seems appropriate right now. I love speculating about what's going on as much as the next guy (okay... a little more), but even I'm a little taken aback by the strength of the opinions being formed about people based on -- quite literally -- 10-12 seconds of footage culled from five hours of prep. I'd say the editors might come out of this mess with a little bit of a credibility problem, but anybody who watches the show regularly knows that ship sailed a long time ago. It'll be interesting to see where all of this goes, and folks are free to blame and make personal judgments about those involved, but I'M not about to plant my flag on ground this shaky.

UPDATE VI : I'm going to quote a portion of Jake's comment at the top here, both because it's dead on and because, frankly, I should've had the stones to say it myself yesterday:

"Look, Stefan's been my favorite for most of the season, and I've grown to really like Carla too. But can we all please take a page from both Stefan and Carla and be reasonable about this? Both have acknowledged that Hosea deserved to win, and both have acted with class and humility. On top of that, both will be fine. By all means -- cheer for your favorite, applaud when they succeed, and lament when they fail. But chill with the blame, the conspiracy theories, and the conjecture (you don't know who would have won if the sous were different, or the surprise ingredients, or whatever). It's starting to sound like the drunk football fan who is yelling at everyone around him about how the refs cost his team the game, when the refs didn't make any controversial calls. Don't take away from Hosea's accomplishment, and don't diminish what Stefan and Carla accomplished either."

What he said. We (by which I mean both myself and the folks who have seen fit to participate here) have tried to foster an atmosphere here that respects the chefs involved in the show -- understanding that they're real people -- and keep the discussion as free from the kind of nasty, strident tone that all too frequently dominates the 'net. We all get a little carried away from time to time (and I'm by no means blameless in that regard), but I think most folks here have a sincere interest in staying above speculative mudslinging, and I think we've done a pretty good job of keeping each other honest in that regard. In short, take a deep breath everybody... speak your mind, please, but let's keep this from devolving into the kind of ranting that typifies far too much of the internet.

UPDATE VII : FYI, I've confirmed that Blais' comment below is, indeed, from him. Which is not to cast aspersions on the comments left by anybody else related to the show -- he's just the only one from whom I've managed to wrangle up a confirmation so far. So if you're the skeptical type, you can erase any doubt about the authenticy of that particular comment (that is, unless you don't trust me either :-).

UPDATE VIII : Ditto Carla's husband, Matthew. That's him (not that I think anybody doubted him).

Top Chef - S5E13 Power Rankings

This evening's post written by guest poster, Jennifer Scudiere

I regret to inform you that in the course of preparing dinner for his family this evening, Dominic sustained a chef's knife related injury. Fortunately, there was a medical professional (me) on hand. Upon examination, my diagnosis was, "Yup... that's a bad cut." Though the injury is not serious, it does make the transcription of his usually voluminous Top Chef analysis much more difficult than usual, and as such, he would like me to pass along the following:

• Carla has made a believer out of him.
• He still thinks Stefan will probably be named Top Chef.
• He'd be happy with anybody other than Hosea winning.

He apologizes for being unable to provide the Power Rankings this week, but having examined his wound, I feel confident that his fingers will be operating at full capacity next week, in time for an end-of-season wrapup. In the meantime, there will be a postmortem thread tomorrow as usual.

Thank you for your attention.

Jennifer R. Scudiere, MD
aka Dom's wife

Top Chef - S5E13 Postmortem

Best. Twist. Ever.

I love it. Not just a fun idea, not just applied in a way that makes it hard to call it unfair, but busted out for just the right season. Great call on the part of the producers.

And another great episode all around. Anybody who was beating up on Emeril last week want to eat their words? :-)

What I liked the most, though? Nobody fell down. Seriously... in this season more than any other, how refreshing was it to see great comments across the board for all five chefs? Yeah, people had their issues, but you get the sense that the judges genuinely liked everything that was out there. Nice to see the season five cast bringing it when it counts.

Lots more, of course, but not tonight. I'm a little sleep-deprived at the moment. Three hours ago, I just couldn't get excited about this season's finals. Now I'm totally jazzed. Bravo, everybody.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S5E12 Power Rankings

Questions about the cast aside, can we all agree that this might be the best season yet from a challenge standpoint?

Seriously, when the most controversial elimination of the last eight episodes is the Super Bowl challenge, I think that demonstrates just how few gimmicks we've seen this season. These chefs are being given every possible chance to succeed... which raises the question, naturally, of why they're so often responding in a largely uninspiring fashion. But we'll get to that in a moment.

Wylie Dufresne seems to have rubbed some folks the wrong way for reasons I don't understand. Maybe I just love the geek factor. And what's more geeky than an egg? Even setting aside all of the symbolism and potential for witty approaches, you have an ingredient that's so critical and so irreplaceable, with funky physical properties that no other foodstuff shares. It's the perfect ingredient for a playful techy geek like Dufresne. Unfortunately, as I mentioned last week, the contestants on this show always seem to forget that the guys who have become known for MG didn't get there without understanding that the food has to be good, not just interesting. The successful MG chefs are often savaged for being focused on wacky technique, but their critics fail to understand that the same love of flavor -- extracting every last bit of deliciousness out of their ingredients -- is precisely what drives them to seek out new ways of doing so. Sometimes they're successful, sometimes they're not, but their mission is the same even if their method is sometimes alien. In Dufresne's case, the fact that he knows what's really important showed in how he judged the challenge. With the possible exception of Leah, he chose for his winner the least funky and avant-garde of all of the dishes. He saw interesting, clever ideas on other plates and complimented the chefs for them, but in the end he pinned the ribbon on flavor, and that's why I think you have to respect the guy -- at least based on what we saw of him here. Really, my only complaint about the challenge is that I would have liked to know if getting a little avant-garde was a mandate or merely a suggestion. But, you know, minor quibbles.

Then, in a lovely bit of contrast, the pendulum swings the other way and we get to discuss simplicity in cookery. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. While I think a Top Chef winner has to do more than roast chicken and it's ilk to stand out, that doesn't mean that drop dead simple isn't entirely appropriate for some challenges, and that I don't respect what makes simple dishes so difficult. The thing is, when you're cooking a simple dish -- especially for an amazing panel like that -- your difficulty is compounded in two ways. First, it's incredibly difficult to stand out. Who hasn't had a roast chicken? Not only does your execution have to be flawless to make an impression, but that intangible something special has to be present or your dish will be forgotten before you even get to Judges' Table. Secondly, you're working without a net. Screw something up and there's nowhere to hide. Everything is under a microscope and small error are glaring. And you don't have that safety of being able to impress with your intentions. Make a mistake while doing something boldly creative and the judges might be inclined to give you a pass because they see where you were going and want to reward that creativity, even if you didn't quite pull it together. Make a mistake with a simple dish, however, and it's just a mistake. At any rate, I like that they made the traditional/creative question a judgment call for the contestants, and I liked that the judges -- regular and guest -- came prepared to accept the direction the chefs decided to take it and judge their dishes on their own merits, even for a dish so personal as your last meal (mine, incidentally, would be Rigatoni all'Amatriciana with a really, really good guanciale). And so, for their last challenge, we sidestep the question of whether it should be more of a technical or more of a creative challenge by allowing the chefs to decide where on that continuum they'd like to stake their claim. Elegant.

So we're off to the finals, and what can we expect from our top four chefs? I have absolutely no idea. Seriously! Have we ever had a season where you felt more unsure of what these guys are going to bring to the table? Contrast with last season, where you knew exactly what to expect from Blais, Stephanie and Antonia. Granted, Antonia drifted a little too far from her strengths, and Blais wasn't on his game, but we weren't surprised by what we saw. The only person who surprised us was Lisa, who had turned in clunker after clunker for weeks leading up to the finals, going on and on about how Asian food was her thing while completely avoiding those flavors in her work, and generally didn't give any indication whatsoever that she could put together a decent plate, much less a respectable meal in the finals. But a funny thing sometimes happens during that long break between the regular season and the finals. Chefs who have been pushed to the brink of exhaustion get a chance to sleep and refocus physically and mentally. After being subjected to endless surprises and tight restrictions, they suddenly know what to expect and have months to plan for it. And most importantly, they're finally given a blank canvas upon which to do their work with little to no interference. It is, to coin a phrase, a whole new ballgame. And in Lisa's case, it meant she suddenly busted out a very respectable meal that, even if it wasn't close to being a winner, was light years beyond what she'd made to get there. Last year, the Lisa Effect was the exception. This year, I can't help but wonder if it won't be the rule. I pretty much know what I expect to see from Stefan. I think I have a pretty good sense of what we'll see from Hosea, but I'm a little shaky. Carla and Fabio, though? Who the hell knows? We could effectively have two or three fresh faces this week, as chefs who have had trouble expressing themselves finally have a chance to get their footing. The question is, how did we get here?

A few weeks back, I believe when the Ariane controversy was at its peak, we all started to wonder if the judges were inadvertently stifling creativity by rewarding so many simple dishes. Then, in his Q&A this week, Fabio showed that perhaps we weren't overanalyzing for once:

"The problem is that for the whole season the judges are keep asking us to amaze them with incredible food. They have been telling us that playing safe is not going to get us anywhere and they prized poached eggs and roasted chicken. Lately who is winning the challanges has been doing panna cotta, seared scallops, mousse, and grits. With all due respect for those people, how amazing is a panna cotta or a plate of grits. They have to decide where they arestanding because this year it seems like that the more safe you play the further you go. I'm happy I do simple food and this is what is good for me but I dont know how amazing the food is till the end of the competition; all the chefs are playing very safe, and I dont think that he will laugh at me."

There they are. Our fears, perfectly summed up by one of this season's competing chefs. At least one chef seems to have noticed what types of dishes were winning and responded by pulling his punches, and you can bet there were others. But here's the question. Have the judges been sending mixed signals this season by asking for wow and rewarding simplicity, or have the contestants simply failed to rise to the challenge by coming up short when they extend themselves creatively? I have to say, while it would seem Fabio believes the former to be the case, my money is on the latter. It isn't as though Tom has had problems praising highly refined, wacky, creative dishes in the past. He may not have liked Jeff's particular brand of wonky, but that doesn't mean he's anti-wonky in general and I think he's proven otherwise. My sense is that early on this season, you had some high-profile creative failures and some high-profile ultrasimple winners, and everybody just got scared. If so, it's unfortunate. But the upshot is that it means we could be totally surprised by what we see in the finals. Here's hoping the remaining chefs push themselves creatively like they haven't to date. And more importantly, here's hoping the fallout from this phenomenon doesn't carry into next season. I think the casting department would do well to ensure that a couple of next season's stronger chefs are wildly creative, to set the pace and ensure the message doesn't get sent that the path to the finals is a timid one.

Anyway, power rankings. Here's how I feel about these guys going into the finals. But will the chefs who show up to the finals look anything like the chefs ranked below? Search me.

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 Stefan Quickfires 4 7 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 4 6 2 Losing Jamie last week wasn't enough. Stefan had to go and make us sweat a little bit, apparently. I don't think he was in any real danger for reasons we'll get into shortly, but that doesn't mean a finals lineup of Hosea, Carla, Fabio and Leah didn't flash before my eyes and cause a tingling sensation in my arm and a slight metallic taste in my mouth. Maybe it will serve as a wake-up call, we'll see. His quickfire looked nice. No recipe on the poached egg with béarnaise, but the mango filled panna cotta was a witty little number, mimicking an egg while inverting the components (yolks in the panna cotta "white", whites in the mango puree "yolk"). Sounds like it was a near miss. As for the elimination, some have expressed surprise that he didn't go home and feel that Tom just wasn't willing to let him go over Leah. This surprised me, actually, because I felt long before reading everybody's comments that -- jibblies aside -- it seemed pretty clear that Leah was the weaker of the two. But evidently that impression wasn't shared. The thing is, the judges found the two-way spinach a little puzzling, but nobody complained about its quality. And while the salmon was clearly a problem, almost everybody went out of their way to compliment the rest of the dish. Stefan is lucky that Leah botched her benedict. Usually, at this stage of the game, you don't have the benefit of a bigger mistake to save your bacon. Just ask Jamie. In any case, desserts aside, Stefan has been a little more conservative in the second half of the season than he was in the first, but I'm sure he'll step it up and I suspect he'll give us exactly what we expect. But he's the only one.

2 Carla Quickfires 1 4 2 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 2 5 3 What can I do? I can't keep Hootie down. Neither she nor Hosea strike me as the complete package, but Carla is definitely looking like the stronger of the two at the moment. Plus, as mentioned last week, a catering competition in New Orleans is something she should be able to rock up and down to earn a spot in the final challenge. Her eggs give me continued hope. Carla hasn't been outside the box much this season, but she's hit a couple of them recently and has me wondering if maybe she really can pull out the kind of creativity I think she'll need to win. Something like the squab with peas, no matter how wonderful it was, just doesn't strike me as the kind of dish I can see earning her the title. But a high concept (if a tired concept) dish where she blends spinach with egg whites, then sets them in a pan with quail yolks to mimic regular eggs, but green? A little more of that creativity and wit and she might just have a shot at this thing. In any case, though I'm still a bit of a skeptic when it comes to Carla, I'm glad she's still around. In terms of pure entertainment, she may be the best thing to happen to this season.

3 Hosea Quickfires 1 6 1 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 1 3 4 Hosea goes into the finals as the inverse Carla, doing the kind of funky, creative dishes that the judges love to reward with Top Chef titles. The problem is that while he isn't screwing them up, exactly, he doesn't seem to be making them terribly compelling either. He hasn't done much, especially recently, that's grabbed the judges' attention, and both of his dishes this week were perfect illustrations of this problem. Great idea, turning egg whites into a pancake and using it across a trio of Japanese-inspired bites. But at the risk of putting words in Dufresne's mouth, his reaction seemed to be more along the lines of, "Hey, neat idea, but... mmm... well... tastes okay, I suppose." Ditto the scampi (I refuse to say "shrimp scampi" on the grounds that it's FRICKING REDUNDANT), which reflected his creative touch but struck the judges as largely soulless. It's a shame we can't fuse Hosea's creativity and ambition with Carla's technique and focus on flavor. Between the two of them, they'd make a pretty good challenger for Stefan.

4 Fabio Quickfires 0 2 5 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 2 6 1 I'm glad to see Fabio going into the finals on a win. He pretty much backed his way up to the door, but at least he managed to get himself turned around and charge through. His dishes have just been miss after miss after miss (even if they're sometimes near misses), until he finally gets a fat one right across the heart of the plate. He said it himself. This one was gift wrapped for him. But I don't see how the ability to reproduce his nonna's knockout roasted chicken in any way makes up for weeks of history. That said, if any of the four finalists are going to suddenly bust out a level of sophistication we haven't yet seen, it's Fabio. He's shown flashes of creative signature dishes, and he all but said this week that he's been playing it very safe. We could see a whole new Fabio in the finals. But I still say he's the first out the door.

5 Leah Quickfires 3 4 4 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 0 3 3 No surprises here, though I remain disappointed that Leah won't be in the finals, given the impressive look of some of her successes. A popular theory seems to be that Tom was just done with her after she waved the white flag over her arctic char last week, and pushed for her elimination even though Stefan was more worthy. I don't see how that follows, though. Eggs benedict is a very touchy dish that's all about technique (an unlucky draw, BTW), and she missed on both of the primary components. With the egg and the hollandaise off, you're left with bacon and bread -- not much in the way of a safety net. So we bid Leah farewell, and I have to say, I was actually kind of impressed by her exit interview. Not only was she self-aware enough to note that her head just wasn't in the game, but she also displayed a surprising amount of humility, talking about how she isn't ready to have her own place -- that she has far too much to learn. Though she caught a lot of well-deserved flak for being the "walking shrug" (brilliant, BTW, whoever came up with that one), it was refreshing to see that she was aware of her shortcomings and ready to get back out there and keep learning. It was a surprisingly sweet coda to an otherwise inconsistent and troubled performance.

EPISODE THIRTEEN SPOILERS AHEAD!

Of COURSE it's Emeril. People are already scratching out their eyeballs, and dumping on the bam man is de rigueur in food nerd circles, but I'm going to stick up for the guy a little bit. First, whatever you think of his shtick, the man can cook. He may be messy, he may be all about big flavor, but his restaurants reflect a distinct personal style and it's a compelling one. Second, while his live show was absolutely ridiculous, the early seasons of Essence of Emeril were really great. He hadn't yet gone to eleven, and the goofiness was still kind of charming. And unlike the live show, which was all about him, the Essence of Emeril was about the food -- both doing it well, and demystifying it. He tried to make cooking approachable and minimize his viewers' kitchen anxiety -- "This isn't rocket science... if you like X, add a little more X." -- without dumbing it down ala some other people whose names we won't mention but rhyme with Mandra Bee. Those who benefitted from his ratings surge may disagree, but speaking purely from a food nerd standpoint, the worst thing they could have done over at Food TV was give him a live audience. It took him away from what was, I think, a really enjoyable show and buried his better traits. Point being, he's capable of being more than the clown so many see him as, and I suspect he'll rise to the occasion and pleasantly surprise his detractors.

In any case, it looks like the contestants are catering a Mardi Gras ball, so the aforementioned Carla advantage should be in full swing. But preview videos seem to contradict one another... will there be a single or double elimination? Either way, we get the sense that Hosea's in trouble, which wouldn't surprise me. I'm betting Carla's safe, so if it's a double elimination that leaves Stefan and Fabio. We couldn't possibly end up with a Fabio/Carla final, could we? Could we? Naaaaaaaaaaaah.

(Could we?)

Discuss!

Top Chef - S5E12 Postmortem

Aaaaaaaaaand, there was much rejoicing.

As mentioned, I had hoped Leah was going to make the finals, but I realize I was in a significant minority in that regard.

That said, hoooooooo buddy, a nailbiter. It seemed clear that Leah was going, but I know I wasn't the only one who was sweating. That was a little too close to total disaster for my tastes.

I'll let you guys comment for a while and jump in later.

Oh... and what I said about Carla's chances of making the final final final and that New Orleans couldn't be any more squarely in her wheelhouse? Looks like it's a catering challenge. So apparently, it can.

Discuss!

UPDATE : I'd just like to add to Fabio's chicken discussion by saying there's perfect, and then there's PERFECT. Sounds like his fell in the latter category. I agree, I'm glad to see him go in on a win, but it took him getting something he could rock up and down at just the right time and I'm not sure it means much other than his grandmother made one amazing roast chicken. Sounds like he really caught a break (ha!).

Top Chef - S5E11 Power Rankings

Well, that was a bummer.

I think those who were already irritated with this season have officially thrown in the towel. Personally speaking, this one hurt even more than Dale Talde last season. But still, I'm not in the camp that considers this season a failure. It's not one of the most compelling, no, but they can't all be season four. Actually, it's interesting to look back at how the progression of this season is playing out as compared to previous seasons. In seasons one and four, you had a couple of favorites slugging it out 'til the end. Season three looked like a runaway at times, but thanks to a late surge by a couple of others it ended up being remarkably compelling. Even in season two, weak though it was, you felt like you knew who was going to the finals and what you hoped to see from them. But this season is funny. With the most compelling culinary matchup now gone, we're left with a crowd of folks, none of whom (Stefan excepted) you get the feeling have been operating at peak efficiency. It's like you want to shake these guys and remind them that there are only three episodes left, so anytime they want to bust it out and show us what they can really do, that'd be just fine. Especially puzzling since this season has, to my memory, involved fewer restrictions than any other. Some will argue that's just the problem -- they've already performed as well as they can. But I'm still not convinced. We've seen flashes. It just feels like there's more there. My gut tells me that despite some of the recent unfortunate eliminations, the level of competition is going to take a sudden and jarring jump in the finals and we're going to wonder where the heck these people were all along. Maybe not to the level of some previous seasons, but I expect improvement. Just a feeling. Or maybe it's just wishful thinking, because otherwise we really might have a dud on our hands.

Along those lines, am I the only one who feels as though there's almost more drama surrounding fan favorite right now? It's not something I ordinarily care about, but seriously... Fabio's dreamy and funny and Italian. Carla's hysterical, her positivity is infectious and she's coming on strong. Ariane had a dedicated following from those who felt she didn't receive enough respect and was unfairly eliminated. And even Jamie, though some find her prickly, will get a lot of support from those who respect her food and feel she went too soon, I bet. As I see it, this a four-way race, and a win for any of those four wouldn't surprise me one bit. Okay, that's officially as far as I think I've ever gotten from the core foodness of the competition. Back to the important stuff.

Interesting side note before we get to last week's episode and the rankings. There's a great video up on the Bravo site right now. It's painfully labeled "Chef Crushes", and some of the contestants take that literally (there's talk of Tom, and a crowd of Jamie Oliver admirers), but for those who approach it as a question about inspiration and admiration, it's interesting -- and sometimes amusing -- to see who the contestants name. Stefan naming Jean-Georges Vongerichten is both unsurprising and admirable (heck, the guy's one of my heroes). It seems Leah would do well to take a few more lessons from Thomas Keller, whom she named, by remembering that this is a guy whose reputation is for maintaining incredible focus in absolutely everything he does. Other predictable matches include Gene picking Morimoto, Radhika choosing Floyd Cardoz, Danny naming Bobby Flay, Melissa naming Bayless and Fabio mentioning Batali. And then Jamie answers in a manner that adds a little context to the mini-controversy surrounding her exceedingly brief edited comments about Ripert. She's just not interested in celebrity chefs, it would seem. And while there are those who will no doubt suggest there's something disingenuous about taking a veiled shot at the chef as media icon trend in an interview for a cooking reality show, a little more of that "look, can we just make good food here?" attitude wouldn't be a bad thing.

Anyway, sidebar over, great episode, result excepted (though not unwarranted). We get what amounts to a solid episode of skills challenges, which is particularly fun at this late stage when everybody... you know... has some skill. I'm always happy to see another prep race, and having three stages of very different fish is a fun and appropriate step up in difficulty from the apples of episode one. And just as in season three, I loved the elimination. I've seen some complain that the chefs weren't making their own food, and that's true, but that overlooks how critical it is to be able to execute somebody else's dish. Of course, when you're inspired by something you eat somewhere, you want to be able to reverse-engineer it so that you can incorporate it into your own work (chefs, like any other artists, are skilled borrowers). But more importantly, when you're a cook working your way up through the kitchen, your creativity isn't what gets you started. If you're lucky, you're working under somebody who cares about fostering up-and-comers -- as long as they get their work done -- and who might even consider something you've made for the menu. But you don't work your way up the ranks by making your food. You do it by replicating somebody else's food as flawlessly as possible. And you may have graduated from culinary school and have the most brilliant ideas in the world, but if a dishwasher who thinks canned pork and beans is the pinnacle of centuries of culinary achievement steps on the line one day and does a better job of frying that bread crust, or roasting the monkfish, or braising the celery, guess who gets to continue doing so and who doesn't? Point being, all of the contestants have been here before, and it's something they should all do well. When they don't screw up, that is.

Boring rankings this week. No movement whatsoever aside from the shift due to Jamie's ouster. Yet I still manage to write obscene amounts of commentary! Clearly, I'm the one with issues here.

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 Stefan Quickfires 4 6 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 4 6 1 Presuming he makes it through this week (can I jinx two top contenders in a row?!?), has there ever been a heavier favorite going into the finals? He certainly has the sabermatrician vote, having won MORE THAN A THIRD of all of the challenges thus far, evenly split between quickfires and eliminations. This week, he firmly establishes himself as the most technically skilled of the bunch, rocking both challenges, getting his THIRD double win of the season (more than all of the contestants of the previous four seasons combined, for those keeping track), and reproducing Ripert's lobster so well that some have speculated his was even better. But what I liked most about Stefan this week? It was this quote from his transcribed Q&A: "I really love Jamie, as a chef, as a person and how she is. She is a straight shooter like me. Lots of people think, that we comes across as arrogant or pompous. Trust me, it is just love and passion for the kitchen. She is by far one of the most creative chefs I have met. She was my biggest competitor on the show. She is fun, and has the sweetest smile and laugh on the face of the earth. And yes, Jamie is that chef I want to cook against in the finale. Boring without her." We can speculate about what percentage of this is professional admiration and what percentage of this is personal admiration, but my impression is that he's genuinely disappointed to have not faced his strongest competition in the finals. I know that feeling. It's the feeling that the win doesn't mean as much to you if your opponent wasn't at his/her best. It's the byproduct of a fierce competitive spirit, which is yet another mark in his column going into the finals.

2 Hosea Quickfires 1 6 0 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 1 3 3 I know a lot of people want to see Carla here, and I have to confess, I never dreamed I'd be considering her for the number two spot -- much less any spot -- this late in the season (and I did consider it). I'll get more into why I left Carla where she is shortly, but despite being on the bottom this week, I'm still giving some weight to his consistency over the course of he season, and also the fact that while they still look clumsy to me at times, he's making the kind of food that I can see the judges giving the title to. I was, however, a little taken aback by his quickfire. Some have expressed amazement that he wasn't practiced in cleaning eels, given that he runs a seafood restaurant. This doesn't bother me. If it's not on your menu, it's not on your menu, and it isn't as though eel is something you see a lot of in the States outside of a sushi context (though I personally consider that tragic -- eel rocks). But the fact that I knew more about HOW an eel is cleaned than he did? Very, very strange. Not knock-him-down-a-peg strange, but strange.

3 Carla Quickfires 0 3 2 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 2 4 3 How exactly did Carla become the X factor? I took comfort in the fact that apparently even her fellow chefs didn't see it coming. Though I wondered if the editors were intentionally keeping her under wraps, this week's sequester house video revealed that even Jamie seemed surprised by Carla's sudden "role reversal". She's gone from homey comfort cook to a classically trained French sauce wizard? The question, of course, is whether this is a blip or a trend. But before we get all carried away and start declaring her a major threat -- a popular label all of a sudden, especially among those who have said she was underestimated before -- let's remember that before these past two episodes, the only top recognition she'd received was for tart crust. Thhhhhhhhhhhat's it. Literally. Of course, this is Top Chef. All that matters is what you did this challenge. But my point is that this sudden departure from a previously well-established record is just that -- a sudden departure from a previously well-established record. Maybe she can bring something big for the last few episodes. Good golly, I hope she can. The finals may need it. But while I'm a hopeful skeptic, I'm still a skeptic when it comes to Carla. I believe that she'd put together a delicious, compelling meal for the final challenge, but I'm still not convinced it will be something I can see the judges hanging the title of Top Chef on. The real kicker is that my feeling right now is that she'll probably make the final challenge (and props to Elise for also picking up on this). If she survives next week -- and the inconsistency shown by Leah, Hosea and Fabio suggests that they won't all hit -- that gets her to New Orleans... nexus of big flavor, homey, multilayered American comfort food rooted in classical French tradition and technique. Presuming the finals stay true to form and the next-to-last challenge involves the foods of the exotic locale they're visiting, is there another location on the entire planet that could be more squarely in her wheelhouse? I mean, criminy, she just won a challenge with a creative, twenty minute gumbo last episode. If she makes it to the finals, she'll be competing for the title. Book it.

4 Leah Quickfires 3 4 3 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 3 2 This will be, I imagine, the other ranking that meets some resistance. People are just done with her. Done done done. And have been for a while. But despite waving her slacker flag yet again and getting lost in Ripert's miso sauce, she's still shone way, way more brightly than Fabio on the occasions when she has. What she needs is some rest. It's obvious (not to mention understandable) that she's fried. But I can't believe the finals won't motivate her, and I still believe she'll bring something big if she can hang on for one more episode. Unlike most, I'm rooting for her to make it, not because I think her attitude should be rewarded -- far from it -- but simply because I'm rooting for the most compelling finals from a food standpoint that we can get, and a rested and refocused Leah will help to provide just that.

5 Fabio Quickfires 0 2 4 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 1 5 1 That a guy who can't seem to shake technical problems did a fine job in Le Bernardin's kitchen isn't lost on me, but I think this is a matter of too little, too late. Add to this the fact that some of his recent dishes have looked just embarrassingly bad, and I don't mean that in terms of plating, but... well... yeah, that too. Leah has at least proven that she CAN belong in the finals, but after 22 challenges, I still haven't seen anything from Fabio that makes me believe he can perform at that level. Hey, I could totally be surprised. It's been that kind of a season. But charm aside, much as I like the guy (and I still do... a lot), he just hasn't brought much to this competition. And incidentally, here's hoping he walks away with everything he brought... including all ten digits.

6 Jamie Quickfires 0 5 3 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 2 6 3 I'll say it again, this one hurt even more than Dale Talde last season, partially because it may have been an even more egregious example of a chef going before her time, but also because of the impact it's likely to have on the finals. When Dale went down, you still had Richard and Stephanie and Antonia. At first blush, with the understanding that anything can happen, Jamie's ouster looks to have turned a two horse race into a laugher. And the manner in which she went down is frustrating as well, since she's been one of the more technically sound competitors. But unfortunately, this is the stage of the race where if you make a mistake, there probably won't be somebody else who made a worse one anymore. And as I mentioned earlier in the season, she seems to founder a little when out of her element -- an impression bolstered, I think, by her claim that she had a hard time getting inspired by this challenge. Speaking of which, to address the controversy du jour, while I don't want to say her comments about Ripert's food and the ensuing discussion is much ado about nothing, I do think it's been blown out of proportion, especially considering how quick the cut was and the fact that it appears to have been taped immediately after her elimination. Ripert's food may be minimal, but it's still fussy, and there are plenty of chefs who are anti-fussy as a matter of philosophy. To be clear, I don't know this to be the case with Jamie (and to be clearer, I like fussy when it's good!). I'm kind of supposing based on what we've seen from her. But while the comment came off as rather dismissive, I suspect it was a lot more innocuous than it sounded, and Tom seems to agree. Bottom line is that not only was she one of the most compelling contestants this season from both a technical and creative standpoint, she also comported herself in an unusually calm and mature manner, and a season full of that speaks more to me than an offhand comment ripe for varied interpretations -- all of which makes this one a sad, sad elimination. She was the chef about whom I was most excited entering the season, and at this late stage of the season she still was, even before I visited Absinthe. Jamie is a confident and talented chef who knows what she wants to do and is going to go right back to doing it. I'm confident she'll fall into the category of runners-up we haven't heard the last of.

EPISODE TWELVE SPOILERS AHEAD!

Huzzah for eggs! There's much talk in the preview of eggs being the true test of a chef, and while I don't know that I'd call it THE true test, it's certainly one of the better barometers. They're tricky little buggers, eggs, and so critical to so many techniques. This challenge should be fun. As far as the elimination goes, I'm not sure what the heck is going on, other than a little unintentional butchering back in the kitchen. They draw knives to see which celebrity chef they get, but surely they won't be cooking just for that chef? Presuming they do, though, I actually think Fabio's in trouble. Two things about what I've seen in the preview bug me. First -- and I don't understand why nobody ever gets this -- just because a chef is known for MG that doesn't mean that's all he wants to eat! Time and time again, contestants try to impress MG chefs with their funky techniques, and they fail to understand that the MG chefs who succeed do so because they understand the techniques are only valuable so far as they serve the ingredients. It looks like Fabio busts out the chemistry set again, which is all fine and good, but despite his olive success I don't trust him not to fall into that trap. Then he draws Lidia Bastianich from the knife block. I'm still not sure exactly what that means, and I'm not convinced this is a good thing. If he ends up doing Italian, he can't exceed expectations... he can only disappoint. And one challenge away from the finals, you can cook well and still go home if everybody else is just a little more impressive than you.

I'm ready for New Orleans. Let's get this show on the road. Literally.

Top Chef - S5E11 Postmortem

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!

Well, this sucks.

First off, in my defense, I'd like to point out that while I've already read the J-word three times in the comments, Jamie was actually eliminated months ago. It's not my fault!!!

Secondly, sorry this took so long to get up tonight. Whoever redesigned the Bravo site should be shot. It was always broken, but at least you could find everything with a little determination. Now, you can't even get part two of Jamie's exit interview? Epic fail, Bravo.

Most importantly, what a fricking bummer. I'm not suggesting the judges' call was unwarranted, and Jamie doesn't appear to object to it either, but that doesn't make it suck any less.

No more commentary tonight. Too depressed.

P.S. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

UPDATE : Okay, I lied. A couple of quick thoughts. Lop off the last two minutes, and it's a great freaking episode from start to finish. Those who are pissed at the result would do well to consider the episode that got them there as Exhibit A for why you can't give up on this show, no matter how disappointing an elimination may be.

Look, I know some are angry, but raising the producer boogeyman? C'mon. Much as it hurts, Jamie blew it, she knew it before her dish even left the kitchen, and it was written all over her face for the rest of the episode. Yes, everybody on the block made mistakes. But while Hosea and Leah made mistakes that made their dishes less than the originals, Jamie was the only one who had the misfortune of making a mistake that rendered her dish inedible. There's no getting around that.

Lastly, has Hootie just been lying in the weeds this whole time, or have the editors been waiting to spring her on us? For nine episodes she cooks hearty, soulful American food and then she's suddenly all about classic French technique? I still haven't seen anything that changes my assessment of her chances in the finals -- but I feel like we're suddenly getting a completely different chef. Weird.

Top Chef - S5E10 Power Rankings

Up is down! Right is wrong! Andrea makes chili! WITH MEAT!!!

This week was a little weird for me. This is, I believe, the first time I've ever watched an episode already knowing the result. It was certainly the first time I've done so after having read so much commentary. So perhaps the fact that I was already prepared for Jeff's departure and was expecting a big steaming pile had something to do with it, but I'm going to take the minority position and say that I liked this episode. Quite a bit, in fact!

The quickfire, not so much, though that had more to do with the chefs and less to do with the challenge. Make something good with oats. Nothing wrong with that! We're not talking about nasty pre-processed junk here (unless you're talking about some of the other oat products on display, but I didn't see any of the chefs reach for them). We're talking about a worthy core ingredient. Worthy of frying, anyway, which is apparently all you can do with oats. I'm a little disappointed that the lesson learned from the creativity of the full crew basically boiled down to "oats make a good crust for frying". At the same time, I have no idea what else I would have done with oats and a time limit, so I find it hard to criticize too much.

The elimination challenge that everybody seemed to hate so much though? I dug it! I thought it was fun! I would've liked to see them get at least half an hour or more (though the degree to which they were allowed to prep ahead of time is a little unclear), but otherwise it didn't bother me. Would it have sucked if Stefan had been the only one to lose his head-to-head and been forced to go home by default? Sure, but that would have been his fault for losing his head-to-head, not the challenge's fault (and, incidentally, he appears to agree). I'm not sure why giving five culinary students tiebreaker power was such a big deal either. If you get three of the four main judges, it isn't an issue. There have been plenty of times when the judges have gone to diner comment cards as an unofficial tiebreaker when they're split and having a difficult time making the call. Presumably, five culinary students are at least as worthy of breaking a tie as a bunch of random diners. As for the idea that we shouldn't be seeing this kind of challenge so late in the season, I dunno. There were no dumb surprises, they were granted a lot of flexibility, they were doing real, straight-up cooking and they were masters of their own destiny, which is more than we can say for a lot of challenges. And really, they had TWO ways to survive: either win your matchup, OR do a better job than any of the other losers. If you can't do either of those, I think it's hard to argue that you deserve to stay, regardless of the format that got you there. Besides which, looking at it purely from a production standpoint, bringing in seven previous contestants is both a big pain and expensive. If you like the idea behind the challenge, the earlier in the season it is, the bigger the logistical nightmare to make it happen.

One thing I will say is that this challenge is a perfect example of why I'd love to be able to see the challenge rule sheets that Lee Anne gives to all of the contestants. For those who aren't aware, Lee Anne has mentioned giving a little summary to all of the chefs outlining the rules of the challenge and any other pertinent information right down to a list of pantry items at times. We know the dish was supposed to reflect the city. But was it supposed to be football fare or not? What kind of prep was allowed the day before and what wasn't? It just isn't clear and for the obsessives among us, at least, it makes a big difference in how we see the chefs' performances. Can Lee Anne's rule sheets be added to the website, guys? Pleeeeeeeeease? After Judges' Table raw footage (as if), that's probably number two on my completely unrealistic Top Chef research materials wish list.

Anyway, I was expecting angst and I got entertainment. Episode 10 was good to me. 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 Stefan Quickfires 3 5 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 3 5 1 Tough call for the top spot this week, but for lack of a big shift in momentum, I'm inclined to leave the top two where they are, even if I consider them more of a 1 and 1a. I might've dinged him for losing his head-to-head, but reports seem to be that it was solid food, just the lesser of the two dishes. I'd like to get some sense of what he was doing from the recipe, but while we've joked about minimal, incomplete recipes before, this one takes the phenomenon to comical new heights. The instructions, in their entirety, read "Mix all ingredients together and serve". Thanks, guys. His quickfire was an elegant little number though, and Conant had some really nice words for it in his blog interview. In any case, I'm disinclined to give much weight to Stefan's bottom appearance this week. It would have been really impressive if he'd gone the length of the season without standing on the chopping block, but everybody's there at some point and if anybody is capable of simply standing up, dusting himself off and moving on, it's Stefan. He may call himself a douche a few times first, but I don't imagine he'll be any worse for the wear.

2 Jamie Quickfires 0 5 2 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 2 6 2 Jamie just keeps on rolling, doing her thing and doing it well. Incidentally, though the only remaining contestant with fewer wins is Fabio (it's a three way tie just above him), Jamie is actually the most consistent top performer in my count, pulling in eleven top mentions to Stefan's ten and Hosea's eight. Her quickfire -- a little out of the box for her -- looks like a fresh angle on the now ubiquitous (and usually mediocre) coconut fried shrimp, working oats into the crust and serving them with a nectarine / fresno chile / cucumber salsa and avocados blended with crème fraîche, cucumbers and lime. As for her elimination dish, I'm completely ignorant in the ways of cioppino (despite last week's San Francisco trip -- writeup of Absinthe soon, provided I get my act together) so I have no basis of comparison, but it seems like a nice dish, and Conant practically tripped over his tongue praising her process. Apparently, she looks like a chef. Cooks like one too! Another strong week and yet more indication that this is, essentially, a two person race.

3 Hosea Quickfires 1 5 0 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 1 3 2 That said, Hosea's hanging around, and with the eliminations of the last two episodes and the inconsistency of those below him, he's almost looking like a lock for the finals at this point. His quickfire was a bit of a take it or leave it proposition. Wienerschnitzel with oats in the breading is still wienerschnitzel, and while it might have intrigued me had he brought the oats to the dish by choice, here it seemed more like shoehorning oats into a dish he does without them all the time. His elimination dish, the fried salmon roll with ginger-blackberry coulis and sesame apple salad, looks -- like so many of his other creations -- a little clumsy to me, but the guy brings flavor and is making mouths happy, which is the most important thing. And though it's already been said by the judges, it bears repeating. Keeping the salmon rare in a fried roll like that is, indeed, an impressive little technical achievement. I'm less interested in Hosea's potential for the finals than I was in Radhika's or Jeff's, but he brings some interesting stuff to the table, he's a consistently solid performer who probably won't do a faceplant and, barring the resurgence of Leah, he's the only one left who looks like he might be something more than a sideshow in a final battle with Stefan and Jamie.

4 Carla Quickfires 0 3 1 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 2 3 3 Who are you and what have you done with Hootie?!? Ah, what the hell. She's earned it. I waffled on whether to put Carla or Leah here, and I still think Leah has far more upside, but there comes a point where you have to stop ranking what these chefs could cook and start ranking what they're actually cooking. Last week, I said that Carla has yet to make a single dish that I could see in the finals. Well, this week she made two. Her quickfire tofu was marinated in soy, garlic, sriracha and a mix of citrus zest, then seared and crusted with oats, pecans, orange zest, ginger and garlic and finished in the oven. Meanwhile, she sits it atop a nice looking lentil and oat salad tossed with onion, bell peppers, pecans, scallions, snow peas, thyme, parsley, oregano and a bunch of citrus. Then she busts out a gumbo in 20 minutes. I don't think it was actually "gumbo", per se (how could you do that in 20 minutes?), but it was a creative little spin on the dish, it definitely hit the thematic mark, and it was tasty. End of story. I still don't think Carla has a prayer in the finals should she make it. But I think she has a good shot at getting there, and if she does, I expect it'll be a respectable defeat. She doesn't wow people, but she makes 'em happy, and while I don't know that that distinction would help her all that much in the finals, I suspect it's a mantle she'd happily accept. And that'd make two caterers in the finals, BTW, assuming Stefan makes it. Who'da thunk?

5 Leah Quickfires 3 4 3 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 3 1 Leah is just a big disappointment right now, though still a salvageable one. She would have borne the brunt of my wrath this week if I thought she was dissing chicken livers in the manner that some seem to believe, but watching it carefully, I think this is a false impression to chalk up to editing, intentional or no. Leah says two sentences: "I hear that Nikki's doing something with chicken livers," and "I don't want to sound too cocky, but I think I'm going to beat her." Problem is, I'm pretty sure they were stitched together, and even if they weren't I'm not convinced there aren't plausible alternate readings of that line. She may very well be looking down her nose at chicken livers, but it ambiguous at best from what's there so I'm not about to ding her for it. Her branzino with mussels, tomato, escarole and bacon, though interesting, isn't quite coming together in my head, and apparently it didn't come together on Conant's tongue, either. Her NY strip with creamed corn, arugula and tomatoes was good but ultrabasic, and she isn't going to beat Jamie at her own game. I know I say it every week, but I firmly believe she'll be a force in the finals if she hangs on -- so much so that I hope she does! But I'd say surviving to make the finals and going out with a whimper are pretty much even odds at this point.

6 Fabio Quickfires 0 2 4 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 1 4 1 It's been said both in the comments here and elsewhere that Fabio is just a more charming male version of Nikki, and Nikki's appearance this week only served to hammer this point home. Most of his dishes are poorly conceived and clumsily assembled, and on the rare occasions when he gets certain elements to cick, they're undercut by gross technical errors elsewhere in the dish. Add to this that all of his plates look terrible -- not that anything is going to look good on a yellow and green Packers plate (yes, I'm from Chicago) -- and he's become this season's whipping boy. Unlike many, I still find the guy just as charming as I did back in November, but he should have been gone a long time ago. His quickfire was just a poorly conceived dish, cramming sautéed corn and pancetta into what looks like a really, really heavy eggplant roll with bulletproof oat armor. Then he kills the deer again, and I'm not buying his excuse for a second. A plastic plate and a little bit of sauerkraut? That doesn't take your meat from a perfect medium rare to well-done. I think he knew he was on the precipice and was grasping for plausible deniability. He's lucky to still be around, he knows it, and his survival was reportedly by virtue of the fact that the judges dug his sauce, even if it only appears to be a blend of three different mustards from the recipe. I give him full marks for embracing his city, but of all the remaining contestants, he's the only one who looks like he just doesn't belong in the finals at all.

7 Jeff Quickfires 0 4 2 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 0 2 2 While I'm disappointed that Jeff's creativity and refinement won't be present in the finals (Stefan, Jamie, Radhika and Jeff was my personal wishlist as of two weeks ago), we can't say an ouster like this didn't seem a strong possibility, even if Jeff didn't see it coming. He made some of the most compelling dishes of the season, but in between his successes, stuff that looked great on paper elicited shrugs from the judges. Despite Jeff's implication in his exit interview that there were other factors at work in his elimination, the truth is that his food has was a frequent target for this kind of reception long before even the most hardcore conspiracy theorists would suggest the judges could be attempting to create storylines for the finals. More frustrating is that Jeff still doesn't seem to get it. He says he learned a lot from the experience, but he doesn't seem to have learned the most important lesson for him: that more doesn't equal better. And as much as he ragged on Josie's "ceviche", it was his dish that was the big tactical error. You just can't do ceviche in 20 minutes. So rather than try to fake it, Josie had the good sense to go way outside the box. The problem is that when questions of authenticity might arise, the closer you get to "authentic", the more expectations people bring to the table. By doing something hot with tortilla strips and whatnot (no recipe available, sadly), Josie made it clear that "ceviche" was just a play. Jeff's method, however, was close enough to traditional that it came across as half-assed rather than creative. But even setting expectations aside, I'm not convinced it was a good idea to begin with. Looking at the recipe, I can see where it might have across as flat. You get cold seafood in ceviche marinade ingredients and you expect that explosive flavor, but I would expect that effectively poaching and dressing the shrimp would result in a much lighter flavor that would seem like it simply lacked oomph. In the recipe, Jeff even seems to concede the point by suggesting that you go the poaching route only if there isn't enough time to fully cure it. And one of the lessons of Top Chef is that if you find yourself dumbing down elements for lack of time, stop and do something else instead. I would rather have seen Fabio go, and it seems like it could have gone either way, but once again, I can't quibble with the judges' conclusion. But he was full of neat ideas and here's hoping that with the benefit of some time off, Jeff will take some of the season's criticisms to heart. His exit interview got a rather charitable edit for broadcast, so it doesn't look good... but here's hoping.

EPISODE ELEVEN SPOILERS AHEAD!

Welcome back, Eric Ripert! Thanks for not wearing a Santa suit this time.

The Bravo site has kindly identified the two chefs in the running for the quickfire win, but I won't reveal them here. While the rule around these parts is generally that anything broadcast or posted on the Bravo site is fair game, I'm among those who are getting increasingly annoyed by how much they've been revealing as of late. At any rate, it's a prep race which I love, especially at this late stage in the season when you generally don't have to worry about chefs tripping over their shoelaces. Should be fun.

Oh, hey, we're shooting in New York! Chicagoans (your humble author included) were frustrated last season by the show's underutilization of their fair city, but season four was practically the Blues Brothers Cooking Hour when compared to how well season five has utilized New York thus far. This week's elimination takes place at Le Bernardin, which means creative and exceptionally refined seafood. Stefan should be fine. Jamie's style isn't exactly fine dining, but she's meticulous in her preparations and I expect she'll do well. Hosea's food is a little rough around the edges for a place like Le Bernardin, but he's ostensibly a seafood specialist so you'd think that would be a point in his favor. Despite her fish issues, Leah's successes have been of the creative and refined variety, so this episode might have comeback written all over it for her. Even if his flavors are on, I expect Fabio's sloppiness will stick in Ripert's craw, and unless Carla's throwaway bit about being classically trained and needing to get back to that was impressive foreshadowing on the editors' part, this doesn't exactly seem like a challenge tailor made for the comfort food queen, so I'd peg her for trouble as well. Here's hoping Hootie has a little more surprise love up her sleeve. It's time for Fabio to go.

Top Chef - S5E10 Postmortem

Hey, all! I’m traveling and working on a project that has me pretty tied up at the moment, so I couldn’t watch tonight’s show or get the postmortem up. I’ll be back for the Power Rankings in a few days, but in the meantime, my buddy Jake is taking over postmortem duties so we can get the discussion rolling.

(Note: I'm filling in for Dom for the night -- he'll be back soon! Be gentle with me, Stefan.)

Well, that was a weird challenge, wasn't it? I mean, I can't quibble too much with the outcome, although it looked for a bit like it could have gone really badly.

Based on the editing, I think it's being implied that Jeff, while a creative and hard-working chef, just hasn't been hitting on all flavor cylinders. As Stefan pointed out, I can't actually tell from licking my television (it's a little dusty anyway). But that's what a lot of the comments from Tom, the guest judge, and Jeff himself seem to imply. Maybe he's the anti-Ariane.

That said, I was sure it was going to be Fabio going home based on the overcooked venison. It seemed like everyone else, Fabio included, thought so too. Looks like we can get a monkeyass comment for three weeks in a row, so that's a plus.

Although I'm going based on impressions again, it felt like Stefan's dish was pretty solid. It didn't get criticized much, and it sounded like a lot of the comments that were spoken while they were showing Stefan's salads were actually about Fabio's. Tricksy editors.

Here's my problem with the elimination challenge: Stefan and Jamie both split the judges' votes. Jamie won an extra "fan" or two, so ended up on the winner's side where Stefan ended up a loser. That seems like a pretty arbitrary distinction to me, especially since some of the winners' dishes didn't seem all that great.

Props to Carla for knocking this one out of the park. It was kind of a quirky challenge even aside from the winning/losing criteria, with only 20 minutes of actual cooking time and the constraints of cooking to a specific regional theme. It looks like they may also have been limited to, or in some way constrained by, a basket of "thematic" ingredients. Not positive how that worked though. "Sometimes you gotta have quick love," she said. I'm so with you on that one, Hootie hoo. Enjoy watching the Steelers wreck the Cardinals on Sunday.

How does this affect your personal rankings? I'm not knocking Stefan down in mine -- dude dropped one after winning five in a row. I'm not worried. Plus, I'm guessing he was responsible for the "Top Chef / Douches" scorecard, which made my night. But now I'll get out of the way and let you discuss.

UPDATE : Waheeeeey! I disappear for one freaking episode and all Top Chef hell breaks loose? (Dom again, BTW) The Florida chef who spent years on a fishing boat goes down for ceviche? Hootie wins a solo elimination? Stefan is beaten by Andrea?!?!?!?! I can't even imagine how this all went down, and I can't watch the episode until very late Friday night. Crazy. Anyway, talk amongst yourselves. I'll just have to sit back and watch for now.