Top Chef Power Rankings

Top Chef - Season 7 Postmortem

Apologies for the delay, folks. Blame Pavle over at FnB. Alcohol just makes me sleepy these days (you can enable me anytime, Pavle).

So season seven draws to a close, and while most folks, myself included, seemed to be pleased with a strong finish, you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who didn't think this was one of the less compelling seasons. And most people found it disappointing enough that I think it might be troubling for the series, if not for a certain late-season development that we'll get to in a minute.

The question, of course, is what went wrong? The challenges certainly seem to have survived Lee Anne's departure (though she's still dearly missed) and Eric Ripert did a fine job as the new substitute judge. So where's the issue? Top Chef has always walked a fine line between a hardcore competition and a reality series with everything that entails. To oversimplify, you have the food and you have the personalities, and while some value one above the other (I'm more concerned with the former, though I don't deny the importance of the latter), I suspect we can all agree that the show's at its best when you have both.

The problem with season seven was that for a long stretch, it seemed to have neither.

We've seen that people can get excited when the food is great and the personalities are a little flat and/or focused (season six). And we've seen that when the food is lacking, if there are people competing who we truly enjoy watching, we can forgive food that's a little less compelling (season five). Though in the latter situation, I stress the word "enjoy." There's clearly an audience for shows featuring despicable individuals acting terribly towards each other, but you won't find many of them here, and while the elves just can't help themselves sometimes, I think Top Chef is best when it refuses to get down in the gutter with many other reality shows.

Season seven, however, just came off as flat in both departments. On the personalities end, there were certainly some curious folks. Can we all agree that love him or hate him, Angelo possessed enough weird for all four finalists? I'm not sure there was a lack of quirkiness. I'm more inclined to think it was a matter of a lack of people to root for. And I don't know that there's a formula, per se. There was just kind of an intangible sense that this season's cast wasn't compelling, at least from a reality show standpoint. And I suspect this is simply the nature of the business when you're in reality show casting. You pick a bunch of personalities, throw them in a room together and hope something watchable comes out. Sometimes what comes out is less than you thought you put in.

But you guys know me, and the personalities are a distant second consideration next to the main event, which is the food. Though it may be an unpopular sentiment, and you can never say with any degree of certainty if you're not sitting at the table tasting, let me first say that I don't think the quality of food was lacking this season. Certainly not in the back half of the season. But even in the front half, when I look back at what was produced, browse old recipes, look at the leaders and eventual winners, I can think of multiple other seasons that -- on a dish by dish basis -- I found less compelling than season seven. And Tom came right out and said that Kevin's finale menu was the best finale menu he's had to date. Even if you believe he's prone to hyperbole (may very well be the case), I don't see him making that statement if it wasn't at least one of the better ones. The problem, I think, was that the food didn't come across as well as it could or should have, and I think there were two contributing factors that I hope the elves consider going forward.

The first, I think, is a casting issue. Modern American cuisine is such a hodgepodge of flavors, techniques and influences that it's difficult to define, as it is with any big tent. It also means that while the differences between the chefs who practice it might be fairly evident when the plate's on the table in front of you, it means that drawing the lines between them is a little more difficult on camera. In essence, much of this season's food looked the same. There wasn't much in the way of ethnic specialists. There weren't any flashy MG chefs. There wasn't the contemporary yet vaguely foreign feel of a Stefan, or the technically sound homey feel of a Carla, or the San Francisco clean of a Jamie, or the rustic yet deceptively sophisticated pork-centricity of a Kevin Gillespie, or the clean simplicity of an Antonia, or the clumsy-looking but awesome-tasting of a Dave... you get the point. Angelo aside, the season seven contestants were very difficult to pigeonhole, which isn't a bad thing in the restaurant world, but I think it's a liability on Top Chef, and I think this season demonstrated why. It's easier to follow the contestants and get excited about them when there are clear lines to be drawn between their styles.

This was exacerbated, however, by what I consider the larger issue, which is one of editing. We have all come to expect deception from the editors on Top Chef. And not just in small ways. Of course, they want to sharpen personalities for dramatic purposes -- make the lovable contestants more lovable, make the jerks bigger jerks, make the comedians funnier -- that's part of the reality show game, it's to be expected and other than the places where it seems like they're manufacturing controversy out of whole cloth, I can't get that bent out of shape about it because that isn't where my primary interest in the show lies anyway (and in their defense, in the reunion episode Tiffany made it pretty clear that peagate wasn't completely an invention of the producers, even if they played it up). But this season, it seemed like the task of trying to fight through the editing to see the food was unusually difficult. I'm trying to decide whether this is a trend, an exception, or rose-colored glasses. But my gut feeling was that this season, it was harder than ever to trust the way the food was presented. It's as though the editors are so concerned with preserving suspense in that last minute of the show that they're doing whatever they can to obscure the nature of the food. And this is really, really bothersome. If we aren't given an accurate idea of what's on the plate, with the accompanying judges' comments both good and bad, then the food is no longer a part of the show. It becomes the MacGuffin, a nondescript, meaningless element that exists solely to drive the plot. We've always relied on the blogs for context and detail in the wake of the episodes, but I worry that it's increasingly becoming a matter of "Okay, we just watched the show. Now let's go read the blogs to hear what *REALLY* happened." And that's that kind of thing that, for me, completely destroys the show.

Hey, Elves... if you're reading, it's okay to have somebody run away with it sometimes. Hearing the judges' opinions -- their real opinions -- provides far, far more enjoyment than a little bit of suspense in minute 59. You have articulate, interesting judges and you've mostly done a good job of assembling interesting chefs. Trust that the competition is interesting enough on its own and that you don't have to play sneaky editing games to make it so, and I think the result will be a stronger show. Please. Because it's getting really tiresome, even for (obsessively) dedicated fans of the show.

Thankfully, the Elves rounded out the season by pulling a rabbit out of their hats. Just when the calls that Top Chef had jumped the shark were starting to reach a crescendo, they announce (after a leak) that next season will be an all-stars season, featuring favorites and finalists from the previous seven. I'm sure somebody will find something to be annoyed about, but really, if you can't get excited about this, you never should have been watching the show in the first place. Plus, the addition of Bourdain as a regular judge is a major, major coup. Here's hoping this won't be a one-season stint. The only thing I'm dreading? The preseason rankings. Talk about an impossible task.

So until then, we'll consider this post the signoff until either season eight of Top Chef, or another season of Masters, whichever comes first. While I appreciate the enthusiastic e-mails, I just don't have it in me -- time or energy -- to post about another TC spinoff, particularly one that covers the part of the menu I personally find the least interesting (pure preference, no value judgment), and includes some reportedly... um... oversized personalities. Sounds like a recipe for a weekly desire to claw out my eyeballs, even if I had the time. And this blog has always simply been about what interests me, and I don't want that to change. So I'm going to pass on Just Desserts and focus on my regular content for a while. But I'll leave this post open for any TC discussion you like, and I'll try to get some sort of prominent link right on the front page of the blog for easy access before it gets too buried.

And with that, I'll sign off. Thanks again to everybody who comes here to read and discuss and participate. I love that the folks who comment here are interested in the food, and try for the most part to stay above the usual mudslinging. It certainly makes the show a whole lot more enjoyable for me, even though it feels like I can't spend as much time responding directly to comments as I did a few years ago. Please don't read it as a lack of desire -- purely a lack of time. And as usual, there's an actual blog here about plenty of things non-TC, and while readership numbers aren't something that drive me (my ad revenue isn't based on-- hey, wait... I have no ad revenue!), food discussion surely does, and I love hearing all of your thoughts on things unrelated to Top Chef as well. To you folks, it's business as usual, minus Top Chef.

To those solely interested in Top Chef, though, thanks for hanging out, I hope you enjoyed the posts and the discussion, and I hope you'll check back in when the next season is dated.

Thanks, all!

Top Chef - S7E14 Postmortem

Well, it's nice to see that a lackluster season finished strong. I said on Monday that I'd be a little disappointed if Kevin won since I didn't feel he'd established the same body of work the other two did over the course of the season, but having now watched it happen, I can't say I mind. The bottom line is that everybody came to cook, the producers set them up to succeed rather than setting them up to fail, and the best man of the day won. Sure, it would have been nicer if Angelo was at full strength, and it would have been nicer if Ed had the sense to do his own dessert (is it 100% clear whether that was his recipe or whether he turned the conception over to Ilan as well?), but nobody was killed by lame last-minute twists and nobody dropped the ball.

And Hung rocks.

Gotta crash. You guys chat. Season postmortem next week!

UPDATE : I wrote more below, but I'm really flabbergasted that anybody thinks Mike V. was responsible for Kevin's success. This was a Kevin menu, through and through, not a Mike V. menu. Kevin's issue was never one of ability, it was one of consistency. At his best, he was as good as any other chef in the competition. We got his best last night.

Top Chef - S7E13 Power Rankings

And it is thus that we reach the final Power Rankings of season seven.

...

Is that applause for the Power Rankings, or because the season's almost over?

Okay, okay, we'll save that discussion for the season postmortem next week. In the meantime, if I may be so bold as to ask, what the heck is up with you people? We finally have some fantastic food and the discussion turns to the genesis of Angelo's insecurity, Kelly's cameraworthiness and the finer points of New England douchebaggery? Singapore! Street food! Piles of exotic ingredients labeled in foreign languages!

*sigh*... I guess it just goes to show that the crowd is really ready for this season to be over.

Personally, this is the kind of episode that makes me want to cry. Not having anything at all to do with the cooking competition, I just want an hour in the hawker market. It would make my year. And some pretty awesome-looking food resulted. But we'll save the details for the actual rankings.

Final Power Rankings of season seven... go!

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 Ed Quickfires 3 4 3 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 3 6 2 No-doubter here, right? Ed's now the winner of the last two and four of the lsat six challenges. He looks comfortable and cocky and ready to waltz right through to the win. And he gets one of the strongest judge reactions I think I've ever seen for a dish, last season included. The chili banana fritters aren't rocket science. They're essentially plain old banana fritters with the addition of red curry and sesame seeds, but sometimes that's all it takes. I think you have to consider Ed the favorite going into the finale no matter who his sous chef is.

2 Angelo Quickfires 4 7 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 2 4 2 Angelo, on the other hand, just looks lost all over again. And we're led to believe that we may be losing HIM this week through no fault of his own. As mentioned earlier, however, I don't trust the elves' editing for a moment. This is clearly a wait-and-see event. And it would be a shame to lose him because though he continually seems to be teetering on the precipice, he's making great food. The lamb tartare was exceedingly simple -- some tapioca, shallots and cilantro, rambutan pickled in lime juice, oil flavored with fenugreek, coriander, white pepper and cumin -- but it was seductive, to use food vocabulary more suited to Angelo's milieu. Sadly, there's no recipe for his other elimination dish, but I also love his quickfire if for no other reason than the fact that he used frog. One of things I always find curious (read: annoying) is that when traveling in southern China, frog is everywhere. I eat it there all the time and love it. But how often have you seen frog on a Chinese menu in the States? A shame. At any rate, though he finished the regular season strong, there's just no way he's number one heading into the finale. The elves took the chefs to Singapore, and Ed took Angelo to school. 'Nuff said.

3 Kevin Quickfires 1 5 4 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 1 4 5 Kevin is right in the hunt, though. While I'd be a little disappointed to see him win because he hasn't built up the same body of work over the course of the season that Angelo and Ed have, his peaks have been good enough to take this thing home if he has a good day. And if more of Singapore sneaks into the finale, he's handling the Asian ingredients with aplomb. While I'm in the camp that's a little surprised he didn't at least give himself a passing familiarity with the wok, his strategy of focusing on flavors is serving him well. And in the end, that's probably more important. Don't write him off. He could surprise.

4 Kelly Quickfires 2 3 5 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 2 4 4 Well, I'm disappointed, though not surprised, that Kelly didn't make the finale. I wanted her to have one more shot to make *her* food, because I'm betting it would have surprised a lot of people. But we'll never know. To her credit, Tom was very complimentary towards her dishes both on screen and in his blog. It sounds like she didn't go home because she didn't cook good food, but rather because the other three simply cooked better food. Which is exactly the way you want to go out. How nice is it that both eliminations leading up to the finale were largely error-free and the result of a choice between winning dishes rather than a choice between losing dishes? This crew really came on strong at the end.

So that's it. One more dinner. Biggest question is how many people are cooking. Here's hoping for a minimum of the twisty-turny. I'm not holding my breath.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S7E13 Postmortem

Yowza... another barn burner.

I'm unwilling to take the cynical tack, here. Yes, much of this season has been subpar. But I'll gladly take an exciting finish and enjoy it for what it is. Of course, the preview is setting us up for a colossal disappointment. This would be a bummer of the highest order. Or it's the typical elves preview bait and switch. Which is why I won't be giving it another thought until next Wednesday.

So here's the setup: The chef who should be in his element but is in danger of caving in on himself, the chef who took a while to get rolling but is incredibly self-confident and maxing out his ability at exactly the right time, and the dark horse who has amassed a third of the wins of either of the other two, but has turned out some great dishes and could easily play spoiler if either of the first two stumble even the tiniest little bit.

Has the makings for a great finale! Provided everybody cooks, of course.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S7E12 Power Rankings

Will somebody please explain to me where these chefs have been all season?

Now do you wonder if it's just been a big season-long missed opportunity? Maybe it's just a fluke. But it sure was nice to see these guys cooking their hearts out and producing food that looked great.

I'm going to be pretty useless when it comes to intelligent commentary on the quickfire. The thing is, I don't know wine. I really don't know wine. And it's not for lack of respect and interest. It's just that you can read as much as you like, but the only way to really learn and understand wine is to drink a lot of it. And I just don't drink all that frequently. So while the food looked pretty good for the most part, even if some dishes looked a little more interesting than others, I couldn't tell you much about how it paired with the wine. Except that Kevin did, in fact, kind of screw himself.

And while I appreciate the idea of following the restrictions for freeze-drying, I'm really glad the judges didn't weigh them too heavily, particularly going into the finals. Just cook good food and try to maybe kind of half follow some of the recommendations. Good enough.

Incidentally, is this season all about really stiff dinner guests or what? Don't get me wrong, I went to nerd school. These are my peeps and I'll take NASA nerdy stiff over CIA creepy stiff any day. But I can't think of a season when we've seen so many people looking so uncomfortable on camera. End of meaningless tangent.

I went back and forth over whether to consider this a traditional Power Rankings, or more of a reset preview for the finals. Then I decided it probably wouldn't have much of an effect on where I placed everybody.

One quick side note is that the Power Rankings come to you this week from Mexico City. Which is great. Except that apparently the Bravo site and Hulu won't stream video to Mexico. So I apologize for being a little handicapped this week. No exit interviews, extended judges' table or episode 13 previews for me.

That said, on with it!

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 Angelo Quickfires 4 7 1 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 2 4 2 And Angelo's brief two-week stint out of the top spot comes to a close. He and Ed were neck-and-neck going into this episode as far as I was concerned, and Tiffany's ouster sent him right back to the top. Not that it wasn't at least as much his doing. That's two creative, distinctive, great-looking dishes that he put out. No battles of attrition or TKOs here. They both looked like winners. The black salt seared foie was done with a fennel and thyme salad, and a white wine and butter based broth with cumin and basil. Asian influence, entirely contemporary. Ditto the short rib recipe, which has one of the funniest opening lines I think I've seen: "Don't season short ribs and grill." It's a braised short rib with horseradish crème fraîche, mushrooms and pea puree. Traditional enough. But the short ribs are done with soy, pineapple and ginger, the mushrooms are pickled with Japanese vinegar, and the short rib is topped with butter-toasted panko with candied ginger and juniper. That strikes me as a difficult set of flavors to pull together, but he does it to the tune of a win. The finals have tripped up far stronger favorites than Angelo so I'm reluctant to go into the realm of prediction, but you almost have to consider Singapore home field advantage for him, and if he performs like this I think he's the man to beat. So, since he appears to be once again operating at peak efficiency, I'm putting him back at the top going into the finals.

2 Ed Quickfires 2 3 3 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 2 5 2 Ed's quickfire wasn't exactly distinctive (and it was awfully similar to one or two of his previous entries), so I'm going to helpfully refer to it as "a dish," and leave it at that. But boy howdy, they weren't kidding when they said his elimination dish was busy. I felt like I had to stare at it for ten minutes to figure out what was going where. There are two types of lamb, marinated chops and seasoned ground lamb skewers on licorice, there are couscous fritters, there's an eggplant puree, there are cucumbers in yogurt, there's a stewed pepper and onion mixture, there's a lamb sauce with veal stock and harissa, there's a fennel salad, and each of these components is done with a small pantry's worth of various herbs and spices. Heck, even Ed seems to have lost track of everything in writing the recipe. There are instructions for preparing the components, and instructions for plating them, but a couple of the former are never mentioned in the latter. I couldn't even begin to break it all down in my head, but while Bourdain's cooking ability has been called into question (oftentimes by Bourdain himself), he's become an awfully well-travelled eater, so if he says it captures Morocco for him, I'm willing to believe it. Like just about everybody else who's left, I still feel like I'm not sold on Ed. Clearly, he's made some very good dishes. But as much as we've seen him, can anybody describe what he does, exactly? Versatility is a good thing in a competition like this, to be sure, but more than any of the other remaining contestants, I feel like I don't quite know what to expect from him if he reaches the finale. Still, he's been pretty darn strong for the past few weeks, and I can't see dropping him any lower, especially given the ongoing inconsistency displayed by the Kevin and Kelly.

3 Kevin Quickfires 1 5 4 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 1 4 5 Kevin is, by a not insubstantial margin, the least-winning contestant remaining. But I'm trying to look past the numbers and recognize that he and Kelly are on more equal footing than the numbers might suggest. I'm oversimplifying here, but at times Kevin's food seems to have imagination issues, while Kelly's seems to have flavor issues. But Kevin can come back from the break reloaded with great ideas for what is usually a pretty free-wheeling finals, while issues of taste seem likely to remain. So on that basis, I'm giving the nod to Kevin in this week's tough call. Unfortunately, neither of their offerings were exactly a big vote of confidence. It's tough to read too much into Kevin's quickfire, since he had issues with the pork belly and had to change gears at the last minute. And while his elimination dish looks nice, I find myself wishing he'd done just a little more with it at this stage, a sentiment reflected in the judges' comments as well. That said, this was clearly a solid dish and I'll be curious to see if the finals will bring some of the more creative fare that we've seen he can do at times. And though it's a tiny issue, and the break may render it a non-issue, he seems to have fallen into the bacon trap, and I wonder if he'll be called on it at some point. Jamie's use of scallops was downright restrained in comparison (though I always thought that criticism was a little ridiculous).

4 Kelly Quickfires 2 3 5 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 2 4 3 Kelly was a little up and down this week. Her quickfire was a miss, the blue cheese emulsion deemed overpowering, though trying to keep it from overpowering a dish sounds like the perfect reason to make an emulsion out of it. Again, an issue of taste, not of conception. It's too bad, because this actually looked like one of her more interesting dishes, with a blackberry thyme conserve and five spice on the boar. I'd love to know how it would have come out had it been in balance. The up, of course, was her elimination, which almost seemed to make Ripert weak in the knees. But it really doesn't get any more straight-up traditional than what she did. A salsa verde along with the barigoule? A modest creative stretch, perhaps, considering that it was made with capers, anchovies, lemons and parsley. These aren't exactly flavors foreign to Provence. Which, as we discover, is a place she's spent some significant time. Remember: comfort zone. So while I like Kelly a lot and think she's perfectly capable of walking away with the title if she's on her game, I have two areas of concern for her going into the finals. The first, as mentioned above, is one of taste. There have been an awful lot of times when her flavors seem to be out of balance -- overpowering ingredients, oversalting, etc. One or two instances you might excuse as simple errors, but it's been more than one or two instances. Still, there isn't much opportunity to screw up left. String a few good dishes together and she's done. Also, there's the issue of working in her comfort zone. She doesn't seem to have the range of some of the others, and whether she makes it to the finale and gets to cook her food and only her food may simply come down to whether the challenges of the penultimate episode push her outside of her box.

5 Tiffany Quickfires 2 3 2 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 2 8 1 Nobody's happy to see her go. She seemed like a swell gal. But looking at her elimination dish, it isn't hard to understand why. Seared halibut over rice, some sautéed vegetables and a canned Thai curry that's punched up with some fresh aromatics really shouldn't cut it at this stage. It's one of those dishes that looks sort of Thai without actually being Thai, which is a problem when the plain old actual Thai dish would have been better. It may still have been a perfectly tasty dish, but it's not hard to see how it came up short against this crowd. Though as I mentioned in the postmortem, I consider that a good thing. Tiffany's been surviving as the steady and consistent presence surrounded by chefs with wild ups and downs. And she was steady and consistent again. But she went down because, perhaps for the first time, everybody else was on their game. It's a little late, but this is the competition we should have had all season long. Tiffany's departure was symptomatic of that.

And we're off to Singapore! Once again, I'd love to discuss the previews for next episode, but I can't access them from here. So I'll simply say here's hoping that everybody continues to shine like they did this week. That would, at least, make for a lovely little finish to an otherwise less than stellar season.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S7E12 Postmortem

Where have you people been all season?!?

See, now if we'd been seeing more of this, we'd be having a completely different discussion. Though I sure don't envy the judges having to make that call, how great is it to see the regular season end with all five remaining contestants turning out great, distinctive food? But you know, this has pretty much been the theme all season long. Just when you think you have it all figured out...

But as mentioned in the Power Rankings, this is also somewhat typical of the last challenge going into the finals. Everybody who's been dragging is suddenly reenergized and puts their best foot forward. And in that very vein, I was really pleased to see Angelo and Kelly get their mojo back. Something tells me Angelo's going to deal with Singapore a lot better than Kelly (you think?), but I feel like they justified the fact that I let them hang on so high for so long, even if the late charges by Tiffany and Ed could no longer be ignored.

It is, indeed, sad to see Tiffany go. I would think finishing fifth has to be one of the toughest if not the toughest time to go. There's that added feeling of abandonment, being left behind while everybody flits off to a special destination for a wild finale. But for the reasons I've pointed out the past couple of weeks, I'm not disappointed. She's succeeded by remaining steadfastly solid while everybody else flailed around her, and she did the same today. So her elimination means that everybody else finally got their act together all at once and put out those distinctive, memorable dishes that have not been Tiffany's strength. She went down because the competition finally stepped up. And while that's bad for Tiffany, that bodes well for us going into the finals.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S7E11 Power Rankings

This week's Top Chef Power Rankings need to go home. They're annoying. They're sloppy. They have no tech-neek.

Seriously, I'm not feeling the mojo here. Week after week of throwing darts. Remember early in the season when I was assuming just a couple more episodes would give us some clarity? Then a couple more? Then a couple more? One elimination to the finals (and Singapore!), and things are pretty much as murky as they've ever been.

Reading around, I'm catching a big negative vibe about this episode, which puzzles me a little bit. The quickfire's a straightforward inspiration/ingredient exercise without any stupid restrictions. Some tighter tie-ins with the idioms themselves would have been nice, but hey, decent-looking food. And in the elimination, with the exception of Amanda, it sounds like their issues were relatively minor, which is more than we can say for some previous sports-type challenges.

I don't know. Like a lot of folks I'm struggling with this season. I know I'm not enjoying it as much, but I'm having a hard time putting a finger on precisely why. Mostly I'm trying to determine if this season is as weak as so many seem to feel, or if it's just that season six was so exceptional and so fresh in our minds. It's been pinned on the skill of the cast, the personality of the cast, the challenges, the editing... really, what hasn't been blamed? I should probably save this for the season postmortem. We're still too close.

In the meantime, let's determine ourselves some finalists!

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 Tiffany Quickfires 2 2 2 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 2 8 0 While I can't say either of her dishes screamed, "Send me to the finals!" to me, to her credit, Tiffany did manage to successfully navigate two ingredients that have killed or at least tripped up a crowd of other mere mortals who have dared to use them in the Top Chef kitchen -- canned beans and Italian sausage. Both of those always seem to get people in trouble. And yet she managed to go unnoticed in the QF and get top mention in the elimination. I feel very strange about having her in the top spot. I'm repeating myself a bit, but I look over what she's been cooking the past couple of episodes and none of it looks like winning material to me. Respectably surviving material, absolutely. But if the food she's cooked the past two episodes -- delicious though I'm sure it is -- ends up making her the champion in three episodes... well, I think that'll confirm just about every negative thing everybody's been saying about this season.

2 Ed Quickfires 2 3 3 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 2 5 2 I feel equally weird -- if not more so -- about Ed inhabiting the number two spot, for much the same reasons. He's coming on strong and winning like crazy all of a sudden, but again, is this really the food you see winning Top Chef? The arancini at the ballpark were a great call and apparently he nailed them, but still, arancini, straight-up spring gnocchi, inside-out chicken cordon bleu... all things I'd be perfectly tickled to eat, but that's not what we're judging here. But he's hot, so in a field this tight, he's number two. And now that I've been the curmudgeon, let me point out that I think those arancini look really great. A smart choice, appealing to a ballpark munchy food kind of aesthetic while kicking up the refinement a couple of notches, easy to finish on site... I think that dish deserves a lot more respect than it's getting from a lot of people. Still doesn't look like a Top Chef winning dish.

3 Angelo Quickfires 3 6 1 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 1 3 2 Despite the fact that I've busted him down to number three, I'm not so sure I buy this "Angelo's season-long decline" narrative. I mean, the guy hadn't had a bottom appearance until two episodes back. He's had a rough couple of episodes and he definitely seems a little frazzled. The guy who owns an Asian sandwich shop managed to screw up an Asian sandwich. He knew the buns were wrong, but instead of getting creative he decided to ignore his better judgment and press on -- a mistake I doubt he makes in the first half of the season. And I'm always dismayed to see anybody use tilapia, the boneless skinless chicken breast of the sea. But he only has to make one more cut and he gets time to go back to reread the complete Tony Robbins collection, say a few prayers in front of his four star chef shrine and develop a few more dishes. My hunch is still that as long as he makes the finals, he comes back strong and leaves everybody else in the dust. If I'm a betting man, my money's on Angelo in the finals. But he has to get there first. Oh, and one last side note on Angelo. If anybody was concerned that his exclusively Asian approach was going to wear thin, extended JT this week pretty much put that to bed. Padma started to raise the issue, and Tom jumped right to his defense (as he should). As long as his food is good, the Asian focus isn't going to bother Tom, and he's bulldoggish enough that I doubt he'll let it influence any decisions.

4 Kevin Quickfires 1 5 3 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 1 4 5 This one I went back and forth on about a dozen times. In fact, I just switched three more times since writing that first sentence. But since it's close enough that I could pretty much identify anything as what I used to put daylight between them, I'm going to go with this: Kevin's hits seem to be more distinctive. That's it. They've both had some success, they've both had a great deal of failure. But we're getting close to the finish line and dishes like the reimagined vitello tonnato, the vibrant restaurant wars halibut and -- see if you still remember this one -- the lamb with meyer lemon and pistachio marmalade just seem more distinctive and unique. Granted, those have been the exceptions. But at least they're memorable ones.

5 Kelly Quickfires 2 3 4 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 2 4 3 I think that Kelly, like Angelo, will show stronger than her current position indicates should she make the finals. The more I think about it, the more I think her issue might simply be one of range. She's never had Ethiopian. She had no idea what flavors are in kung pao chicken. Both of which are more extreme examples, but even with less ethnic dishes, she just seems like the kind of chef who really needs to be within her narrow range or she falls down. She's not afraid to stretch herself, and the competition requires that you do, but she should probably avoid it as much as possible.

6 Amanda Quickfires 1 3 4 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 2 5 This week we got one of those long-overdue eliminations, though the usual annoyance was, I think, tempered by three factors. First, though she made a lot of mistakes, she also had a few big hits and showed that perhaps all that was standing between her and a much stronger showing was a little experience. Second, the field in general is weaker this year and she didn't seem quite so out of place. And third, and perhaps most importantly, there were no delusions of grandeur here. She knew it was time to go, and even seemed to feel, as most of us do, that she's been in over her head for a few weeks now. So while she certainly doesn't need my permission to do so, I think she can go home with her head held high.

Historically speaking, the last episode before the finals always seems to be the one where those who have been getting a little tired and sloppy suddenly snap to attention. Nothing like the knowledge that you're just one elimination away from a nice long break and the finals to coax out your best.

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE TWELVE SPOILERS AHEAD

So the sneak peek videos have cleared things up... somewhat. The quickfire has absolutely nothing to do with NASA. It's a straight wine challenge, though whether that means the wine goes in the food or simply has to pair with it or both is unclear. What I said about Kelly working in her comfort zone applies here, I think, but the others could just as easily rock the house, of course. For the elimination, they are, indeed, cooking space food. We see them being told that their dishes will have to "[follow] the guidelines for dining in zero gravity." What that means will determine whether this is a reasonable final regular season challenge or a ridiculous one. Here's hoping for the former.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S7E11 Postmortem

Episode 11! With a higher FPM* rating than any other episode this season!

"I want to make a statement, so I'm going to make tuna tartare."

*smack*

"...because of all of those choices, chicken is the least interesting. Why would you come to a ballgame and order chicken?"

*slap*

"The Nationals' park is amazing. It's a beautiful park."

*ow* (with apologies to D.C. residents)

There were more. I lost count. The first was the worst, though. Am I the only one who started laughing when Amanda said she was going to make a statement by doing one of the singlemost overdone dishes of the past two decades? Apparently the statement was, "Send me home."

Aaaaaand, now I feel bad, because I think Amanda has a lot of talent and just needs some seasoning. Clearly, however, it was her time to go.

Ed's starting to roll. The Tiffany trajectory, four episodes later (well, three, apparently).

In any case, it's a total toss-up. Top to bottom, 1-5, however it falls... this entire crowd is well into the "whoever happens to have the best day" portion of the competition.

Discuss!

* - Facepalms Per Minute

Top Chef - S7E10 Power Rankings

Criminy, are we really two eliminations away from the finals? Always seems to sneak up on you.

Disappointing episode on a lot of levels. Disappointing performances, disappointing television... not a favorite.

One thing that did impress me was that the chefs really did manage to come up with a diverse-looking set of dishes, particularly given the number of ingredients in the mystery boxes. I don't mind the gimmick of ingredients drifting in midway through prep. But I would have liked to see fewer ingredients. Restrictions bring out creativity to a point, after which they start to force homogenization. I thought they pushed it just a little too far. But either way, brutal challenge, if not the most interesting from a food standpoint.

The elimination challenge, as I mentioned in the postmortem, was just a huge disappointment. Not to take anything away from Tiffany and Kelly, but nobody really seemed to knock it out of the park. And watching others flounder with a challenge that, to be honest, really shouldn't have been so hard was kind of lame. There were no onerous time restrictions, no onerous ingredient restrictions, no crazy unusual flavor palettes to work with, no substandard facilities... and yet, almost half the field at this late stage in the game made lousy food. And nobody did anything particularly interesting. Ah, well.

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 Tiffany Quickfires 2 2 2 Last Week: n/a Eliminations 2 7 0 It's possible I've never had more reservations about a number one this late in the game. The fact that her flavors are always solid is slowly allowing her to rise to the top. But I just don't see a signature style here, something for the judges to get behind. Her winning dish was roasted lamb with pickled onions and glorified baba ghannouj. The elimination winner before that was a pitch perfect but almost stone-cold traditional chicken tamale. Conventional Top Chef wisdom would be that she doesn't have (or hasn't shown) the unique artist's voice that wows the judges in the late stages. Thing is, this isn't your conventional season. Right now, consistently great flavors may be enough to win this thing. As such, I don't see the argument that keeps her out. Yeah, if they're both at their peak I don't see her topping Angelo, but she's riding high and he's at his lowest point of the season, so for this week at least, it's a no-brainer. Subject to change if Angelo comes storming back, but this is a number one position well-earned, I think.

2 Angelo Quickfires 3 6 1 Last Week: n/a Eliminations 1 3 1 And now I'm going to turn right around and say that this is still Angelo's thing to lose, but he needs to get his head back in the game, and quickly. The Beef Wellington was an all-around weak effort, and one wonders if the key for him is to stick to the Asian he knows and (usually) rocks. We've seen this late fade from top contestants before, and they tend to get it back in gear when they catch a glimpse of the finish line. I'm pretty firmly of the belief that if he's operating at or near peak efficiency, nobody in this field beats him. The guy's a pro, and if he makes it to the finals and gets a chance to focus, he's going to come back from the break strong like bull. You can bank on that. But he has to get there first, and if there's been one truism this season, it's that anybody -- anybody -- can fall down at any time.

3 Kelly Quickfires 2 3 3 Last Week: n/a Eliminations 2 4 2 This isn't strictly a numbers pick. When Kelly's on I like her a lot. But it bears mentioning, I think, that Kelly rounds out the four win crowd, doubling up the rest of the pack (minus Amanda). She has her slip-ups -- everybody from here on down does -- but her peaks are solid, I like her style when she's doing her food, and she's shown a nice ability to roll with the punches on a couple of occasions. Yeah, it's a little strange that she can't put together even the most basic Chinese flavors. My hunch is that while an experienced chef, she's not a very experienced eater, which would also explain why her flavors often go flat when she gets out of her comfort zone (though that wasn't the case this week). But she'd have to do less of that in the finals, and she's recently shown some ability to step up to what I'm sure are one or two wacky challenges remaining. A little side note on Kelly's rice. Those who wondered if it might have something to do with her usually cooking at altitude? Bingo. Water boils off more quickly at high altitudes, so you use more of it. Also, if you're unused to rice cookers, in my experience at least, they tend to take a little less water than rice in a pot. So that's a double whammy of extra water usage for Kelly. Result? Mushy rice. Or, if you don't like that explanation, here's the listing for the rice cooker she used on Amazon.com. Most reviewers seem to like it (most people have no idea what good rice tastes like), but complaints of mushy rice make quite a few appearances. A triple whammy, perhaps? Oh... and one more thing about Kelly. Last week, during Restaurant Wars? She's a stone's throw from the Chesapeake, and she's using canned, pasteurized crab meat from Indonesia for her dish. And she still called it "Maryland Crab Salad." I was tempted to penalize her one spot for that alone. Boo.

4 Muffin Quickfires 1 2 3 Last Week: n/a Eliminations 1 4 2 Ed vs. Kevin was really the only tough call for me this week, and I'm giving the nod to Ed. The main reason is that he just feels like he's warming up to me. His dishes are starting to look interesting (not so much this week, top honors notwithstanding), we're seeing him on the top a lot more, he's got a couple of wins and is building up some near-misses. He seems kind of like he's following the Tiffany trajectory... four episodes behind Tiffany. And when the duck potsticker at the ambassadors' function is the closest you've come to elimination, that speaks pretty well for your ability to keep your head off the block (I have a hard time holding the lunchroom challenge against him, and he was never in any real danger in either instance). Truthfully, I think he's less of a flameout risk than Kelly, but he doesn't have the peaks and I'm still fuzzy on what, exactly his food IS, so I never really considered him for the third spot.

5 Kevin Quickfires 1 4 3 Last Week: n/a Eliminations 1 4 4 I'm not sure what to say. I'm just not a believer in Kevin. I mean, 3-5 is exceptionally tight, even though I felt comfortable picking number three, but I just can't shake Bad Kevin. I named a few reasons above why I went with Ed for number four, but the more I think about it, the most I think it's just because I believe Kevin is headed for a flameout in the next two episodes. Can't really back it up, just a gut feeling. He's been a little too good at blowing it, and even though he turns in a great looking dish from time to time, I have a feeling he's out of extra lives. The other question is whether his belligerence is going to get in the way at some point.

6 Amanda Quickfires 1 3 3 Last Week: n/a Eliminations 0 2 4 As somebody who's routinely in trouble, Amanda's here by default. I've said it before, but she just looks green. That said, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see her sneak into the finals. Kelly and Kevin both have some pretty serious flameout potential, and if they both go, she's in. And that's even assuming that those who look fairly solid remain so for the next two weeks. Thing is, Amanda can put together some great dishes. She just needs a few years' experience to learn how not to make the mistakes she's making. And to not look so completely flabbergasted when she's informed she's made them.

7 Alex Quickfires 0 0 7 Last Week: n/a Eliminations 1 3 2 The exit videos for Alex are pretty damn hilarious. Explaining to the crowd why he was eliminated: "The dish that brought me here to be with you guys was a piece of veal that needed to be dead. Over and over and over again. So, I killed it. Over and over and over again." And on peagate: "So, you know, we've got to do the recipe, right? So there I am with my [unintelligible], and Ed is in the kitchen, so I go, 'Hey, Ed! Do me a favor. What was in that pea puree? I'm doing the recipe and I want to get it straight.'" Incidentally, there's more fuel on the peagate fire there. He mentions that there was a camera right over his shoulder as he was making it. But I soooooooooo don't have the energy for the "Elves buried the evidence!" discussion right now (assuming he wasn't exaggerating, of course). In any case, the edit leading up to service during Restaurant Wars aside, I liked Alex. But he needed to go. And to his credit, he knew he blew it.

8 Kenny Quickfires 3 6 0 Last Week: n/a Eliminations 1 2 4 Kenny, on the other hand, I really wanted to like, but he just made it so damn difficult. The guy had talent, but that talent always seemed to be surpassed by his ego. That can be amusing at first, but after a while it just gets tiresome. Though he boasts in his exit interview about usually being on the top, it isn't as though he was any stranger to the bottom, either. But the point is moot. The Beast is gone, indeed.

Two more eliminations to the finals. Two more eliminations to the finals. Field's wide open!

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE TWELVE SPOILERS AHEAD

Nothing too far off the reservation challenge-wise, it seems. The quickfire appears to be a standard themed affair, involving a figure of speech and ingredient that the figure of speech references ("Spill the beans," "Bigger fish to fry," etc.). The elimination involves running a concession stand at a Nationals game, so they'll be cooking their own food and doing so in the kitchen, and an elimination this late could be a lot worse. Looks like Angelo and Kenny get into it, so we'll see if there's anything to that or if it's a red herring. You never know.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S7E10 Postmortem

Biggest. Missed. Opportunity. Ever.

Did nobody consider disguising their dish as a different famous dish? Particularly somebody else's designated dish? What if Alex had done a layered veal lasagna cooked in a soup crock with melted cheese over the top? Veal Parmigiana disguised as French Onion Soup. What if Amanda had done a beef tenderloin and wrapped it in pastry with an onion and cheese concoction in place of the duxelles? French Onion Soup disguised as Beef Wellington. There could have been so much more awesome.

So is this the first time somebody has won four challenges in a row? I'll have to check.* I know there's never been a back-to-back double win. I'm trying to remember if there's been a double win bracketed by an EC and a quickfire win, spanning three episodes. I don't think so.

Apologies again about this week's inadvertent hiatus. Won't happen again.

Discuss!

*UPDATE : Huh... not only has nobody won four in a row, as far as I can tell, three in a row has only been done once... and one of those three was a team challenge with no single designated winner. Any guesses? (No peeking!)

UPDATE II : D'oh! As Elizabeth points out below, Angelo won the first three challenges. I was so busy looking at past seasons that I looked right past the first half of this season. So put Angelo and the mystery contestant in the three-in-a-row (sort of... team win for the mystery contestant) club.

UPDATE III : By the way, the answer is Antonia. The 15-minute Uncle Ben's quickfire, the healthy meal for a family of four under $10, and a team win in the mise en place relay. Incidentally, Stefan was a great guess. He put up back-to-back wins four times, but never quite managed to string together three.

UPDATE IV : Cripes, I need to have my head examined. As Merlin's Nephew points out below, there was... you know... a whole episode in between Tiffany's double wins. So that'd be four of the last six, not four in a row. Eeeysh.