I haven’t seen a thread on this yet, so here goes.
I think Otto got shafted. It was noble of him to take himself out of the competition but all the drama over lycheegate was greatly overblown. When they got in the car, Otto said something like, “I think we got these lychees for free.” Everybody heard him and not one of them offered to take them back to the store. Then when Marissa decided to rat him out, she really distorted her description to make it sound like Otto had intentionally stolen the lychees and was bragging about it. She wasn’t narking him out because of anything to do with personal conscience (although I do think that was the case with Elia) but purely as a game strategy. I guess she thought she would come off looking noble and honest but it just came off as transparently CYA, smug and disingenuous.
It was also bullshit for the whole group to throw Otto under the train when they were really ALL complicit in the larceny. Plus it wasn’t the reason they lost. They lost because Marissa, the pastry chef, botched the dessert. I was kind of sorry that Otto took himself out because Colicchio had just said that if Otto was willing to cowboy up and take responsibility that he wanted to get rid of Marissa. I wish he would have at least told Marissa how close she came to losing.
Well, I guess we have a “bitch” now.
Oh…and how cool would it be to get that knife from Ming Tsao?
Actually, it sounded like he was saying it in passing as they were getting back in the vehicles, so I don’t think everybody heard him.
I mostly agree, though I don’t think she was trying to look noble, I just think she didn’t want the team to get in trouble. However, she did articulate it in the most disparaging way possible, and she didn’t take great pains to address her concerns with the team as a whole (“Hey Guys, we might get disqualified for this”) before blabbing to Colddickio.
I have to give props to Frank because he didn’t engage in the pile-on, but called the team out for feeding on their own when he took full responsibility for the rice fiasco. Ilan was pretty straight-up, too (and he knew the score with the two pork dishes), but Marcel didn’t waste any time jumping on the “integrity” bandwagon.
Yeah, she really dodged a bullet. If I was Otto, I would’ve said what he did, except simply say “If you think what I did deserves being sent home, I totally understand and wouldn’t blame you one bit.” Leave it up to the judges.
Yeah, the lychee thing, though unfortunate, only worsened a team dynamic that was disorganized and dysfunctional already. Otto sticking around for another hour wouldn’t have changed that, nor would it have improved the dessert.
Yeah, I can see her leaving all sorts of drama in her wake. Too bad that the sole Bay Area rep is the one I most actively dislike now (though Michael comes a close second).
It also couldn’t have happened to a nicer person–Betty’s tres cool, which is why I’m worried she may not last as long as I’d like her too among the cutthroats they’ve assembled.
I was surprised to see Otto fall on the sword for the team. I really think they would have eliminated Marissa, had Otto not volunteered to go. I thought that Otto was going to be the Season 2 version of Dave. Then again, isn’t Otto a culinary school instructor? His performance on the first two shows (albieit edited), didn’t show that he had great skills.
I think you are right that Marissa will be a villian. Although, with her cooking skills, she probably won’t be around much longer, anyway.
Getting that knife would be so cool… It’s only one of 200 in North America.
As far as the other contestants go, I’m pulling for Marcel Vigneron (the guy with “Jimmy Neutron hair”), who is clearly Stephen Asprinio’s heir-apparent.
We also have a “Santino,” that is, someone who’s competent and talented, and might deserve to ultimately win, but you hate them any how. I’d say they really played Marcel and his coiffure up for that role.
And, yes, I had a feeling poor Otto would end up in the role as scapegoat.
I thought Otto and Marissa should have both been fired. Neither one of them apparently did anything immediately when they saw the free lychees. The item should have been returned at once.
Question for the culinarily informed: would most professional cooks have at least some basic knowlege of Vietnamese and Korean dishes?
Speaking as someone who has been a professional cook (nothing fancy, I’ve worked at family style restaurants and sports bars as well as one Chinese place), I would say that if you’ve had much training at all you at least know something about the ingredients and maybe some basic dishes but unless you’ve worked somewhere that specialized in one of those cuisines you wouldn’t necessarily have a lot of in depth knowledge of technique or an internal catalogue of recipes. For instance, I would know that Korean cuisine uses kim chee but I would have no idea how to make it. I could probably put together some spring rolls or something that resembles a Vietnamese soup with stuff like cilantro and lemongrass and lime but I wouldn’t really know how to make it really authentic or extraordinary. A lot of these people supposedly have formal, gourmet training, though, so they should be able to handle themselves ok.
One thing I can say for sure is that any professional cook should be able to cook rice with his eyes closed.
Team Korea looked more like Team Weasel last night. I loved that Marissa (Weasel One) got turned on in front of the judges by her own ‘buddy’ though. So far I only like Ilan, Frank and Michael. And Suyai, but she’s gone.
And Padma, mmm. Scale of one to ten, that’s like a fourteen right there.
Otto totally got shafted. Marissa will be gone soon because she can’t cook and it’ll show when she has to cook alone, but she should have gone instead of Otto.
If there has ever been a contrast between two teams, this episode is on top of the heap. Team Vietnam was not issue free, but the issues were handled before they became a cancer - Team Korea did none of that. The only time they were somewhat cohesive was when they were all getting smashed the night before, but even that wasn’t 100%. Funny that none of them took the opportunity to look back and learn from that error either (or at least finger point - which the majority were very good at).
I’m more or less a Top Chef virgin, so I’m going to stay out of it this week, except to say that I think Betty’s awesome. Everyone else, I’m still pretty much reserving judgement.
I think he shafted himself. If they had thrown him under the bus and then he got voted off, that would have been shafted. As it is, I think he thought that was going to happen so he fell on his knife. If he had a pair, he’d have owned up to it and we would have seen the stunned look on Marrisa’s face when she got the boot.
Anybody who heard him make the remark about the lychees was as guilty as Otto was. At the moment they heard it, they had the exact same information as Otto had.
I’m not up on all the character’s names yet, but the goofy guy talking about kicking Tom’s ass, then shadow boxing, has to be an idiot. He’ll probably go far.
It was obvious that Team Korea was getting the loser’s edit the entire episode but even without that I think their incompetence would have shown through on its own. How did all the losers and whiners end up on the same team through a random selection? I can’t help but hope they remain on the same teams for a couple more episodes, if for nothing else than the entertainment value.
Yep, Betty seems to be a really nice and considerate woman which means she is surely doomed.
The thing I noticed most was Marisa jumped all over not just Otto but Elia when she’d made a comment about the parfait. She reminded me of an attack dog!
