Guest Judge: Eric Ripert
Quickfire: Clean and fillet fish
Elimination Challenge: Replicate seafood dishes served at Le Bernardin
Like many others probably were, I was totally shocked at Jamie’s elimination. However, I recommend reading the blogs over at Bravo - apparently her dish really was that inedible. Still wish Leah had gotten the boot.
Well, they certainly held up their end of the bargain: judge on what’s coming out on the plate that show and NOT on their overall performance. I think Jamie was one of the best chefs left. She screwed up last night and it’s hard to tell just how bad. I think everyone agreed her fish was nicely done, it was just the celery accompanyment.
Should that be enough to send her home? I haven’t yet read the blogs, but I think Tom was definitely pulling for her to stay but got outvoted. I think if someone else could reasonably be shown to have done a worse job they would have been gone in a heartbeat. It’s disappointing though. I understand that they judge the way they judge, but she’s been in the top 3 50% of the time and won the challenges twice. As opposed to Leah who has been in the top 3 20% of the time, never won, and literally quit the quickfire last night.
So how did they set up that eel challenge anyway? “Oh this large cutting block and nail we’re putting below you Hosea? Just ignore it. I don’t think it’s important.”
And again. Why give the Chefs grief when they screw up? Though this time it wasnt as bad as in the past.
Like they all said for the gazillionth time, once its screwed up, there AINT no time to FIX it. They know it. Its not like they are purposefully sending out crap to personally offend the judges.
If they screwed up, send em packing for screwing up. But don’t make a big deal about the fact they didnt fix it if they CANT fix it.
UNTIL the day comes when the judges actually give a chef credit for NOT sending out anything rather than sending out something bad, the judges need to quit playing that particular tune.
minor rant over.
I think Jamie has been dodging a bullet for weeks now. She has very limited experience and she cooks scallops whenever she can get away with it.
I’m surprised she lasted this long.
I was bummed that Jamie lost. Leah proves that you can make it to the end just by avoiding taking any risks.
I agree with bullfish. The last 15 minutes of the show gets old watching the judges asking “why did you do” that over and over. You said they have X amount of time to do the job so thay only get one shot at a dish, sometimes they miss. This episode was refreshing in that all of the last place chefs confessed their mistakes without the need for eyerolling from the judges. Kind of left the judges at a loss.
Now, with Jamie gone ( I’m going to mis that angry little chef) I will have to confess my man-crush for Fabio. I don’t want to like him, he’s Italian … and named Fabio for Christ’s sake, but I can’t help it. He’s the only one that doesn’t cry and make excuses.
Well that’s not entirely true. She’s nearly killed everyone with undercooked fish a couple of times.
Seriously… why is she still here? Her food is uninspired when it’s not bad, she doesn’t seem especially invested in it (by which I mean the food, as opposed to the show), and yet she always seems to scrape by on someone else’s disaster, which occasionally she contributes to (who tied that lamb again?). Oh, and she seems a bit dim, but maybe that’s just me.
She bugs me. A lot.
My post is my cite 
This would IMO make an interesting “rule” for the show.
Say the chef is REALLY unhappy with their dish.
They are allowed to claim a mulligan so to speak.
The judges eat it anyway, knowing its been proclaimed bad beforehand. IFF its as bad as the chef claims and for the reasons the chef claimed, it aint grounds for elimination.
Of course you would need some mechanism to not allow this to be manipulated into some kind of overall strategy to win. Maybe you only get to do it once, or there is still some way it can backfire or sumptin.
I read Tom’s blog today and I think this is one case where the producers’ edit left viewers with an inaccurate view of what went on.
According to Tom there was no question from the beginning that it was Jamie that was going to be eliminated. Both my wife and I predicted it wouldn’t be Jamie. We were split on Leah or Hosea, but definitely not Jamie.
The only hint of a vote for Jamie came when Tom said which is worse, someone who missed the dish and produced something decent or somebody who knowingly produced something bad. That was also the first hint I had that the judges didn’t think Leah and Hosea’s dishes were that bad.
And I completely agree that Leah doesn’t even seem interested in being there anymore.
On the editing - they sucker-punched us in the beginning with the scenes of Fabio on the phone.
Not quite true on Fabio. He was making lots of excuses last week to the point of being argumentative. He lost a little of his luster for me last week.
I used to think Leah had potential, she does well in quick fires a lot but hasn’t really been that good in the elimination challenges. But after her Hosea smooching I decided I didn’t like her and have been watching her more critically and I think she is just getting by. I thought her quitting in the quick fire might be her undoing.
I think Jamie had more potential but unfortunately when she screws up a dish, she screws it up big.
AM I the only one who thinke Carla got robbed in the challenge? Stephen had the EASIEST dish, it wasn’t even close. He had to make a Hollindaise sauce some lobster and some uncooked Asparagus. Granted he did all those things very well, but for degree of difficulty, it was nothing compared to what Carla had to do. Not to mention he got to pick, and he picked the least challenging dish, smart to stay in the competition, but not smart to win a challenge…or at least I would have thought.
Carla had one of the more difficult dishes, figured out the sauce and basically pretty much nailed it. I was kind of shocked she didn’t win it.
She looked shocked too. … nevermind, she always looks that way.
Leah obviously won’t be around much longer. Carla has really been coming on strong lately, and I’m betting the final 3 will be Carla, Stefan, and Fabio.
Stefan still seems like the definite favorite to win the whole thing.
I enjoyed those two challenges more than any I’ve seen this season. Partly because the guest judge explained the technical details of the food. I didn’t understand most of it, but it was nice to hear him discuss the technique rather that just an abstract discussion of the taste.
I was watching with my 12 year old daughter when the eels came out. I said “I saw this once on Iron Chef and you might not want to watch th…”
Her: Runs screaming from the room.
I think Jamie lost it when she didn’t even have Chef Ripert taste her dish to help her out.
That must have been some really, really fresh and young asparagus to serve raw, because when I’ve just undercooked asparagus, it turns into a mouthful of green dental floss.
You may want to read the blogs linked upthread, particularly the Q&A with Eric Ripert. Even if it was the easiest, I don’t think any of the dishes would be easy to nail the flavors and techniques as well as Stefan did.
I knew as soon as they sat down for lunch and said there were six courses that they would be trying to reproduce the dishes. I’m surprised all the chef’s didn’t figure that out and pay close attention to each dish. I was a little disappointed that they were provided with all the ingredients for the dishes rather than trying to figure that out on their own, but that may have been too much.
I knew Jamie was going the second she dissed Chef Ripert by saying he was uninspiring (and could he BE any cuter). I looked at my boyfriend and said “She’s getting the asshole edit, she’s gone.” He said he wasn’t going to watch Top Chef with me anymore if I was going to keep ruining it.
Well the edit sure made it seem like Carla should have won.
According to the blogs, Stefan’s lobster dish wasn’t easy at all, and he did the best at the challenge, which was to come as close as possible to duplicating Ripert’s dishes. Ripert said that Stefan’s dish was virtually perfect except for a slightly thicker sauce (but Ripert says the flavor of the sauce was still spot on). And if perfectly duplicating a given dish shouldn’t be good enough to win, then that dish shouldn’t be part of the challenge.It wouldn’t be fair to put a dish out there and then say you can’t win with it no matter how well you do.
None of those dishes are as simple as they look. This was a technical challenge, and Stefan was the best technician.
Carla did a good job, but got maybe a little too much credit for figuring out the bernaise sauce. She DID know what all the ingredients were supposed to be for the dish, so she knew she had to use the veal stock. She still had to get the technique and ratios right, but it wasn’t THAT remarkable that she figured out the ingredients. I still like her, though and I think she’s a dark horse.
Hosea is getting on my nerves with the “Euro” sniping. He’s starting to turn into Hosea the Plumber.