In last night's episode of Top Chef: D.C. (or should I say, Top Chef: Singapore), four became three and the heat was turned up on this lukewarm season — temperature-wise, at least. As I commented in the preview post yesterday, having the finale in Southeast Asia for the season taking place in our nation's capital is so patriotic, don't you think?
For the Quickfire, I see the producers planning it, saying, "Get 'em off the plane, throw them into a market full of food stalls, give 'em a few samples of "traditional" dishes, hand 'em a wok and tell them to get cooking." And that's exactly how it went. The contestants were also thrown a curve ball with the challenge prize being immunity in the Elimination (and goodness knows all four of them could've used it).
With the extensive studying of Singaporean cuisine (can you just hear the sarcasm oozing from this post?) the chefs did in the aforementioned challenge, they were then told to cook a meal inspired by the country's cuisine for eighty people at a shindig for Food & Wine's Dana Cowin. When planning the meal, they decided to half-ass it and try to get away with cooking only one dish each. After hearing this, Tom gave them a look of "WTF?!" and strongly urged them to each make another dish.
At the event, everything went surprisingly well — besides some of the servers who were writing their orders in Chinese. There didn't seem to be any major gripes about the food, one of the judges even commenting that it was the best food they'd had all season.
Not wanting to be chastised for giving away spoilers, I won't reveal here who won and who got the boot. Want to know what happened? Well then, you'll have to listen to the podcast to find out.
