This week on Top Chef Masters, we're down to six chefs: Rick Moonen, Susan Feniger, Marcus Samuelsson, Susur Lee, Jonathan Waxman, and Tony Mantuano.
As I've questioned in prior posts, "Where are they coming up with these challenges and guest judges?!" These Quickfire Challenges just seem to get more and more ridiculous, for example, this week's "leg protein" challenge. Alright, I get that they were all supposed to use leg meat (do squid tentacles really count as legs?), but inviting an Olympic gold medalist swimmer who finished the "last leg" of the Men's 400m freestyle relay just doesn't make sense to me. What does he know about food?! And, instead of immunity or getting special privileges in the Elimination Challenge, the winner received a USC football jersey to wear during the Elimination. That sure gets one a "leg up" on the competition.
Tailgating was the theme for the Elimination Challenge and the chefs had to cater at a tailgate party before a USC game (hence the aformentioned jersey). The chefs prepared an array of food: grilled chicken and shrimp soup from Marcus, grilled pizza from from Tony, steak tacos from Susan and Waxman, Korean-style skirt steak with Austrian dumplings by Susur, and chermoula and grilled chicken-filled pitas from Moonen. This challenge put the chef'testants multitasking skills to the test, having to cook their dishes while simultaneously serving and chatting with the guests. Now I call that a challenge.
Want to know what happened? Well, then you'll have to listen to the podcast to find out.
Whether you watch the show or not, our review of it is top notch snark and an all-around good time. Listen to us (attempt to) recap this episode and the hilarity that ensues.
Tune in to Bravo every Wednesday at 10 pm EST/9 pm C, check out our own live Tweets during the show (Jeff: @JeffHouck, Katie: @culinarypirate), and listen to our podcast here every week! (You can even download us on iTunes!) And if you missed an episode, you can now watch them on Hulu.
Check out our fellow Top Chef fanatics' blogs: Please Pack Your Knives And Go's hilarious notes from last night's episode, and All Top Chef gives us their uninhibited reactions.
Hear the hi-larious podcast after the break:
This article appears in May 20-26, 2010.