Top Chef Power Rankings, Week 10: A Raw Deal

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It was a big week this week on Top Chef. The chefs crushed it! The guest judges raved! Tom Colicchio nearly cracked a smile! But, they still had to kick someone off at the end of the show, and the elimination ended up feeling… unfair? Or maybe just bittersweet?

Theoretically we all want to see the chefs cook their best, but then they go and do that, and you realize that now the margins are extra slim and the judges have to split even stringier hairs and someone has to go home for cooking something that was probably pretty good, all things considered. bE CaRefUl wHaT yoU wIsH fOr, as mom might say.

So, this week’s episode.

Stardate: Greenville, South Carolina. After last week’s purgatorial episode set entirely inside a hotel lobby, this week the contestants actually got to go outside and get some sun. Specifically, the Magical Elves took the whole gang out to “Legendary Green Point Landing.” Home of the Bassmaster Classic! Of course!

Is it truly “legendary,” or is the “legendary” adjective just part of the name, Mighty Ducks-style? Hard to say, the official website has “legendary” in the headline but not in the body text. All I know is that it’s a historic landmark, rich in history and cultural significance, dating all the way back to, um… 2014.

Mise-ing En Place.

The plan for part one of the show was the Mise En Place Relay, Top Chef’s second or third most famous challenge behind Restaurant Wars (and probably blind taste test? we haven’t had that one yet, something to look forward to). “Mise en place,” as we all know, is French for “chopping shit up real good.”

This year’s special rules??? I don’t know, I think I blacked out. You ever have someone try to explain a new card game to you and you immediately zone out and regret every life decision that brought you here? It was kind of like that.

There was something about “capture the flag,” and your team winning a stage means you move closer to the flag, but also you can switch out the team member competing whenever you want. All of it leading up to Kristen Kish’s pivotal ad copy read, “…kind of like how switching to Finish Quantum gets you unbeatable results.”

Oh right, the challenge was sponsored by Finish Quantum. That’s a dish washing pod. (Great brand name to add “…in bed” to).

The mise-en-place challenges consisted of: shucking and kernelling corn, deveining shrimp, cracking pecans, and “seeding and hulling” scuppernongs. What are scuppernongs, you ask? Why, they’re the state fruit of South Carolina, of course. A type of large grape in the muscadine family, obviously.

Do you know your state fruit? I didn’t, but it turns out that’s because my state, like many, doesn’t have one. Also, aren’t “seeding” and “hulling” sort of the same thing? A “hull” is part of the seed, so don’t you just mean peeling and hulling?

Anyway, I guess they love their laborious grapes out there in South Carolina. Peeling, seeding, hulling… me personally? I just like to cram ‘em in my ass.

Slappin’ Da Bass

After that, it was time for a fishing challenge. What else would they do at the home of the Bassmaster Classic? Everyone split up into their own boats for a cook-what-you-catch challenge.

Well, sort of. The judges noted in the fine print of the challenge that everyone would get three spotted bass that their guides caught, regardless of what they actually caught themselves. Which sort of rendered the entire fishing challenge little more than an excuse for some cute B-roll.

Would it have been too unfair to make the chefs who didn’t catch any fish just cook vegetarian? It is called “Top Chef,” not “Top Fisherman,” after all. Still, how many times has someone on this show won a challenge for a vegetarian dish, or after having to pivot from what they really wanted to cook? Unfair schmunschmair, make the non-fish catchers cook vegetarian, I say. Bass don’t lie.

By the way, what does it say about your supposedly famous fish destination that multiple chefs couldn’t catch a single fish, even with the help of a boat and a professional guide? If a professional fish fixer can’t catch a fish for a TV show what hope do I have? It’s a good thing that the point of fishing is something you pretend to do while getting drunk.

Anyway, shout out to this week’s guest judge Danielle Brooks. I haven’t seen the work that makes up the GOT in her EGOT nominations (the stage show, album, and film adaptation of A Color Purple), but if they award an Emmy for Top Chef judging, she has my vote. Do they teach that at Juilliard? Also, does it bug you as much as it does me that “Juilliard” has two Is? Discuss.

Results

Smallest Fish Caught: Duyen (prize: an extra $5).
Most Fish Caught: Duyen (prize: an extra $50).
Biggest Fish Caught: Jonathan (prize: an extra 30 minutes).

They gave Jonathan a giant trophy that was almost as big as Rhoda. Sure to fetch dozens of dollars someday on a showbiz auction site, if it hasn’t already.

Quickfire Winners: Red Team (Duyen, Sieger, Rhoda), who had a cook off with Laurence.
Bottom of the Top: Sieger, Laurence.
Top of the Top: Rhoda*, Duyen.

Elimination Top: Rhoda, Anthony, Jonathan, and Laurence*
Elimination Bottom: Sieger, Duyen**.

(*Winner. **Eliminated.)

Power Rankings (Change from Last Week)

7. (-3) Duyen

AKA: Banh Amelie. Bondle. How YOU Duyen. Duyen’s Dinner? Dwayne. Dwayned Vitale. Mamba.

Ranking History: 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 6 4

Notable Quote: “I have a winner mentality.”

After Duyen spent half the episode crowing about her “winner’s mentality” (hence the new nickname, Mamba, for her Mamba Mindset) it was probably inevitable that she’d end up going home. I still can’t help feeling like she got a “raw deal” (pun intended, get it?).

Yes, Duyen ended up undercooking her fish. But are we really going to pretend not to be taking past performances into account during eliminations? And is a good dish with one poorly-cooked element really worse than a poorly-conceived one? “Conception vs. execution” is a whole debate in and of itself, but I have to take Duyen’s side in this one. It seemed like she had about 80% of a good dish vs. Sieger having 60% of one. Maybe that’s just me falling for drama ginned up in the editing room, but I still think I’d defer to the chef who always seems to be in the top three or four (Duyen) over the one who always seems to be on the bottom (Sieger). This show has really painted itself into a corner when it comes to booting people for miscooked proteins.

That Duyen gets booted over a minor mistake, with no opportunity to redeem herself on Last Chance Kitchen, against a guy who got a second chance thanks to another competitor’s rope swing injury, makes it sting all the worse.

They’re going to give Duyen another chance, right? …Right?? I feel like they are, but maybe I’m still in that first stage of grief: …Duyenial.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Canh Chua with pineapple, tomatoes, and bok choy.

Reviews: “Mine’s way under.” “Other than the cookery of the fish, the broth is nice and bright.”

6. (+1) Sieger Bayer

AKA: The Silver Bullet. SEO. Hansel. Spade. Veruca Salt.

Ranking History: 7 7 10 7 8 11 11 8.

I love Sieger on account of he’s by far the spiciest bitch in this competition. When he responded to the judges’ criticism that “I thought your fish and lentils just needed something to tie them together” with “I thought the spoon would do that” I was sure he had just punched his ticket home. (Do not ridicule the judges, David Murphy learned that the hard way).

I also appreciated the moment when Tom left Sieger hanging for a high five:

Sieger’s spoon joke didn’t really land, because it feels like he’s already mentally checked out of the competition. He got booted in episode six, came back in episode eight, and has spent almost the entirety of the three episodes since defending his food at judges table. Which is always kind of a weird scene in general.

YOU FOOL! YOU IDIOT! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU SERVED US ROOM TEMPERATURE VICHYSSOISE??

Um… I guess I wasn’t thinking, sir…

This poor bastard, just put him out of his misery already! It’s killing my soul having to watch him defend sub-par lentils every week.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Baked spotted bass with braised lentils, pepper sofrito, dates & cardamom vinaigrette

Reviews: “The lentils just got too much going on.” “They’re very sweet, and a little astringent.” “The lentils are great on their own, the fish was well cooked, but we’re missing that third element to tie them together.”

5. (even) Jonathan

AKA: Big Twin Big Twin. Thicc Twin. Meat. Brawnathan. H Bomb. GLP-2. Rawdaddy.

Ranking History: 5 6 7 7 8 9 8 8 5.

Brief aside about Jonathan here: I spent week one of these rankings pointing out the extra H in Johnathan/Jonathan’s name, and even gave him a nickname about it. Then this week I noticed that the show was crediting him as “Jonathan” (no H). His instagram profile also says Jonathan. I checked his official show bio, and it still says “Johnathan” at the top, which was a relief, knowing that I didn’t just invent a spelling of his name to clown him for. Though it does say “Jonathan” in the rest of the entry. Was it always like that? If so, who could say?

Anyway, apologies if I busted the man’s balls solely because of an intern’s careless typo. At this point I probably just have to stick with it. Hey, man, nice food, was the Grink there?

This week, Jonathan made the decision to turn his spotted bass into a fish taco, which sounds great and is probably something I would’ve done, but stood out as a bold move in the context of Top Chef, where everyone was serving up their cheffiest entrees — which are widely recognized to be a piece of protein sitting on some sauce with a garnish on top. That’s like the black tie dress code for Michelin food. And so a fish taco is sort of like showing up to a black tie event in a Hawaiian shirt.

Luckily for Jonathan he managed to identify a deeper, more bedrock truism of food, which is that not even the snootiest toff can resist a really good fish taco. Not even when you put “avocado mousse” on it. “Avocado mousse,” eh? Reminds me of an old joke about polenta and grits. What’s the difference between “avocado mousse” and guacamole? Probably about 12 bucks.

Mousse aside, that fish taco sounded great (at least, to hear it from a group of five chefs from east of the Mississippi judging another chef from east of the Mississippi). Though it could just be that I’m still spicy about my town losing our Rubio’s franchise. I blame all you idiots who went to Rubio’s and ordered anything besides a fish taco.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Beer battered fish taco with avocado mousse, cabbage slaw and chipotle remoulade.

Reviews: “This was so good.” “I think it’s a great fish taco.” “I loved all the acid in there to cut through all that batter.”