Top Chef Power Rankings, Week 4: Show Us Your Okra Face

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A new week, a new episode of Top Chef, and— oh my God, are they recapping Jennifer’s shoulder injury again? Sheesh, the lady wore a sling for five minutes because of an old rope swing injury, that doesn’t seem like a crucial plot development. Every time they show the sling and play the ambulance sirens again I start to get Christopher Moltisanti vibes.

Ah, well. Maybe the first edit of this week’s episode came up a little short of the new 75-minute time slot and they had to pad it out with more recap.

In any case, this week’s quickfire challenge began with an introduction: Tristan Epps-Long, last season’s Top Chef winner! Yes, this show is more self-referential than the Simpsons now. Though considering Top Chef is still on Bravo, it’s kind of a miracle that we don’t have five Top Chef spinoff surreality shows called like Voltaggio Vacation and Blaise Island or whatever (Andy Cohen, you have to pay me if you use any of these).

This week’s quickfire challenge was an inspired masterpiece of lateral thinking (game recognize game, if you’ve read any of my chef nicknames). As Kristen explained, this challenge was based on North Carolina’s status as the home of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s first successful flight. Not enough children being named “Wilbur” and “Orville” these days, you ask me. I’ll take Wilbur and Orville over Jaxxyn and Jace any day.

Anyway, in honor of celebrating North Carolina as the birthplace of “flight,” this week the contestants would be pairing a “flight” of food to a “flight” of wine, sponsored by Josh Cellars!

“Any wine aficionados in the group?” Kristen Kish asked the assembled chefs.

“I’m a big Josh fan,” said Brittany, whose family definitely wasn’t being held hostage just off stage.

Oh sure, man. All the big oenophiles love Josh Cellars. Sidenote: isn’t Brittany the sober one? Problematic!

The chefs, in teams of three, had 30 minutes to pair a food flight to a wine flight, featuring a white, a red, and a rosé, all from Josh Cellars’ award-winning portfolio of palate-pleasing potables. The example Tristan gave of what constitutes a “food flight” was three sliders with different proteins.

Sadly, no one stole this idea, and a couple teams probably should have. The actual “flight” theme ideas included Eggs, Seafood, Mochi, and Tomme cheese, managing to encompass both the overvague and mundane and the esoteric and fussy. Mochi was probably the most conceptually solid of the bunch, but then that group all used the same bad dough and ended up on the bottom. Season 23: first in flight, last in flight.

After that, it was time to introduce the elimination challenge, a job that fell to local Charlotte chef Greg Collier, a big teddy bear of a man who looked like he was auditioning to be the hype man for Team Zissou:

Sidenote: Do you think it’s a knock on him or a point in his favor that Wes Anderson’s movies always so easily lend themselves to hipster Halloween costumes? Discuss.

In any case, the show should really consider bringing back Greg Collier to guest judge every week. I truly enjoyed just listening to this man talk. No one on Earth has ever pronounced “sorghum syrup” with this much soul.

Collier was in the kitchen to serve the chefs a selection of traditional southern and soul food sides: collard greens, smothered cabbage, jostled grapes. Just kidding about that last one, but it was all for the purpose of explaining the next challenge: to take a traditional southern side, like potato salad, hoppin john, red beans and rice, etc., and turn it into a main course, like the culinary equivalent of turning a ho into a housewife. Many of the chefs struggled accordingly.

Oh, and fried okra, which gave the show the opportunity to bring back one of its now numerous running gags. In this case, the fact that Tom Colicchio famously hates okra. Tom, show us your okra face:

Lol, he hates it! We love to remember stuff, don’t we, folks?

Hating okra feels like one of those boomer things that never quite filtered down to the younger generations. I remember my mom hating okra, along with liver and brussels sprouts, and so it was one of those foods we just never ate. Hard to say whether that’s a quality specific to okra, or just a symptom of Americans not realizing that there were other ways to cook vegetables besides steaming until like 1990. Supposedly the plant breeders fixed brussels sprouts, so by the time I had them they were actually pretty good. To this day I don’t think I’ve had okra as anything other than a pickle. Though I do believe okra is the king of pickles. It’s like five different textures in one!

Anyway, those are my thoughts on okra pickles. I’m for ‘em.

Results:

Quickfire Bottom: Cream Team - Mochi (Laurence, Rhoda, Sherry). Green Team - Seafood (Brandon, Brittany, Oscar).
Quickfire Top: Red Team - Tomme Cheese (Anthony, Duyen, Jonathan). Blue Team - Egg (Sieger, Justin, Jennifer)*.

Elimination Top: Sieger*, Sherry, Laurence.
Elimination Bottom: Anthony, Jennifer, Brittany**.

(*Winner. **Eliminated.)

Power Rankings

12. (Even) ((Eliminated)) Brittany

AKA: Mumbles McGillicutty. Biff. Scallops.

Ranking History: 12, 13, 14.

Brittany opened this week in classic Brittany fashion, which is to say, by making some more goddamned scallops. That no one reacted to what has to be Brittany’s third or fourth scallop dish in just four weeks of competition (she did one for last week’s elimination challenge too!) made me feel like the show was gaslighting us. How have the producers not hidden the scallops by now?

Maybe this is why the damned ocean is full of microplastics. The scallops might filter it out, but we keep overfishing them to power our reality cooking competitions. Damned shame.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Collard wrapped pork and fennel sausage with smoked tomato butter sauce.

Reviews: “Was this dish meant to be room temperature?” “I don’t understand what I’m eating.” “There’s not one thing in there that says sausage.” “The texture is sort of sharp and mushy.”

Brittany, who has managed to only just squeak through after being at or near the bottom basically every week so far, was working hard to get her mojo back, but ended up being the victim of a Big Adversity: the steamer where Brittany had put her collard greens and home-ground sausage turned out not to be non-functioning. That seems like something you might want to check on periodically if you’ve ever watched this show, but what do I know. And so with just minutes to spare, Brittany had to try to quickly pivot to “anything edible,” repurposing Justin’s potato scraps in the process.

The result was somehow not hot (how do you cook something last minute and still have it come out cold??), not sausage, “mushy,” and “sharp” simultaneously. Low-key one of the harsher critiques I’ve heard on this show. Thus it was another pretty anti-climactic ending when Brittany finally, predictably punched her ticket home.

We could quibble about how much better Brittany’s greens would’ve been even if everything had gone perfectly (a steamer doesn’t seem like the ideal way to cook collard greens and sausage, but as a non-chef cooking pretty much anything for 80 people sounds impossible), but after a tough run on the show all season, this week sort of felt like putting Brittany mercifully out of her culinary misery. At least Tom and Greg Collier gave Brittany her flowers as one of the best chefs in Charlotte. I’ve never eaten there myself, but I would kill my firstborn if Greg Collier told me to.

11. (-1) Justin

AKA: Dangle. Wife Guy. Panthro. Crazylegs. Quad City. Yoga Jack Black. Jortscenter.

Ranking History: 10, 10, 12.

This week’s episode gave us just what we want: more Justin leg content. Tristan complimented Justin’s “short vibes” straight away, and Justin immediately attempted to maximize his strengths with even shorter ones, courtesy of his life partner/jorts tailor Jennifer.

If our relationship doesn’t look like this, I don’t want it.

I always love it when some asshole from New York like Tom Ford says that men should NEVER wear shorts. Yeah yeah, fashion man, spoken like someone who has clearly never lived in a place that’s over 100 degrees for 60 days every year. The shorts haters can sniff my sweaty undies, I’m thigh maxxing. Don’t be jealous of these porcelain pythons.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Yukon filled with potato salad, scallion cream, and potato chip.

Reviews: “I like it, it just still feels like a side.” “He was afraid to mess up potato salad, so he just made potato salad.”

Justin has been and continues to be difficult to handicap. According to my research, he hasn’t had a single high finish in any challenge yet, but also has never really felt like he was in danger of going home. Same story this week, where he was quickly overshadowed by better dishes but the judges seemed to appreciate his potato salad all the same.

10. (-1) Jennifer

AKA: Hi Y’all. Bon Voyage. Husband Gal. Fishbait. Slinger.

Ranking History: 9, 9, 11

Elimination Challenge Dish: Yeasted hoe cake with pot liquor, butter beans, triple cream, and hot honey.

Reviews: “I like the idea of this dish. It’s just that the pot liquor’s too salty.” “It’s for sure a side dish to me still.”

As with Justin, kind of the same story with his life partner/common law jorts seamstress Jennifer. Only one high finish so far, in week two, and one incomplete grade in a quickfire last week due to gimpy ropeswing shoulder.

This week Jennifer fell victim, along with Anthony, to the pitfall of salty sides. Beans in particular are especially easy to oversalt. Jennifer also apparently put chickpea and rice flour in her hoe cake, which was something only mentioned in passing at judge’s table. Seems like we could’ve delved into that one just a bit more. Chickpea flour? In a hoe cake? Is this some kind of Your Mom joke riddle designed just for me?

Btw, you guys know the difference between a chickpea hoe cake and a garbanzo bean hoe cake? I’ve never paid to have a garbanzo bean on my hoe cake! (Does that work at all? I think I’m having a stroke).

9. (-1) Johnathan

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

Ranking History: 8, 8, 5.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Hoe cake with gojuchang fried chicken and bourbon bacon maple syrup.

Review(s): “Johnathan’s is definitely a hangover dish.”

Rounding out (heh) the where-the-hell-do-I-rank-them trio of Justin and Jennifer is Johnathan, the thiccer of the two Dearden twins. Johnathan at least seems like the more tolerable twin, on account of he doesn’t talk like he’s trying to get all of his soundbites included in the final edit.

This week, John-a-thon made a tasty-sounding fried chicken hoe cake dish that got a lot of backhanded compliments about how it was hangover food. “This is the kind of dish I would eat after night of tequila shots.” Oh, is that so bad? Hungover people gotta eat too.

8. (+3) Sieger

AKA: The Silver Bullet. SEO. Hansel.

Ranking History: 11, 11, 8.

I’m using the period photograph of Sieger that the producers included this week, just to show how not off-base I was for nicknaming Sieger “Hansel” last week. Is that real hair? My god, the volume! His barber must have to service his clippers three times during every haircut.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Braised okra and pork belly with seeded tempura.

Review(s): “It’s melting.” “He cooked it right.”

Sieger “put his heart on the plate” this week, in Top Chef cliché parlance, choosing okra at the last minute and crediting it to his mom (pictured). In the process, he managed to convert famous okra hater Tom and bandwagon okra-hater Tristan Epps-Long. The win bumps The Silver Bullet up a few slots, though I’m not convinced enough to put him in the top half of these rankings just yet.

7. (-4) Anthony

AKA: The Ringer. Scrapple.

Ranking History: 3, 4, 2.

Notable Quote: “I used to work with Tristan. When I heard I was going to be on the show, the only thing he told me was ‘do better than I did.’ I’m like, Tristan, you won, man, what the hell.”

Elimination Challenge Dish: Braised collards, chadon beni and kimchi, with black bean and tasso ham fritter.

Reviews: “The texture of the greens, he did a good job.” “This is a fantastic side, that’s also too salty.

I had Anthony as a solid lock for top three before this week, and that view managed to survive all the way through the quickfire this week when his team finished top two for their flight of Tomme. (I believe that’s an alpine cheese fermented in Tom Colicchio’s underpants drawer).

Then Anthony went and embarrassed himself in front of a former colleague by cooking salty greens. The pot liquor has gone bad! It was actually hard to tell whether it was the abundance of salt or the lack of main course vibes in Anthony’s dish that the judges hated more. But thanks to having Brittany’s sharp-mushy room temperature non-sausage as a point of direct comparison, it never felt like Anthony was truly in danger of going home.

Jennifer might deserve partial credit for Anthony’s dish, since she was the last one to taste his greens before service, at which point she told him, and I quote, “It’s so good, Anthony.”

The pitfalls of false consensus! Calling these two “Salty Crew” from now on.

6. (-1) Brandon

AKA: GLP-1. Shh. Broccoli Twin. Slim. B-Train. New Danny.

Ranking History: 7, 7, 3.

Elimination Challenge Dish: Charred Cabbage with smoked bacon cream and parmesan breadcrumbs.

Reviews: “It was a little undercooked for me.”

It was nice to see Brandon getting mildly roasted this week for his shameless soundbite hogging. “Who felt confident about their dish this week?”

Oh, let me guess, you did, Brandon? What a surprise.

I do think it’s funny how much Brandon, the contestant with the biggest social media following (citation needed, I’m absolutely not going to fact check this lest it shit on my point) seems to embody the way algorithmic content favors the confidently basic. Aw shucks, gee whiz! Dude loves to self-narrate everything he’s doing. How many current Gen Z celebrities got their start doing dad jokes on Vine? What a world.

Anyway, much as it’s fun to bag on Brandon for always talking even when he doesn’t need to be, his food, this week’s allegedly-undercooked cabbage aside, at least looks consistently great. That sourdough-crusted grouper in the quickfire round? Sorry, that looked fire. “Seafood” is a really stupid, too-broad idea for a “flight,” but I would destroy that grouper. I see Brandon sticking around for a while longer, hopefully fulfilling his niche as the pseudo-influencer everyone loves to hate in the process.

5. (even) Duyen

AKA: Banh Amelie. Bondle. How YOU Duyen.

Ranking History: 5, 6, 4.

Notable Quote: “I own a wine and champagne company.”

I can’t believe Duyen got to mention that she owns a wine and champagne company this week without ever including the important fact that her wine and champagne company is called BONDLE. When you own a company called BONDLE, you’d think you’d take any opportunity to mention BONDLE. Maybe it was nixed by those bastards at Josh Cellars. What’s the matter, can’t handle a little competition? From BONDLE?

Duyen also proved herself a GAMER this week. Everyone was creaming themselves over Greg Collier’s smothered cabbage, and so when it came time to choose dishes, Duyen snaked one cabbage card for herself and gave the other to Brandon. A classic cabbage snake! Duyen made it sound like she did it because she heard Brandon was talking about the cabbage and wanted to be nice, but I choose to believe that she had insider knowledge of Brandon’s inferior cabbage cookery and was attempting to eliminate a rival. Don’t be fooled by the cute act, Duyen is ruthless!

Elimination Challenge Dish: Charred cabbage with grits, confit tomatoes and pickled corn.

Reviews: “It felt like a main dish and it felt innovative and it felt very personal.”

I’ve never heard of or eaten a dish like Duyen’s, combining cabbage, grits, and confit tomatoes, but damned if that doesn’t look and sound amazing. Duyen doesn’t feel like she’s in the top one or two yet, but she seems like a lock for the top five.