Top Chef Recap: Jammed Up
By
Roxana Hadadi,
a Vulture TV critic who also covers film and pop culture.
She is a juror for the Peabody Awards.
The teams face off in a surprisingly drama-free Restaurant Wars, even with that takeout-order gimmick.
Photo: Paul Cheney/Bravo
Our question has been answered: Sieger’s back. The timeline of Last Chance Kitchen (which Sieger didn’t have to compete in) isn’t fully explained, but here’s my theory that I shared in the comments last week. I think that production paused filming LCK as Jennifer’s health took a turn, to see what Justin might want to do, approached Sieger to return to Top Chef when Justin said he wasn’t coming back to the competition, and then let Justin compete in LCK when Jennifer’s health leveled out, because why not? They still had to fulfill the LCK episode order, and at that point, Justin had given up his spot in the main competition anyway. Regardless of how that all went down, Sieger’s back, and Jennifer and Justin have provided a health update on their shared Instagram account. Which I think is cute, by the way, and if Jennifer does come back to the competition in another season, I’ll be rooting for her.
Anyway, Restaurant Wars! This was the most straightforward, efficient episode of the season, pleasurable in its simplicity, with only one gimmick (the to-go orders) that barely made a difference to the episode’s outcome. Kristen explains to the brainstorming teams that Jennifer is still in the hospital and has been removed from the competition for her own well-being, and Justin chose to be with her rather than take her spot, and that Sieger is back instead. He joins Oscar, Brandon, and Jonathan, whose restaurant concept is Terra Reina, Latin food with Southern soul; Sieger will be executive chef and expedite orders, Brandon and Jonathan will be line cooks, and Oscar will be front of house. The other team decides on the name Carolina Queen, and on a general Southern concept; immunity-having Anthony will be the executive chef, Laurence and Sherry will be line cooks, and Duyen will be front of house. As they plan their menus, Sieger volunteers to do an appetizer and a dessert (two dishes is a lot on top of being executive chef); Oscar has an entree that Brandon will pick up and cook for him; Brandon is also doing a dessert; and Jonathan is doing an appetizer and an entree. Over on the other side, Anthony is doing an entree; Duyen is doing an appetizer; Sherry is doing an appetizer and a dessert; and Laurence is doing an entree and a dessert. I think that the Carolina Queen line cooks each doing two dishes is more in line with how prior Restaurant Wars competitors have handled the division of labor, so let’s see how that goes.
The teams shop for decor and ingredients — I loved seeing Sherry’s very long, neatly organized shopping list — and are prepping when Tom and guest judge Michael Mina walk through their shared kitchen. Duyen freaks out when Tom both mocks her green rice pudding from last week and wonders whether she tested her choux pastry for her cheese-stuffed puff (her “Not today, devil!” response to Tom in her talking-head interview made me laugh), but the Carolina Queen team already has a good idea that shows they’ve done their Restaurant Wars homework. They’re making a fizzy welcome tea with turmeric and yuzu that diners will receive when they arrive, and that’s exactly the kind of pleasant touch that will make diners rate Carolina Queen highly. No team really seems to run into any issues on the first day. On the second day, though, Duyen realizes how much work she needs to do in the restaurant to get it ready for guests, and Jonathan admits he’s fallen behind on his prep work with only an hour to go before the restaurant opens. Brandon’s rightly pissed that Jonathan didn’t ask for help earlier (I enjoyed Brandon and Sherry both mocking Jonathan for thinking he could catch up on prep during actual service), and to his credit, Jonathan’s a little embarrassed to ask. Also of note is that the two teams differ in their approach to takeout orders. The Terra Reina team is asking their host to take to-go orders and walk them back to the kitchen to Sieger, while Carolina Queen has a phone in the kitchen that Anthony says he’ll personally answer.
Time to open the doors! The judges, Michael, and second guest judge Clare Reichenbach, CEO of the James Beard Foundation (she’s been on Top Chef before), dine at Carolina Queen first, which they praise for its “soft and feminine” aesthetic and the welcome drink. Duyen is right there when they arrive, paying attention to them — and every other table; she’s very good at this — and the dishes come out in a timely manner, with only a slight gap between entrees and desserts. Here’s their menu and some brief judges’ thoughts:
Appetizers: “Great start,” per Kristen; everyone loves both dishes.
• Sherry: She-crab cake made with coconut milk instead of aioli, with she-crab bisque.
• Duyen (with Sherry doing her pickup): Cheese puff with country ham, comté cheese, and mornay sauce.
Entrees: Laurence’s pork belly skin is too crunchy and difficult to eat; Anthony’s rice is mushily cooked and slimy from the okra.
• Anthony: Red rice with smoked oysters, pickled okra, crab roe, and béarnaise sauce.
• Laurence: Pork belly with collard greens, fried scallion cornbread, and pickles.
Desserts: Sherry’s is a big hit; Tom thought Laurence’s dish could have used more sweet potato flavor in the crème anglaise or in the baklava itself.
• Sherry: “PB&J” peanut butter panna cotta, oat crumble, compressed fruits, Cheerwine gel.
• Laurence: Pecan baklava with sweet potato crème anglaise.
There’s a slight lag in service when to-go orders start coming in — Anthony needs to be reminded to pick up the phone — and some tables wait a little too long for entrees. But mostly, Carolina Queen seems to be running well in this first service. Tom calls it “very successful,” which might be one of the nicest things Tom has ever said. Over at Terra Reina, things aren’t going so hot. The servers struggle with filling out the tickets as Sieger needs them (a sign that he may not have trained them that well to begin with), and food is being walked back into the kitchen because it’s going to the wrong tables. As Sieger deals with that and the restaurant tries to get the first diners out the door so they can start their second service, the judges walk in. And for some reason, Oscar doesn’t prioritize their dishes going out first? Instead, it seems like he (or maybe Sieger, or maybe both of them together in a moment that isn’t explicitly on camera) decides to push out the entrees that are holding up their first seating of diners. Maybe the time genuinely got away from Oscar, but I am really skeptical that he thought the wait was just five minutes. Instead, it takes 40 minutes for the judges’ appetizers to come out, and they only come out after Kristen beckons Oscar over and asks him what the hell is going on. Yikes! Here’s what they’re served, after Tom justifiably grumbles that the wait is “ridiculous”:
Appetizers: Gail dings Sieger on the casual presentation of the tostada, and Kristen thinks it needs a sauce; everyone loves Jonathan’s aguachile.
• Sieger: Carolina Ruby sweet potato tostada with crema and salsa negra.
• Jonathan: Snapper aguachile with grapes and apples and a plantain chip.
Entrees: The judges say both dishes are fantastic and definitively better than Carolina Queen’s, and Kristen says Oscar’s dish is the most sophisticated thing he’s made all season.
• Jonathan: Cod pescado a la veracruzana, with stewed tomatoes, Castelvetrano olives, and capers.
• Oscar (with Brandon doing his pickup): Tongue and cheek barbacoa, wrapped in a collard green leaf, with a duo of salsas
Desserts: The judges don’t like either, and call them “a big letdown”; Sieger’s custard is grainy and too savory, and Brandon’s rice pudding has clumps of uncooked rice and not enough Cheerwine jelly.
• Sieger: “Crémeuxso,” with crema Catalana (the same custard Sieger made a few episodes ago), chocolate, and a benne cracker.
• Brandon: Arroz con leche (rice pudding) with Cheerwine cherry jelly.
Before the Judges’ Table, the judges agree both teams did a better job than many others before them, and they liked both concepts. At Judges’ Table itself, a winner isn’t immediately identified; instead, the judges ask the teams a few clarifying questions and share what takeout diners thought. With Carolina Queen, a few takeout orders came back because they were missing dishes and utensils. With Terra Reina, there was negative feedback about the container the aguachile was served in; it got too messy, and the plantain chip too soggy. Also, with Terra Reina, Sieger, Jonathan, and Brandon are shocked to learn about the timing issue with the judges’ appetizer; it’s unclear whether Oscar knowingly fibbed to his team about how long it took to avoid a confrontation, or genuinely lost track of time. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
The judges deliberate on their own, and because the teams performed so similarly, they really go in on little things. Tom calls Duyen’s service “impeccable,” and says Anthony is lucky he has immunity because his dish had so many technical issues. Kristen calls Laurence’s dish “uninspired and safe and, quite frankly, boring,” which is very different from the feedback they gave him when he was in the room! Gail calls both of Sieger’s dishes “mediocre.” But the most criticism is leveled at Brandon, who helped a ton with Jonathan and Oscar’s dishes, but also served up a one-note and poorly cooked dessert. Tom says that Sieger should have, as executive chef, ordered Brandon to cook both desserts, and while I don’t think there’s any world in which Sieger would have done that, I see Tom’s point that Brandon has been talking up his dessert prowess all season (and done well with it!) and then whiffed here. (Interestingly, the to-go issues are basically waved away; Tom practically rolls his eyes when Gail asks how much they should consider Carolina Queen diners missing items from their orders. So what was the point of putting the chefs through that at all? A silly change that I hope gets dropped for future Restaurant Wars.)
It’s pretty clear that Carolina Queen is going to win because Terra Reina’s desserts were so lackluster, and that’s exactly what happens. Duyen wins, but immunity is off the table for the rest of the season, so she just gets bragging rights. And Brandon gets sent home, Tom says, for not pulling his weight, which I don’t think is exactly right. Brandon failed with his dessert, but he did pull his weight by helping teammates instead of focusing on his own dish. He’s going immediately into the finale of Last Chance Kitchen … and depending on how he does there, maybe he’ll be back on the show next week when the chefs travel to Greenville, South Carolina, and meet last season’s finalist Shuai Wang.
• The dishes I most wanted to eat this episode: Sherry’s she-crab cake and soup, Laurence’s pecan baklava, and both of Jonathan’s dishes. A version of cod pescado a la veracruzana is pretty straightforward to make at home, and one of my favorite weeknight dinners with a huge slab of sourdough.
• Kristen teased last week that the winning team would get a major prize, and we learn that each of them gets an “exclusive vacation” to the Universal Orlando Resort. In Florida. For a Carolinas-set season?! There was nothing worth gifting in all of North and South Carolina?
• This is my latest conspiracy: Did anyone else notice that Terra Reina’s to-go containers for ceviche were DIFFERENT from the containers the takeout diners complained about? The to-go containers we see in the kitchen were two-piece plastic with a detached lid. The to-go containers the diners complained about were a one-piece black clamshell container. Now, the plantain chip definitely would have gotten soggy in either of those, but were there enough to-go diners that the Terra Reina team ran out of one container and started using another? I didn’t really get a sense of there being that much takeout demand.
• Very jealous of Duyen’s excellent over-the-knee boots in this episode.
• Last Chance Kitchen spoilers for the fifth episode and season finale “Last Bites”: It’s Brandon vs. Rhoda, with each preparing a three-course progressive menu. Their courses need to be a single bite, and all three need to be presented to Tom within 45 minutes; it’s their own version of a mini Restaurant Wars. Rhoda decides on a California-Mediterranean concept, while Brandon goes broadly with seafood. Brandon serves a scallop crudo “taco” with apple, fennel, and yuzu; a hushpuppy with trout roe and Andouille sausage aioli; and a quail egg raviolo with ricotta, country ham, and caviar. Rhoda presents a roasted carrot salad with goat cheese and pistachio aillade; a seared scallop with grilled leeks and romesco sauce; and a roasted duck with grilled radicchio and grape jus. The dishes are all good, and Tom’s critiques are very slight: Brandon’s hushpuppy was slightly undercooked; Rhoda’s romesco sauce was underseasoned. But he thinks that Rhoda’s concept was stronger and her progression was better, and she wins LCK. She’ll rejoin Top Chef proper next week, and Brandon’s going home for good.
Top Chef Recap: Jammed Up
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