I write these for a Top Chef fantasy league my wife Anna and I serve as co-commissioners. This was written for the participants, so IGNORE any mention of points. INSANE SPOILERS BELOW!
We pick up moments after Zubair gets sent to Last Chance Kitchen. Shockwaves ripple through the chefs as Shuai tells the gang that someone will rejoin them for the quickfire. Shuai is still stung from being part of the bottom three, but he credits his ability to learn from his mistakes and look forward to the next challenge. For these chefs cooking is all between the ears, but also a lot of arms, hands, and fingers because that’s what they use to touch the food. It’s so important that these chefs move on quickly because here come Gail and Kristen.
G and K have business to discuss with the chefs. There’s no quickfire, just an elimination. But for this week they will stage (pronounced stahj) at various restaurants around town. They pull knives and get a different cuisine. Tristen will be paired up with the winner of LCK, and both of them will have immunity. The twists aren’t done though as the chefs are told this is a double elimination. Two chefs will go home.
The next morning the chefs wait to see which Last Chance Kitchen chef will rejoin the competition. Vinny thinks Zubair’s coming back, but he’s wrong. Music swells as Bailey glides through the door throwing up deuces and trying out the “Ciao amici” greeting. An interesting thing about the phrase Ciao amici is that it can be a greeting or a farewell as it means “hello friends”, or “goodbye friends”. With so many nights carving tallies into the wall of the Last Chance Kitchen dungeon, we have to assume this was deliberate wording. Will her stay in the competition be joyous and friendly? Or was her time confined to a small concrete cell being forced to cook dishes for Tom and give a TV rent in form of a pint of blood a day to Bravo King Andy Cohen cloud her thoughts and steer her actions more toward vengeance?
Lana seems thrilled by Bailey’s return. Apparently she’s good energy. And you know what I kind of believe her, Bailey was fun down in LCK. We speak more to Bailey and find that she has viewed this whole experience as a rebirth. She has recentered her cooking and now just cooks for herself. But then she says something interesting, she talks about her first stint in the main competition and says “whoever that was, that person is gone.” Most likely she’s speaking metaphorically, but we should watch out for a sort of Beatles switching out Paul McCartney thing going on. The chefs see it too, as Tristen says “she looks like a whole different person.” There is always a possibility (Bravo has done it before) of a chef switch scheme in which Bailey was swapped out for a new Bailey for TV ratings. It is sweeps after all. I can’t be the only person who has alarm bells going off.
The chefs partner up and head to their restaurants. The teams are: Shuai and Henry (Filipino), Tristen and Bailey* (Greek), Kat and Corwin (Portuguese), Katianna and Cesar (Royal Thai), Massimo and Paula (Caribbean), Lana and Vinny (Indian).
The chefs settle into their staging restaurants, Bailey tells us a story about how the Greek restaurant reminds her of her dad’s restaurant in Chicago, something that her actor replacement could have easily googled or memorized off of a flash card given to her by Top Chef producers. Vinny and Lana are given flowers by the restaurant owner and introduced to a dish called Chicken Kamasutra. Either the restaurant owner has mixed up his appointments and thinks Lana and Vinny have chosen to spend their honeymoon with him, or Vinny has paid the guy to turn this into a cute little date for him and Lana. This guy lands on our BRETT’S BOARD today. He’s got a great vibe and he’s solely responsible for a lot of good Vinny content coming up. Either way, Vinny falls easily into the grooves laid for him and latches onto the only dish named after a sex book. He will say the word kamasutra eighty more times over the course of the episode getting more and more aroused each time. While Vinny refuses to stand up around people and keeps a blanket over his lap, Lana has the wherewithal to write down the ingredients.
Henry and Shuai get into the Filipino ingredients, Cesar and Katianna work a wok, Kat and Corwin do their thing, Massimo puts on his apron after taking off his belt some sort of bullfighter.
The couples finish up their stage sesh and get back into their ultimate driving machines. The chefs drive and chat. Corwin and Kat want to make a croquette, Vinny and Lana want to make their sex chicken. But something interesting happens in the driving montage, you may or may not notice that in every car one of the chefs drives. That is except: Tristen and Bailey. Could this be because the actor playing Bailey isn’t allowed to drive?
We run through Whole Foods again, everyone gets their ingredients, some quirks from Whole Foods, they don’t have 40 lbs of fresh octopus, also they don’t have Corwin’s saltfish which of course they don’t because WHAT IS IT? He always talks about it but I still don’t know what it is.
Back in the kitchen Tristen starts the octopus, Bailey makes a tapenade, and Massimo uses his arms and hands to rub seasoning all over his short rib. Frustratingly little footage of that. Kat and Corwin talk about the potatoes, Kat worries about the peppers. Vinny and Lana make something, Vinny decides to make a curry hollandaise? Because he worked at the Nomad. But why make a hollandaise instead of just an indian sauce/curry? He’s doing it just so he can say he worked at the Nomad. They did a whole brunch episode but he whips out this hollandaise backstory here and NOW?
This episode is pretty lame because everyone is getting along. Cowrin and Kat have some chemistry. Henry and Shuai are loving being teamed up and talking about congee. Vinny and Lana are still in the honeymoon stage of their indian hollandaise date. Katianna and Cesar are so chill they might be on muscle relaxers. Bailey 2.0 and Tristen are cooking just for the hell of it since they’ve got immunity. Everything is good. That is until Paula and Massimo’s jus. Massimo is worried about the jus. I hate seeing him worry. So he wants to cover the meat with the jus. But if the jus isn’t thick enough, it won’t stay on the jus. So he wants to reduce. He’s so tense you wish he’d just whip that chef's jacket off and cool off. Anyways Paula tries her best to calm him, but he’s in full takeover mode. His fight or flight has kicked in. He’s also the only chef in sunglasses. Shifting to Paula’s POV, what do you do when there’s a gorgeous wild horse wearing sunglasses charging you on some sun soaked plain? You stand your ground, but you also compromise. Paula stands up for herself, but realizes that the fastest way to town is on that mustang rearing before you. So Paula calms Massimo, and they reduce the jus together.
A bunch of people show up, and the chef teams get their dishes ready. Massimo and Paula’s dish goes well. No big complaints. Then there’s Kat and Corwin’s dish. I think their lack of salt cod made the thing too wet? I don’t know what the hell salt cod is. It’s all Corwin talks about but has he ever really talked about what it is? is it a type of cod? Is it regular cod with a bunch of salt added to it? Whatever it is or isn’t the balls are a little too wet.
Judges like Katianna and Cesar’s dish. Henry and Shuai do fine. Judges love Bailey and Tristen’s dish. Vinny and Lana are next. We meet Gail’s family for this one. Vinny introduces the sex dish and then mentions that he made a hollandaise because he worked at the Nomad [pause for adoration]. The judges are underwhelmed by the hollandaise.
Back in the TC kitchen, the judges tell us their favorite two teams are Katianna and Cesar and Tristen and Bailey. Tristen and Bailey win it.
As for the bottom two teams, it’s Kat and Corwin and Vinny and Lana. The judges deliberate, and I think they hate Vinny. They just don’t care that he worked at the Nomad. The judges say what we have all been thinking. He’s got to step it up and cook for himself. He’s getting too cute. But Kat and Corwin’s croquettes were just too wet and mushy. So they go home.
Kat and Corwin go into Last Chance Kitchen and Kat wins it. She’s not done yet, but can she keep winning and rejoin like Bailey did? I think she can.