'Top Chef' judges call out 'ridiculous' Quickfire Challenge that was maybe misplaced in the competition
While Top Chef contestants have impressive culinary skill and sophisticated palates, sometimes on the show they're put into outrageous cooking situation, which was very much the case in this week's Quickfire Challenge. In the dépanneur challenge, the chefs has to make a dish only using items from the Top Chef dépanneur, cooking exclusively with the electrical cooking equipment in the Top Chef pantry and disposable utensils.
The challenge was inspired by Top Chef guest, comedian Punkie Johnson, who started cooking in her dressing room on set. But the judges were very aware of how "ridiculous" the challenge was.
"The thing I appreciated the most is that all the chefs leaned into the fun, what else are you supposed to do in a scenario like this? Make something that's edible, have a good time," Kristen Kish told Yahoo Canada on the set of Top Chef in Toronto last year. "And really, for the most part, it wasn't the best showing of all the food they made, sure, and I would hope it wouldn't be, ... but they all embraced it, and they all made something. ... Nothing was not edible."
"I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't ridiculous. ... But here's the thing, ... as a chef, we're used to eating late night, convenient style. So it might not be the food that we cook, but it's certainly something that we know what it tastes like. It's not like it was something off in a faraway land."
But actually, judge Tom Colicchio believed that this is a challenge that was placed at the wrong time in the competition.
"This was a challenge we should have done earlier in the season," Colicchio said. "Especially at this point ... where we're factoring in Quickfire and Elimination challenges.
"This was a tough one for me. .. I think the challenges should be challenging, but we should always find an avenue where we're going to get a really good [food]. ... Some of these shows where it's like, you've got pasta ... and jelly beans, what does that do? No one would ever do that. ... But I think the biggest problem is they couldn't use a knife."
Looking at Season 22 as a whole, Colicchio identified that the chefs are more "consistent" than he's seen in previous seasons of the show.
"Sometimes this kitchen, this competition, is not for everyone," he said. "There's been a lot fewer lows and a lot more highs. There have been some extraordinary things, just things that are just out of left field, really good."
This week's episode also marked the return of César to the competition after being eliminated last week, but surviving Last Chance Kitchen.
"There was a pickle challenge and he had a bread and butter pickle tart, like lemon curd tart, with ice cream. ... It was fantastic. It was sensational," Colicchio highlighted. "But there are times when [the chefs] do something doesn't work."
"There's always one or two ingredients that he puts in there that you kind of question sometimes."
Looking at mistakes that chefs generally make on the show, Colicchio stressed that sometimes they try to give themselves too many option.
"They go and get a bunch of stuff so they have options, the thing about having options is that you don't know which lane to choose, and you're able to go back and forth maybe too much," he said. "I think, go and get a few things, focus and cook. ... It's always that one extra thing that ruins a dish."
In this week's Elimination Challenge, the chefs had to create dishes using sustainably grown Montreal rooftop ingredients, and only using the items left over in the Top Chef pantry. The dishes had to transport the judges into one of the four weather seasons.
The winning chef was Shuai, who made a "last bowl of hot pot" with squash, sweet potato dumplings, fried enoki mushrooms and mushroom dashi, representing winter.
Unfortunately for Vinny, he was eliminated from the competition. He made a lamb dumpling with morel mushroom consommé, enoki mushrooms and english peas, meant to represent spring. Canadian judge Gail Simmons said there was an "aggressiveness" to the consommé that overpowered the dish, and both Simmons and Colicchio were missing the radishes on their plates.
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