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The second episode of any Top Chef season usually allows you to start recognizing who will be the real contenders this season. They usually stick to the same formula of giving you a Quickfire Competition where a chef has the opportunity to win immunity from elimination (at you can win it for the first several episodes at least), followed by a more intense Elimination Challenge where an unlucky chef gets ejected from the kitchen. Not literally, even though that would be awesome. But in more recent seasons, they’ve shown that while they don’t deviate from this specific structure much, that they’re willing to play with this familiar template a litte bit. Most noticeably, they did this in Top Chef Texas when the introduced the Top Chef try-outs for the first episode, as well as the “Texas-sized” challenges. But this season they may have jumped a shark with shaking up the template. Okay, maybe not jumping a shark, but they definitely jumped a dolphin or a swordfish with the latest Big Brother-like twist. Other than that, it was a reliably solid episode where we start to see people emerge as front-runners, and others fade into the background. Let’s get this recap shake n’ bakin’!

We begin with the chefs coming into the Top Chef kitchen only just now seeing all of their competitors for the first time. They quickly try to assess each other before Padma comes in to give the instructions for the first Quickfire Challenge. The way this usually works for those of you new to the Top Chef universe, is Padma walks in with a guest judge or judges to tell the chefs what their Quickfire Challenge is. A Quickfire Challenge usually lasts no more than 45 minutes, and often results in the winner getting immunity or some kind of other prize. And sometimes that prize is simply the glory of being named the winner. So, this episode, the mingle session that the chefs had started is abruptly interrupted by Padma coming in with three past contestants: C.J. (Season 3), Josie (Season 2), and Stefan (5). All I remember is C.J. got eliminated from disastrous broccolini in an airline meal challenge and that Stefan was super talented but a real doucheboggle. I have very little recollection of this Josie character. Anyhoo, we’re told that they’ll be our guest judges for this challenge. Seems like odd choices from the get-go, but let’s just see where it goes, shall we? Onto the challenge!

QUICKFIRE CHALLENGE: In 5 groups of 3, decide on a dish to make in 20 minutes that highlights one of a selection of local shellfish (crab, mussels, crawfish, geoduck, and razor clams). The dish must be on the table by the time the timer goes off.

While Padma is relaying the rules to the cheftestants, John starts to whisper to teammate Kuniko what their strategy should be whereupon Padma completely shuts him DOWN. I have to say I laughed out loud when this happens. I love it when Padma puts the smack down. It’s usually delivered in her trademark slurry dry affect, but this time, it had a little kick to it. Well done, Padma.

A couple of things are worth noting before we explore the dishes and the judging. First of all, geoduck is pronounced goo-ee-duck not jee-oh-duck the way that it’s actually spelled. Just so you know. Secondly, Kristen educates us that geoduck looks like a penis. And it does, I’ve confirmed it. Thirdly, geoduck is really easy to cook quickly. That’s why everyone wanted the geoduck and why Danyele’s team had to go for razor clams. Fourthly, Bart tells us that the best food is from Belgium because they’ve been conquered so many times that they get to use the ingredients of their conquerors in their cuisine. Now you know! And fifthly, Carla is still crazypants out of her mind and I can’t tell if I’m completely annoyed by her or having a good time watching her.

Gray Team (Bart, Jeffrey, & Brooke): Crawfish with pickled red chili, fennel, and crawfish cream.

My take: Looked and sounded yummy. Plus, they had Jeffrey on their team, whom I’m convinced is going to be one of the ones to beat this season, so I assumed it was going to be one of the better dishes. No surprise here.

Judges’ verdict: “Old school” but good.

Orange Team (Lizzie, Carla, and Chrissy): Oven roasted crawfish with fennel and herb salad. (Lizzie thinks their plate is sloppy and blames Carla’s batshit craziness. Probably a fair assumption.)

My take: Once again, looks pretty tasty but maybe a little too simplistic. Given they have Carla on their team screeching at them and interrupting every two seconds while bouncing around the kitchen like a crack addict, it makes sense that they didn’t have time to make it a bit more sophisticated. Doesn’t matter, the judges pretty much liked it, so they’ll either wind up at the top or around the middle of the pack.

Judges’ verdict: Flavors are nice, seasoned well, could have used more acid, but two thumbs up.

Green Team (Micah, Kristen, and Tyler): Fried and sashimi geoduck, radish and bok choy salad, yuzu chili vinaigrette.

My take: Okay, so after seeing what an actual geoduck looks like, I never want to eat one. Unless it’s fried, I’d probably eat that. Doesn’t look anything like a duck, by the way. I have high expectations for this dish given that Micah and Kristen are on the team and early standouts.

Judges’ Verdict: Geoduck two ways is a good idea, but the sashimi should have been cut a little thinner (cue scary top chef knife sound)

Blue Team (Sheldon, Kuniko, and John): Geoduck sashimi, ponzu, apple, and cucumber

My take: It’s geoduck and no amount of apple, ponzu, or cucumber will erase the memory of what this animal looks like raw. Fry it up and I may eat it with a generous portion of ranch dressing. But since it has the best/most hated/most best chef from Dallas on their team, it should be at least decent. And Sheldon, with his familiarity with seafood, should help them knock it out of the park.

Judges’ verdict: They love it, but needs just a hair more salt. Maybe.

Yellow Team (Eliza, Danyele, and Josh): Razor clam & grilled corn chowder with fresno chili and grilled lime.

My take: Sounds super yum, but also sounds like something you could easily get at Applebee’s or something. I didn’t have a sense of confidence from this team while they were cooking, so I didn’t have high hopes for the dish. Sometimes you can get a sense of the chemistry on a team and see how that energy gets translated into the dish.

Judges’ verdict: Good on the grilled lime, but it needs salt and it’s watered down. Ouch.

Losing Team: Yellow team. Not surprising here given the feedback, or seeing the tentativeness of how this team worked together.

Winning Team: Blue team. Great. Another thing to add to John Tesar’s egomania. But it doesn’t stop there! When they draw knives to see who gets immunity, John wins that, too. He kinda comes off like a humble guy in front of the others, but then in his confessionals, he gets a little high on himself. The picture of him holding a knife with that seemingly innocent smile on his face is rather fitting.

After the winner is announced, Padma announces that there is a twist. Usually this takes the form of flying to another city, announcing that two chefs will be eliminated, announcing that the chefs will have TWO dishes to cook for the elimination challenge, etc… Instead, Padma announces that CJ, Josie and Stefan will be joining them in the competition. WHAT THE WHAT?? I don’t like this!! Former contestants should be exiled to the All-Star seasons only. Not only do they now have an advantage because they’ve been able to taste their competitor’s cooking, but they’re seasoned vets of the show and are more accustomed to the unpredictable madness of it all. Not. Cool. Oh and by the way, CJ and Josie should just pack their knives and go right now because Stefan is gonna SPANK all y’alls!! C’mon, Top Chef. I love you because you’re NOT Big Brother and you don’t bring contestants back!! Micah is definitely up for the challenge, while Tyler is definitely NON-PLUSED.

Anyways, C.J. says that he’s a much better Chef than he was ten years ago and that he’s eager to show Tom his stuff. Stefan is still bitter about losing to Josiah. And to be honest, so am I. That was a downright travesty. And Josie has apparently just been travelling the world. I’m most worried about her prospects on the show.

ELIMINATION CHALLENGE: They’ll be cooking at the Sky City Restaurant at the top of the Space Needle. Each team will serve one dish to our usual judges (Tom, Padma, and Gail Simmons) and local chef Tom Douglas. They’ll have 47 minutes to prep and cook the dish using Seattle’s finest local ingredients, which is the exact amount of time it takes the space needle to go around one time. They only have 30 minutes to get ingredients from the Top Chef kitchen and GO.

The teams from the Quickfire will remain the same, and the former contestants will make the last team (Red Team). John and Kuniko’s team is doing a chili-poached cod, and John is super impressed with her choices. At least he’ll give props when they’re due… I think he still may be a closet asshole. Don’t make me take back all my snark!! Danyele’s team chooses the last remaining fish, even though they can’t tell what it is yet. Not surprised by this decision-making given that they were in last place for the Quickfire. Really hoping they luck out here. And then Lizzie is dreading having to work with that Tasmanian Devil Carla again. However, I’m kinda looking forward to watching that all go down. YAY!

Onto the Elimination Challenge, where we are told two teams will be cooking at a time.

First up: Blue Team & Orange Team

The Blue Team works efficiently and has separated out all of the tasks for the dish to the three members. They’re like a machine! They seem to respect each other, be focused on their individual tasks, and they don’t scream at each other. When Kuniko accidentally burns her chili oil, Sheldon calmly tells her about it and she makes another batch without ruining the dish. If these guys have to work on teams again, I’m guessing they’ll team up. The Orange Team is making poached salmon on seasonal vegetables. Carla is still a scatterbrained lunatic. But oddly fun to watch? And wildly annoying. I don’t know! I’m so confused about this woman.

Blue Team: Chili oil poached cod with dashi, spot prawn shabu shabu

All of the judges gush over this dish. They thought that the chili oil wasn’t overpowering and that the cod was cooked perfectly. Once again, team blue seems to be headed for whole kitchen domination!

Orange Team: Wild salmon poached with seasonal vegetables and beurre blanc

The judges call the salmon “right on the money” and the beurre blanc has a ton of flavor. Now, this was a surprise given that Carla went on one of her off-her-rocker rampages while cooking the food. But it turns out that for both challenges, the team was able to give the judges great dishes. Perhaps we won’t be seeing her vanish from the kitchen anytime soon? We shall see. She’s obviously not going anywhere this episode despite her antics

Second Up: Gray team & Red Team

On the Gray team, Jeff is definitely taking the leadership role here. Brooke expresses concern that perhaps the fish is overcooked though, so this may be the first sign of danger for the team. Usually when the chefs notice, the judges definitely notice so look for this to come up at Judges’ Table. The Red Team is knowingly taking a risk by making quail. They hit a road bump with the cherry emulsion, but Josie tries to save it. I’m thinking that CJ may be a little bit overconfident here, and while he may be a better chef than he was previously, this may be his downfall.

Gray team: pan roasted halibut, mushrooms, English peas, wheat beer with herb sabayon.

As predicted, the judges think the halibut is overcooked, but they seemed to like the pickled radish. The overcooked halibut will spell DOOM.

Red team: Quail breast with confit of spot prawn, cherries, and porcini.

The judges note that the quail is overcooked, and that the dish needed more cherries overall. Of course this happened! Top Chef does a good job of showing us footage of people being cocky and overconfident, then slicing them down to size around Judges’ Table.

Third Up: Yellow Team & Green Team

It turns out the Yellow Team has cod. But they can’t find their mushrooms, so it looks like at some point they stole someone else’s? What happens here is very confusing, but if they did steal someone’s mushrooms, then you better believe there will be drama later. The Green Team, consisting of Kristen, Micah, and Tyler, are making salmon and appear to work very well together, just like the Blue Team. There isn’t one person barking orders at another – they all seem focused on the task at hand, and from previous challenges, they all seem like pretty talented chefs to boot.

Green team: crispy seared salmon, local vegetables & spot prawn butter sauce.

The judges receive the salmon and state that it is perfectly cook. They do a little more back and forth in comparing it with the other salmon dish (Orange Team starring Crazypants Carla), but overall they were impressed with the execution.

Yellow Team: pan roasted cod, mushrooms, fava beans, pickled green apple & garlic scape pistou

They comment that the cod is cooked well, and that they love the apple, but I believe Tom made some comment about there being too much raw garlic in the sauce. Probably a telling sign that they didn’t win the challenge, but nice comeback from a team I’d written off for sure!

JUDGES’ TABLE

As the chefs commiserate in the depressing pantry room (where they’re always relegated to during Judges’ Table), Padma strolls in gloomily (as she always does at this point) and says they’d like to see the Blue Team. Now, at this point nobody knows for sure who the winner is, but nine times out of ten, the winning team is called in first. As predicted, the Blue Team gets to Judges’ table to find out that they had won.

When asked about their success, John said that it was a collaborative effort, but gives Kuniko props for coming up with the idea. But the spot prawns were his idea. Sheldon apparently didn’t do anything. And the winner is: Kuniko! John seems genuinely happy for her. UGH. Why can’t he just be an asshole like I thought he was going to be??!

The Blue Team goes back to the Pantry of Despair and Judges would like to see the Red Team and the Gray Team because they were the losing teams.

Back at Judges’ Table, Tom begins to lay into the Red Team by asking why they think they’re there (I love this question). C.J. spouts off some obvious nonsense about the fact that maybe there was an imperfection with the dish. Padma adamantly responds “CLEARLY.” Which is amazing and hilarious. (Aside: I want her and Heidi Klum to co-judge on each other’s shows just once). It’s obvious nobody wants to throw the other under the bus, but Tom finally asks who was responsible for the quail and Stefan reluctantly raises his hand. He tries to give a couple of lame excuses like the quail was too small (DER!), but he finally concedes that it was his fault.

On the Gray Team, the judges call-out the hard sear on both sides of the halibut, which was unfortunately Jeff’s fault. Jeff put the fish in when they had 14 minutes 30 second left to cook which we find out is WAY too long to cook that portion of fish. I probably would have done the same thing, but Jeff, a clear front runner, should have definitely known better. We find out that the flavorless herb sabayon was classical Belgian chef Bart’s fault, and I get a sinking feeling that he’ll be the first one to pack his knives and go since we have ZERO back story on this guy, and tons on Jeff.

FINAL DECISION: Jeffrey’s gone!!!! This is a travesty. He seemed like a real contender, and he was one of my early favorites. I should have known from the amount of attention they gave him throughout the episode; that’s kind of like the producer’s way of saying goodbye. They should have eliminated Stefan just on the principle that he’s done this before, and because it’s a lame idea to bring vets back in the first place. But whatever. So long, Jeffrey! You will be missed. Pouring a 40 on the kitchen island in your honor…

Score: 6/10