Thursday, September 09, 2010

Top Chef: Singapore

This is it, the build up to the finale! Once again everyone seemed to cook really well in the quick fire challenge and the elimination challenge. It seems the smallest of margins sent one chef home and elevated the other three for one last challenge.

Quick fire challenge: create Singapore street food using only a wok and local ingredients. Ed wins the challenge with stir-fry noodles with black pepper sauce, lobster and gai lan. I can't believe Ed beat the supposed master of Asian cuisine, Angelo. Though, in Angelo's defense, his chile frog legs with pineapple and rambutan salsa looked very delicious. Ed also won immunity for the elimination challenge securing a place in the final.

Elimination challenge: a team challenge to cater a party based on local cuisine, cooking dishes to order for 80 people. The team agrees to cook one dish each and that all changes when Tom visits the kitchens and pretty much orders them to cook at least two dishes each. Ed seems to be the only contestant prepared for this change of plan. Long story short (I'm not even going to try to remember everyone's dish), Ed wins again and Kelly is sent home by what the judges referred to as a microscopic margin. So the final will consist of Angelo, Kevin, and Ed.

Other observations:

So in the elimination challenge Kelly was making fish head curry but without fish heads? Did I catch that correctly? "Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads..."

Head chef Tom rags on the team to each create two dishes instead of one in the elimination challenge. It would have been cool if they had banded together and told him collectively to piss off. If a requirement on dishes was necessary it should have been told to the contestants initially.

Was Ed being prepared to create a second dish in the elimination challenge dirty pool? It was a team effort, no? I did love his psychological warfare on Angelo! Does anyone think this elevated him to victory?

Kelly can't open a can, with a can opener? She eludes to Asian cans being different. Is this true? Let's get a ruling from the judges. Timmy? Hello?

It really sucked that Kelly sliced her hand and proceeded to bleed out everywhere. Been there, done that. It always seems to happen at a crazy busy time!

Next on Top Chef: it looks like past contestants (or was it winners?) join the last three contestants left to be their sous chefs. Nifty.

No "Bye Felicia" award this week. I'm fairly satisfied with the remaining three contestants even though I would prefer Kelly in the finale over Kevin.

The next Top Chef is: I'm going with Ed since he's been on such a roll and, based on the preview, it looks like Angelo drank the water!

Edit: I totally forgot to add some quotes:

Kelly - "There is zero room for error."
Ed - "Immunity would definitely help me out."

Wow. Masters of the obvious...

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