Another week, another ill-conceived Top Chef Wisconsin challenge.
And don’t take my word for it: Even the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Rachel Bernhard wrote that they were “both curious challenges that left the chefs feeling like a fish out of water.”
This week: a fish boil. As Dan pointed out more than once, boiling fish is just gross, and Top Chef made that extra-fun by having the chefs do so on the sand, in the sun, and without ingredients they’d shopped for.
Top Chef: just make a great plate of food after we spend a third of the episode f*cking with you.
Oh, and though the episode was titled “Door County Fish Boil,” and though Door County is just about a three-hour drive north of Milwaukee, they did their Door County fish boil on a beach 20 minutes south of Milwaukee, which is basically right next to the location of the Top Chef kitchen set.
First, though, was the quickfire: a meat raffle. Guest judge and Top Chef Masters alum Art Smith came to paddle their meat, or something.
Art was wearing a bright reddish coat, and Michelle called him “a fancy Santa Claus.” But he got her back by telling her “bless your heart,” which as any true Southerner knows is sometimes a loving phrase and sometimes is a sarcastic insult. In the case of undercooked chicken nuggets the size of hockey pucks, I think it probably translates roughly to “good golly you really f*cked this up sideways, didn’t you.”
After selecting meat, the chefs made a dish with it. In the top were Soo and Savannah, with Savannah’s corned beef dish winning $10,000 from the Wells Fargo Active Cash Credit Card dunked in Saratoga Springs Water boiled on the Viking Range. (The producers really squeezed in a lot of awkward product names this quickfire, didn’t they, bless their hearts.)
In the bottom were everyone else: Dan, Danny, Manny, and, of course, Michelle.
Kristen asked them, “Chefs, who is ready to set this competition on fire?” and only Manny raised his hand, an apt illustration of this season.
Because not explaining things has worked out so well so far, the chefs weren’t told anything except to get into comfortable clothes and go outside.
There, they gathered around a fire with six Top Chef alum: Tournament of Champions winner Mei Lin; Tournament of Champions competitors Shota Nakajima and Justin Sutherland; Fast Foodies star (with Kristen and Justin) Jeremy Ford; Chopped guest judge Gregory Gourdet, and Chopped: All American Showdown winner Sara Bradley.
Instead of a fish fry or crab boil, they were going to do a fish boil. Dan’s response seemed appropriate: “no.” He told us that “fish boiling goes against everything I’ve ever been taught as a chef.”
The best thing about this challenge was Torch, which is a name of an actual person, not a Clippy-style animated character made from flames.
Torch is a “fish boil master,” and was also responsible for throwing a pitcher of kerosene on the fire under the boiling pots to cause them to explode and boil over, thus removing all the cruft from the fish. Delicious!
It was also hilarious. Soo jumped backward to put the other chefs between himself and the fireball, which is exactly what I’d do. Gail Simmons said, simply, “that’s insane.”
They all tried Torch’s fish, and then came the twists. Just in case cooking on the sand and heat wasn’t enough, they were going to cook for 100 people!
And to really test them as Top Chefs, the alumni had to shop for them. They were randomly assigned a partner (except Savannah, who chose Shota as her prize for winning), and then had five minutes to talk about menu planning.
As Kristen explained it, “you’re not going to know what ingredients you have until tomorrow when you arrive at Grant Park Beach.” So it’s like Chopped: Mushy Fish Edition.
Helpfully, the producers gave the alum no paper or pens or phones or anything, so they just had to try to remember what the chefs wanted. Why was this necessary? Why does Andy Cohen seem incapable of answering a question that hasn’t been written on a card for him? These are the mysteries of Bravo.
Michelle was repeatedly skeptical about this. “Are they on our side, or are they on the judges’ side?” she asked.
The alum had $500 to spend at Whole Foods, leading to my second-favorite part of the episode: Gregory saying he spent $499, and Justin calling him “Bob Barker over there.” Justin had money left over, so he bought Danny a bath bomb, too.
As it turned out, no one really screwed up on the shop. Mei Lin really wanted Manny to make his own tortillas, so she bought masa for him, but also bought him pre-packaged tortillas like he requested.
Cooking on the beach was, as Dan said, “physically the most demanding challenge I think we’ve had all season.” Michelle said, “I’m going to die cooking on the beach.”
Oh, friends: Just wait until next week, when you have to cook while swinging through the American Ninja Warrior course and fishing produce out of the water tanks with your teeth!
The beach cook resulted in culinary disaster for some chefs, but only one had to go to urgent care: Savannah sliced open her hand. After a medic wrapped it so she could finish cooking, she threw the fish she was filleting into the trash: “f*ck this fish!”
Before each chef served, Torch threw kerosene and a fireball erupted surprisingly close to the chefs and the diners.
“Hide your wife, hide your kids,” Michelle said.
While they sat and waited, Kristen enjoyed her alumni reunion, and Tom complained about the chefs’ general problem: “That seems to be the issue. They just, like, throw everything at the wall.” Gee, that sounds like the challenge design this season!
Dan, Danny, Michelle were the winners. Art said Michelle’s slaw was “artfully made,” which made me laugh, because Art his is name.
In the bottom were the rest: Manny, Savannah, and Soo. Manny’s fish boil was cohesive but boring. “You’ve got to swing for the fences, man,” Tom said, while Gail told him, “We just wanted some creativity.”
Savannah’s overcooked fish and mushy tofu salad didn’t thrill everyone, but she’d won the quickfire challenge, and the recent rule change probably saved her, though it didn’t save Soo, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Soo’s dish didn’t have a theme, and Tom said “your dish felt like a potluck'” while Kristen said it tasted like a raw casserole. And that’s what sent Soo back to Last Chance Kitchen yet again.
Before Kristen announced Soo’s exit, Tom Colicchio said that, “in order to change these dishes, you really need to understand them” and called this “a misunderstanding of what this was all about.” I wonder why they didn’t fully understand a fish boil after trying one once, and then trying to do it completely differently than it’s normally done.
Last Chance Kitchen ends for the season
Soo and Kaleena re-entered the competition five episodes ago, so Top Chef Wisconsin episode 10 means it’s time for Last Chance Kitchen to end again.
Soo joined Amanda and Laura, and all three had to make a dish using everything from all seven quickfire challenges so far, a combo of ingredients and techniques.
After throwing too many ingredients into his fish boil, Soo yet again created a Thanksgiving-ish mash-up that was mushy, and he ended his run on Top Chef where he began.
(If you haven’t yet read my interview with Soo, we talked hours before the elimination episode aired, so we didn’t talk about that. But I did ask him about the muddled challenges this season, and also the Last Chance Kitchen weirdness.)
Amanda and Laura competed in the final round. They’d worked together throughout the competition, and were eliminated together, as Amanda pointed out. So would they re-enter the competition together?
Nah. For some reason, there was only one winner this time. At least Last Chance Kitchen is as messy as Top Chef Wisconsin this season.
Mei joined Kristen and Tom to judge the final LCK, which was a simple challenge that copied the one that sent Kristen back into her season: “cook a great plate of food.”
By the way, Tom introduced Mei as “someone who’s never been to Last Chance Kitchen,” which is some major shade right there to literally every other person in that room.
The best plate was Laura’s vegetables in oil, and she’ll rejoin Top Chef for its final four episodes, which will be conducted on a raft made of Wells Fargo credit cards in a pool filled with Saratoga Springs water and Morton’s salt.
All reality blurred content is independently selected, including links to products or services. However, if you buy something after clicking an affiliate link, we may earn a commission, which helps support reality blurred. Learn more.
