Top Chef NY: Week 4 - Bacon and Brulee

It's like a miracle - my third episode in a row watching Top Chef the day after it aired!  See, I don't watch anything live anymore, it's all DVR.  So, often I get behind, but since I've started this blog, I try to watch it the day after.  Unfortunately, I just realized that las week's episode never downloaded!  What the hell?  I was looking forward to watching it too, with the Foo Fighters on and all!  Well, to recap, Richard got sent home for making S'mores.  Maybe that's because he was on Top Chef and made freaking S'mores.  Really?  I saw a clip and they didn't even really look different from what you'd make at home?  Anyhow, let's move on...

Way to start the episode out on a happy note with Richard's goodbye letter.  I'm not a big fan of the 'getting ready to go to the kitchen the day after' clips anyway.

Ah, Rocco DiSpirito.  Even I can recognize him!  And I love breakfast challenge!  Yay!

Quickfire Challenge

Create a breakfast Amuse-Bouche.  I really like the word Amuse-Bouche.  However, I feel that it would not be enough for me.  Although, if everything was really good, you could taste it all!  BACON.  Anyone who doesn't use it, they aren't winning from me.  Ha.  Holy cow, that stuffed french toast looked so freaking good.  I liked Stefan's presentation of his Huevos Rancheros!  I felt like the potato cakes were too plain.  It didn't look impressive.  I liked Jamie's cute little breakfast sandwich too!  I did agree with the observation that not everyone's dishes were really one bite, ESPECIALLY Jeff who actually made TWO things, PLUS fruit skewers.  And, for the winner, Leah's perfect bite!  I think she deserved it.  

Elimination Challenge

Create a dish for a 2.5 minute live television presentation.

Ooh, this should be fun.  Reminds me of what they have to do on 'The Next Food Network Star'.  I love it when the winners get extra prizes too.  I also like it when they have to create a dish that someone else at home could make, or something... simple.  Like last season when they had to do dinner with a $10 budget.  It's fun to watch them try to come up with something that's not necessarily FANCY, but on the level of regular people.  Sometimes it's funny because they fail.

I think Eugene's Sushi idea was good because Sushi is really popular, and people love to impress guests by making it at home.  I can't stop looking at Jeff and thinking about Chase from 'House'.  

From the beginning, the creme brulee seemed like a bad idea.  I feel like it's a hard thing to make, and that it's a really rough thing to tackle.  The corn/blueberry combination Leah chose sounded tasty!  And crazy-eyes is making a tortilla soup.  Also doesn't seem like a great choice for a 2 minute demonstration.  How can you demonstrate soup in 2 min?

Ariane wasted too much time introducing herself I think.  She seemed REALLY nervous, but I guess it would be hard not to be!  She completed it on time, which is good!  Poor Jamie with her uncooked egg!  I felt that realistically though, that wouldn't matter at all for a live demonstration.  They could eat around it and the people at home wouldn't be able to tell it wasn't quite cooked, and would be able to follow the recipe.  Poor Alex with his time up before he finishes.  And then the creme brulee didn't set.  Of course.  I thought Jeff did well too.  Although I agreed that people watching would need those ingredients written on screen to be able to know what he was talking about.  I think that Melissa made a mistake with the hot peppers, because I think a lot of people wouldn't be able to take it.

Good think Leah had immunity.  I guess I was wrong about the soup - it seemed to work for Stefan.  I thought that Jeff's was the best.  He was great with the multi-tasking!  And Fabio did great despite his reservations about his accent and vocabulary.  

What was with telling them the top and bottom three then sending them home!?  How crazy and sort of mean!  Those bottom three KNOW one of them is going home the next day, it must have been such an awful night for them!  I guess it made for some interesting time-filling clips, but still.  Then - what the heck?!  Tom at 2 AM?  What does it mean?  

HOLY CRAP!  The Today Show!  That was awesome!  It was nice that they aren't making them do the live presentation over, but they still get this sweet perk of having their dishes on The Today Show.  Pretty cool!  I think it's bizarre that Jeff was pissed off - these hosts have a different schedule than everyone else, they're USED to tasting that kind of thing early in the morning, it' probably the middle of their day by that point!

Oh no!  Jeff, sabatoged by Kathy Lee!  I didn't really get why she was spitting it out.  And they chose Ariane's beef with watermelon!  Sounds like an interesting combination for sure.  And what a really cool perk - Rocco's favorite kitchen gadgets!  And, a guest spot on The Today Show later!  So cool.

But, it has to be the end for someone.  I totally agreed with Gail - you don't want people playing around with those kind of hot peppers if they don't know what they're doing.  I also feel like Alex choosing to do a creme brulee was silly and ridiculous.  I mean, if he didn't know how long it was going to take to make it that would be one thing, but he did seem to know how long it was going to take and decided to try and force it to be done sooner.  What the heck?  And... it's the end of his Top Chef journey.  It's a little hard to feel very bad about it when he takled about getting married and how the competition wasn't his life - I think that it's much more important than that to many of the other contestants, so I'm not sad to see him go really.

Back next Thursday with the next episode!