Top Chef Season 3, Episodes 4 and 5
Episode 4: Cooking by Numbers. Casey won the quickfire of what to pair with a Bombay cocktail (reminding me that I’m interested in What to Drink with What You Eat), and then promptly abused the privilege when she was put with Howie and Joey on a team. She got all bossy boots during the planning, didn’t encourage their ideas since she was immune, and then made the crappiest dish of all the chefs. If Howie or Joey had been eliminated, she would have had much to answer for.
Good for that team, then, that the dessert course was truly dreadful. Dale’s ideas–dessert and a pineapple theme–failed spectacularly. He admitted to feeling guilty about Camille’s elimination, but I thought she dug her own hole. She readily agreed to Dale’s idea of dessert, and claimed to know something about pastry, though her very basic idea of upside-down cake looked dreadful. She was inarticulate in response to the judges’ queries, and I thought she deserved to pack her knives.
Episode 5: Latin Lunch. When the cooks are given frozen pie crust for the quickfire challenge, Joey admits he knows a little about pastry, which he didn’t cop to on last week’s ep. I was bothered by the fact that he later lied outright to the guest judge and said he didn’t know pastry. In any case, he won the quickfire challenge, and immunity, and went on to almost win the elimination challenge, but graciously gave kudos to his new best bud Howie. I suspected that either Lia or Casey would be eliminated because of the clip shown early on where they commented how close they’d become, and how they had each others’ backs. Casey’s dish sounded quite bad–dry chicken, overcooked rice, and a bitter, unpleasant sauce. But Lia’s polenta was deemed worse, perhaps because it was both ill-prepared and not very Latin, so she was asked to pack her knives. I would have preferred to see Casey sent packing, since she abused her immunity the week before while Lia won. But that might just be mean-spirited me; I dislike Casey’s overly coiffed, made-up, and accessorized presence. I also suspect Hung is going to go sooner than later. Not only is he a spaz in the kitchen, but his self-awareness is pretty dim.
P.S. Padma Lakshmi has requested a divorce from Salman Rushdie. Quel surprise.