Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Top Chef NYC: Week 5

It took me awhile this week to write the recap for this episode only because of some emergency at work. After reviewing it, I was glad to get some time off to reflect on this week's episode. After the last few episodes preceding this one, I was really annoyed by the way on how the show is being edited and presented on television. They really needed a kick in the pants.

Quickfire challenge:

I was thrilled that they decided to make a skill challenge this week on testing the contestant's palate. I was getting sick and tired of these lackadaisical creativity that is being thrown out there for a rapid cooking and plating. Breakfast in a bite size? Really? That was just lame execution on the part of the staff who is in charge of drawing up challenges.

The quickfire challenge dealt with a truth and dare game. Each contestants get to taste test soup or a sauce for a short amount of time on a face off in a one on one duo. They each take turn on giving out a number which they can identify the ingredients in the soup/sauce. The dare would be issue by one contestant where the other contestant must name the numbers of ingredient which was agree upon. The winner is the last man/woman standing from either winning the dare or was able to name the ingredients being issue by the dare.

One quick advantage about this game was that if you can identify the soup or the sauce, you pretty much can guess the basic ingredients. One of the contestant, Stefan could pretty much guess the taste test and started naming the basic ingredients. He got cocky at the end and stumble in naming an obscure ingredient for the sauce where Hosea won the contest. I'm lost for words in that a low numbers of ingredients can win that final round for the Mexican Mole sauce.

It was the best quickfire challenge of the entire season so far because everyone is on the even playing level.

The Elimination Challenge:

Come out with dishes for the bridal shower. Simple and easily done. Except when you come out with a dish that you would neglect to tell the guest that you will need to assemble a dish yourself. In this case, a plate of sushi ingredients was presented, and a seaweed wrap left all the guests puzzled on what that was for on the plate.

You can see the trainwreck coming for the team that comes up with the concept of self-assemble sushi. The ingredients was not that pleasing in the first place and the idea was just awful. Any one of the members on that team (Eugene, Daniel, or Carla) can make a case for the elimination. The judges decided on Daniel because he actually stand behind that awful dish the team concocted. Easy call on that.

This past week's episode did rekindled my interest in the show and I hope they do keep it going. Otherwise, the boring contestants will make me want to turn it off.

ps. Is there a budding romance going between two couples? For the sake of the show, I hope not.

2 comments:

hana said...

budding romance for which couples?? Hosea and Leaia are always flirting but they both admitted they have significant others!! Scandalous.

Right Way to Eat said...

Hi Hana,

That episode between Hosea and Leah was on week 6. They tried to play up the crush that Stefan on Jamie (which will never happen if you know what I mean). It was just lame on their part to spice that hopeless puppy crush that Stefan have on week 5 episode. They also had a clip on their Bravo website where Stefan was begging Jamie to let him kiss her (I think he was doing this after a few drinks of wine). That clip is hilarious!