Top Chef Week 2: Bachelor/Ette Party

A battle of the sexes rages when the male cooks battle the lady chefs in a contest to cater a poolside bachelor-and-bachelorette party.   Chef Todd English is the guest judge.

For tonight's quickfire challenge, each chef is asked to roll the dice to determine the number of ingredients he or she gets to use to create a dish.  There's a lot of drama about getting a really high number or a really low number, but it all amounts to nothing since most of the chefs roll high numbers and handle the number of ingredients well.  The judges' least favorites were Jesse, Brian, and Eve.  The judges' favorites were Michael, Jennifer, and Kevin.  I'm sensing a theme here!  And the winner of the quickfire challenge is....  Michael!  He won $15,000 AND beat his brother at something.  I'm not sure which is more important to him, but maybe he can use some of that money to see a therapist.  Seriously, get over it already.


Now to the elimination challenge--Top Chef honors a time old Vegas tradition with a battle of the sexes.  The men are preparing dishes for a bachelor party, and the women are planning a bachelorette party, much to the chagrin of many of the chefs.  Ashley thinks its unfair to have a wedding challenge when she and other gay cast members aren't able to get married.  Preeti agrees, but admits she doesn't really care all that much.  Jennifer thinks the challenge sucks too, but you can tell she only wants to play with the boys.

The chefs are to create a dish that complements the happy couple's shot choices.  For their party, the couple has selected moscow mule, tequila, and (I think) golden delicious shots (who are these people?  Who picks those as their shots??).  The women are cocky and confident, which means they are going to lose.   Ashley decides to make two dishes, because hey, why not?  Ash (is this guy really on the show?) gets crap about keeping some flowers alive.  And he's all like, why does the gay guy have to watch the flowers?  And I'm all like, WTH?  I guess we've made note of this because he's going to kill the flowers.  And flower killers never win, right?  Anyway, all of the chefs think that people coming back for more means that their food is the greatest.  The judges dash those misconceptions pretty fast.  And several of the men decide they should jump in the pool, shirtless.  This is just NOT that kinda show guys, sorry.


The men win the challenge (yay, I'm so awesome).  The top scoring men in the challenge are Brian, Hector, Michael, and Eli.  The judges are just delighted with all of them.  Hector made some kind of heavenly tofu tacos which completely erased the deep fried steak incident from last week.  The judges liked Eli's dish too, but it's more fun to mess with the brothers, so that's who they focus on.  And the winner is....  Brian!  Again, one brother is just happy to beat the brother.  I think they just need to hug it out.  But more importantly, did Ash kill the darn flowers?  WE MAY NEVER KNOW.



That means the women are the losing team.  The women with the four least favorite dishes are Jesse, Eve, Preeti, and Ashley.  The judges actually really liked one of Ashley's dishes, but really disliked the other, so she has to be in the bottom for some reason.  She's safe--you can tell the judges don't really want to send her home.  The judges give Preeti a hard time (not because her name is stupid) because she was pretty sure she made the bestest horse-duvrey ever.  Not so much.  But it really comes down to Jesse and Eve.  Jesse admits her item wasn't executed well, as she did last week, and cried for the camera.  Come on.  You're a badass.  You're covered in tats and have like 27 facial piercings (okay, maybe 4?).  Don't cry.  The judges really don't want to hear it, but, since hippy-dippy Eve has no idea what planet she's on (I think she said she got a degree in wine and spirits.  Huh?  I think I've got one of those too!) and thinks her food is awesome even though she's been in the bottom of every challenge thus far, she's toast.   (Side note, I think Top Chef should adopt, "you're toast" as its elimination line.)



Next week the chefs prepare food for our servicemen out of *gasp* canned food including OMG spam!  The horror!  Jesse had better make some awesome spam dish or she's outta there.  Heavy contenders thus far are Jennifer (kinda cranky but she's got it going on), Kevin, and the brothers grim.  


Eve's elimination means one of our contestants is out.  Eve's match was....


DS!


Seriously, DS, you better hope your Loser rocks, 'cause it's not looking too good for team DS.  On the bright side, you're definitely a better chef than your chosen chef.   So, you've got that going for you.  Here's our current scores.



Tomorrow night, Project Runway at 9c!