So this weeks quick fire was to make their own original mixin for coldstone ice creeam. Yeah! Lets get fruit, chocolate, crunchy textures. Thus should be easy! Right? Wrong! Micah said a few episodes ago, I was not raised on junk food, and comfort food… Haung has stated he came from a traditional asian family. When did he have ice cream with vegetables in it? Is this a new blend coming to stores near you? I think not. Even ben and jerrys knows where to draw the line. Also, did he taste his stuff? Did he enjoy it? I was rooting for dale since he is from chicago and a fellow homo. Woot! Woot! Yummy apple crisp on ice cream. I would love that. It would have been an ode to last season if it would have been “apple brown betty”. It was cool to see him and saras relationship but only to be let down when she got kicked off. Even in reality tv show things are left in for a reason. I should have seen that coming. Dale was happy to win a challenge and get immunity. For the first time since I can remember that ment he didn’t have to participate in the elimination challenge.

The elimination challenge was they were spit into two teams and were required to make ate night snacks fo the bar crowd.

We are down to the final four tonight we get to boot two more contestants. Who will be the final two for next week and who will win the prize of 100 thousand dollars and a spread in food and wine? The contestants come back from hiatus to hawaii bringing with them tools of their own trade. Supplies and spices and a few new tricks up their sleeves.

Today’s elimination challenge is that they get 3 hours to prepare 2 lou-ou dishes. The day before they had a traditional hawaii dinner with the guest for the challenge. Sam and Ilan learned some Hawaiian dishes while they were on their "break" which was about 2 months. Marcel and Elia did not learn any new dishes while on break. Elia only had the experience from the one Hawaiian meal from the previous day.

Sam goes first and his dishes are a hit, he is a bunch of nerves. His guests ask for seconds for his dessert. One thing is that he didn’t actually cook anything.

Elia is second and her food is only traditional in the sense that she used raw tuna.

Marcel explaining on and on about his dish to his guests, once again uses his damn foam along with an arsenal of chemicals. He likes to cook with chemicals that’s his thing. Make me a volcano kid.

Ilan did a spanish twists on his dishes combining traditional hawaiian tastes with spanish ingredients which the judges loved.

Sam wins the fan favorite prize of $10,000 Yeah Sam! Besides Betty being our favorite and fighting outloud with Marcel, Sam was nice guy to everyone.

Ilan and Marcel are in the final two contestants for the final Episode of Top Chef tune in next week for our Highs and lows from the Season.

Top Chef returns after a two week hiatus and gosh be goshen is Captain Obvious excited!

Nine chefs remain and someone is going home tonight. Will it be my new favorite bitch Betty? Perhaps the perpetually on-the-edge Michael? Let’s find out.

We start out with Elia doing yoga. Everyone’s getting ready and putting their game faces on. It’s getting serious with every elimination challenge becoming a do-or-die affair. And with that, it’s the Quickfire.

Quickfire Challenge

The contestants assemble at the Redondo Beach farmer’s market. Raphael is introduced as the guest judge, he runs Giraffe restaurant. Their challenge is to create an entree but it has to be raw, no heating of any ingredient at any point. Just raw talent. Whee! 30 minutes and $20 to shop, then 30 minutes to cook.

Marcel is excited they’re not doing canned goods or vending machine. Elia is used to raw foods and likes them, she grabbed some Ahi tuna. Mia is going for corn, apparently it’s really good raw. Mike doesn’t know what to do so buys salmon jerky, peppers, basil, and watermelon. Frank is confused at the start, but then a light bulb went off and he got some scallops.

In the end Betty made a halibut with a grape salad on the side, Mia did a fresh corn salad with tomatoes, Ilan made squash with a tomato sauce and Cliff did radishes, fresh beans and fennel. Elia made tuna sashimi and white beans with greens, Frank did a scallop carpaccio, Sam made a crudo from squash and zucchini, Mike did a watermelon napoleon with avocado and salmon jerky and Marcel did watermelon and tomato slices with a watermelon steak on the side.

Raphael was disappointed with Betty for her presentation, Mia for not using enough quality ingredients and Mike for poor execution and needing more depth to his preparation. On the flipside he was impressed with Elia, Frank and Marcel with the winner being Marcel! The winner Marcel went on to say he was totally proud of his dish. Ilan disagrees, saying Marcel “thinks about how to cook more than tasting it.” Meow, catty lil’ bitch, don’t be salty your dish wasn’t even mentioned.

Elimination challenge

Their challenge is to cook breakfast for hungry California athletes on $30. In addition they won’t know what equpment they’ll have until they get to the location where they’ll be making breakfast.

Mia is confident, she cooks breakfast professionally. Everyone was very unsure with planning. Everyone’s going for the eggs but my boy Mike figures out “what if there’s no heat?” so he grabs a cooked chicken. Cliff also picks up on this. Smart boys!

No one slept well, everyone’s really nervous. Before leaving for the challenge Marcel does the uneliminatable dance, it was cute.

So the challenge is on a beach in Malibu. There are lots of BBQ pits, pots and pans all around but no kitchen, no stove. Frank and Sam are unhappy, as Frank’s quiche is impossible to make over open flame. They’re told they’re cooking for surfers and everyone gets to work.

The challenge is tough with a lot of unexpected factors including unreliable heat control, territory wars over pit-top space and the fact that sand gets everywhere. Mia and Marcel butt heads over what part of the pit is theirs but the biggest faux pas is Mike forgetting his eggs.

I grimaced and instantly saw Mike going home this week. But then suddenly Betty swoops in like some menopausal angel and gives him six! Sam and Cliff also pitch in and suddenly Mike is back in business. Frank refers to him as his “stupid little brother” and that he doesn’t know how he got this far. And he doesn’t volunteer to help him which not only instantly redeems Betty in my book but puts Frank into the role as my pick to get the fucking boot from the show. Fuck Frank, right in his ear. Seagulls eat the pie crust from his failed quiche, some form of wicked karma for that asshole. Go seagulls!

Time’s up and there’s a lot more surfers than they expected. Sam’s dish is looking rough but it’s eatin time!

Mia did crabcakes benedict with a mango cream, Elia did a sweet and salty combination of waffles, cheese, egg ham and parsley. Ilan did eggs, potatoes and veggies all in a spanish tortilla while Betty did eggs, tomatoes, ham, egg and chives. Frank scrambled, no pun intended, to turn his quiche idea into a zucchini and salmon egg scramble with a holland waffle topped with cannoli creme. Cliff has a sloppily presented chicken apple sausage with scrambled eggs and sweet potato hash, Sam did his take on toad in the hole with eggs and basil-almond pesto in a bagel. Mike did a chicken and egg taco and Marcel, trying his best to talk surfer did poached eggs with hash browns.

The sufers ate it up, literally. Elia, Mia and Betty all went running into the ocean and were joined by Marcel who made it a point to tackle Elia. Is there love in the air? Can we not throw up thinking about that concept?

Judges Table

So the RAV4 was mentioned for the twelfth time tonight and Captain Obvious bought seven as a result. Damn product placements! Ilan, Mia, Elia and Betty were the surfers faves and of those Betty, Mia and Elia were the judge’s choices for top three. They liked all the dishes but Elia is top for the week. She’s all happy ‘n shit, can’t say I blame her.

The bottom three are Frank, Sam and Cliff - no surprises there.

Frank was disappointed in his choices for menu but seriously, his eggs sucked. Sam’s was unappealing, but he feels it was his toughest challenge and thinks he’s been good so far. Prepping blind is a gamble. Cliff knew his looked bad but says he’s not done, scrambled eggs was a bad call but he doesn’t think he’s going home. Ho ho ho, Cliff. We shall see. The judges deliberate and bring the three boys back in for the bad news.

In the end Frank’s eggs were terrible, Sam made too many excuses about the challenge being tough and Cliff had a good idea but it just looked like mixed up stuff. Just bad presentation.

They were thrown off their game and didn’t recover with style. They chose Frank to leave and he quips that everyone is welcome at his house for good food, good wine and good friends. Only if someone else is cooking, Franky. He tells everyone waiting that he’s the sacrificial lamb. Sheeya. See ya.

Captain Obvious is glad. Frank was an alright chef but his attitude toward my favorite to win was too much to bear. Now he’s gone and Michael is one week closer to his inevitable win. Go Mike! Tune in next week, same pop show, same Pop Assault.

With no new episode this week I thought it a good time to give my overall impressions of the show thus far and where I think this competition is going. A lot of viewers have complained that this season when compared to the last is a bit lacking in drama and character interest. While I agree for the most part, I still think this season has its redeeming qualities and shouldn’t be written off so easily.

Sure Marcel is no Steven. Steven was catty, surly and at times a bit of an antagonistic megalomaniac. We loved him for these traits. Marcel on the other hand is just pretentious from time to time with only the slightest trace of Steven’s antagonism. The best example of this would be his taunting of Betty during her prep time at the Firehouse. But at the same time we need to look back, even to the first episode where the group collectively decided they didn’t like Marcel for his arrogance and overconfidence in his skills as a chef. As early as the first Elimination Challenge they were ganging up on him, trying to give the judges the impression that he wasn’t at all the chef he talked himself up to be.

Problem is that he actually is and that’s not only what sets him apart from Steven from last season but it also makes it very hard to dislike him. The boy’s cocky but talented and I think Betty and the rest are just a wee bit jealous and intimidated. I hope this starts to dissipate in the second half of the season, Marcel deserves to go far in this thing.

Betty, on the other hand, needs to go and now. Unlike her predecessor Cynthia there’s no sweet center under her sugary sweet shell. Instead we find a bitter, sardonic witch with marginal cooking skills and a deceptive, creepy smile. At first I liked her and Solarbluseth here even thought she would win the competition but her catty and selfish actions of late have turned me off of her quicker than Taco Bell’s return the next morning. Put succinct, Betty gotta go.

Mike is my favorite to win, for lots of reasons. The biggest and best, however, are his skills in the kitchen while excelling at staying under the radar. He knows what he’s doing and the smooth, “I don’t care” attitude of his keeps everyone from suspecting how strong he really is. The one thing to remember about Michael is that if he really was a talentless, lazy boar of a chef then how is he still around after almost half of the other chefs have gotten the boot? He’s a smart, fat man. Smart fat man.

The rest are a mixed dish. none of them really impress me. Cliff, Frank and Ilan are talented but aren’t making any power moves anytime soon. Maybe toward the end but not now. Sam is another dark horse, reminding me most of Harold from last season but lacking the consistent winning and obvious flair for cooking. Mia is hanging on by a thread, just one breakdown away from getting tossed and Elia is far too unreliable and inconsistent to be a contender, plus her undying devotion to Marcel simply means he’ll find a way of getting her tossed near the end after her usefulness has been outlived.

The show overall has definitely been a letdown compared to last year but that’s the way the reality cookie crumbles.

Last week’s double elimination leads us to the first episode I’ve actually been looking forward to: the episode with Anthony Motherfucking Bourdain as a guest judge! Chef Bourdain, for those unfamiliar is the badboy of cuisine. He’s crasser than Gordon Ramsey, more infectious than Rachael Ray, more Italian than Giada DeLourentis and cooler than Alton Brown. He’s written several books as well as cookbooks and has starred in two television shows in addition to having some of his memoirs made into a short-lived Fox sitcom (redundant, I know). Plainly stated: Anthony Bourdain is god.

Quickfire Challenge

So our chefs assemble in the Kenmore Elite by Sears Roebuck & Co kitchen and Padma and Tom are waiting for them. The Quickfire Challenge this week is to assemble something that resembles food from canned goods, stacked on a table behind our hosts. They chose canned goods because it’s Thanksgiving time and everyone on the show should be thankful they’re not on a show with Howie Mandel or Bob Sagat. Chef Tom will be judging the challenge which automagically disappointed Captain Obvious cause… where the fuck is Bourdain?! Anyhow, they scurry like pigs to suckle, snatching up the prerequisite three cans of food and we’re off.

Right off the bat Mia is surprised that people are trying to create hot dishes in only 15 minutes. Perhaps someone should remind her that last week Marisa and Horseteeth served cold and got their pompous asses punted as a result. The chefs worked fast and by the end Cliff had concocted a potato and sauteed anchoy dish, Betty made lemon hummus with artichoke hearts (which sound really good right now) and Sam did a garbanzo and beet salad with anchovies. Marcel did hearts of palm and clams with coconut milk and a touch of orange, Mia did a cold bean salad with mint, Ilan did a spinach and bean salad with sauteed Vienna sausage, Elia did a creamy fruit salad with… meaty hash? Uhm, Carlos did some pasta puttanesca, Frank pulled a fruit and coconut salad with blueberry cream and my dark horse Michael did mashed potatoes and bacon wrapped corn.

Yes, bacon wrapped corn. The Captain loves ya, Mike. Keep up the good work.
Anyhoo, they announce Sam the winner but what ho! Mia is also a winner! And Cliff! And Ilan! And Frank! It’s like motherfucking Oprah was up in this bitch giving away cars. Left out of the winner parade was Betty, Marcel, Elia, Carlos and Mike. Oh. That would make them the losers.

Elimination Challenge

So that brings us to the Hummer H3 Toyota DeLorean PopAssault Elimination challenge. The five losers have to cook an avant garde take on Thanksgiving flavors for the five winners and judges. The winners got the day off to deliver some canned goods to a shelter and to relax. Quoteth Carlos, “I think it’s oxymoronic to make a cutting edge Thanksgiving dinner.” Well Captain Obvious thinks it’s oxymoronic that such straight-up bad cooking can be done by such a gay man. Eat it, Chuckie.

The losers, of which Carlos was one, had one hour to prep that night and then four hours to cook the next day. Planning for the meal was absolute chaos with Betty immediately trying to insert her pushy ass into the leadership role. Unfortunately, Betty’s idea of leadership was shooting down everyone else’s ideas for her own and excluding Michael from even contributing. To hell with Betty, I hope she cuts her damn hand off.

In the end the group decided to just assign courses to individuals with Elia getting soup, Carlos the salad as no one else would do it, Marcel the entree, Michael the appetizers and in-betweens and Betty the desert cause god knows Betty is teh best desert person evarrr. Yeah.

Elia was pissed more than anything. She was disappointed Tom didn’t like her Quickfire creation and was on a crash course to getting herself tossed by revealing she really didn’t care about the challenge or cooking, she was that demotivated. Personally I couldn’t care less so to hell with her too.

They split the group into Marcel/Michael and everyone else. Marcel and Mike take the small kitchen in the loft, the rest of the group the larger kitchen. In addition to being better equipped, the larger kitchen also has the advantage of being clean while the smaller kitchen had personal effects all over the place, detracting from Mike and Marcel’s already shrinking cooking time. Once they had cleared off the stove and counter tops Mike and Marcel got to work on their own dishes while in the larger the kitchen the three stooges were acting like retards.

See Elia goes batshit insane wiping melted chocolate on her face and others. They all share a laugh. Thankfully we don’t have to watch it for too long and instead see the winners dining in luxury at a hotel restaurant.

The four hours go quickly and, with the exception of Frank getting pissed Marcel moved his toothbrush (uhm, maybe leave it in the BATHROOM ya mook) the cooking was uneventful. Finally Bourdain was brought in to meet the chefs and the show got much more bearable. There’s just something about Anthony Bourdain that improves anything he appears in. I’m fairly certain he could’ve saved Gigli, Deck The Halls or even Battlefield Earth, had he the chance to appear in them.

The rest of the show blurred into a slurry of Thanksgiving dishes. The group, with the exception of Marcel completely missed the point of the challenge and what avant garde means. Michael, god bless his retarded soul served a turkey hors d’oeuvre that actually passed for edible. Go Mike! Carlos followed up with the laziest, most horrible tossed green salad with sauteed squash. He had an hour to prepare and four hours to make this thing and it was the most basic, uninspired pile of drek imaginable. The soup Elia spanked out was a nice combination of cream and mushrooms and while simple, apparently made up for its lack of innovation with a very pleasing taste.

Mike uneiled his next combination, a duet of potatoes, one twice baked, one mashed. The table scoffed but Bourdain said it was the tastiest thing he’d had and that somehow, in some twisted way he liked Michael for his no-apologies, take it or leave it approach to cooking. Marcel then brought his entree, a turkey roulade with this frilly cranberry gelee with cranberry foam. Pretentious and probably exactly what the judges wanted to see from the chefs in this challenge. They complained the turkey was dry but at least it was avant garde.
Betty finished things off with a pumpkin creme brulee that amounted to more of a pudding with burnt sugar on top than a brulee. That capped off a disappointing dinner but seriously, what do you expect when you make losers cook?

Judges Table

The judges got together and talked it over. They decided of the five that Marcel and Elia were safe as Marcel at least got the point and Elia made something tasty. Mike, they concluded, was also safe against Chef Tom’s wishes. I think Tom doesn’t like Mike but he’d better get used to him as he’s in this for the long haul. That left Betty’s horrid and misconceived dessert and Carlos’ lazy, inconceived salad. They asked the three bottoms who should go, Betty said she’d rather not say, Mike said Carlos, Carlos said Betty and suddenly Betty had an opinion and decried “Carlos gotta go!”

Well thank you, Betty. After thinking about it the judges agreed and Carlos was sent packing. Fare thee well, Carlosito, you were here but you will not be missed. And then there were nine.

So here we are, a week after our lying, cheating chefs were busted and humiliated, sent scurrying back to their loft shamed and beaten. I was surprised there wasn’t more tension among the cooks but I guess when there’s a camera always around you tend to do a lot more mugging and less actual, real caring.

Betty is still busy trying to convince us she didn’t cheat. Ironically enough OJ is also making the circuit trying to convince us of his innocence too. I believe both of them equally, take it how you will. This week’s Quickfire Challenge (as sponsored by every company on Earth, save Tic-Tacs) is for our chefs to get creative with leftovers. Michelle Bernstein is our guest judge and will be overseeing the competition.

When we say leftovers, we mean the leftover parts of animals. They have such lovely parts to choose from as fish heads, pigs blood, honeycomb tripe, chicken feet, lamb hearts, sweetbreads of veal, pigs feet, pigs trotters and beef cheeks. Yum. Marcel, our resident villain went for the pig’s blood while Michael jumped on veal tongue. Mike’s an interesting study in under-the-radar politics. He comes across as not caring but he never does so bad as to warrant getting himself kicked off. When he needs to perform, he does. I predict he’ll be in the final three this time.

So the contestants cooked their little hands off. Frank did catfish head soup with basil, Mike did a stew with the veal tongue, Josie did a carrot broth with tripe cracklin’ and ox tails and Elia made some kidneys. The top three, however, were Cliff with his sauteed ox tails, Ilan with his almond crusted sweetbreads and Sam with his sweetbreads cooked with Chinese five spice. In the end Sam won the challenge and immunity.

The Elimination Challenge, brought to us by Dodge and the 1973 Green Bay Packers Preservation Society was to work on a six course tasting menu based on leftovers for Jennifer Coolidge, famous for playing Stifler’s mother in the American Pie movies. The chefs were to split into pairs and then cook one course per team for Jennifer and her closest 60 friends. On the line for one chef from the winning team was also was the opportunity to cook with guest judge Michelle Bernstein at the Food and Wine festival in Florida. Let the games begin!

The teams came together as follows: Mia and Betty, Frank and Marcel, Sam and Cliff, Mike and Ilan, Josie and Marisa, Carlos and Elia. Tom told the chef he was gonna keep his eye on them cause we all know they’re a bunch of cheating liars. Throughout the challenge the one thing Tom and Co. kept coming back to was that the contestants weren’t checking in with one another to ensure their dishes all meshed together. Big mistake as a tasting menu really needs to flow together.

Their dishes were hit or miss, Mrs. Stifler’s friends knew what to look for in good dishes so the chefs couldn’t make mistakes and get away with it. Frank and Marcel started things off with a salmon tartar and beets which wasn’t a hit with the crowd. Cliff and Sam followed that up with a seared scallop and foie gras dish that impressed. Ilan and Michael continued that tradition with a baked paella and softshell crab creation that amazed me on two levels. One is that they found all the parts to make it edible, including the leftover risotto. Two is that Michael was just as involved as Ilan in conceiving and executing the dish, thus making Mike my new dark horse to win this thing.

Following Mike and Ilan the dishes went downhill. Betty and Mia made a seared duck napoleon dish which consisted of duck perched atop puff pastry. People didn’t understand the point of the pastry as it totally overwhelmed what little overcooked duck was on the plate. Josie and Marisa presented an “awakening trio” which consisted of uncooked combinations of citrus and other fruits. A fennel apple salad, a prickly pear soup and a fruit salad all felt disconnected to the guests and judges and the final course, a dessert trio from Carlos and Elia failed to make anyone happy. They even messed up on the plating for one of the guests.

Suffice it to say the judges were not impressed with any of the chefs overall. They didn’t use half of the good stuff that was in the kitchen. Tom said that they “aren’t trying to win, they’re trying not to lose” which rings true for the most part. The top two dishes were Cliff/Sam and Ilan/Mike and of those two, Ilan and Mike were the winners. Ilan was chosen out of the duo as the winner of the challenge and will go to cook with Michelle at the festival.

The bottom three were Josie/Marisa, Betty/Mia and Carlos/Elia. Betty and Mia were proud of their dish but would’ve cut the pastry if they had the chance. Uhm. They had the chance and didn’t do it. An intermezzo, said Marisa and Josie. But it wasn’t even cooked and they still made it taste bad and for something intended to cleanse the palate and bring the other courses together, it did neither and just confused people. Of Carlos and Elia, their pomagranate cocktail just tasted sour and spoiled and not at all good. Quality control, y’all. Try it. The overriding theme is as such: If something seems off, fix it.

So the verdict came down after much deliberation. Of the three worst dishes, Josie and Marisa’s was chosen as the absolute worst because of it’s complete lack of focus, direction and it wasn’t even tough to make. Bum bum bum, they both go home! I called it last week, two go home. I think they made the right choice and Marisa is a bitch that betrayed our poor Otto and Horseteeth was just irritating, as proven in her final tirade overlaid as she packed her shit. “I’m so talented,” Horseteeth told us, “that’s fine cause I know I’m talented and they’re just losing my great talent.”

Fine by us.

See y’all next week when the guest judge is none other than ANTHONY BOURDAIN!