'Top Chef: Chicago': Woodstock vs. Altamont

Top Chef: Chicago gave us a lesson in Why Attitude Matters. If you work at getting along with your team, you overcome difficulties and produce great food. If you act like dueling divas, you'll come out with culinary abominations like Baby Vomit with Wood Chips.

These spoilers come with Milk Duds.

Tom Colicchio gleefully wakes up the remaining competitors at 0 dark 30, which is evil. The chefs will be working the line cooking eggs at Lou Mitchells, a Chicago institution. We're talking great, no-frills food fast, and as a bonus, kids and women get Milk Duds just for walking in the door. It's damn good, but it's a high-pressure place to cook as folks want their food fast.

Helene, the owner, puts the chefs through their paces. We see some screwups, but she is unaccountably kind at the end of the shift -- she says they all did surprisingly well. (I imagine she was just grateful nobody burned down the kitchen or ran screaming.) She gives Antonia the win, which gives her an advantage in the upcoming elimination challenge.

And that challenge is Restaurant Wars! Apparently they bribed the right officials paid off the Mob filed all the appropriate paperwork with the local authorities, so Restaurant Wars is a go. Wheee! The cheftestants check out the raw space -- some sort of rehabbed warehouse space, probably in the West Loop area -- and get cracking.

Antonia's reward is that she gets to pick her team, so she immediately snaps up Richard and Stephanie. This, of course, leaves Dale, Lisa and Spike together. I expect violence.

Tom Colicchio is otherwise engaged, so Tony Bourdain stands in as head judge. Huzzah! I always love Tony. He immediately sizes up the situation and dubs Antonia, Richard and Stephanie "Team Woodstock,"  while Dale, Lisa and Spike are "Team Altamont." Hee!

Woodstock starts off smart. assigning Antonia head chef, Richard chef de cuisine, and Stephanie front of house. They fix on an upscale gastropub concept -- good food, laid-back space, relaxed atmosphere. Tony says it's a safe choice: it'll be easy to exceed expectations, but it's unlikely they'll wow anyone.

Altamont immediately hits some snags when both Dale and Lisa vie for executive chef. Shocking, I know. Lisa loses the coin toss, so Dale's in charge. Spike volunteers to be front-of-house. They pick an Asian concept (try to control your shock) and Tony immediately confirms why I adore him with this quote: "They say  they're all very comfortable with Asian food. You know, Asia's BIG. How good can you be good at all of those things?" Damn straight, Tony. That's one of the things that always bugged me when people talk about "Asian" food as a genre. You don't tend to hear people talk about "European" food as if it's one easily identifiable lump, so why do it for "Asian"?

Woodstock has a pretty smooth rollout -- the only bobble is when it looks like the homemade pasta might be difficult, and that's solved when they're allowed to draft another pair of hands from the most recent eliminees. Nikki, get too it!

Altamont? Yeah. Lisa messes up her laksa (one of Tony's favorite dishes), something goes wrong with her rice (AGAIN!), Dale starts having a meltdown when things don't go perfectly from the get-go, Spike fusses over the one dish he does prepare, and it looks like it's a matter of time before blood is spilled.

At the judges table, Woodstock is roundly praised -- and roundly praise each other -- while Altamont competes at who can blame the other two first. Plus, much of the food is awful. Scallops with butterscotch? Smoke-flavored laksa? Mango sticky rice that most people can't even touch? They've got some explaining to do... Most of that explaining is about how it's NOT MY FAULT everything sucked. Classy.

In the end, the judges decide Dale had the responsibility (and the idea for that wretched butterscotch/scallop combination), so he takes the blow. Bye, Dale!

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• I love that Tom woke the chefs up so early. It was just mean. I just got finished covering the National Restaurant Association show here in Chicago, and they purposely schedule nothing before 10 a.m., because chefs are notoriously nocturnal.
• When Dale realizes he's on a pared-down version of the wedding team, he says he thinks it will be better: "Not to say Nikki's personality was horrible, but it's one less to deal with..."
• You want an illustration of the different attitudes among the teams? Stephanie described herself as "front of house." Spike named himself "General Manager." Pretentious twit.
• Tony, on being guest judge: "I'm bringing my warmer, sunnier disposition to this challenge." Hee!
• Spike makes it clear that he thinks he's safe: "They cannot hold me accountable for the food." I love that Tony calls him on that in the judging: "Through guile or luck, however it happened, you're missing in action. It was a good day to be in the dining room."
• Of course, the judges did mock Spike's décor choices. Tony: " Silver and purple? I feel like I'm in the back of Prince's van." Ted: "Is it more Prince or is it more Aerosmith from the mic stand?" And THEN! At judging, when asked about the décor choices, Spike LIES that they all chose the tablecloths. Schmuck.
• Tony, on Dale's dish: "It's like Willy Wonka scallops. Butterscotch almost by itself is too much."
• The verdict on the mango sticky rice is dire. Padma calls it "this atrocity," and I can't remember her ever being that harsh. Tony's take: "Baby vomit with wood chips." Wow.
• Lisa and Dale make a case for each other's dismissal. Dale: "You're only as good as your weakest link." Lisa: "You're only as good as your leader." Nice.
• I'll admit that I'm bummed that Dale is gone. He was a pain in the ass, but it seemed like he actually had some talent. If only he'd had the sense to let Lisa take the executive chef position, then she would most likely have taken the bullet.
• Lisa ... Good lord, woman! A fellow Top Chef junkie and I agreed that Lisa lives by the ethos of that two-hikers-encounter-a-bear joke. She's survived this far by being juuuuuust a teeny bit better than one other person -- and she goes out of her way to push her competitors down in front of the judging table bear while she scampers free. I really, really hope she's the next one who goes.   

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