Top Chef: New York: Spam vs. Lamb

Given a choice between farm-fresh ingredients and crap in a can, you'd expect a good chef to produce a superior meal with the first one, right? Not on Top Chef: New York. Dishes made with Spam get raves, while those made with fresh lamb are dissed. What's going on?

Behold! The spoiler warning returns!

Granted, these ingredients didn't go head-to-head. Canned crap figured in the quickfire, while fresh food was the subject of the elimination challenge. Still, Padma seemed more enthusiastic about grilled Spam and Velveeta than she did about roasted lamb. Of course, the lamb was badly cooked, but still....

Season 3 winner Hung Huynh, the FedEx guy of cheffery, judges the quickfire, which means the cheftestants have a mere 15 minutes to make their dish. Their ingredients? Crap in a can. We're talking food suitable for bomb shelters. Fresh doesn't even enter the equation.

There's a mosh pit at the ingredients table as chefs compete for the least disgusting canned goods -- and Spam. Personally, Spam frightens me, but the chefs seem drawn to it. Hosea is thwarted when Fabio snags the last two cans of artichokes, and Fabio is unwilling to share. Hosea whips up a sweet pea soup augmented with Spam, pork rinds and onion rings. He grudgingly shares his Spam with Stefan, which is surprising, since (1) Hosea really wants to take Stefan down,(2) "Stefan's boyfriend" (i.e., Fabio) wouldn't share the artichokes, and (3) Stefan is making a similar dish -- bean soup with a grilled cheese-and-Spam sandwich.  To complete the Spam trifecta, Ariane makes a turkey Spam sandwich with cranberry and pineapple chutney.

At least they're trying -- Jamie and Rahdika just wield a can opener and call it a day. Jamie's bruschetta is crap formerly in a can on toast, and Rahdika makes  bean dip. Bean dip! Sigh.

Hung agrees, and Jamie and Rahdika end up at the bottom. So does Leah, who fried some waffles and glopped on canned strawberries and Cool Whip. Snore. Spamsters Hosea and Stefan are praised, as is Jeff, who made his typical multi-part meal with conch and coconut sauce. I think it causes Jeff actual physical pain to make one complete meal that ends up mixed together on a single plate.

Hung awards Stefan the win, and Hosea fumes -- "If I hadn't given him the Spam, I would probably have immunity now!"

Elimination Challenge
The chefs divide into Teams Pig, Lamb and Chicken, and are told to design a seasonal menu based around their protein. Stefan takes charge of Team Chicken, creating a menu that highlights the chicken, but ignores the "seasonal." Chicken soup and mashed potatoes just don't cut it when it's 85 degrees. But Stefan brooks no dissent, even when Jamie loses it. Stefan is an ass.

The next day, the chefs figure out they won't be stopping at Whole Foods. Instead, they go straight to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, which takes the farm-to-table movement one step farther by putting the table in the farm. It doesn't get fresher than this. This means that the chefs can't pick and choose from a whole world of ingredients -- if it's not on the farm, they can't cook with it. So much for menus...

Team Chicken seems to have settled their differences, although they're still making a soup. Team Pig also settles in reasonably well, with Fabio making (gasp!) ravioli, Jeff handling the pork loin, and Rahdika taking a nap... sorry, I mean the roasted corn salad.

Team Lamb has the most trouble, for a couple of reasons. First, the team is made up of Hosea, Leah and Ariane -- "I got the lovebirds," Ariane says with a sigh. Leah and Hosea are too busy exchanging sweet nothings to  pay much attention to Ariane, except to assign her the centerpiece of the meal. They reason that she won with a lamb dish before. Unfortunately, Ariane is a lousy butcher and doesn't know how to tie a roast. Leah complains that she doesn't have enough to do, but she seems content to watch Ariane hang herself with her own rope.

Team Chicken's cutlets and potatoes are praised, although the soup draws some puzzled comments. Teams Pig and Lamb are criticized for taking the meat off the bone. Jeff trimmed most of the fat from the pork -- that might fly in body-conscious Miami, but people who revel in food know that the fat is what makes pork so yummy. Fabio's ravioli is drowned in pesto, rendering the pork nearly untraceable. The crème brûlée is too sweet -- and anyway, crème brûlée hardly strikes me as a farm-table-type dessert. It's too fussy, you know?

Team Lamb seems to get everything wrong. The butchery was butchered -- the lamb is hacked up and sliced against the grain, so the juices run out and the meat dries out. The salad was nothing to write home about, and the berry trifle reminded Toby of an airplane dessert. Tom and chef Dan Barber seem insulted that a lamb gave up its life for this mess. Uh-oh.

At the judging table, Tom spanks Jeff for removing the fat, but praises his fried green tomatoes. Rahdika gets called out for contributing next to nothing, and Fabio is chastised for his not-so-light pesto. Still, they didn't destroy their meat like Team Lamb did. Tom switches between tearing Ariane a new one for dishonoring the sacrifice of the poor wee beastie, then slapping Hosea and Leah for not stepping in and helping Ariane. Leah tries to say that she totally did help... but it's still all Ariane's fault. Feh.

The judges award the whole of Team Chicken the win, but have a tough time figuring out who to eject. Should it be Ariane, for screwing up the lamb? At least Ariane did something, Padma complains. Leah stood back and waited for Ariane to fail. And where was Hosea in all of this? Why didn't he step up?

In the end, Ariane's insult to all lambkind is too much to ignore. She's going home.

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• Stefan may be the most annoying man on the show. Here's a hint, Stefan -- the "you're so cute when you're mad" tack is liable to get you kicked in the nuts. And Jamie was right -- you don't get to dictate the menu when you're the team member with immunity. Shut it!
• I'm also getting really, really sick of the Leah and Hosea show. This isn't about your budding and/or mock romance -- it's about cheffery. So quit with the goo-goo eyes! (And isn't Hosea attached in some way -- married or dating someone?)
• Ariane complains that she's never dealt with baby lamb before. But... isn't all lamb baby? Otherwise, it's sheep, right?
• Tom, during his tour of the kitchen, asks Carla about her team. "I'm working with some strong characters," she says, with admirable restraint.
• Toby officially: "When I'm faced with a beautiful, well raised piece of meat, I don't want to stand back and admire it, I want to have full-blown, unprotected sex. I didn't even get to first base with the pork." Note to self: Do NOT leave Toby alone in the kitchen.
• Padma agrees that Ariane did a lousy job with the lamb, but she defends her at judging table.  I feel sorry for her for having to deal with those two, she says. "I feel sorry for her too, because he can't cook," Toby quips. Not so! Padma rallies. In previous rounds... Ah, but the whole point is we don't pay attention to what's come before, just what was presented in this meal, Toby says. And that right there is probably why Ariane went home.
• Ariane did not go gently into that good night: "I don't think it's fair that I'm going home. Leah was not a good team player, and you know, Hosea, he's a wimp!" Heh.

Did the right person go home? Is Leah getting on your last nerve, or are you liking the Leah/Hosea love story? Did you find yourself hoping that a rouge chicken would attack Stefan, just to knock the wind out of his sails? Talk!

E-mail

• Digg
• Facebook
• Fark
• Yahoo Buzz
• Stumbleupon