Bravo (Sort of) to Top Chef Contestant, Fall Guy Otto Borsich
Bravo (Sort of) to Top Chef Contestant, Fall Guy Otto Borsich by Roxanne McDonald
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First caught up in the excitement, then denying total culpability, then taking responsibility for the lychee-stealing fiasco, Otto Borsich is the one with the heart. |
First caught up in the excitement, then denying total culpability, then taking responsibility for the lychee-stealing fiasco, Otto Borsich is the one with the heart.
The opinions are split 30/70, but I have to hand it to Otto for having the blades to take full responsibility for a ridiculous lapse in judgment and for taking the fall (when maybe it should have been the worst chef going home—Marisa Churchill).
The cheftestants were divided into two teams for the Elimination Challenge:
one team would be preparing Vietnamese cuisine and the other would be doing Korean cuisine…for a food and drink show at a charity event of about a 1,000 people. The criteria for judging will be 1) how well they prepare, showcase, and meet the countries’ cuisine standards; and 2) how well they work together as a team.
The problems start for team Korea, however, as soon as the men and women start drinking sangria and yukking it up instead of cooperating to plan the menu (which must consist of at least one cold and one hot dish). Once the hung-over idiots get a menu planned, they hit the specialty store with their 500 bucks budget, go off in too many directions inside the store, have to take something out of the cart lest they go over, and make their way to the vehicle.
There in the parking lot a giddy Otto tells Marisa that it looks like they got away with a free case of lychees which had not been rung up. This unnerves the already rattled Marisa, who reports the issue to Ilan, bitching that it is “cheating” and that she wants none of it. (Ilan says in interview that likely she just wants to be completely exempt from culpability of any sort.)
When Tom Colicchio comes in not as mentor but as judge checking up on the teams’ progress, it is then that Marisa tells the tale, which gets Otto grilled and sent to return the lychees.
So far, none of this is all that big a deal, maybe. Except it gets more dramatic once the dessert which Marisa makes is what guest judge Chef Mig Tsai calls a hockey puck (Marisa made Jasmine Tea Custard with Pink Tapioca and Lychee Gelee of a sort, which the judges identify as panacotta, which is supposed to be gelatinous, not dense).
As well, team Korea’s rice is sticky (a major faux pas for any basic chef, evidently), and the members do not get along well at all. All tolled, these problems and issues contribute to their being the losers. But the focus continues on Otto. In fact, judge Colicchio says at deliberation that if Otto does not own up, then they will send Marisa home.
Here’s where Top Chef reveals the real integrity, the real guts and the much deserved props:
First, if Marisa’s was the worst, she should go. Boom. Done. However, when called on to speak to the problems in the team effort, Marisa emphasizes the lychee-lifting as the grossest of all problems. Yuh. When someone on the team has confided in you that your team has a bunch of free fruit, you surely would screw up an easy jello dessert recipe.
And she harps on it to the point where Otto first goes into denial about being so excited, so wrapped up in the energy of shopping and challenge that he fails to tell a store clerk the charge was missed.
He skirts the whole issue in the first confrontation, so that back in the waiting area (a pantry of sorts), the likely lecture about team effort and individual responsibility comes from the most likely, most outspoken one, Frank Terzoli (who lights into Otto—and Marisa?—with the fury of a firebrand): he screams at them for being
selfish about not team-playing then for being selfish about only speaking in ways that would save their own asses.
Back in the judges chambers, the dining room, whatever—the team lines up to face the charges/dismissal. But Otto takes the fall: he admits that decisions made were wrong and disruptive to the team effort, and that despite how badly he wanted this, he must take the full responsibility and bow out. Bravo number one!
Back in the room with his team, he speaks to integrity, honesty, fairness, and taking responsibility so others [wouldn’t have to]. The team applauds heartily, which I noticed was started by the gentle and introverted ones…and which reinforces what a big human Otto is. Bravo, Bravo!!!
Couldn’t Marisa have admitted that the shittiest product producer should have been the one to take a hike? I can’t stand this one, obviously, and want her gone, but I also trust the process and know she will, after showing incompetence in two of two weeks, bring the knife down on herself soon. Good. Makes more room for the beautiful Bettys and the silent but super Sams of the show.
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