Remaining Seven Top Cheftestants Commit the Seven Deadly Sins

Remaining Seven Top Cheftestants Commit the Seven Deadly Sins by Roxanne McDonald

In one of the most unique challenges yet, one which lends itself to the cheftestants’ natures, the remaining seven get lustful and greedy… and enraged.

Not uncommon to human nature never mind to the battling Cheftestants, anger and envy, for instance, fit right in to the episode nine motif of “Top Chef.” Poor Marcel (whom we earlier disliked, I know) is the target for much of the vitriol, with Ilan and Sam jumping now expressing personal disdain—though Sam is typically quiet about it save in the interview room and in one confrontation at the market, while Ilan is taking stabs at Marcel’s sexual inexperience, his foam proliferation propensity, and his general dislikability.

First, however, the Top Chef contestants warm up to the

new challenges— and the blow out—with an equally unique Quickfire challenge: with guest Ted Allen, author of The Food You Want to Eat and several other books and consulting chef on “Quuer Eye…”, judging, and with Padma prompting them to appeal to four of the five senses the remaining seven choose knives, each with a specific and single color. They must prepare a dish based around the color chosen.

Mike gets orange, and cleverly chooses to prepare a salmon dish (the cleverness being in the fact that salmon is pink but turns orange once cooked), accompanied by carrot chips that impress both Ted and Padma. Elia draws white—which she is none too pleased about—but creates a dish of white Dover sole fillet with poached egg topper. Sam once again impresses with his yellow muffins and breakfast crudo salad, which judge Allen twice remarks delights in the commingling of salt and sour flavors.

Cliff is color-blind, but despite Marcel’s offer to help choose purple foods and despite his refusal, creates an eggplant and blackberry compote that also pleases the judges. Betty gets what Ted Allen says is the easy color to work with—green—but disappoints (and ends up in the bottom three) with a vegetable tamale, zucchini and asparagus apparently the predominant veggies with basil the prevailing herb.

Marcel draws the brown knife, much to his chagrin and Betty’s and others’ smirking. Still, he aims to triumph over this ugly color, creating a steak and egg concoction that one can only assume was intended as a breakfast or brunch fare, as he surrounds the main dish with a dish of floating coffee beans and grounds (which had “exploded” in the coffee pot (?) and which look really messy despite his intentions to incorporate the aroma (the olfactory sense) the diner can enjoy while eating…. Ted is not as moved as Marcel would hope.

Ilan, who drew the red knife, has done steak tartare with red taro chips, which Ted puts him in the bottom three for as well.

The creative opportunities are dwarfed by the in-fighting, which is less competitive in nature than personal. Ilan is relentless this week, taking over, evidently for Betty, who has tamed her direct attacks and relegates them to whispers to Ilan, carping on how Marcel has used foam in every single competition. The foam will be the star ammunition, evidently, for the judges attack Marcel for including it also in his seven deadly sin challenge (wherein he creates a “lustful” cherries tart and gelee…with foam), and once Ilan is busted for boosting his dish (gluttonous chocolate fudge dessert topped (?) with a third generation funnel cake [first just right in the kitchen too crispy then too soggy once Ilan tries to soften it with syrup]) and putting down Marcel’s cherry choice based on his trivial knowledge of cherries as libido decreasers….

Sam had anger for the main dinner competition (7 courses of 7 deadly sinful foods), which he channeled beautifully into spicy chili pepper popcorn (which Padma calls “sophisticated”) and spicy shrimp ceviche (which guest diners Debbie Mazar, friends, and judges love).

Betty had sloth, the semantics of which she enjoyed playing on, but the outcome of which failed to impress: more soup.

Mike, who was recovering from a tooth extraction and was doped up, quire sedate for a change, somehow used the alchemy of pain and pain killers to up his game—to refine his usual flash food fares—and created from the sin envy a salmon and trout dish, which he asked Cliff to serve (to avoid hurting the diners’ appetites with his swollen

appearance) but which he was called out to speak to, explaining, then, how salmon are stronger and trout are envious…and impressing with such wonderful tastes and consistencies that he makes, as he later reports, Top Chef history—winning both challenges of the day/night.
Cliff served up a greedy bouillabase, which was skimpy on broth; Elia was proud to serve a proud roasted chicken; and Marcel and Ilan, as we noted earlier, battled weakly with what many of us would have found to be the most interesting sins, lust and gluttony…but also both ended up in the bottom three with Betty.

It comes out at the judging table that Ilan had dissed Marcel’s dish, and the personality conflict, which Tom Colicchio says is fun for TV but has nothing to do with the food/talent, peaks right in front of the judges (while Betty, the third bottom, stays unusually quiet), then escalates in the pantry with Ilan slamming Marcel to the point of his Jimmy Neutron smugness reducing to near tears.

We say goodbye, however, to Betty…so the anger and fire-spitting can continue to make for good TV?

Betty, however, will be fine, with her effervescent personality and her accessible charm, coupled with her comfort food menu. Maybe we will soon see her doing a cooking show on Bravo?

Where the rage in the food-processing machine will take us next is the thing to watch for, though the quiet, sublimated anger is what I am going to keep an eye out for, hoping, really, that it doesn’t trump the talents of the remaining six.
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