Top Chef Episode 10

Last week on The Mikey Show:
Michael won both the Quickfire and the Elimination, which makes Top Chef history. Everybody pissed and moaned about Marcel except for Elia and Michael. Betty had to pack up her knives and go because she decided to serve lumpy soups in wine glasses.

This week on Where's Betty When We Need A Front-of-the-House Person?:
The guest judge is this Asian man with a Naima-style limp mohawk and a shiny rest-of-his-head. The Quickfire involves making a snack. Which to me is a bag of Cheetos but to them is more of an appetizer.

Oh, by the way, I know this is two Top Chef recaps in a row, which means I'm not kept up with the rest of my shows, but I haven't been able to get a hold of I Love New York yet and I need to watch The Apprentice again because long premieres make it really hard to recap. I did start the recap, though, and spent a paragraph or two talking about how I like Ivanka a lot more than I like The Donald.

Anyway, Kraft is the name-drop of the episode apparently and they're provided with three condiments: Mayonnaise, Italian dressing, and barbeque sauce. Which are really weird choices. Anyway, Sam says he's obsessed with mayo or something. I don't remember what people made, which is a little pathetic since I just finished watching it like ten minutes ago. All I know is they didn't like Michael or Ilan. Padma says there will be two winners, which should sound off alarms in everybody's heads that this is yet again going to be a team challenge elimination.

Sam and Marcel are the two winners and I'm assuming Marcel is going to choose Elia and Michael. However, he chooses Elia and Cliff. Sam gets Ilan and Michael. I really wanted the three egomaniacs to be on the same team and then lose and have to throwdown with each other. It would be like watching the Self-promoting Circus Parade.. except that's already something else called the Tyra Show.

Anyway, each team has one half of an empty restaurant to redecorate in time for service the next day. This is another one of those times when the judges decide it'll be a good idea to give the contestants a ridiculous deadline and then berate them for not creating award-winning entrees. The wedding challenge of last season comes to mind. This one's slightly better, though, because they seem to get quite a bit of help. Each team gets an interior decorater and a server to help them out.

The Marcel team decide on a Mediterranean restaurant called Medi, which is stupid. The Sam team decides on an Italian restaurant called Lalalina, a combination of Michael's wife Lacey, Sam's girlfriend Lauren, and Ilan's girlfriend Carolina. The name is ridiculous, kinda cute, but mostly just funny. I imagine it as a nickname for Carolina, Darren Brass' wife on Miami Ink. Now there's a crazy and ridiculous lady. I love Miami Ink. And everybody on it.

After meeting with the interior lady, the Marcel teams decides that Medi is stupid and changes completely in a different direction and chooses to do a high-end diner. They call it M.E.C. because guess why.. it's their initials. They should have borrowed the other team's extra $100 and bought some creativity. I would've gone with Run EMC.. hahaha. I'm just as lame as them, but in a different way.

The teams go shopping for stuff and Sam executive-decisions himself all over the place and makes Michael go get the plating and utensils. I'm willing to bet he wrote a list of stuff he wanted specifically and warned Michael that if he didn't bring back the exact list, he would get his balls cut off or something. I don't like Sam for the same reason I don't like Cliff. They're both way too serious about themselves. They should go join Tyra and they could all annoy each other. Something that some friends and I love is when people who are annoying in the same way end up annoying each other.

There's some discussion about who will be at the front of the house and Cliff and Elia both want to do it. Cliff pretty much superior-izes his way out of cooking anything, thinking that'll make it easier for him to throw Marcel under the bus later. Ilan ends up doing a lot of cooking and also the front of the house. Both suck.

The main problems on the Lalalina side is there is not wine and also no plates to put olive pits or bread. Which I would take as a hint to not eat any olives because they're disgusting. Haha this recap is just filled with my obnoxious opinions, isn't it. Oh, and Sam's watermelon gnocchi is disgusting. Which I knew from the moment he mentioned it. I'm still not sure if it was actually in doughy-gnocchi form or just watermelon balls. Either way, that cheese and cream crap on top looked awful.

On the Run EMC side, Cliff's service is horrible. He decides that it's not important at all to greet the judges when they come in, or even serve them at all. He makes them wait forever and then doesn't really talk to them. The drumstick amuse-bouche, a Marcel creation, is kinda raw and just really not that good. The tempura vegetables with barbeque sauce, another Marcel creation, is excellent. Elia's burgers apparently don't live up to their name, The Best Burger Ever, which sounds like something I would've come up with. Except I would've known that it's probably hard to claim to be the best when those judges have probably eaten at some really high-end places. I would've called the The Almost Best Burger Ever.

So apparently Padma is the one who gets stuck with the short straw all the time. When she sits down at the Lalalina table, there's an olive pit on the table in front of her. It's like that time she got the fish with the blood line in it, or whatever. Oh, by the way, I think Padma is hilarious. So much better than that lame Katie Lee Joel or Stoneface, or whatever her name was. Billy Joel's child bride.

Anyway, there's no winner this episode because they all sucked in some way or another. They're brought back as teams separately and then all together. They send Elia back to the loft because she isn't a cop-out or a sell-out. They send Ilan back because he did almost everything and kept the pissing and moaning to a minimum that day. Marcel also got sent back because he made a lot of the dishes. That leaves us with Sam, Cliff, and Michael. I totally want Cliff to go because he's always barking orders and putting himself up on a pedestal. I wish that Padma had said, "Cliff, put your dick back in your pants and pack your knives and go," a la Mia. However, she asks Michael to pack up his knives and I am sad. Michael stayed out of the stupid circus parade of jerks and had a huge episode last week. Oh well. I don't think he's too heartbroken. He made it pretty far.

Next week on The Episode of High Expectations and Big Disappointments:
It's the week before the finale in Hawaii and everybody wants to make it. This is the week where contestants usually go way too safe and then they all get beat up for it. Also, have you ever thought about how far out in the middle of the ocean Hawaii is? It's two time zones away from the west coast. It doesn't get to participate in stuff like the Deal or No Deal Lucky Case Game. And they don't care because it's paradise all year.