Top Chef Power Rankings

Top Chef - S8E6 Postmortem

Back online, a little late.

Sorry about the rankings this week, folks. Getting the 'net up and running at the new place took a little longer than anticipated. And smartphones aren't conducive to writing 5000+ words.

A really, really wonderful episode. A great challenge, creative and fun that made for good TV but was still focused on the food and putting the chefs in a position to succeed. Though I can't say I'm thrilled about the result, even if I'm sure I'm in a tiny minority on one of the eliminations.

We've seen in the past that Jamie was better than this, but she sure didn't show it this season. And Tiffani never got going. She's stronger than this performance, and I'm disappointed we didn't get to see her at her best. But such is the nature of the beast.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S8E5 Postmortem

Hey, look! Mike Isabella!

And a lot of fun to see Tom walk the walk. Aside from that? Hard to watch.

Not at all surprised it was Casey. Inedible trumps lousy every time. Though I'm sure the burgeoning wave of Jamie hatred (which I find overblown, but... okay) will disagree.

And I will resist the urge to revisit the Top Scallop myth... AGAIN.

Tough calls at the top coming up this week. I can see making a case for three people right now. And I'm prepared to take my beating for missing the clearly obvious choice, no matter who I end up going with. Comes with the territory, I guess :-)

Discuss!

Top Chef - S8E4 Power Rankings

Wow. You phone it in one week, have a week off the next, and suddenly it feels like we haven't had any Top Chef in forever. Was Christmas really less than two weeks ago? Anyway, time to get back into the swing of things. And a good episode with which to do it. Again, maybe I'm going soft. I enjoyed this episode. Well, half of it, anyway.

This was one of the stupidest quickfire gimmicks in Top Chef history, and the worst in a long, long time. The infamous vending machine challenge and the one where each contestant got a different aisle in the grocery store spring to mind, but this one's right there. Really, what about banning utensils made that a better challenge than just doing a stuffing challenge? Or if you insist on forcing the contestants to use shelving units for cheese graters, celery stalks for spoons and pepper mills for paring knives, at least invite Richard Dean Anderson to be the guest judge. Annoyance.

The format for the elimination, however, I actually enjoyed! I thought it was nice change of pace. It added a little excitement and fun, but it still gave the chefs the opportunity to cook their food without dumb restrictions. It's true that the format made it possible for the worst dish to stay. But how is that different from any other team challenge? Dishes that are worse than the eliminated dish skate by all the time. Just because the mechanism was a little different doesn't mean the result wasn't routine. And put me in the camp that says, hey, if Jamie's dish was the worst, the reason she didn't go home wasn't because the format was faulty, it's because her teammates weren't willing to stand up to her and send her out. But more on that later.

Since we're four episodes in, I tried to let the preseason rankings go for the most part this week, and the result was that... not much changed. Largely because a few of those who would've gotten a strong adjustment up or down happened to have a poor or a good week. I suspect they'll sit well with everybody. There's a little mess in the middle, but I'm starting to feel comfortable with how everybody is performing. Almost everybody.

The power rankings are not purely a prediction of who is most likely to win, or an assessment of last episode's dishes, or a reflection of the contestants' historical performance, but rather a nebulous amalgam of all three, combined with a little bit of gut feeling, to provide a relative measure of current awesomeness.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Angelo Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 2 3 0 Angelo's just haaaaaaanging in there at number one, with Richard breathing down his neck. But we'll get to Richard in a second. Angelo's QF didn't get any screen time at all, so for those who are curious, his stuffing was "Surf and Turf Oyster Filled Pork, Bread Crumb Topping, Parsley, Whole Oysters." Basically, he steamed oysters, removed them and mixed them with pork (ground, presumably), breadcrumbs, parsley, thyme, oregano, cayenne and Old Bay, stuffed that back into the oyster shells and steamed them again. I like the idea. Could have been the third-best dish, could have been the fourth-worst. We have no idea. He got a clean sweep from the judges with his elimination dish, and getting that win despite scrapping his mackerel at the last minute speaks well. Just scrapping the mackerel speaks well, actually. A lot of contestants would have pushed through, hoping it would be good enough. Good for him not only for sticking by his standards, but being able to rework the dish on the fly. Speaking of standards, I don't buy this whole Angelo sabotage thing. It seems pretty clear that at the least he's kind of pushy with his teammates. But I think he genuinely wants his team to win, even if he believes that means taking over some aspects of somebody else's dish and doing it himself. We've seen that work both ways. Doesn't make it okay, but it's a completely different motivation.

2 Richard Quickfires 2 2 0 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 1 3 0 Number one is Richard's for the taking if he gives me a reason. This week, he got top mention, but not without criticism. If all of the dishes were simply thrown in the pot and judged without the tennis format, it's hard to say whether or not he would have gotten that top mention that his win earned him. And the win came against a dish with big problems (Spike's). This wasn't a claiming the top spot performance. But he's right there. Incidentally, though he has the most wins, they've all been team wins. He's always been a great collaborator, so this should come as no surprise, bt I'd sure like to see him take home a win with a solo dish.

3 Dale Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 1 2 0 Dale didn't have an especially strong outing, but I don't know that there was anybody who quite snatched the third spot away from him. We got no reaction whatsoever from Mantuano on his Spanish-inspired stuffing, and there's no shame in losing to Tiffani in a head-to-head (3-1), so I figure we'll just let him tread water for a week.

4 Tiffani Quickfires 1 2 2 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 0 0 2 Here's the tough one. Though it's no secret I'm bullish on her chances in the long run, I can't deny that Tiffani, despite some success, hasn't quite given a number four performance so far. But here's the dilemma. Who has? I can't think of anybody beneath her who's more deserving of the fourth spot. So I kind of feel like I have to leave her here, too much maple syrup notwithstanding. In her defense, she did take down Dale. And I still believe she's going to earn it... and possibly more... in short order. On the other hand, there are some others making big moves up the ladder, and while I wasn't ready to go quite this high this week, she's going to get bumped very quickly if she isn't on her game in the next week or two.

5 Carla Quickfires 0 1 2 Last Week: 11 Eliminations 1 2 0 That's right, Hootie's on the move. I don't like big jumps, but I'm trying to let the performances speak, and Quinoa Undonete aside, the woman who's arguably the series' all-time greatest dark horse is, in her own inimitable fashion, quietly rocking once again. What's more, I've done what she did to her finger, and I didn't handle it a tenth as well as she did. I waited too long in season five to give her the respect that she deserved, and I'm not going to make that mistake again. Am I swayed somewhat by the fact that she's a complete joy to watch? Perhaps. But if the Power Rankings are about relative awesomeness, I hope a little piece of that can be for simply being awesome.

6 Antonia Quickfires 1 1 1 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 2 1 Antonia's the other big mover, and the other half of my "let the performances speak" week. That's a top elimination dish two weeks running, and aside from the frittata mishap, she's looking pretty strong. My gripe about her last time around was that her dishes, while spot-on, were unexciting. When it comes to creativity, she's no Voltaggio, of course, but still, I think she's showing more this season than she did the last time around. Has she grown creatively since then? Is she simply more comfortable on the second pass and in a better position to reach a bit more? Both, perhaps? Either way, though they're not attention-grabbers, I feel like we're seeing some really nice little touches in her food on this pass, and it's showing on the scorecard.

7 Marcel Quickfires 0 2 1 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 1 1 0 Marcel didn't have a bad week, I'm just really not sure where to put him. He should have knocked the WD-50 challenge out of the park last week, and he's shown some good and some bad, but I'm just not feeling his food or his style and I really don't know which direction he's headed. I'm going to park him here for a week and hopefully get some more info soon.

8 Casey Quickfires 0 1 2 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 0 2 Casey had a bit of an off week, but she's showing much stronger than the numbers suggest. She's not quite cracking the podium, but she's racking up positive comment after positive comment, and her bottom appearances, for the most part, aren't ones that give the sense that she's having a hard time. She doesn't seem to be in the kind of danger that four bottom appearances might suggest. And one gets the sense that she could break out at any time. If not for the strong showings by Carla and Antonia the past two weeks, I'd have her significantly higher.

9 Mike Quickfires 0 1 2 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 1 0 What to make of Mike? He's almost a non-entity. His Paella Stuffing, which didn't get any screen time, didn't look too exciting, and we didn't even get to see his elimination dish (Slow Cooked Chicken with Pepper and Chorizo Stew, Pickled Onions -- no recipe). I have him lower than some of the hot and cold contestants above because they've at least shown something. But Mike just kind of keeps on keepin' on, earning neither praise nor scorn. So, um... yeah, number nine.

10 Tre Quickfires 2 3 0 Last Week: 12 Eliminations 0 1 1 I should probably have Tre a little higher, but how can I bump him more than two spots in a week when one gets the sense that the only reason he's still on the show is that he had immunity? It's true, Angelo prepared his salmon, which was roundly dinged for being overdone. It's hard to discern how much of the dish's problem was the salmon, and how much was other issues. I dunno, there are some hot and cold contestants I have higher than Tre, but his cold dishes (and I don't mean garde manger) worry me more, somehow. I think I already said this, but give me one more good dish and I'll give him a good bump.

11 Jamie Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 1 1 After a strong start, Jamie's been getting herself into all kinds of trouble. I think she's probably one of the stronger chefs when she's on, but she's barely managed to hang on the past few weeks, and in the process she's dug herself a hole that's going to be tough to climb out of. I thought her QF dish looked nice, though there's no recipe to peruse, and her elimination dish is a total mystery, except that we know it involves chickpeas and, from the looks of a photo on the Bravo site, a lamb(?) medallion and perhaps some kind of cucumber yogurt sauce. I'm sure there was a little more to it than that. There always is with Jamie. But it's a mystery, at least for now. How you feel about how the tennis match went down depends, I think, on what you believe Jamie's motivations were for trying to stay out of the early rounds of service. If her chickpeas really might have come around with a little bit more time, holding her until the end isn't necessarily a bad strategy from a team standpoint. But that also doesn't mean she wasn't motivated by self-preservation. Speculate away. The problem from a competitive standpoint, I think, is that between this and the cut incident, she seems to have lost the respect of her competitors. Some people thrive when isolated like that (*ahem*... Marcel). But for somebody who self-admittedly avoids conflict, it sure looks like conflict is coming her way. She's perfectly capable of popping off and winning the next challenge or two if she gets hot. But unless she does something heroic, she might be on her own the rest of the way out, and that doesn't bode well.

12 Fabio Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 14 Eliminations 0 2 2 Well, he can make gnocchi. And what the heck, we'll get him out of the basement on that basis. Here's the thing with Fabio. If he can shoehorn one of his dishes into the challenge, he's often going to do okay. Even very well on occasion. But he's already lucky to still be standing, and I just don't see him conjuring the magic to get as deep as he did last time. Amusing aside, there's a pretty clear hint in his elimination recipe that they aren't bothering to do any editing before posting this season. When it calls for "2 pounds Steamed and Grinded Potatoes," I don't think that's a recipe writer being cute.

13 Tiffany Quickfires 0 0 3 Last Week: 13 Eliminations 0 0 2 You all know by now that I don't go strictly by the numbers, but numbers like these are brutal. Tiffany is the only contestant without a single top mention, and she leads the pack with five bottom mentions out of eight challenges. Though Fabio is teetering on the precipice, he's busting out a good dish here and there when he can do his thing. But Tiffany can't seem to get going at all. If she catches a streak like she did midway through last season, she could blow past half the field in a hurry. But she's the only contestant who's really shown absolutely nothing so far.

14 Spike Quickfires 2 2 0 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 2 1 Though my preference has always been strongly for cooking over gamesmanship, let me add my voice to those who defend "the strategy." It was halfway smart. The idea of throwing up your team's weakest dish against the other team's strongest competitor (or even two, if you have a pair of clunkers) is very, very shrewd. Rank the opposing chefs, 1-7. Take your one or two clunkers and match them up against whoever you've identified as the other team's top chefs. Then pit your 1-5 against their 3-7, hoping to snag four out of five. It's not an ideal scenario, but that's how you give yourself a chance to win even if you have a weaker team. The mistake was in assuming that Team Orange would send their best first, and not planning for that contingency so that the dish selection wouldn't devolve into chaos at the last moment. But as countless others have pointed out, there couldn't have been a more appropriate way for Spike to go down. And I hate him for it, because I was really starting to enjoy him this season. Additional hilarious note, in addition to the judges' table, the chefs also served a large number of party guests in typical Top Chef chafing dish style. And what did Spike do when the guests came around to his table? He grilled them for information about the other team's dishes, asking which they liked best. If his team had been totally on board, I bet he could have pulled it off.

There are still a few I'm having trouble placing, but I'm starting to feel better about the rankings. I'll be curious to see what people like Tiffany, Marcel and Casey do over the next couple of episodes.

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE FIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

Loving the quickfire challenge. If it is as the preview suggests, Tom's going to set the clock by cooking a dish first. However long it takes him, that's how long the competitors get for their dishes. It's going to be fun to see if he still has the chops. I'm more than a little concerned about the quickfire. While I adore Chinatown and love the idea of a dim sum challenge, doing dim sum service for an entire restaurant full of Chinese seniors can't possibly end in anything short of a total train wreck. And not everybody is cooking, so somebody could go down for something stupid. If the wheels are coming off -- and that's definitely the impression we're given -- I'm not sure if our Asian specialists have a leg up or not. If the whole ship goes down, the guys who should have done better will be in the crosshairs.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S8E4 Postmortem

Y'know, despite featuring one of the most stupid and pointless quickfire gimmicks in the history of Top Chef (and that ain't hyperbole), I actually ended up liking that episode just fine. That Carla featured so prominently is, I'm sure, no small coincidence.

Curse you, Spike, for making me decide I like you and then getting yourself kicked off! Still don't think he could've won, though.

Much to get into on Monday... game theory, missing dishes... perhaps a drastic Power Rankings housecleaning. We're far enough in that I should probably start purging some preseason preconceptions.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S8E3 Power Rankings

Hey, all!

Between the kid with pneumonia and holiday travel, try as I might, I haven't been able to get to the rankings this week. So I'm cashing in my once-per-season "Get Out Of The Rankings Free" card. But because I hate doing nothing, here's a really, really quick and dirty set of rankings for the week:

The power rankings are not purely a prediction of who is most likely to win, or an assessment of last episode's dishes, or a reflection of the contestants' historical performance, but rather a nebulous amalgam of all three, combined with a little bit of gut feeling, to provide a relative measure of current awesomeness.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Angelo Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 2 3 0 Continued strong showing allows him to hold first place, just barely ahead of Richard.

2 Richard Quickfires 2 2 0 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 1 2 0 Tom's favorite dish from the Marea group, even if he was outvoted by those who preferred Tre's. Combined with the QF win, thought about putting him ahead of Angelo. Could be either, really.

3 Dale T. Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 1 2 0 Elimination challenge win that demonstrates everything a finalist needs to do and gets heaps of praise serves as a reminder of why I was so big on Dale T. back in season four. He has to maintain, but earns the jump this week.

4 Tiffani Quickfires 1 2 1 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 0 0 2 A disturbing trend of bottom appearances for a chef who I believe is better. An early wake-up call can be good, and hopefully that's what this is for Tiffani. But even at number four, she's on thin ice and needs to come back strong to maintain her rank.

5 Marcel Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 1 1 0 Got a big, fat fastball right down the heart of the plate and whiffed. Doesn't bode well, but he didn't hurt himself either.

6 Spike Quickfires 2 2 0 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 2 0 Curse you, Spike!!!

7 Casey Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 0 1 Not breaking into the top ranks, but looks consistently strong which, as discussed earlier, is unusually important this season.

8 Jamie Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 1 1 Has skill, even if she didn't show it on this elimination, but lack of flexibility is exposing her.

9 Mike Quickfires 0 1 2 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 1 0 Makes a great dish... on his own!

10 Antonia Quickfires 1 1 1 Last Week: 12 Eliminations 0 1 1 Wish I could see a recipe, but that dish looked nice. Seems to be stretching a little further this time around. Could make a big move if she keeps it up.

11 Carla Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 11 Eliminations 0 1 0 Deftly handles a challenge that could easily have sent her packing.

12 Tre Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 13 Eliminations 0 1 1 There's Tre the chef rather than Tre the legend. Gets a bump, but I want to see if he can do it again.

13 Tiffany Quickfires 0 0 3 Last Week: 14 Eliminations 0 0 1 Just can't get it going. Took half a season last time, but she won't have that luxury this time. Needs to get it in gear, and quickly.

14 Fabio Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 15 Eliminations 0 1 2 To be fair, that was about as brutal as a challenge could be for Fabio. But still, you'd hope he'd be able to do a little more with it than that.

15 Dale L. Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 0 2 A disappointing finish for one of my sleepers. He was always high risk / high reward, and I thought the gig at Sprout meant he might come in a little more evenly this time around.

16 Stephen Quickfires 1 1 2 Last Week: 16 Eliminations 0 1 2 Clearly didn't belong in this field, but made a classy exit, shameless explanation of his motivations in the extended exit interview notwithstanding.

Back at full strength next week...

Discuss!

Top Chef - S8E3 Postmortem

Awwww... another favorite bites the dust. And Stephen.

In all fairness, that was a classy exit by Stephen. His exit interview would suggest that it was carefully crafted, but if so, no matter. You get points either way.

Dale, I'm sad to see go. I felt he didn't get the respect he deserved going into this season, and though I'm sure this elimination won't help, I still feel the same way. Bourdain definitely hit it on the head in his blog, and those who feel Dale didn't belong in this crowd should give him a read, I think.

Killer episode! Much to enjoy. And much to parse (in a good way). Here's hoping for some recipes. Back on Monday.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S8E2 Power Rankings

I think I'm getting soft.

You know what? I didn't mind this episode. It featured a kids' snack challenge, a sleepless elimination with odd ingredient restrictions, very little usable information for Power Rankings purposes, and a tween pop sensation. And I didn't mind it. Maybe it's because I'm still basking in the glow of the All-Stars, I dunno. But I probably should have been annoyed by this episode, and I wasn't. Go figure.

A kids' snack challenge is a perfectly legitimate endeavor. And I like that they just set them loose to make chocolate frosted sugar bombs if they wanted. We got preachy with kid nutrition last season. No need to do it again. And the showdown at the museum was kind of unnecessary and contrived, but you know what, who cares? Why not let the guest judge pick two worthy dishes and let the kids have the final say? It's a quickfire, after all.

And I really wasn't bothered by the elimination, either. Lack of sleep, whatever. No sympathy there. And the ingredient restrictions forced them to get creative (or should have forced them to get creative), but they had a well-stocked walk in, they had plenty of time, they didn't have any wacky curveballs -- at least not any that weren't a function of their own misunderstanding of the rules. So while it was a tricky challenge for Team T-Rex in particular, they weren't set up for failure. I see no reason why they shouldn't have been able to put out perfectly delicious food. So even though it wasn't a situation where we were going to get their best shot, where they were more likely to simply survive than thrive, I'm disinclined to be terribly annoyed by it. Give us a nice plated dinner within the next episode or two, and I'm a happy camper.

On the subject of ingredient restrictions, I'm of the opinion that Tiffani's misunderstanding really did put her team at a severe disadvantage. Of course she picked meat. If I'd stopped listening halfway through Tom's instruction (before he said "only"), I would have picked meat too. Not because I believe it's inherently more delicious, but because I hate being limited. But as hard as it is cooking without animal products -- and it's hard -- I think the other way around is a lot harder. And it would have been ten times harder than it was if the elves had imposed a truly hardcore interpretation of the rules and not allowed the chefs the dried spices they did (plants all), but that's where I think it would have crossed the line into out-and-out crippling them, so I appreciated the restraint.

There's not a whole lot of movement in the rankings this week. I don't feel like this episode gave me a lot to sink my teeth into, and continued recipe issues didn't help. Once again, less than half of them made their way to the website. I'm hoping we'll get more to work with next week.

The power rankings are not purely a prediction of who is most likely to win, or an assessment of last episode's dishes, or a reflection of the contestants' historical performance, but rather a nebulous amalgam of all three, combined with a little bit of gut feeling, to provide a relative measure of current awesomeness.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Angelo Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 2 2 0 Angelo picks up another elimination win and his closest competition in the rankings was on his team, so I don't see any reason to shake things up at the top this week. If I'd had a better sense of who contributed what to the winning dish, that might have changed, but I can't find much in the way of clues as to who did what. And in some ways, I'd feel dirty trying to reorder rankings based on that anyway, since it was a team effort (unless you ask Marcel, of course... more on that momentarily). A little side note, though there's no recipe, I'm really curious about Angelo's QF. He did fried dough with white pepper, Old Bay and cheddar. There's no recipe, but I'd really like to know how that worked, exactly. I'm just having a hard time getting it into my head. Sadly, appears it'll stay that way.

2 Richard Quickfires 1 1 0 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 1 2 0 If I knew for a fact, as I suspect based on his demonstrated affinity for roasted and brûléed bananas, that the banana puree portion of the parfait was Richard's brainchild, combined with Tom's clarification that he might have won last week's elimination if not for the fact that he was DQ'ed, I'd probably kick Richard up to number one. But there's enough uncertainty that I'll leave them be. (Of course, we know Marcel did the plums, roasted banana puree kind of screams Richard and Tandoori maple kind of screams Angelo, but... no, no, don't assume.) Since I suspect it was Richard, I'll write here that it really was a slick little way to imply dairy without using it. They blended roasted bananas with a Jasmine rice, ginger, vanilla and soy milk "horchata" to make what their "faux-gurt," and I can totally see that working. The dish really is well-conceived, and though I bet it plays simply, it's not.

3 Tiffani Quickfires 1 1 1 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 0 0 1 It's a little tough to keep her at number three with two bottom appearances out of four, but I'm looking at the nature of those appearances and I'm not ready to ding her just yet. Though if we get a meatier challenge next week, she's going to have to show very strong just to hold. I'm a little surprised by her use of liquid nitrogen in the QF. At least as far as I've seen, that's never been her style. But the fact that she used something that you wouldn't peg as her style and won with it is a mark in her favor, I think. Yeah, it was one of the frosted sugar bombs, but while there's no recipe, it seems like one of the more intelligently conceived and constructed ones. And hers was the top dish on the bottom team, so I felt like her showing in the elimination didn't really tell us much of anything positive of negative other than she can perfectly cook enough beef tenderloin for 150 people on 45 minutes of sleep. Many impressive Top Chef contestants have failed miserably at just that sort of task, so I don't want to completely discount it. But consider this more of a hold with warning of a drop if she doesn't bust out something awesome pretty soon.

4 Marcel Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 1 1 0 I don't like putting Marcel here with such a huge jump so soon, but I'm honestly not sure where else to put him. There's a big messy chunk of contestants beneath him, and I couldn't find a logical spot to put him in the middle of that pack, so it was either just above them or just below them. So I went with just above them since he's coming off a win (even though it seems like his contribution was the fruit... no, no, don't assume). That and his QF looked fun and interesting. Though it didn't get any camera time, the recipe made it online. He did a play on Ants on a Log, compressing his celery, substituting freshly blended apple butter for the peanut butter, and adding dried cherries, apricots, cranberries and toasted panko to the traditional raisins. It could've been just off the bottom, and it could have been just off the top. We'll probably never know. But I liked that it was creative and thoughtful. Less thoughtful was what he had to say about Angelo. Reason to be pissed off? Maybe so. Probably. But accusing the guy of sabotaging his own dish? That kind of... defies logic. If he's trying to figure all the angles, Tom Reagan he's not.

5 Dale T. Quickfires 1 1 0 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 1 0 Though I could just as easily have him three spots down, Dale gets a modest bump for putting together an elimination dish that the judges seemed to enjoy quite a bit. Bonus points for realizing the polenta wasn't setting up the way they'd intended and having the serenity to bend like a reed in the wind and go with it rather than fighting it. And as much as I like him, that's the last time I expect to use the word "serenity" in reference to Dale T.

6 Jamie Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 1 1 I'm not really sure what to do with Jamie this week, but I'm taking consolation in the fact that I don't seem to be alone in that regard. So she's going to hang out in roughly the same spot and I'm going to take the opportunity to talk kitchen injuries. It's true that cooks have a special brand of machismo when it comes to dealing with the punishment their bodies take while making our food. If you've spent any time at all listening to the folks who have spent time in the trenches, you know that little short of Ebola or a severed carotid will keep an experienced line cook down. It's a matter of professional pride, and it kind of looks like Jamie didn't get the memo. I'm not here to judge. Those who have actually spent time on the line can do that. But I do have a doctor for a wife, and while emergency medicine isn't her specialty, she's put in plenty of stitches in her time. I'm paraphrasing (so hopefully I don't embarrass her by getting something wrong), but here's what she had to say. First, she said that the comparison to Fabio's broken finger is BS. Unless it's a compound fracture or badly displaced, they aren't going to do much other than slap a splint on it. And even if it requires some more significant treatment, it's unlikely to be something time-sensitive. Sutures, however, have a small-ish window of time beyond which they're a lot less effective and the wound is less likely to heal. So however bad the cut was or wasn't, a broken finger isn't a fair measuring stick. As for the number of sutures, more doesn't necessarily equal a smaller or less serious cut. A lot depends on the nature of the injury. Added to which, they might very well have used Dermabond -- crazy glue for skin, essentially -- which, depending on the nature of the injury, could drastically cut down the number of sutures needed. Long story short, you can't judge it based purely on the number of sutures. It could have been a mild injury, it could have been very serious. We didn't see it, we just don't know. More relevant, I think, is how her fellow contestants see it. If they get nasty with her because they think she's weak, based on what we've seen from her, I'm not certain that her reaction wouldn't be "screw it" rather than "screw you." We might find out.

7 Dale L. Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 0 1 Again, Dale L. could just as easily be on the top of this pack as on the bottom. His QF seemed like a cruder version of Tiffani's, but there was something he did on the elimination dish that I really liked. As was pointed out, they had no acid to work with. No vinegar, no citrus. You ever try a hollandaise without the acid? Let's just say it really needs it. So you have your game plan, and then you discover that you have no acid of any kind to work with. What do you do? In Dale's case, you grab the crème fraîche -- an item on the T-Rex side of the walk in that actually has a little natural sourness to it. And then you effectively work it into a "hollandaise." That's understanding flavor fundamentals, thinking on your feet, and executing something that might have been a little tricky. I like that.

8 Casey Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 0 1 Does Casey deserve a drop? Probably not. It seems like she held down her part of the dish just fine (even though it appears that she had some minor filleting issues with her salmon). But, you know, everybody's close here in the bottom half of the top half. Mike's criticism of her chocolate lasagna was pretty baseless. It was just crepes, layered with chocolate and mascarpone and cut into squares. I'd ordinarily be annoyed by her use of the word "lasagna," but it's for kids... I can appreciate that something that would be pointless on a regular menu might have silly appeal for kids. I know my kid would probably get a kick out of the idea, so I can't knock it. And then she seared salmon. So a couple of people who I thought were a little more interesting this week passed her by. She seems to operate on a pretty even keel, though, and I think that'll help her down the line.

9 Spike Quickfires 1 1 0 Last Week: 13 Eliminations 0 2 0 Damn you, Spike! I don't want to take you seriously, but I have to. You never wow me with your food, but you always seem to do just the right thing at just the right time. I don't think you have a snowball's chance of winning. And I don't want to believe that, under ideal circumstances, you'd make me a better meal than a lot of the chefs I have in front of you. But these aren't ideal circumstances, and based on the first two episodes, you deserve to be higher. A lot higher. But I... I just can't. Not yet. Do it one more time. I dare you. Work your crafty MFer magic this Wednesday, get a little more top mention, and I'll choke back my prejudice and send you into the upper tier. I'll hate myself for it, but I'll do it. And then you'd better keep doing it, because against my better judgment, I'm kind of really enjoying watching you this season. (Damn you, Spike!)

10 Mike Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 1 0 Mike's another one whose success I'm just not quite ready to believe. I don't know, he just always seems to be at his best when teamed with somebody else. A bottom for his QF dish, and a top for the elimination dish he made with Dale T.? I'm going to punt on him for one more week. Do me a favor, Mike, and do something highly notable this week, preferably by yourself. Good or bad, don't care. Just stand out so I can decide what to do with you.

11 Carla Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 12 Eliminations 0 1 0 Sounds like Carla and Spike made a really nice, creative gazpacho! Too bad I have no idea what was in it *shakes fist*. Carla's QF, BTW, was the other one that didn't get any screen time, but it's also up on the site. She did carrot, ginger and oatmeal cookies with fried carrot chips and chocolate granola clusters. A little sweet, a little savory. Sounds about right. I know I'm not the only one who's noticing that Carla's following the exact same editing trajectory as season five. Just sayin'.

12 Antonia Quickfires 1 1 0 Last Week: 11 Eliminations 0 0 1 Uh-oh. It's only episode two, and Antonia has a technical black mark already. This is like Ron Santo making an error in the third game of the season. I don't want to think it portends anything, given her track record, but it's kind of a frustrating mistake. I'm sympathetic to the notion that the oven was cooking unevenly. But I'm a lot less sympathetic than I could be given the fact that what she and Tiffany made was so simple that they barely had anything to do BUT pay close attention to the oven. And it's something that would be relatively easy to surreptitiously check with a knife point before serving. Also, while a challenge like this with a mystery pantry isn't the easiest time to get highly creative... really? Bacon and cheddar? Ham and cheese? That's all you got? There's no recipe, so perhaps there was more to them, but that's an awfully underwhelming showing. Antonia's better than this. I hope we get to see it. And incidentally, Antonia, I don't know how much sleep you're used to getting, but I'm of the opinion that the only thing worse than no sleep is an hour of sleep. Call me crazy, but I'd have chosen the flashlight tour over the cot.

13 Tre Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 15 Eliminations 0 0 1 Tom's right. Tre really should have been able to save that sauce. Whisk in a little butter, you're good. And incidentally, for all of the times we've heard the judges say that a contestant shouldn't have served something if it wasn't right, I'd love to see somebody actually do it just so we can confirm once and for all that that will immediately get you thrown off (I believe it's happened once before, but we could use some reinforcement so they'll stop saying it). Though I'm actually kind of impressed that Tre nailed the sauce in the first place without any vegetal matter. Well, maybe not impressed, but he did well. Right up until he over-reduced the sauce, that is. I'll say it again, I know Tre has somehow gotten a reputation as one of the more talented non-winning Top Chef alumni, and he might be, but I still can't figure out where he's shown it to us. Don't get me wrong, I hope he does. He'd better do it soon, though.

14 Tiffany Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 14 Eliminations 0 0 1 That goes for Tiffany too, who's now been on the bottom of three of the four challenges so far. I'm keeping her out of the basement because she's shown some game in the past and I'm not quite ready to write that off after two episodes. But like Tre, she needs to get it in gear or she's going to be gone before she even got going.

15 Fabio Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 16 Eliminations 0 1 1 This is exactly the kind of place you'd expect Fabio to do well. He could approach the challenge from a place of comfort (reasonably, I think... I'd eat gnocchi for breakfast!), and he's a guy who can get it done in the kitchen. But despite the fact that his gnocchi were very well received, I can't say this changes my opinion of his chances. And if episodes one and two were reversed, there'd be no question that I'd have him behind Tiffany and Tre. So barring further magic, we'll leave him at the bottom. Incidentally, on the show he complained about having to make gnocchi without butter or eggs, and then there they are in the recipe, stuffed with eggs and parmesan. So who knows what we're looking at. Update : As pointed out below, the best way I can think to explain why I have Fabio so low is that in four challenges, he's made good gnocchi without working on the condimento, and two bad pastas. That doesn't strike me as a strong start for an Italian chef.

16 Stephen Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 17 Eliminations 0 1 1 Ditto Stephen who, like Tiffany, has been on the bottom of three of the four challenges so far. I don't want to take away from him that he seems to have done a lovely job with something that was squarely in his wheelhouse. But he'll have to do a lot more to convince me that he isn't still the weakest link.

17 Jen Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 0 0 1 And so we come to Jen. I'm going to go ahead and call that the most memorable exit in the history of the show, though probably not for reasons she would like. It's KILLING me that this recipe isn't on the website. I'm dying to know what she did with it. Now I love braised pork belly. It's one of my favorite things in the world. And while I've heard it suggested that perhaps the judges aren't accustomed to that texture, I don't believe it for a second. And the extended judges' table seems to confirm that they had no issue with the concept, but rather with the execution. So I'm inclined to toss out the notion that they completely misunderstood Jen's dish. Maybe it really just comes down to a difference of opinion. Or maybe Jen has no palate and still somehow managed to smoke most of the field of season six (I don't actually believe that). Or maybe lack of sleep and stew room booze had something to do with it. I don't know. I do find the line, "Welcome to Jen All-Stars" a little disconcerting, as though she decided ahead of time to be 100% right all of the time and never doubt herself no matter what. Who knows, it could have been a conscious decision after seemingly dealing with some significant self-doubt issues at times during season six. And I love that she just came out and said that she cooks for the judges and not for the people. It's smart strategy. Provided the judges like what you cook for them, of course.

So there they are. I'm not happy with them. There are plenty that'll be called out as too high or two low, and the criticism will probably be valid. It's still early and I'm not quite ready to release some feelings about the chefs from their previous seasons just yet. The preseason rankings still figured pretty heavily here. But I hope -- and I think -- that this week's episode will let me put some of that behind.

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE THREE SPOILERS AHEAD

I'm curious to see how the QF works out. It looks like a long-format twist on the prep relay... perhaps not a relay? Seems like kind of a waste of David Chang, so hopefully he sticks around for the elimination. Some others (I'm looking at you, nomnomnom) have done the detective work with the preview videos to break down the teams, and while that's totally fair game here, I don't want to overthink predictions. I feel comfortable assuming that Stephen will be slow, Casey won't be as slow as people think, and Spike will be fast, which might put him on top of yet another challenge (Damn you, Spike!). Wylie Dufresne is in the house and Carla breaks out the liquid nitrogen (oh dear) and talks about making something that could be served at WD-50, so it could be an MG challenge. Then again, the restaurant they take over is Marea, which specialized in Italian seafood, and Tre makes reference to Italian food, so maybe it's an Italian challenge. If it's both, which I'm kind of hoping for since it's a recent subject that's both near and dear, here are some predictions. It'll be far more than the Blais/Marcel slugfest you might expect from an MG challenge. The sleeper here is Tiffani, who has done some really interesting things with Italian. And Fabio, the fellow who lists Italian and MG as his two specialties, won't sniff top mention for the Italian MG challenge. I'm not sure if those are the parameters for this challenge, but if they are, I'm REALLY looking forward to this episode.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S8E2 Postmortem

Anybody else think the Top Chef site being down is an intentional cooling-off period for Jen Norris fans? :-)

Welcome to Top Chef All-Stars, folks. Nobody's safe. I figured we'd have a big elimination before too long, but that's awfully big, awfully early. A normal season, you botch something, there's still a handful of scrubs around to take the heat. Not anymore. You stumble, you're done. Might have to weigh consistency a little more heavily going forward this season.

I'm shocked too. Not that Jen went home. Or anybody near the top, for that matter. But wow, what an exit. I've no doubt the psychoanalysis will be running hot and heavy on the intertubes.

Gird up, folks. Almost every week, somebody you love will be gone.

Discuss!

UPDATE : Your helpful mnemonic device for the day: I is the Roman numeral for the number one. Tiffani, with an I, is from season one.

Hopefully a mnemonic device will not be necessary to remember which Dale is a Talde and which Dale is a Levitski.

Top Chef - S8E1 Power Rankings

To reiterate my feelings from last week's postmortem:

Woot.

I'm already loving season eight. And I'm sure the elves will do plenty to make me grumpy before it's up (can't please everybody all the time), but really, could you have asked for a better start to an all-star season? While the discovery of new faces is always a fun part of the start of any Top Chef season, there's something to be said for hitting the ground running. We know these people. We've spent hours watching and (some of us) obsessing about these people. So there's no need to build to a crescendo. We have a nice mezzoforte going right out of the gate, and it's exciting stuff.

Even setting aside the small sample, I'm not sure the QF settles any debates about which season was the strongest. Not to take anything away from Jen, but a season six team without Pork Jesus or I Voltaggi is hardly representative of the best they had to offer. That said, it's an appropriate and fun start.

The elimination challenge really was brilliant, though. Even setting aside that it's a great test of their ability to see their mistakes, learn from them and edit their dishes, there's a lot of poetry going on here as well. It's easy for us to simply call it a neat idea, and I don't want to oversell the drama of it, but while I'm sure some of these chefs have been able to move on, there are some who saw their little slip-ups at the finish line as the difference between relative obscurity and victory and fame. And they've no doubt been obsessing over what they did wrong ever since. There's some serious demon-facing going on here. Some have suggested that this challenge wasn't really an even playing field, and that's true. Some chefs were dealt a particularly bad hand. But it's also true that that goes both ways, as I suspect it did with Spike... but we'll get to that in a bit. I have to believe the surprise over the judging broadcast in the kitchen was an editing construct. The chefs couldn't really not have seen that coming, could they? On the other hand, I'm still shocked when somebody turns up without a few good dessert recipes in their back pocket, so maybe a few of them really were caught flat-footed. It's something of a transparent attempt to sow the seeds of conflict, but at least it was tangentially appropriate to one of the challenge's themes -- take criticism. The only thing I found odd about the challenge was how freaking LONG they had to cook. Five hours? Really? Not complaining, I like getting people's best shot. But it's almost like they're trying to lull them into a false sense of security. No wonder Dale T. had time to make muffins.

I'm already loving, loving, loving Bourdain. I know he rubs some people the wrong way, but for me there's a difference between him and Toby Young. A few differences, actually. The first of which is that Bourdain is actually funny. If you can't laugh at his blog post this week, you need help. But more than that, there's something genuine about his rants. Yes, they're hyperbolic and savage and chock full of snark. But when he abuses Fabio's dish, one gets the sense that it isn't because he's been sitting there waiting for his opportunity to belittle somebody, but rather because simple constructive criticism can't possibly express how offended he is by a crime against pasta. At least that's how it comes across to me, and it resonates with me. Of course, to each his own. But I sincerely hope he isn't cowed by Fabio's response in the first elimination.

Really, there's only one thing that's troubling me so far -- a lot, actually -- though it's unlikely to be of any great consequence to anybody other than... well... me. A disturbing trend that started last season seems to have carried over and intensified this season. Less than half of the episode's recipes are posted online, and those that are present are poorly edited and seemingly incomplete. For me, this is a Total Nightmare. So much of my opinions of the contestants are based on my reading of their recipes. It's not a substitute for tasting, but there's a lot I can put together in my head by reading about their flavor combinations and techniques. And for half the field, it's not there this week. I feel like I'm doing this blindfolded. The recipes have always been my unedited look at the food, one that isn't subject to the elves' tricks. Mike Isabella said there was a weird kimchee-like marinade to Tiffani's fish. Was he right? Did he identify flavors correctly? Is it a flavor combination that I know works for me? No idea. A couple of other contestants didn't like Dale L.'s dumplings. But we never saw what the judges thought. And now I have no idea how he made them. Marcel put together a crazy-looking concoction of uni, caviar, Meyer lemon, fennel and olive. He's crazy technique-intensive, but was this smart MG or over-the-top MG? No idea. I'm still hoping this is just because it's the first episode and maybe it's tough to wrangle recipes out of everybody in the craziness of the first couple of days. But if this is the new norm, my most cherished Power Rankings tool has been completely crippled. And that really, really sucks. Elves, Bravo, if you guys are listening... somebody cares. A lot.

So while I feel like I'm kind of just chucking darts at the wall for anybody who didn't make an appearance at Judges' Table, here are the E1 Power Rankings:

The power rankings are not purely a prediction of who is most likely to win, or an assessment of last episode's dishes, or a reflection of the contestants' historical performance, but rather a nebulous amalgam of all three, combined with a little bit of gut feeling, to provide a relative measure of current awesomeness.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Angelo Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 1 1 0 Be within striking distance in the preseason rankings, win the first elimination challenge, and I figure that earns you the top spot, at least for the moment. His QF with Tiffany apparently had a salt issue, which'll put you in the bottom in a hurry, but we don't really know who was responsible for what components. Of course, as half the team, he should have been tasting and commenting even if the broth wasn't his responsibility. And he, uh, certainly hasn't hesitated to do so before, even when it wasn't welcome. On the elimination dish, however, he reworked one of his finale dishes, hand cut ramen with braised pork belly, pickled mushrooms and watermelon. Last season, the watermelon was a big focus of the dish. The "broth" for the ramen, so to speak. This time around, it's a bit of sweetened watermelon foam working more as an accent than a core part of the dish. Incidentally, from reading around, it appears that Angelo had little more than a couple of weeks off between seasons seven and eight. You could read that to mean he'll be sharp because he's already going full bore, or you could read that to mean that he'll be tired, coming off season seven and his Singapore illness. Remains to be seen.

2 Richard Quickfires 1 1 0 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 0 1 0 Richard might have almost kicked off S8 with a double win. It hasn't been made clear, at least anywhere I could find, whether his dish would have been the winner had he not been disqualified. On the other hand, without those last-moment touches, perhaps he never would have even made Judges' Table. We can't say for sure. Which is precisely why disqualifying him from the win was the simple and correct answer. Tom mentions in his blog that once Richard was shown the tape, he understood the decision. So the guy makes mustard ice cream work, and then revamps his ill-fated finale pork belly and earns top mention. There's a recipe, but again, detail is lacking. There's mention at the table of the pork's crispy coating, but all the recipe instructs is to pressure cook it with lemongrass, Worcestershire, ginger and mirin. Clearly, we're missing something here. There are also radishes pickled with sugar, cider vinegar, ginger and coriander, and there's a cheddar and mirin foam. Gelatin figures in somewhere, but it's unclear how. Is my frustration showing, here? In any case, it sounds like a winner. Except for that whole plating past the buzzer thing. Slightly off-topic, I must confess that I'm puzzled by the amount of bile I've seen directed towards Richard this week for his comment about people remembering S4 for him choking. I kinda figured that we know enough about the elves' editing and he's built up enough goodwill that he'd get the benefit of the doubt on one out of context line like that, but... well, okay.

3 Tiffani Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 0 0 0 Tiffani didn't do much this week other than use too much raw garlic in her QF, apparently. Or maybe that was Stephen's fault. I'm intrigued by the idea of "cioppino gazpacho." Does that mean it was served chilled? Don't know. Her elimination dish looked like it was right in her sweet spot, creative but not overworked and heavily Italian-influenced. We know it struck a funny chord with Mike Isabella, but I wish we knew what the judges thought of it. In any case, while she didn't come up big in episode one, I don't really see any reason to drop her very far, so position three it is. In terms of how she works with others in the kitchen, I'm interested to see how she comes across this time around. As mentioned in the preseason rankings, she was kind of the original villainess, though time seems to have softened people's feelings about her. She mostly struck me as somebody who sometimes got prickly because she didn't suffer fools. And in season one, boy howdy, she was surrounded by plenty of fools. She's about the food, and kicking ass in the kitchen, and that's why she's pushing Stephen to get his plates in the pass as time's running out, even though he's her competition and clearly doesn't deserve the help. I'm reminded of one of our Iron Chef competitions, in which one of the members of the other team was a professional chef. When one of my dishes was going down in flames, he told me he felt weird not stepping in to help. "When you're in the kitchen, you pick each other up, no matter what." And at the risk of going all Psych 101, it seems to me that that's Tiffani. If you fall down, she'll pick you up, but you're going to hear about it because she doesn't have time for your crap.

4 Jennifer Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 0 0 0 Jen's off to a bit of a rough start, but I'm not going to drop her like a stone based on one solo dish. We've got too much history with her to not give her a chance to catch herself. And hopefully she will, because short of a brutal bottom appearance at Judges' Table, some "emperor has no clothes" kind of comments on her first solo dish are pretty much the worst possible thing that could happen to somebody who's shown the ability to fall apart quickly when confidence becomes an issue. I loved the concept behind hers and Mike's dish, fusing old-school mobster Vegas with modern day lobster tail decadence Vegas. And while I personally tend towards classic Italian, lobster should take to Carbonara beautifully. Wish I knew how they built the dish, but I love the idea. The duck issue is just puzzling. She was dead set on not oversalting it this time around. Was it flat because she overcompensated in the other direction? Just speculating.

5 Jamie Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 1 0 I don't know if she's going to be able to hang this high, but it's nice to be reminded that I'm not crazy for liking Jamie's style as much as I did the first time around. She definitely exudes a doesn't play well with others vibe, which many seem to feel will hurt her, but I'm not so sure. Without doing the math, I bet more talented chefs on this show have gone down because they didn't clearly delineate their contribution than because they weren't great team players. I'm not suggesting putting the team before yourself isn't admirable, I'm just suggesting that it isn't necessarily always the best way to win Top Chef. In any case, she gets the call-out as the good dish in her QF team's trio (even if it goes in the books as a bottom appearance), and despite her celery annoyance she turns the Ripert dish into her own and gets a top mention in the elimination. A strong start.

6 Casey Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 0 0 Ehhhh, I'm still uneasy about where I have Casey. But we don't need to be reminded that she can, in fact, cook. She seemed to have a central hand in generating her team's top-mentioned QF, and though she didn't make JT, her revamped braised pork belly with pickled peaches and whipped crème fraîche garnered some rather nice comments. So I'm going to punt on Casey for a week and see what happens.

7 Dale T. Quickfires 1 1 0 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 0 0 Dale was another fellow who, like Jamie, impressed me foodwise before exiting a little early. And he's another one who came out of episode one looking pretty good. He made the sausage for the winning QF dish -- from scratch in 25 minutes, for those keeping score -- and then, as Bourdain so eloquently put it, got himself unf**ked with the infamous butterscotch scallops, which gave me some small sense of vindication as well. The last time around, most people felt that his dish was a disaster of a concept, but I had a hunch the concept was just fine. It's been a while since this came up, but caramel is sometimes used in a savory context in Vietnamese (and perhaps other SE Asian cuisines, I'm not certain). The trick is to burn it just enough to develop some bitter, savory notes. Too much and it's smoky char. Too little, and it's candy. A little more char, a little better balance to the sweetness... et voila! You're unf**ked.

8 Dale L. Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 0 0 A little good, a little bad for what I suppose you could call my sleeper pick. Consensus seems to be that I have Dale L. way too high, and maybe this is a bit of a correction, though I still have a hunch he's going to show stronger than most expect. He was in on the season three QF, though I'm not sure precisely in what capacity, and we know that a couple of the other contestants didn't like his dumplings, though I wish we could have heard something the actual judges had to say about them. I found that one surprising since he's Polish Lithuanian (thanks, tcfan) and from Chicago. The fellow should know by dumplings, and seemed to do fine with them in season three, which makes me wonder if this was a preference issue rather than a true technical issue. But I'll ding him a bit nonetheless, put him below a few of those who look like they might have just missed top mention, and see where he goes from here.

9 Marcel Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 0 0 On paper it's a two-position drop, but it isn't really. This is mostly a matter of Marcel treading water while a couple of others move past him. I'm not too troubled by the apple issue on his and Elia's QF dish. If the apple being a little bit too thin is the worst thing he can say, you're doing fine. Lack of seasoning on the shrimp is more troubling. His elimination dish certainly was something to behold (or was it beholding us?), and I hate that we didn't really get any comments about it other than that it was bold. So Marcel will hang out around the middle of the pack for now.

10 Mike Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 11 Eliminations 0 0 0 Between the aforementioned bucatini QF and a vegetarian elimination dish that got some nice comments, Mike should probably get a bigger bump. But he also pissed me off: "Roast a leek, grill a leek, braise a leek, but It's still a leek." Mike, I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine, Charleen Badman, the chef at FnB in Scottsdale, who braises leeks, melts some freshly-pulled mozzarella over the top, covers them with crisp mustard breadcrumbs and finishes the dish with a fried egg. It's vegetarian, it's all about the leeks despite the toppings, and it just made Food & Wine Magazine's Ten Best Restaurant Dishes of 2010. In short, you'd better not let Gail catch you saying that. So because you so blithely dismissed the noble leek, and because I'm still not 100% sold on you as a contender despite the fact that you held your own in what was probably the toughest season, I'm only bumping you one spot.

11 Antonia Quickfires 1 1 0 Last Week: 13 Eliminations 0 0 0 I can envision a trajectory for Antonia's already. She's going to creep and creep and creep her way up as I refuse to believe that her style can take down some of those near the top. Well, I don't want that to happen. I do think she's a strong chef and I want to acknowledge that a little better this time around, but I also want her to make me. This was a pretty good start, being in on the QF win and making a pork sausage with pigeon pea puree and roasted cherry tomatoes that looked closer to Pork Jesus simple than Antonia circa S4 simple. Really, I like the look of this recipe a lot (though perhaps that's because it's one of the few I can actually look at). The sausage is done with cilantro, onion, garlic and annatto oil, and the pigeon pea puree works in chives, leeks and raisins. More of this, and I won't be singing the same tune as last time. But I want to know it's for real before I give her anything more than a modest bump.

12 Carla Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 0 0 Called out for issues in both the QF and elimination, Carla came out of the gate a little unevenly. But none of this was anything that was going to get her into trouble. She went beef and beef, first doing a ribeye with apple and then doing a very straightforward and Frenchified strip steak with herbed mashed potatoes, compound butter and a very, very classic looking red wine sauce. Stated as her objective, she's staying true to herself in the early running. As far as the issues go, we seem to be talking about things that need adjustment rather than things that are going to get her into trouble, so here's hoping she's just finding her sea legs.

13 Spike Quickfires 1 1 0 Last Week: 16 Eliminations 0 1 0 Remember how I said a bad hand in this elimination could cut both ways? Case in point. If you made a pretty great dish last time that only needs slight adjustment, your task is easy, but the judges have already seen the dish. When you're saddled with one of the worst possible situations, however, it's all upside, and you can wow the judges with something totally unexpected. I have no way of knowing for sure, obviously, but I suspect this top mention was as much for being smart as it was for being a good cook. The judges rewarded the wit of finding a way of coping with some distinctly suboptimal product. Spike even seemed to acknowledge this in his line about the judges taking the bait. Which is absolutely fine. But I still have a hard time bumping him more than a few spots. I know, I know. He was on the top. His record already matches Richard's and is better than Angelo's. I just... I just can't. Not yet. If Spike can survive by being the craftiest MFer in the room -- and maybe he can -- I want to see him do it a little more before I kick him up significantly.

14 Tiffany Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 12 Eliminations 0 0 0 There's a very fine line between Refined Asian and Asian Lite, and I'm not sure Tiffany's elimination dish didn't fall into the latter category. I seem to remember that coconut curry sauce falling a little flat on both occasions. Still, I don't have a problem with her performance so far. I just haven't seen that much to go on, so we'll see if she can move up in the coming weeks.

15 Tre Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 14 Eliminations 0 0 0 Tre is also kind of just treading water down here, being mildly hit and miss in episode one. On the upside, he handled the pork for a top QF dish. On the downside, Jennifer Carroll thought the accompaniments for his cured salmon were all wrong. And while I don't know that I'd listen to any contestant who said so, I'm inclined to value Jen's opinion on an elegant, cured fish dish. I know everybody and their mother thinks I have him too low, and maybe I do. But I want to see something from him besides professionalism and reputation. I want to see a dish that kicks ass. How 'bout it, Tre?

16 Fabio Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 15 Eliminations 0 0 1 Now I'm remembering why I found myself wondering if I was coming down too hard on Fabio every week during the S5 Power Rankings. The guy can bust out a killer one-liner, but the things that were articulated about his pasta dish were exactly the kind of things that bugged me about his style the first time around. His pasta just always looks heavy and horribly oversauced to me. I'm not tasting it, I know, but... but... I just get a bad vibe from those photos. Pasta is simplicity. If it looks messy, it probably tastes messy. And the paper is a total conceit. And what's really frustrating about it is that a condimento that's a little saucy with crab and crawfish is something that's crying out to be roasted al cartoccio. Instead of just putting it ON paper, why not actually cook it IN paper? Then it's not a show. Then it means something. And I bet it'd be a better dish. My other frustration with Fabio is that he's coming across yet again as remarkably thin-skinned. Nobody wants to have their work insulted. But you signed on for a reality show, amico. It kind of comes with the territory. It's something you might excuse if this were his first time and he underestimated what it would be like, but Top Chef abuses its contestants, he knows that now, and he voluntarily re-upped. Between that, the grim look on his face and the comments about riding the elevator into hell, he certainly lends the impression that he doesn't really want to be here. And one thing we've learned over seven seasons of Top Chef is that if you don't want to be here, don't worry... you probably won't be for very long.

17 Stephen Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 18 Eliminations 0 0 1 Fabio is saved from the basement only because Stephen is one of the most obvious choices I've ever had for the final slot. I appreciate a man with style, but really, when you're cooking in a dress shirt and tie and your knife case looks like it was made by Bottega Veneta, it raises a lot of questions about where your priorities lie. And it shows. Yes, he was dealt one of the tougher hands in the elimination challenge, but he looks completely lost in the kitchen, he's already getting himself into trouble, and he's committing one of the cardinal Top Chef sins of being oblivious to his shortcomings. Over the next 2-3 episodes, I'm not sure which would be the bigger upset: if somebody like Blais or Angelo went home, or if Stephen didn't.

18 Elia Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 17 Eliminations 0 0 1 Elia's one of the ones I had a hard time explaining or justifying why I put her where I did, so on a purely selfish level I'm glad to see her depart right about on schedule. That disconnect between her and the judges that I mentioned last week? Here it was again. She thought her dish was great. They didn't. And I forgot to mention last week that the only reason Elia finished 3rd instead of 8th in S2 was because Mia wanted to go home and threw herself on the grenade, volunteering to leave, to save Elia. If not for that act, Elia would have finished in the bottom half of what is widely regarded (even if I don't agree) as the weakest season in the history of the show. Tom says in his blog that Elia's was the only dish of the lot that was actually worse the second time around. She didn't address the conceptual issues, she served the fish raw, and there's really no getting around that. There's an interview with her in the Chicago Tribune that I haven't yet read for fear of spoilers (I hope somebody will give me the all clear on that once they do or don't come to fruition), in which -- and please correct me if I have this wrong -- I understand she complains that they were told not to stray too far from the original dish and she followed the rules while the others didn't. To which I guess the logical responses would be 1) if everybody else strayed, wouldn't you think that perhaps you weren't the one to get the memo, and 2) what does that have to do with badly undercooking your fish? But the worst kind of criticism is criticism of something you haven't even read yourself, so I probably shouldn't even be mentioning this. Bottom line, it seemed like a solid elimination.

Okay, that was fun. Wait... what? I get to do it again next week?

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE TWO SPOILERS AHEAD

Well, I wasn't aware that Buitoni was going after the tween crowd, but apparently one of the Jonas Brothers (Joe? Jermaine? Jehoshaphat? Jujube?) will be running the show for the QF, wherein our chefs must make a snack for kids, which means we should be treated to plenty of shots of a glowering Tiffani. Dale L. seems to be taking the "throw candy at them" approach, which never seems to work as well as you think it will. Antonia pretty much has the kid cuisine market cornered -- in fact, I think she's working on a cookbook for moms kind of project right now -- so I expect her to do well. The elimination is a catering challenge that I suspect also involves the kiddos, since there were many shots of running and screaming. Again, Tiffani, not the kids. But she'll get through it. Somebody else bites it, I'm sure.

Discuss!

Top Chef - S8E1 Postmortem

Okay, this is already way more awesome than I'd hoped.

Anybody else getting the chills watching everybody else file in? Seriously, this was just so much fun seeing these faces again. Reunion episodes are fine and all, but it's completely NOT the same.

Bourdain's going to be a lot of fun. I hope he doesn't let Fabio shame him into pulling any punches. I'm... well, okay, I'm not really that worried about it.

Great challenges as well. I hope they stay this smart.

Feeling pretty good about the preseason rankings, too!

I don't want to go into too much right now. I'll save it for the rankings on Monday. It's just really, really good to have a lot of these people back on screen. I'm having a blast already.

Discuss!

UPDATE : As pointed out below (thanks, Sam!), Bourdain's blog is up, and it's drop dead hysterical. He may be even more fun to have around in writing.

UPDATE II : Okay, I have to jump in here, since it's being discussed in the comments and it drives me insane. Fabio's most painful (to me) legacy will always be the creation of the Top Scallop MYTH. In Season Five, Jamie didn't touch a scallop until episode six. In that episode, her QF used scallop as a secondary ingredient, and her elimination used it as the central ingredient. So she did double up for one episode, which is what kicked it off. The next episode, because her treatment of the scallop in her elimination dish was savaged, she wanted to go back one more time to prove she could do it, which she did, getting a win. She didn't touch another scallop for the rest of the season. In fact, Leah, who bit the dust just one episode after Jamie, used scallops just as many times as Jamie. In three fewer episodes of the same season, spanning 14 cooking challenges, Ariane managed to squeeze in lamb four times -- nearly a third of her dishes -- but nobody talks about Ariane and Top Lamb. And there are countless other examples of chefs using pet ingredients with far, far greater frequency than Jamie used scallops (*ahem*... pork belly / bacon?), but nowhere through the run of the show has anybody been so tied to one ingredient. It's a completely false perception, and there's one reason and one reason only for it: Fabio got on camera and said, in his lilting Italian accent, "Ees not Top Scallop!" End of rant.