Top Chef Power Rankings - Episode 4

Week four, and people are starting to fray around the edges. Folks are getting petty. The claws are starting to come out. Next week might be the week where character (or lack thereof) starts to put people in danger. But in the meantime, this was a very difficult week to get a bead on.

Start with the fact that there are no quickfire recipes posted this week. Makes sense, since it was largely an exercise in knife work, but it means that we have absolutely no idea what the six chefs who weren't featured did. Too bad, since this was really a great opportunity to get a good sense of who's technically sound and who isn't. Then, everybody pairs off. Are the strong chefs pulling the weaker ones up? Are the weaker ones dragging the strong ones down? Mercifully, the recipes posted for the elimination challenge called out which portions of the dish were prepared by which chef. If we can take them at their word, this made for some surprises.

The top half of the rankings were easy. The bottom half, plagued with inconsistency and breaks from the first three episodes, were agonizing. I thought it was going to be a couple more weeks before elimination predictions got tough, but this week turned everything upside down. At this point, I feel pretty confident that the top six will be the final six, Andrew being the only one who gives me pause. But as for the bottom six? Heck... any of them could go at any time. It all depends on who shows up.

Wins

Top

Bottom

1 Richard Quickfires 2 3 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 1 2 0 At the very least, the top two spots proved they belong. I think it's pretty clear who's in control of this competition. Based on some of the dishes that have surprised him on Iron Chef America, I think Ted Allen's the most likely to find something novel, so we'll set him aside for the moment. Tom, however, seems practically jaded at times, so to see him taken aback is a rare treat and it clearly says something. And all of this is to say nothing of the fact that Richard just stepped up and surprised Daniel Boulud. To make a dish that impresses these guys is challenge enough, but to create something that flat-out defies their expectations is truly impressive. Then look at his record. He has three of eight possible wins, and he's been in the top on three of four quickfires, which shows he thrives under pressure -- a talent that becomes increasingly important as the season wears on. Add to this that the guy has just the right attitude. He's confident without being cocky, and he seems genuinely eager to work with the others. And even though he self-identifies with molecular gastronomy, he's not an idiot about it. When his smoker went down, he didn't start freaking out because his dish was going to be all wrong without his special whiz-bang technique. He said it, and then repeated himself: "It's a bonus". He understands that funky touches like that can be great, but what matters is what's at the core of your dish. Stephanie's going to push him every step of the way, but this is starting to look like Richard's contest to lose.

2 Stephanie Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 2 3 1 That week two showing is looking more and more like a fluke. Here she is again, coming up big with a dish that's creative but satisfying. Stephanie's shown that she can get a little wobbly under pressure -- I'd feel better if she were nailing some quickfires -- but unless she trips and falls, the final matchup is looking like cleverly refined vs. creatively comforting. Her path to victory will have to involve turning out dishes that the judges can't help but love, while Richard pushes a little too hard and loses them. Note also how well she plays with others. As Harold Dieterle can attest, that's no small asset.

3 Dale Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 1 0 Well, it's about time. As predicted, Dale gets a little freedom and finally makes a big splash. I'd love to hear about his vegetable dish in more detail. Sadly, it's not to be, but when you get that kind of praise from Daniel Boulud, you're working flawlessly. As for the elimination dish, Richard was obviously in the driver's seat, but that recipe has Dale's fingerprints all over it. He was no passive bystander. This week was no fluke. Dale continues cruising from here, and my hunch is he doesn't drop any lower than three for the rest of the competition.

4 Mark Quickfires 2 2 0 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 0 1 1 Mark went quiet this week, and his outstanding week two is starting to lose a bit of its luster. But by all accounts his dish with Ryan was really quite excellent, just not excellent enough. One thing gives me pause, however. The recipe on the website, if it's to be believed, gave him credit for the cranberry chutney, and that's it. But it's a weirdly incomplete recipe that makes no mention of the spring roll, for which the show seemed to give him credit. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, and combined with Antonia's not-so-bad bad showing, we'll just drop him one notch and see what happens.

5 Antonia Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 0 2 1 Yes, she was on the chopping block, but one gets the sense that if they hadn't oversold the dish, she and Zoi would have been just fine. As such, I'm hesitant to drop her any further than necessary to move Dale up. The fact is, she's still executing, but again, a very straightforward dish. Yes, they used anchos for the romesco, and yes, the gremolata contained the full Simon & Garfunkel litany (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme). But still, it's a fairly conventional dish. She doesn't need to bust out the immersion circulator, agar agar and pocket smoker to win this thing, but unless she starts to show the judges something that's at least somewhat novel and interesting, she's guaranteeing herself fourth or fifth place. Either she doesn't have it and probably won't make the finals, or she's incredibly shrewd and is saving her silver bullets for the later challenges. My money's on the former.

6 Andrew Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 1 2 0 I toyed with the idea of kicking Andrew past Antonia this week. But checking out his team's recipe gives me pause. For starters, I think his contribution was limited to making the faux caviar and running around like a maniac. And no matter how entertaining his antics may be, his faux caviar is almost exactly the same as the lynchpin of his charred squid ceviche that won him week two. To sum up, yes, he's been on top of the elimination challenge twice, but both times it was largely for the same thing. Still, he's performing well and Bayless loved his taco, so I'm keeping him in the top half, but I'm not giving him number five just yet. Now if he had actually presented the dish as an Oompa Loompa, it might be a different story.

7 Lisa Quickfires 0 0 3 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 2 0 And now we get to the bottom half of the rankings, where any clarity I thought we'd found last week has pretty much gone out the window. The other big mover this week is Lisa. Can we all agree that, while an awesome movie, Top Secret was a flat-out dumb suggestion? But allowing for the fact that she's a chef and not a film critic, we'll set that aside for the moment. Lisa's been very hit or miss. On one hand, she's produced a very nice eggs Benedict, a solid dish for the zoo event and she was half of the elimination dish that week that would have won if not for the fact that Richard basically schooled everybody. And on the other hand, she's been named among the worst on three -- THREE -- of the four quickfires. But I think it's too easy to assume that Stephanie pulled her up this week. Stephanie seemed to indicate that the dish grew out of Lisa's caramel sauce, and let me tell you, that recipe looks great. It's made with sugar, coconut milk, cream, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, chiles, fish sauce and white soy. And the judges seemed to love it. I'm anxious to give it a try. So while Stephanie produced the apple dumplings and put down what I'm sure was a great reduction as a base for the dish, I get the feeling that Lisa is the one who really got this dish off the ground. It's too bad it wasn't selected as the winner, because then the judges would have sought clarification as to who did what and we'd know for sure. But in any case, Lisa had a good week (despite Boulud being unimpressed with her technique) and I'm giving her another look.

8 Jennifer Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 1 0 Is she still on the show? At this point, I don't care what she does, I just want her to do SOMEthing. This wasn't one of her stronger weeks on the recipe front, but it's still nearly impossible to judge where she's going. Has anybody ever gone this deep into the show without showing anything, positive or negative? She's never been on the bottom of a quickfire or elimination, and she's been on the top of each once, but both times it was as a member of a very large group. Everybody passes her going up or down, and she just kind of hangs out in the middle of the pack. This can't go on much longer... can it?

9 Spike Quickfires 0 2 1 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 0 1 Yes, he probably should have gotten the axe, and yes, I only dropped him one spot, but I think I had him a little lower than he should have been last week. Also, regardless of whether or not the dish worked, I think the criticism that it was something you could get at any corner Vietnamese joint was overblown. Maybe Tom's local family run Vietnamese restaurant makes their goi cuon with apple soda, Mexican dried chiles and Swiss chard, but somehow I doubt it. Plus, I think you can make a plausible case that Manuel's influence dragged the dish down, even if it's hard to say. Either way, it's becoming increasingly clear that Spike's attitude could be his biggest liability going forward. Kudos for not trying to throw Manuel under the bus, but whether he's willfully ignoring challenge parameters or not stopping to consider whether what he's doing is appropriate for the situation, the guy just isn't focused. If he can get over himself, shut up and listen, I think he's shown a lot of upside. The teasers seem to indicate otherwise. Of course, they've been teasing us with that clip of Dale blowing up for four weeks know, so it might be summertime before we actually get to see the fireworks.

10 Ryan Quickfires 0 2 1 Last Week: 11 Eliminations 0 0 2 Can somebody please tell me what I'm supposed to think of Ryan? It's like he's intentionally alternating great and horrible weeks with the expressed purpose of making a mockery of the power rankings. Padma, Mark and Aisha are all falling over themselves after tasting his carrot puree, and if the recipe is to be believed (though I have my doubts; see Mark, above), he was in the driver's seat on a dish that the judges really enjoyed. So do I embrace the sharp, creative Ryan or the bumbling "I'm making my piccata with breadcrumbs, gnocchi and tomatoes" Ryan? Well, consider this: in Bayless' blog after week three, he talked about how Ryan mentioned in a "brown-nosey way" that he'd worked for Bayless for a couple of days. Bayless didn't like him. Then this week, Boulud mentions that Richard and Ryan have both worked for him before. Richard sings Boulud's praises. Ryan says he worked with him only for a very short time because it "wasn't his style". To me, that sounds like code for a lot of things that don't reflect well on Ryan. Plus, for reasons only he can comprehend, he's totally thrown for a loop after being paired with Mark, either intentionally (jackass) or unintentionally (idiot) asking if he's from New Zealand or New England. Yeah... I'm going with bumbling idiotic Ryan.

11 Nikki Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 13 Eliminations 0 1 1 Nikki escapes the basement, if only because she gets to do pasta again. And by all accounts, she couldn't even do her specialty exceptionally well. Plus, she's one of the three who Boulud singles out for criticism in the quickfire. She's still clearly near the bottom of the pile, but she doesn't quite have that aura of imminent doom about her that Zoi does.

12 Zoi Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 12 Eliminations 0 1 2 Zoi makes a nice showing in the quickfire, earning a shout out from Boulud, but then she jumps right back in the fire on the elimination. It isn't quite the squeaker that last week was, but this is now two weeks in a row that she's barely survived. The recipe lists Antonia and her as total co-creators (every other dish showed who prepared which elements), but I'm still not convinced Antonia wasn't carrying her at least a little. Plus, she just looks like she's ready to crack, and the pressure has caused her to turn a little nasty. Getting snarky about Richard in that scenario is just petty. And intentionally or not, by "promising" there's no way Richard's dish tasted good, she's basically accusing Daniel Boulud of having no palate on national television. A tip, Zoi... if Boulud says it works, it probably works. Deal with it. The question at this point is whether Zoi crashes and burns or manages to collect herself and show some more of the little bit of potential she's flashed. I think she's gone in very short order, but here's one little tidbit that I found interesting. In his exit interview Manuel talked about the chefs he thought would be standing at the end. He named three: Richard, Stephanie... and Zoi. I'm as surprised as you.

13 Manuel Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 1 1 Ahhh, Memo, you seem like a sweet guy, but you're gone before your time. Not that I thought he had long to live, but I figured he'd hang in there past week four. I'm sure a lot of people feel it should have been Spike at the bottom here, and I think I agree. But there's a case to be made for Manuel's ouster, and I suspect the judges felt one of these two had a chance to go deep into the competition while the other just didn't, and let that influence their decision. If I'm to play devil's advocate, yes, Spike was driving, and over four seasons the judges have always asked leaders to fall on their swords. But it can also be argued that Manuel's contributions -- the sea bass and the Swiss chard -- were the two items that stuck out as the dish's biggest problems. In any case, Spike goes on while Manuel's gone, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. You have to applaud him for what may be the classiest exit in the history of Top Chef, both on the show and in his exit interview. Buena suerte, Manuel. You're the first one I'm sad to see go, even if it wasn't for your food.

So now, looking forward, we know we have Ming Tsai and a very large-scale elimination challenge. Let's guess that it'll be an East Meets West quickfire, and since I can't see them having the chefs do individual preps for 350(!) people, I think we're looking at ANOTHER team challenge. On the top end, Richard makes some crack about the Blais charm wearing off, but for all we know that's from episode eight. Assuming it's East/West or modern fusion, Dale should rock the quickfire, and I wager he'll carry that over into the elimination. He's had his taste of the top and he's pumped, now. For the others, it's going to come down to who can handle scale intelligently, but I'm not sure that the manner in which they handled canapés and picnic fare is a good indication of how they'll handle banquet food. Stephanie's the only one among the upper echelon who's demonstrated poor judgment in that regard, and I feel an off week coming for Richard, so we'll say Dale, Mark and Antonia for the top three. All of this is meaningless, of course, if it's a team challenge, which it almost certainly will be. So, between our forth consecutive team challenge and the turmoil in the bottom half of the rankings, it's really hard to predict the bottom, but here goes. Spike has shown some affinity for Asian and handled scale very well at the zoo challenge, so I'm guessing he's safe. I want to think that Lisa and Jennifer have been solid enough at this point that they're probably okay. So I think we're looking at Nikki and Zoi for the ouster, and Ryan went bad-good-bad-good the first four weeks, so he's due for another bad week and we'll throw him in there as well. Insightful, I know. Zoi's on death watch, but Nikki's totally screwed up both of her large-scale challenges, so I think we have to make them co-favorites for elimination.

Discuss!

Comments

[Peggasus]

Me, I'm just sick of Spike's and Nikki's stupid hats, as well as Andrew's constant swearing and attempting to be the Gordan Ramsey of this competition. I really never remember Antionia's or Lisa's dishes; they seem to be flying under the radar for now.

Your rankings and analyses, however, are spot-on, so thanks!