Top Chef - S6E5 Power Rankings

PLEASE READ BEFORE COMMENTING!!!
There's a lot of sneaky intel out there, but I'm endeavoring to keep this blog a spoiler-free zone. This isn't just for the readers, but for me, too -- I don't want to know what happens! As such, anything that's already been broadcast or has been posted on the official Bravo site is fair game for discussion. I will, for example, discuss the preview of next week's show at the end of the post. But if you've heard rumors that one chef has been hosting a lot of dinner parties, or that another chef was spotted boarding a plane to an exotic locale, please keep them to yourself... thanks!

Of course, the season six cast would feature seafood on a desert ranch.

Seriously, this is getting a little absurd. Our chefs have now produced 128 dishes, 47 of them have been seafood, and that's including the escargot and cactus challenges. Of those 47 seafood dishes, 14 have been ceviches/tartares/crudos, and this episode featured half of them. Makes you wonder if the judges are going to sit up and take notice at some point.

I'm feeling a bit of vindication on the judge front this week. Tom's blog dropped a little nugget that made me very, very happy:

"We also just take note of whether, as with all great chefs, a personal style is emerging in a consistent way, or whether they’re just all over the place. Often we’ve seen a chef come in with a particular style and then, part-way through the competition, begin mimicking everyone else. These chefs tend to flame out; they don’t make it to the final four, and, frankly, they’re not yet secure and mature enough as chefs to be there. We do look at originality, as with Bryan’s winning take on chips and guacamole in Episode Two, or Kevin’s bacon jam, which was utterly original, different, and very, very good. I knew exactly where Bryan’s dish for Joel Robuchon came from – he adapted a dish from Thomas Keller – but he did make it his own."

I've been saying for two seasons now that flavor and execution isn't enough. When you get past the technical, when you get past the tasty, and when the judges are trying to separate the real winners, what they're looking for is a chef who articulates a mature, personal style -- whatever that style may be. I don't believe any of them have ever said it so plainly before, but it's nice to see.

Also, hooray for the return of Lee Anne! Better late than never, though she does drop the incredibly troubling news that this season will be her last. The challenges took on a markedly more mature tone when she came aboard, and I hope she's taught them enough over the past few seasons that they can either continue her fantastic work or choose her replacement very carefully. Also interesting is that she obviously shares everybody's enthusiasm for season six, making it sounds as though she going out in a blaze of glory with the field reaching the kind of heights she'd only dreamed of:

"Yes, Vegas would be hard. But it would be spectacular!!!! Look at the judges we have this season! We’re making food television history!!! Wait’ll you see the last episode before finale! Jeebus, yes, I can leave in peace, knowing the show has finally reached a pinnacle level this season. It’s what I’ve always wanted for it, and I am very proud of TC...

...The talent this season is scary. I can’t tell you just how excited I was to try some of the food this time around! As you can see by now, we have some pretty bad-ass contenders, far and away the best I’ve ever seen on the show. The food porn didn’t last long, that’s for sure."

So there you have it. It's not your imagination, folks. There's something special about the season six crew.

Sadly, this particular episode was kind of a throwaway for me. I dig the quickfire just fine, but my knowledge of cacti is borderline nil, so that pretty much killed my enjoyment thereof. And the elimination resurrected what I've long thought was Top Chef's greatest challenge sin: "Plan and shop to cook a dish, but for all you know you're going to be cooking with a bic lighter and a spork!" I don't understand what's so wrong with just telling them that it's going to be a cookout and they're going to have campfires and a bunch of cast iron. I bet the food they ended up with would have been more appropriate. Is the shocking reveal of teepees and fire pits so critical that it's worth borking the challenge to get it? So we end up with two ceviches, which were wildly inappropriate, but how can I blame Mattin and Ron for thinking -- as they reach for that succulent raw pork -- that with a mystery heat source, perhaps it would be best to pick something that can be prepared with nothing more than a knife and a bowl? And then it turns out that the "fire pits" are really rustic-looking gas grills, which makes the entire thing a farce to begin with. It could have been a fun, straightforward challenge where we see how they handle an upscale cookout. Instead, we're debating ceviches and refrigeration. I don't see how that's a good thing, even if it's in the name of "seeing how the chefs adapt".

Upshot, though, hey, a little interest in the rankings this week! Just when this season was starting to look like a snoozer for the TCPR, we get to shake things up a little bit, starting at the top...

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 Bryan Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 4 Eliminations 3 3 0 It's a big jump, but how do you keep Bryan out of the top spot now? It was easy to maintain the status quo when the top tier all had the same number of wins, but now Bryan's taken home two consecutive elimination wins, not to mention three of five. And the exclamation point is that he did it very simply this week, with a dish that completely bypassed his usual whiz-bang style. He was up to his usual tricks with the quickfire, a halibut and cactus ceviche cured in lime, jalapeno, ginger and cilantro, served with cactus tempura and a coconut pudding sorbet. But that elimination dish was straight-up seared pork loin, marinated with paprika, cumin, garlic, thyme, rosemary and shallot, served atop a very basic polenta enriched with butter and mascarpone, served with some dandelion greens softened with butter, onion and lemon zest, some roasted mushrooms and rutabaga glazed with chicken stock, vinegar, sherry, honey and butter. There's a lot of depth going on, but it's a very simple prep with very harmonious flavors. I still worry that Bryan's style is most vulnerable to a sudden, unexpected flameout, but hopefully the fact that his wild techniques are underpinned by classic flavor combinations will give him a bit of a buffer should he get himself into trouble at some point. Regardless, he's earned the top spot for now.

2 Michael V. Quickfires 1 1 1 Last Week: 1 Eliminations 1 4 0 Voltaggio the younger, however, went a completely different direction. He got himself into a little trouble in the quickfire, dressing diced cactus and poblano peppers with lime and coconut, rolling them in avocado and topping them with fried vegetable chips and a coulis made with cactus fruit, orange and vanilla. With the elimination, however, he took the cookout and freaking bent it to his will. He was supposed to adapt. He refused. And he won, turning out a restaurant dish completely incongruous with the surroundings that still rocked the house. It's a funky little dish, too, that throws seared, miso-cured cod on top of a brick of lime-marinated watermelon, and the whole thing is topped with a chilled dashi that's perked up with ginger, shiitake, orange, lemon, lime, scallion and tomato. Let's review: miso cod, watermelon, citrus and tomato. And the judges loved it. This is one of the most intriguing dishes I've seen all season. He seems to have gotten a little pissy about this week's challenges, which is unfortunate, but he sure responded well.

3 Jennifer Quickfires 2 4 0 Last Week: 2 Eliminations 0 2 0 A quiet week for Jennifer who, with some chorizo in her nopales and a touch of duck confit hiding under her snapper, is edging closer and closer to cooking that elusive chunk of meat. Her salad of fried cactus and chorizo with a chorizo vinaigrette seasoned with garlic, shallots and sherry vinegar escaped official notice, as did her elimination snapper over a slaw made of daikon, carrot, bok choy, scallions, mint and duck confit, dressed with a soy vinaigrette and sauced with spicy tomato water, even if the latter dish got some on-air compliments. I know it started as a joke, but the lack of an actual piece of meat is actually starting to get a little odd at this point. Can we maybe make this a midseason goal, Jennifer?

4 Kevin Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 3 Eliminations 1 2 0 Kevin keeps doing his thing, and also has a quiet week. His quickfire was a simple smoked pork loin and corn cream with some not-so-simple treatments of cactus. First there was a relish of sorts, nopales braised with figs, chiles, tomato paste and veal stock. Then he topped it with a cactus marmalade made with sugar, lime zest and juice reduced until syrupy. His elimination dish got a lot of nice comments, and folks were surprised it didn't make the top three. Seared duck and tequila-marinated lime were paired with a mole of anchos, cocoa, banana, garlic, onion, figs and raising. Then the whole thing was topped with pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Sounds like a nice dish, good comments -- must've just missed.

5 Michael I. Quickfires 1 2 0 Last Week: 5 Eliminations 0 2 1 Some people are really down on Michael I, and I just don't get it. Personality-wise? Okay, I get it. But food-wise? There are a lot of people who seem to feel that he should currently be near the bottom and I just don't see it. So let's address this a bit. First off, can we agree to set aside that Greek salad? It was so out of bounds as compared to the rest of his food that I think it's safe to call it a goofy aberration. So looking at the rest, we know he's a good cook. Whoever's calling the shots, he's turning out crisp food. So the argument basically boils down to whether or not he's a good chef, with some saying he's shown very little creativity and has been riding others' coattails. For starters, he now has three top mentions -- one of them a win -- while cooking solo (in fact, he's the only one other than the top four to win anything). What's more, who's to say that the top four are all cooking their own food? With the exception of Kevin, they've all worked with some serious big-time chefs. Who's to say some of their biggest successes aren't dishes they've simply banged out on the line hundreds of times and dusted off one more time when it seemed appropriate? (See UPDATE, below.) Heck, many believe that's exactly how Ilan won season two. I agree, Mike I. isn't top tier. But he's met with more success -- both co-op and solo -- than everybody I have below him, he's made some crisp-looking food, and he has a pretty clear personal style. I don't see how I could justify putting him much lower. Yeah, the gyro was a little uninspired, but it was safe and, as mentioned, I'm having a hard time dinging people for that. Meanwhile, he busted out a really interesting cactus and tuna ceviche with a cactus fruit puree and a pipian sauce made with garlic, shallot, jalapeno, cilantro, parsley, lime and pumpkin seeds. Salt-curing the cactus was a really neat approach, and he seemed to be one of the very, very few people present who could handle the ingredient. Can we give the guy some credit, here?

6 Eli Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 6 Eliminations 0 2 0 Quiet week from Eli, so he stays put. Even when he isn't gaining recognition, I find his work interesting. He was the only chef to take the cactus in an Asian direction, making a scallop ceviche with lime, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, sambal, cilantro, mint, Thai basil, carrot, onion and cashews. His elimination was a real snoozer, I guess -- seared tuna on toast with sun-dried tomato mayo, pickled shallots and radishes, onion and romaine. But as mentioned, I'm kind of handing out passes for this week's elimination.

7 Ashley Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 8 Eliminations 0 1 2 Finally, Ashley makes a little noise. I know a number of you were with me in thinking that she was capable of breaking out, so it's nice to see that perceived potential fulfilled. She's still too close to that double-bottom episode, so I'm not bumping her that much, but consider the groundwork laid for improvement. I LOVE that she stuffed doughnuts with cactus fruit jelly and was disappointed that it didn't catch any recognition. And her elimination dish looked really nice. Avocado mousse, crispy lardons, wilted romaine with cherry tomatoes, corn, lime juice and butter, topped with a perfectly seared piece of halibut? Classic flavors, new package, appropriate to the surroundings. Good call, well-executed. Most telling, however, was the fact that the judges were emphatic that this was her best dish of the competition to date. In short, Bryan just absorbed her best shot (so far) without flinching. Surprising? No. But noteworthy. I hope she can build on this, but nobody get carried away.

8 Laurine Quickfires 0 1 0 Last Week: 11 Eliminations 0 1 1 The middle-of-the-packers continue to be a consternating mess, but even though it means a three position jump, I'm going to go out on a limb and bump Laurine to the top of the pack this week. The pasta salad debacle is quickly fading into a distant memory, and she had a strong week, pulling down top mention in both challenges. Though the cactus wasn't as featured as he would have liked, Tim Love seemed rather enamored of her pork chop, which was marinated with onion, garlic, achiote, ancho chile and orange juice, grilled and set over a sweet potato puree with sour cream, and topped with a salad of grilled cactus, apple and corn with jicama, cilantro, lime and tequila. Love seemed similarly enthused about her elimination, sautéed arctic char with a simple tomatillo salsa, potato and sort of a grilled Southwestern succotash. I said last week that I wanted to see something out of her, and she delivered. So we'll go with the hot hand and move her to the top of the MOTPers.

9 Ash Quickfires 0 1 1 Last Week: 7 Eliminations 0 0 1 Technically speaking, Ash is moving down two spaces, but it's more a function of people moving around him than anything he's done. That said, it wasn't exactly a strong week for him. His cactus "grilled cheese" didn't sit well with Love, but in Ash's defense, he was deep into his recipe before realizing that he had no tortilla press to work with, and that hurt him. His elimination dish was boring, but I'm sure it tasted fine -- a grilled chicken paillard with vegetable succotash. I'd elaborate, but it won't make it sound any more interesting. Trust me. Still, he's been competent. We'll keep him out of the basement.

10 Robin Quickfires 0 0 1 Last Week: 9 Eliminations 0 0 1 Robin, however, has now been on the block two weeks in a row. I don't think that's an entirely fair assessment of her abilities, but I can't gloss over it, either. Last week it was making one of the least-strong escargot dishes (and I phrase it that way because Tom didn't seem particularly offended by any of them). This week, it was partially for a muddled dish, but mostly, it seems, for serving turned shrimp that she never bothered to taste. (Taste. Your. Food. Do we have to tattoo it on the backs of your freaking eyelids, people?) Still, some of her recipes have looked interesting to me and for reasons I can't quantify she seems slightly less worthy than Ron when it comes to this week's elimination bait. Which I guess puts her in the MOTMOTP (sorry).

11 Ron Quickfires 0 0 2 Last Week: 10 Eliminations 0 1 1 Ron ends up on the bottom twice this week, and is looking like the odds-on favorite for the next elimination. What strikes me about Ron is that a number of his dishes seem weirdly incomplete -- a few ingredients thrown together but not especially integrated. Take this week's quickfire. Chunk of swordfish seared with ancho. Salad of avocado, mango and crab with salt and pepper. Simmered cactus juice with butter. Components served side-by-side. There just isn't a dish here. It's a collection of ingredients. Admittedly, this phenomenon seems to manifest mostly in quickfires, so maybe he just has issues with time. And he isn't in any danger when it comes to quickfires. But all the same, while in seasons past he could have hung on for a while like this, right now he's feeling like the weak link (even if his tuna tartare with coconut milk, cilantro, jalapeno, cumin and Chinese five spice does sound kinda interesting).

12 Mattin Quickfires 0 2 0 Last Week: 12 Eliminations 0 0 2 It was time. Amusingly, his cactus dish was the first interesting thing he's done. But the Basque chef who never cooked anything Basque (shades of Lisa and her Asian focus) made a ceviche dish that was worse than you think. Gail's blog confirmed what I mentioned in the comments last week. When it comes to a ceviche, if your knifework isn't consistent some pieces cook while others are left raw. It's a very basic thing that's embarrassing for a chef to overlook. But more surprisingly, this was a pseudo-trio. Yes, there were three fishes. And yes, each was finished with a different garnish. But the cure itself? The same lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper -- and that's it -- for all three. Just trying that is grounds for elimination, as far as I'm concerned. That's not failing by overreaching and trying to do too much. It's expecting to impress just because you're plating three of something. Bad, bad call.

UPDATE : So I finish the Power Rankings, I go to warm up a bottle for the littlest one, I'm standing in the kitchen waiting for the warmer to beep, and as my eyes cross my copy of Eric Ripert's new book, On The Line, my thoughts go back to what I just said about Michael I. and how much originality is really cruising around. So I flip to the recipes section. What's the very first recipe listed? Wild Alaskan and Smoked Salmon with Apple, Celery and Baby Watercress and Jalapeno Emulsion. Sound familiar? That'd be Jennifer's top quickfire from episode two. Its creator? One of Ripert's cooks, Soa Davies. First, I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with this in the least. Second, I think most if not all of the contestants do this to some extent. You're in a competition, you have to think quickly, you know of a dish that suits the challenge, you're fighting for survival... of course you're going to bust it out. Third, this is the only recipe I could find that resembled anything Jennifer has made (though she's been very mussel and clam heavy and there's none of that in this particular book), and it could be the only one that isn't her dish. But the point I make is that you can never really be sure. Doesn't make it any easier to evaluate where these people stand, but that's how it is. Hopefully, over the course of the season, those who rise to the top can only lean on established favorites so much. And if anything, this only illustrates the importance of keeping them off-balance a bit. All I'm saying is that if you call out Michael I. for riding coattails, bear in mind that other favorite contenders may be silently doing the exact same thing at times.

And looking forward to next week...

WARNING : MINOR EPISODE SIX SPOILERS AHEAD

Penn and Teller! Okay, I'm jazzed. I've loved Penn & Teller since I was a kid. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that sucks about Penn & Teller is that they develop their tricks so slooooooooooowly that their show's practically the same now as it was when I first saw them as a kid. A great show it is, though.

Sorry, I'm done. Actually, thematically speaking, they're perfect guests. We aren't shown anything about the quickfire, but the elimination apparently involves deconstruction, and it appears that the chefs don't get to choose the dish they're deconstructing (or perhaps they choose from a limited list). This is a really interesting challenge for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that "deconstructed" has become a dirty word in culinary circles. Anybody can take a dish apart. And for a while, everybody did. But to do so in a way that's meaningful is no small feat. The line between bringing a new angle to a dish and simply breaking it down into its components is a fine one. The Voltaggios should do well. Even though it isn't Kevin's thing, he seems to be a pretty cerebral fellow who puts a lot of thought into the construction of his dishes and articulates it well, so I bet he'll do something interesting. Here's hoping the "Jennifer In Trouble" trailer is a total red herring (my guess). And having now seen the trailers, I feel pretty good about having Ron in the basement. Half of his dishes are already deconstructed!

Discuss!!!

Comments

[suzanne]

Maxx: "I'm pretty sure there was a bad shrimp one in the bachelor/bachelerette party"

Yes, and it was Eve's as well.

[SorchaRei]

Precisely. Though Mike I's "borrowing" may have been more obvious and immediate from a television standpoint, is it fundamentally any different?

I think it is different, for more than one reason.

First, when Jen used a recipe from her job, she was using a recipe from her job. I know that sounds obvious, but what it means is that she walked into that kitchen with a head full of experience and style and so on, and when faced with a challenge, she pulled out something from her own repertoire that fit. When Mike used Bryan's techniques on the sauce, he did something that he could not have done without the help of someone right then and there. He wasn't using the resources he's built up over his lifetime of experience -- he was using someone else's resources.

Second, while Bryan used Keller's technique on the fish, he still put his own spin on it, something that Colicchio is careful to mention in his blog about it. When Mike used Bryan's sauce, he used Bryan's sauce. He didn't take what Bryan had to offer and go off and turn it into his own thing. He basically executed something Bryan knew how to do.

Before I get to the third reason, I just want to emphasize that it is precisely the sauce that makes me think that Mike I might be simply a very good cook and not a very good chef as well. (Although this week did move me closer to thinking, yeh, that's a chef. His handling of the cactus was impressive, not only in the result that Tim Love liked, but in his obvious knowledge about the ingredient and his ability to use that knowledge to produce something quickly.) In the case of the sauce, Mike had an idea, but he did not know how to execute that idea (we know this from Bryan's comment reprising what happened). Bryan told him how to do it, and he did it. Any line cook who works for Bryan could do the same. It was am impressive technical feat, and I'll even give Mike I. props for thinking "Let's take the sauce apart", but it wasn't something he knew how to do or could figure out on their timeline.

As to the third reason, mar nailed it. He's riding along with strong chefs in order to avoid going home. What he produces when he works with them is their style of food, not his. If he were teaming with the same people and producing food that was clearly expressing his vision, I'd have a different take on that (see: Kevin and Eli at the AF Base).

Overall, I assess Mike I. as a very good cook and a bit of a bonehead (the salad was a ridiculous move, and I'm not impressed with the gyro). He's produced two top-notch dishes. The sauce I don't think was his, and his ability to pull it off without inventing it or transforming it into his own seems to come down on the side of "a great cook, but not a great chef". The cactus QF showed mastery of oth the ingredient and the flavors, and suggests that he does have a chef inside. If only he'd calm down, stop making bonehead moves, and start trying to articulate his own vision in the food, I'd be a lot more interested in watching him.

[TokenOmnivore]

Wasn't it Mike I that was the one that laid out the cheftestant pairing idea for the army challenge? While I agree that I think he's been riding a little on other's coattails, that moves him up away from just a line cook for me. Even if the pairing plan wasn't his original idea (it was hard to tell where the idea came from--he just said that some people had been kicking it around), he gets props from me for being the spokesman for it.

That said, his over-the-top Jersey persona, real or not, makes me so glad we moved away from Jersey when I was young.

[SorchaRei]

I'd give him more props for that pairing idea if not for two facts.

First, he tried to use it to turn Jen into a tournant, not an executive chef. It was she who took his insulting suggestion and turned it into the excellent idea of having her run the kitchen.

Second, he decided that since the chefs had made teams, then they would be judged as teams. This was a foolish (at best) assumption to make. Then he arranged it so that his "team" actually made two dishes, pretty much each working solo, and he biffed his. As far as I can tell, he biffed it because he didn't bother to care about it, thinking that he would be judged on Mike V's work instead.

So fine, he articulated a teamwork idea that did make the challenge easier (by cutting down the number of dishes being made in the military kitchen), but he blew it two ways in doing so.

[Bawdy George]

A George divided cannot stand.

[ally]

I read the first sentence as "seafood six cast" instead of "season six cast". :)

I would love it if a bored statistician would do a per-capita seafood dish analysis for the last few seasons and see if this indeed is an outlier season for seafood. I wonder if the contestants have noticed some kind of winning dish-seafood connection that hasn't been clear before, but I don't think so. These chefs just don't seem like a "nice piece of well-cooked meat" kind of crowd. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[mar]

@SorchaRei: Thank you! You've written what I've been trying to clarify for myself in my sleep-deprived, children-addled brain. Now I can stop thinking about chefs and coattails and start hoping Jen doesn't get booted this episode. One hour til showtime!

[anon man]

uh-oh. Immunity becomes an issue...

[Independent George]

Was anyone else thinking about fennel funnel cake while watching Laurine prepare her fish & chips?

[aaalex]

almost spooky accuracy from the skillet doux gods. i'm starting to think some form of ritual is necessary to appease the dom. i mean: mr dom, sir.

[Scott]

I feel so sad for Robin, do the editors have to make it so everybody seems to hate her?

[KinderJ]

Seriously folks, we need to name this phenominon. And yeah, I did think the fish and chips were lame after all the discussion here. Good ep in some ways, though.

[Independent George]

So... Dom reprises his role as Guybrush Threepwood, and suddenly the Power Rankings have the power of a Voodoo Curse behind them. Coincidence? I think not.

[mena]

Hi, I just recently found this blog and have been enjoying all the discussions. Thanks, Dom!

re: the "borrowing" issue
Has anyone else noticed that Michael Voltaggio has "borrowed" dishes from Jose Andres, his former boss? The nitro gazpacho that Michael won $15K with is from The Bazaar, Jose's restaurant in LA. And tonight, Michael's deconstructed caesar salad looks exactly like the caesar salad that Jose serves at a few of his restaurants. I dunno - it bugs.

Also, after reading about the deconstruction possibilities it was disappointing to see mostly reconstructions.

[natmicstef]

Not to jump on the Robyn bandwagon, though I guess I am...was her QF dish really better than everyone else's? or at least better than the other 2? This is the first result I have trouble believing.