Quickfire Challenge: The cheftestants have to cook a dish faster than Tom Colicchio to win immunity and a Toyota Freaking Prius. Tom finishes in 8:37, but the degree of difficulty will be taken into consideration. They can cook whatever they want, though. Here's what they made:
Antonia: seared ahi tuna with tarragon and fresh tomato salad.
Blais: corn-fed foie gras roasted with aromatics, corn, fresh coriander and port.
Tiffani: New England clam chowder with celery and cream.
Fabio: clams, fish, zucchini, tomato broth, thyme and garlic. That seems really similar to Tom's dish, and also, just fish? They aren't going to tell us what type of fish? Weird.
Angelo: yuzu branzino crudo with jalapeno and cilantro. None of it is cooked, and Tom warned them against serving something raw.
Tiffany: pan-seared bass with tomato relish, olives and capers.
Tre: grilled beef tenderloin with seared foie gras with mushrooms and brandy sauce.
Carla: shrimp with mango, cilantro and mint.
Dale: pad thai with egg noodles. Well, that's what it was supposed to be. He ran out of time and it ended up being like one limp noodle surrounded by a dribble of horrible sauce.
Casey: spice-rubbed filet with fresh tomato relish.
Marcel: black sea bass with dashi broth, bok choy and chili oil. He used the remainder of Tom's fish so he could avoid the pile-up at the fridge, which was smart.
Mike: pan-roasted branzino over a black olive and caper stew.
Jamie: clam amuse-bouche with bacon, tomato and cream. Jamie only had time to cook one clam. Shocker! At least she put something out for judging this time.
The bottom are Dale and Jamie for their unfinished dishes, and Angelo, for doing a raw dish. The tops are Mike, Blais and Marcel, who all developed a lot of flavor in a short amount of time. And the winner is Mike Isabella. Wow. Really? I guess we've found his strength – cooking in short periods of time, as long as everyone else has only a short period of time as well.
Elimination Challenge: The cheftestants work as a team to take over a dim sum restaurant in Chinatown to serve the lunch rush. Mike agrees to expedite, and Carla and Casey are front of house, pushing carts of dishes around and serving them to the customers. The dining room is full and people are waiting for food, and yet the food is late in arriving, so it doesn't start off well.
Susur Lee is the guest judge. Okay, this is going to get confusing, because people did multiple dishes, and some dishes were done by pairs, so I'll do my best to list each dish and the reaction to it, in the order they were served. This was the first group:
Tiffani: cabbage, cilantro and sesame salad with crispy curry chicken. Gail doesn't think it's mixed well.
Fabio: soy honey glazed spicy pork rib. The judge think it's sweet and tasty.
Carla: summer roll with vegetables and lemongrass dipping sauce. Gail can't taste anything but the rice noodles.
Angelo: shrimp and pork spring roll. The judges love it.
Marcel: boneless chicken wing with scallion mayonnaise. The judges find it bland.
Blais: pork foot? It kind of shows up while the judges are eating but it never gets introduced.
The judges get their first batch of food, but the diners are not getting much food, and Mike the Expediter is getting frustrated. The judges notice that no one has any food and the cheftestants in the kitchen don't seem to be rushing too much to remedy the situation. There's also some problem with the carts being returned to the kitchen to be reloaded. The judges get their next batch of dishes.
Jamie and Antonia: long beans with Chinese sausage. The judges find it overcooked and greasy.
Dale and Angelo: cheung fun with xo shrimp, which the judges think is spicy.
Dale: sweet sticky rice with Chinese bacon wrapped in a banana leaf. The judges have no complaints.
Tiffany: spicy pork with vegetables on a steamed bun. The judges think it has authentic flavor.
Tre: orange ginger dessert with fresh water chestnuts, toasted pine nuts and Thai basil. The judges don't think it's cold enough and, thus, too runny.
Diners just start leaving and finally Tom goes down to the kitchen to kick some ass. And still no food is coming out. It's seriously an embarrassment to watch. Down in the kitchen, people are just strolling around and taking forever to plate their dishes perfectly, three or four at a time, and meanwhile people just want to EAT SOMETHING. The judges get the next round of dishes. This is going to be an ugly Judges' Table.
Casey: Chinese chicken feet with scallion pancakes. It wasn't cooked properly, and Padma notes that even the diners, who are desperate for food, aren't eating it.
Antonia: shrimp toast with pickled scallions and mushrooms. The judges like the shrimp flavor, which is present but not overpowering.
Mike: pork and prawn dumplings with spicy soy sauce. The judges think it's spicy, but too salty.
Jamie: scallop dumplings with water chestnuts and Chinese chives. The judges don't think it has enough filling.
The judges call in Antonia, Jamie, Carla, Tre and Casey, because they had the least favorite dishes. The problem is that the editors had to spend so much time showing us what was going wrong in the kitchen that we don't really have a good sense of what was wrong with each dish.
The favorite dishes belonged to Tiffany, Angelo, Fabio and Dale. And the winner is Dale, who was looking totally pissed off until they announced that he won. I guess he was worried that no one deserved to win because service was so bad. And meanwhile, go Dale! And what's going on with Blais? They didn't even announce his dish and barely talked about it, and he hasn't won an Elimination yet (though perhaps he could have won the first one if he wasn't disqualified).
So even though everyone clearly thought it was going to be Jamie, the judges decide that Casey should pack her knives and go. Well, she did make chicken feet. I mean, come on. Although Spike has said in some interviews that Casey volunteered to leave in his place last week, so I guess she was ready. And Jamie lives to see another day!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Since they don't have that extra fifteen minutes (which I didn't mind since there are still so many contestants and the episodes seem pretty rushed these days -- can we bring that back? Or was Andy Cohen mad because it was cutting into his Watch What Happens time?), the episodes don't waste any time with the niceties. The episode starts with Padma welcoming the cheftestants to the kitchen wearing a shirt that I am 100% sure I owned in 1986, which was probably about four years after it was stylish. It's a white shirt with black pinstripes and puff sleeves. It looks like the packaging for Exclamation! perfume (which was my signature scent in 9th grade).
Anyway, Padma reminds them that speed is key when cooking in a restaurant on a busy night, and explains the Quickfire Challenge: one of the nation's best chefs will make a dish as quickly as he can, and then the cheftestants have to make a dish faster to win. The cheftestants' minds are racing, trying to figure out who this renowned chef will be, and this would be a lot more tense if they hadn't shown it on the previews, because we all know that it's Chef Tom Colicchio! The cheftestants are all grinning like fools as Tom gets ready to start cooking, and reminds everyone that he's a little rusty.
Time begins and Tom grabs a bin and runs to the pantry to gather his ingredients and equipment. He returns and quickly sets out his mise en place. He's clearly thought through this and the cheftestants are impressed with how organized he is, and how quickly he opens the clams he's using. At one point, he cuts a whole fish, takes part out, and then tosses the rest of the fish into his garbage bin, which goes flying off the table and nearly hits Padma. The cheftestants all crack up. His prep finished, Tom heads to the burners across the room. He cooks a sauce and the fish. One thing he mentioned in his blog that I thought was genius was that he cooked the fish on one side, then flipped it and covered the pan, and brought the whole pan back to his table, knowing that the residual heat in the pan would cook the other side as he walked. Seriously. That is smart and time-saving. He quickly plates his food and calls time; he finished in 8 minutes and 37 seconds. Damn. I might be able to make a scrambled egg in that time, but I don't know that it would taste great and it certainly wouldn't look great. The cheftestants are shocked. Tom urges them to taste his food, and they all agree that it's a good dish for the time he used, and it would be a good dish even if he had taken longer. He made black sea bass with clams, tomato, and zucchini, and it looks great. Padma explains that the cheftestants can make whatever they want, but Tom says that they will factor in the degree of difficulty, so if one of them makes tuna tartare (or another dish that doesn't require cooking), it won't get very far. Padma then drops the bomb that the winner gets immunity AND a brand new Toyota Prius. Damn! Now that's a High Stakes Quickfire.