Honestly, last night's pre-Thanksgiving Top Chef episode could have been an exercise in dull, and we still would've enjoyed watching Dave Grohl get bleeped as he waxed profane about the joys of bacon. For us, there's no contest: The Foo Fighters are the best Top Chef judges ever...
The chefs hit the ground running with a quick-fire run by award-winning chef, Grant Achatz who, by the way, bore an odd resemblance to Ethan Hawke circa 1990:
Basically, the chefs had to take recipes from the Top Chef cookbook and turn them into soups. Leah made a soup with white asparagus despite her aversion to its flavor (what does white asparagus actually taste like?) and brought home the gold -- and by "gold" we mean she got to pick the teams for the elimination challenge: Make thanksgiving dinner for the Foo Fighters and their tour entourage. In case we haven't adequately conveyed our love for all things Foo, we'll just say again we could not have been more psyched about this episode.
Team challenges are always problematic for us. Inevitably there's a couple chefs on the losing team that obviously did a better job then a couple slackers that got carried on the winning team. It just feels unfair, but whatever, we get that team challenges are necessary. Leah chose half the chefs to join her on Team Sexy Pants, while the remaining chefs formed Team Cougar with Ariana as their mascot. The teams got their game plans together and went to the concert venue to check out the kitchens, which turned out to be outdoors and also comprised mostly of row upon row of microwaves and toaster ovens. Both teams rolled with the punches fairly well, but none better than Gene who constructed a makeshift smoker and grill out of a chafing dish and some charcoal -- the Foo Fighters were duly impressed.
Predictably, in the end, it came down to whether or not these non-pastry chef contestants could execute decent desserts. Team Cougar lost the unofficial dessert-off and were stuck with the clean-up and the fearome spectre of the judges panel while Team Sexy Pants rocked out at the Foo show. Life is so cruel.
The judges let most of the team go back to the stew room and kept the chefs who made the desserts around to reem out a little more. The most distressing thing about this development for us was the failed desserts were made by two members of our fantasy team: Richard and Carla. The odds are not in our favor that they will both stick around. Sadly, Grant "reality bites" Achatz couldn't get past the fact that Richard's s'mores lacked a "melted chocolate component" (Grant Achatz takes his s'mores very seriously), and Richard was sent packing. Good news: We're so moving Gene into Richard's vacated spot. That smoker/grill was badass.
