Top Chef: Portland, Episode 5: I’m working on funny wings

Welcome to Top Chef, Not Top Scallop, the world’s greatest Top Chef recap blog. This is a review of Top Chef: Portland, episode 5. My name is Randall Colburn and I am going to make fun of Richard Blais a lot. Read last week’s recap here and my first LCK recap here.

Top Chef hasn’t necessarily ignored COVID and its impact on the competition, but this week’s elimination challenge was the first that felt uniquely suited to this strange time. Nobody thinks about Portland when they think about drive-ins, but, before the plague, nobody was thinking about drive-ins very much at all. Drive-ins, like 500-piece puzzles and sourdough starters, are something society ushered back into the mainstream after being abruptly yanked from theaters, gyms, and restaurants. Top Chef’s still managed to focus on the food and culture that makes Portland special throughout this season, but here they’ve sought to showcase what was one of the few communal activities we could safely participate in during the pandemic. They were, in many ways, little time portals, the nostalgia onscreen commingling with pre-cineplex memories and taking us back to simpler, maskless times. I dunno, I thought it was sweet.

Also sweet? Maria barreling through her self-doubt with the help of her wife and son, who brought her comfort as the weight of being perpetually in the middle pressed on her shoulders. It’s gotta suck being on the precipice of elimination all the time, but at least you’re getting feedback on what it is you’re screwing up. Being in the middle is a different beast entirely, one that’s perhaps even more maddening. Some might see it as flying under the radar, but for a chef like Maria it can feel like being invisible, like your food is just drifting in and out of the judge’s mouths and minds, making no impact. That particular brand of anxiety can lead chefs to bite off more than they can chew in an effort to get noticed, and that seemed to be the case with Maria, who made the bold decision to make homemade sausages and homemade buns for her Sonoran hot dog.

“No way would I do that,” says Top Chef’s embodiment of the “How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?” meme.

Well, shut up, Blais, ’cause Maria nailed it. Her success carried extra weight, too, as she revealed that it was a hot dog vendor who helped her begin her culinary journey as a child. She wasn’t the challenge’s winner, but she was definitely the episode’s. Will this boost in confidence do for her what it’s done for Chris and catapult her into the upper echelons of the competition?

Hey, speaking of Chris…

Quickfire

Amar joins a positively stunning Padma in the Top Chef kitchen for a challenge that aims to connect Mother’s Day with Portland’s nickname, the City Of Roses. (Some info on Portland’s rose connection.) Nobody seems excited about cooking with rose-flavored ingredients — rosewater, rose sugar, hibiscus and rose, etc. — and a few chefs aren’t all that interested in paying tribute to their mothers, either. (It’s interesting they acknowledged that, with Gabriel dedicating his dish to his sisters since he doesn’t have a good relationship with his mother.) Avishar notes that he’s banned rosewater from his restaurant because he hates it so much. This led me, of course, to imagine him hurling bottles of it at his staff in a rage, hair wild and glasses askew. I’m tickled by the idea of Angry Avishar. Angrishar.

All the chefs are scrambling to balance the ingredient’s perfumey nature with equal parts acidity and salinity. Sara gets dinged for her drenching her yogurt in rosewater, while Nelson is on the bottom for not using it enough in his beans. Byron, reaching to find a coherent theme, says he made a “fresh” dish to represent the “fresh start” his immigrant mother made for him in the States, which is as sweaty a stretch as I’ve seen on this show. It still lands him in the top, but it’s Chris who earns immunity with his cornmeal porridge with rosewater and candied pistachios.

He considers the dish, Haitian in origin, redemption for his poor showing in the Pan-African challenge, which he calls a “wake-up call.” In keeping with the challenge, it’s also an ode to his mother, who made the dish for him as a child. Serving it with a rose for Padma, though? My man, you earned that “kiss-ass” jeer.

(I save my roses for Tom.)

But, alas, who is it that walks through the door? Not Tom.

If Top Chef is a rose, Blais is truly its thorn.

Elimination Challenge

The chefs are going to the drive-in, where they’ll cook dishes inspired by movie genres for 50 “movie buffs.” They’ll square off in head-to-head competitions, with the hungry buffs voting on the winning dishes. As an added treat, the drive-in’s denizens will have the privilege of watching the chef’s sweat drip into their food on the big screen. With introductory bumpers by Padma, of course.

Padma getting hit in the face with a pie? Kinda funny. Tom looking embarrassed in the car as they watch her get hit in the face with a pie? Hilarious.

Tom watching Padma get hit in the face with pies:

The artistic inspiration is historically a tricky one for chefs. Think back to Boston, when someone had to capture the essence of Emily Dickinson in a dish. Or to that time in Chicago when a dish was meant to evoke Il Postino. Some of the genres the chefs are tasked with are easier to culinarily mirror than others. Horror and sci-fi come with vivid colors and identifiable, pliable iconography, but how the hell do you capture “drama” in food? Or “action”?

Action is probably the most difficult, and it’s fucking hysterical to watch Gabriel try to justify the act of “dipping” as action. Yes, Gabriel, dipping is an action in the most base sense of the word. Maria’s dog is a slam dunk for several reasons, but her reframing of “action” to mean the playful and/or sexual action you enjoy before kicking back with a Sonoran hot dog is genius. Dawn, meanwhile, finds a way to make drama work by crafting multiple preparations of a single dish that clash and contrast with each other.

The thing about clever thematic interpretations is that they only go so far. Hell, Byron won with a “comedy” dish and never explained what was “funny” about it. Jamie’s up there babbling about “rubber chickens” and he’s just like, “Korean-style gochujang fried chicken.” Chickens are not inherently funny, dude. Chickens are not penguins. You have to explain why the chicken is funny. TELL ME WHY THE CHICKEN WAS FUNNY. Anyways, more on them later.

Shota goes too far with his horror-inspired dish, making everybody sad by evoking a dead dog with his black cheese dog thing. Avishar, meanwhile, scores big points with Tom (and pretty much no one else) with a “star s’more” with marshmallow ice cream he made using molecular gastronomy techniques. “I hope to succeed by finding a universal commonality of really exciting burnt things, gooey things, and frozen things using liquid nitrogen,” he explains. Tom is aghast that the buffs choose Nelson’s UFO-shaped păpușa over Avishar’s dessert. I love it when he gets snobby.

There wasn’t a clear breakdown of winners and losers this week, so I’ll just focus on the winner and who seemed to be the three least favorites. Let’s start with the losers:

Shota’s cheesy bloody dog with Japanese bechamel and cheddar cheese

Shota: “I focused too much on the theme rather than the balance of the dish and the flavor itself.”

Padma: “This does not look appetizing to me.”

Tom: “It was kinda crispy but the inside was just a horror show.”

Gail: “I will have nightmares about this dish.”

Tom: “I don’t know what to make of this thing at all.”

Gail: “Textually, his dish was bizarre and unsuccessful.”

Blais: “It shocked me in a bad way.”

I found it funny the judges hated he and Gabe’s horror dishes so much they settled on which they preferred by asking which one was scarier. (The scariest dish in Top Chefhistory is Grayson’s black chicken from the Charlize Theron episode of Texas. Just an incredibly unsettling thing. Debate me, if you wish.)

Gabriel’s cauliflower tots with vadouvan yogurt sauce and Calabrian chili aioli

Padma: “These cauliflouer tots feel salty and gummy.”

Tom: “This is a problem doing a tot with cauliflower. There’s no starch to bind it.”

Gail: “Man, were they boring.”

Tom: “You didn’t swing for the fences and you didn’t hit it, either. The tots weren’t very good and you gave us two sauces that were very similar. This was just a lack of imagination.”

Amar: “I don’t eat vegetables but the cauliflower tots were really good.”

No way they’re sending Gabriel home yet. They know his ass is gonna cause drama at Restaurant Wars.

Jamie’s sticky chicken wings with fish sauce glaze and confetti pepper

Jamie: “I’m working on some funny wings.”

Gregory: “The wings are gummy.”

Jamie: “I love the rubber chicken, that’s why I picked the chicken.”

Blais: Jamie’s making this joke about a rubber chicken in comedy and then she’s making this limp rubber chicken dish.”

Melissa: “It’s difficult to eat in the car.”

Gail: “It was so messy.”

Padma: “I think I already got some of these buttons sticky.”

Gail: “If it was great and crispy and had crunch we would’ve gotten over our messy fingers, but it was really disappointing.”

Padma: “I’m used to getting such bold, bright flavors from you. And that did not happen today.”

Jamie goes home and does some beep-boops even as she’s getting eliminated. I will miss her chaotic energy, but I imagine her brrrrpppppp schtick would’ve gotten on some nerves after a while. Feel like we were one episode away from Padma being like, “Jamie, enough with the fucking noises.”

And the winner:

Byron’s Korean-style gochujang fried chicken

Padma: “Byron’s chicken was crispy, flavorful.”

Blais: “So crispy. Tons of spice. Lots of acidity. It was a perfect first bite.”

Gail: “It was what I want to be eating while I’m sitting and watching a movie.”

Amar: “So crispy!”

It’s nice to see Byron, who’s logged time at the ultra-fancy Eleven Madison Park in New York City, emerge from the middle of the pack. He gets $10,000, too, which is roughly what one meal at Eleven Madison Park costs.

Me waiting for you to laugh at my joke:

Scraps

• WHY WAS THE CHICKEN FUNNY, BYRON?
• Jamie: “What is that, Tinder? Swipe left, swipe right? I got swiped.”
• Cameo from Boston alum Dougie! Love Dougie! He was with that B.J. guy from Charleston who went home in, like, episode 2.
• The music was off the fucking rails in this episode. Please tell me you noticed.
• Speaking of music, they played the goofy porn wah-wah when Sara presented her “romantic” milkshake. I will forever associate it with Hosea and Leah hooking up in season 5. I love how long they’ve been reusing that same stupid sound.
• Avishar worked for Top Chef favorite Wylie Dufresne! Hope we see that Prince Valiant-looking motherfucker this season.
• Genuine laugh at the puzzled looks when Chris says his ribs represent “drama” because of “all the dramatic children who fight over the last rib.” Dude, what?
• Love that we’re still doing variations on “you can’t handle the truth.”
• Because Gabe mentioned The Shining I’m going to plug my podcast, The Losers’ Club: A Stephen King Podcast, which literally just got a shout-out from the man himself this week. Unreal.
• Next time on Top Chef: Double elimination!
• Leaving you with a question that is answered by the below GIF: Does Richard Blais absolutely suck?