Photo: David Moir/Bravo
Midway through “Take It Cheesy,” the Top Chef: Wisconsin editors decide to have a little fun. The chefs are preparing for the first-ever Top Chef Cheese Festival, for which they’ll have to prepare more than 100 servings of their dish. Everyone has a different randomly selected cheese, and everyone knows they’re going to be cooking outside in nearly 100-degree heat. The opportunities for their dishes are seemingly endless; the only restriction is they have to feature their specific cheese. But as the contestants run around Whole Foods, Top Chef rapidly cuts between them to reveal a common theme: Nearly half are planning to cook croquettes. All of the options in the world, and this is where we landed — a deep-fried potato ball that’s a wedding-buffet mainstay.
Now, would I eat all these croquettes? Of course. My palate is a basic bitch, and a ball of hot cheese is not something I will turn down. If I reject the offer of one, this is how you will know I have been taken and require saving immediately. But Top Chef wants us to think that for this caliber of chefs, this approach is a little rote, and the editing emphasizes that. Manny and Alisha and Kevin, Charly and Laura and Michelle: Their carts are stacked high with starch, their workstations bubble over with cheese sauce, and their descriptions of their dishes are combined into a repetitive “croquette” supercut. It’s absurd! It feels like the chefs are resting on their laurels!
It also makes for an engaging episode where we get a glimpse into how certain chefs might be limited by training that steers them into the same flavor profiles and techniques, and see others who are willing to take risks begin to pull away. Some of the same faces are already popping up in the top and the bottom tiers of this season, and a repeat high performer wins while a repeat low performer goes home.
“Take It Cheesy” starts off with a Quickfire challenge featuring a variety of local cherries from Door County, Wisconsin. For guest judges Carla Hall (a Top Chef season eight alumna and constant presence on the Food Network) and actress Clea DuVall — two names that are very phonetically pleasant together — the chefs have to cook a dish featuring both cherries and a surprise ingredient hidden behind a little door. (The episode tries to generate some drama by having each chef name who picks an ingredient after them, but the ingredients are unknown and there’s no trading allowed, so the impact of Manny being picked last and ending up with soy sauce isn’t really there.) Some of the surprise ingredients are weird, like Michelle getting ginseng, of which Wisconsin is apparently a top producer, and Danny ending up with chunky bamboo shoots. But the chefs with sweet ingredients (Charly with chocolate, Kenny with marshmallows, Laura with condensed milk) seem more upset about it, and their attempts to counter all that sugar ends up mostly backfiring.
There’s a bit of time tension with the chefs struggling to pit the cherries, and certain dishes clearly aren’t coming together as intended. A few contestants turn to pork because pork and cherries are a classic combination, so Alisha decides to go for cabbage, but struggles to evenly cook the wedges she’s charring on the grill, while Savannah worries that her chicken-liver mousse is too loose. There are no catastrophes, though, and everyone presents their dishes to Kristen, Carla, and Clea without incident. Like last week’s Quickfire, the judges are pretty inscrutable while eating, only really breaking their silence when Kristen asks Kévin what the French word “poêle” means. He describes it as a sauté; it also seems to mean a frying pan. Regardless of what the exact translation is, the judges like it!
On the top are Kévin’s beef tenderloin with a poêle of cherries and black garlic; Savannah’s chicken-liver mousse with panzanella salad and a cherry vinaigrette; and Rasika’s cipollini onions with tart cherries, charred pepper relish, and Berbere spice. All the dishes that do well used the brightness and tartness of the cherries best, but reigning elimination champ and immunity holder Rasika wins, bringing her cash total so far to $15,000. On the bottom are Charly’s charred golden beets with chocolate-cherry demi glace, Kenny’s toasted marshmallows with rum, cherry, and fried spring-roll paper, and Alisha’s charred cabbage with a cherry-serrano reduction; Charly’s beets are too earthy, Kenny’s dish too disparate, and Alisha’s cabbage undercooked.
The chefs wave goodbye to Clea, and then the randomness of the Quickfire continues with randomness in the Elimination challenge. They pull knives to find out the cheese they need to feature at the inaugural Top Chef Cheese Festival, an event celebrating Wisconsin cheese aficionados and cheesemakers, including Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese and Pam Hodgson of Sartori, one of only two women Master Cheesemakers. (Becoming a Master Cheesemaker is a whole state-organized program!) The diners’ favorite dish will win the challenge and get immunity, the judges will select the bottom three dishes and who goes home, and the chefs are able to taste their cheese selection — including 15-year cheddar, 1000-day-aged Gouda, triple-cream brie (which Kévin lucks into), Dunbarton Blue cheese, and cheese curds — before they plan what they’re going to cook.
As previously discussed: A lot of them go with croquettes! Frankly, the trend seems to piss off Tom; as he visits chef after chef in the kitchen, you can see his grin get tighter and his energy curdle into malevolence as he learns of the mind-meld Rasika dubs “Top Chef Croquette Fest.” But there are other worrisome things outside of the great croquette confluence, like how Manny seems to have no idea what to do with cheese curds, and Kenny’s plan for a crab rangoon salad with a Gorgonzola cheese cream, which makes Tom and Carla trade panicked looks. The next day, as the chefs battle bees and Gail looks immaculate in a white sundress, those two dishes fail to impress because of issues with both technique (Manny’s compressed potatoes didn’t set correctly and don’t fry well, Kenny’s salad is too watery) and concept (Manny doesn’t transform the cheese curds at all, Kenny doesn’t highlight the Gorgonzola). The same flaws plague Kévin’s dish, with his brie overly breaded and his truffle paste overpowering. It’s not a surprise when those three dishes are both the diners’ and the judges’ least favorites. Tom gives them all side-eye, it is delightfully passive-aggressive.
Most of the other croquettes — or, as Gail describes them, “really nice fried balls” — end up safe. Tom, Gail, Kristen, Carla, and fellow guest judge Dane Baldwin praise Danny’s cheddar fritter made of pâte à choux and served with cheddar foam; Amanda’s Mount Raclette arancini with correctly cooked rice (a rare feat on Top Chef!) and fig and olive gremolata; and Alisha’s ham and brick cheese croquette with sherry aioli. Less good are Charly’s yucca and Canela cheese croquette (in which Gail struggles to taste the cheese) with tomato-mango sauce, and Laura’s Gouda Reserve potato croquette with peach mostarda (Carla complains about the thickness of the croquette’s roux, while Tom says the mostarda has no flavor). Michelle’s coconut curry collard green saag with a Pleasant Ridge Reserve potato fritter is the rare croquette they love, with Kristen calling it “fucking fantastic.” Overall, though, it seems like the judges prefer the non-deep-fried items, like Kaleena’s Merlot BellaVitano mac and cheese with merlot mushrooms, Savannah’s Oaxaca cheese quesadilla with whipped avocado and hatch chili and roasted corn salsa, Dan’s Sancho Cruz Manchego gnocchi dumplings with cheese foam and olive tapenade, and Rasika’s Dunbarton Blue paniyaram (a rice flour dumpling) with braised chicken korma that Gail calls “beautifully balanced” and is most visibly excited about.
But! Rasika isn’t in the diners’ voted-upon top three (and she looks a little irritated by it). Those honors go to Kaleena, Dan, and Michelle, with Michelle walking away with the win, immunity, and knowledge that she’s one of the judges’ favorites too. (They don’t share the others they would have ranked high, which I would like to have known.) On the bottom are the obvious missteps: Manny, for serving what Carla calls “just out-of-the-bag cheese curds”; Kenny, for serving them “a celebration of so many things, I didn’t know what they were” (Carla again, savage); and Kévin, who Tom chastises for assuming that an American cheese challenge would automatically necessitate “fried stuff.” Manny describes his own dish as “indefensible” and Tom calls Kévin’s “terrible,” yet ultimately it’s Kenny who goes home for the crab salad Gail describes as “wet mush.” I’m personally shocked Kévin is still hanging around, but just like Valentine bouncing last week, I think Kenny being in the bottom for the Quickfire helped secure his demise. I’ll miss him and his ideas — his premiere-episode pho-spiced roast chicken sounded so good, and a crab rangoon salad (without Gorgonzola!) would probably be quite refreshing. Long may he twerk.
• Tom hat watch: We have a hat, folks! It’s big and it looks like straw. Gail was very noticeably burnt after the afternoon elimination challenge, so I guess Tom really did think ahead in terms of sun protection. Kudos to him.
• Also, Tom is right: There is no such thing as too much cheese. Kristen, please pack your knives and go, et cetera.
• Clea DuVall really is a legend; you should watch But I’m a Cheerleader, The Faculty, and Carnivàle immediately; and her best-friendship with Melanie Lynskey is very lovely.
• Next week: Buddha Lo is back. I thought Top Chef would wait a little longer before having him judge a challenge since he just won back-to-back seasons, but clearly I was incorrect.
• More gremolata???
• Do we think that people are going to be more adventurous about cooking Indian food now that they don’t have to reckon with Padma as a judge? I was surprised Michelle went in that direction, if only because in previous seasons contestants have mostly avoided that flavor profile. Let us never forget Stephanie Cmar’s Indian nachos, bless her.
• Laura should have cleaned up after spilling goop on the floor and should have apologized; Dan was classy to let it go.
• The dishes I most wanted to eat this episode: Rasika’s cherries and onions and Danny’s cheese doughnut.
• What are your personal cherry rankings? Sour cherries play a pivotal role in Persian food, so they are a cultural favorite of mine. (Very good in faloodeh, which are noodles soaked with rose water, frozen, and served with lemon or lime chunks and cherry syrup.) And if Rainier cherries weren’t $15 or so per pound, I would also go HAM on them at every opportunity.
• Does Amanda actually sound like Daria? Discuss amongst yourselves.
• LAST CHANCE KITCHEN SPOILERS AHEAD: Despite growing up on The X-Files, I am not prone to conspiracy theories, but LCK is about to transform me into Spooky Mulder. If you aren’t caught up, here’s what’s going on. In the aired Top Chef premiere “Chef’s Test,” first eliminated chef David didn’t get offered the ability to compete on LCK, and in the first episode of LCK, “The 16th Chef,” he’s not mentioned at all. (David said on his Instagram of LCK, “I wasn’t allowed to participate, beyond that I can’t say anything else… NDAs.”) Instead, the eliminated Valentine had to go up against surprise 16th chef Soo Ahn, who has to win five LCK episodes in a row to make it into Top Chef. Soo beat Valentine (his fried lobster fish and chips > Valentine’s lobster bake with poached lobster), and he also beats Kenny in “The Big Stink” (his eggplant parmesan with roasted tomato sauce and bruleed Limburger cheese > Kenny’s Vietnamese rice paper pizza with egg, melon, basil, and Limburger cheese). He now needs to only beat three other contestants to make it in, and the whole setup feels fundamentally unfair to me — the eliminated Top Chef-ers are coming in already stressed from the pressure of the competition and from the experience of losing, and they’re facing someone who for five weeks doesn’t have to deal with Quickfires, eliminations, or any of the in-game drama? Why not just start the series with 16 chefs, instead of adding another change to how things work that seemingly undermines a significant chunk of the contestants? I have a sense that Soo is going to win all his challenges and shock the remaining cheftestants when he makes it into the series proper, and I’m trusting no one until then.
