[upbeat music]
¶ ¶
- Yeah. - Not as planned.
- Create a dish that captures
the essence of the beers in your hand.
- Yup, I'm going home.
- I don't know how you cut the lamb,
but the juices might have ran out a bit more.
- Wesley, please pack your knives and go.
- All right. - Seriously, dude.
- I definitely am gonna miss Wesley.
He's funny as hell, and I know he's a great chef.
- Yeah.
- Certainly does. - Totally.
- Yeah.
- You get the natural sweetness from the beet and the carrot.
It's very adult.
- Thank you so much.
- Today the winner is Karen.
[cheers and applause]
- I'm in the top ten! [laughs]
It feels like turning a page.
My food is starting to feel more like me.
I'm on an upward path, but I can't coast on that win.
You have to bring it every day.
I love San Diego. - Yeah.
- I wonder what Padma has in store for us.
- Maybe she just wants to hang out, you know?
What guy wouldn't be attracted to Padma?
- Why don't you go ahead and tell us about your wish?
[all laughing]
[lively music]
- Ten chefs remain to compete in a culinary showdown
across the Golden State.
At stake for the winner:
a feature in "Food & Wine" magazine,
an appearance at the "Food & Wine" Classic in Aspen,
$125,000 furnished by Sanpellegrino,
and the coveted title of Top Chef.
- Oh, my goodness. [laughs]
- Oh, ho-ho-ho.
- Antonia actually has a restaurant that's, like,
a block and a half from The Gadarene Swine.
I've eaten at her restaurant, I know her style,
and she's a really good chef.
It'll be exciting to cook for a neighbor.
- Please welcome your guest judge
for this Quickfire Challenge, Chef and partner of Scopa
and Black Market Liquor Bar here in Los Angeles.
"Top Chef" alumna, Antonia Lofaso.
- Don't forget that part. - Yeah.
[laughter]
- I remember being on that other side of the table,
like, my heart felt it was, like, bursting out of my chest.
Before every single one of my Quickfires,
I think I threw up, just so you know.
- Really? - Yes, I did.
- I never knew that. - I did, yeah.
- It was kind of a good luck charm, to be honest.
[laughter]
- Chefs, welcome back to LA.
all: Thank you.
- Only ten of you remain to compete
for the title of Top Chef and the grand prize of $125,000,
furnished by Sanpellegrino.
Anyone want that money?
both: Yes. - I'll take that.
[laughter]
- Dude, 125 grand.
You know, if I win this,
it's gonna give me a lot more opportunity
to put my daughter in a better school.
You know, I've been wanting to do a private school for her
for a long time, so it would definitely give me
that little edge to be able to afford
some better things in life.
- We want to see how you do
using exactly the same ingredients,
but let's have a little fun with this.
[dramatic music]
Each of you will get to choose
one ingredient from the Top Chef pantry,
and those ten ingredients will be the only items
you have access to in this Quickfire.
- That's kind of fun. [laughs]
- Yeah, I like this.
- Also, you don't have to use
all ten ingredients on the table.
- But if your other chefs don't choose wisely,
you could end up screwed.
- The winner of this Quickfire will earn immunity...
- Wow.
- In the next elimination challenge.
Each of you will have 20 seconds
to get an ingredient and put it on this table
before the time stops.
- Phillip is coming up first.
It would be great to get some of the basics out of the way:
salt, pepper, oil.
That'll be a good way to go.
- All right, Phillip, you're first.
You have 20 seconds, and your time starts now.
- Go, go, go. - Go, go, go!
[cheers and applause]
- I'm gonna grab a protein that I want to cook,
and then I'm just going to adapt.
Whatever ingredient they give me, I'm just gonna use it.
- [laughs] - Two...
[laughs] Yes.
[laughter]
- Prime New York.
- New York. Okay, beef.
Isaac, your 20 seconds starts now.
[applause]
- Let's go, Toups.
- Six...
both: Five. - Yes!
- Four, three...
- [laughs] - A whole chicken.
We already have a solid protein.
Why are you choosing another protein?
- All right, so now we have beef and chicken.
Chad, you're next.
- Go, Chad. - Go, Chaddy.
[applause]
- Yes! - There you go.
- All right, jalapeño peppers.
- I cook with Latin flavors, and I want some spice,
so this was kind of an easy choice for me.
- All right, Jeremy?
[upbeat music]
- Someone's gotta do it, man. Gotta have salt.
Thank God. It's a staple.
[all cheering]
- [sighs]
[applause]
- Vinegar.
Olive oil.
- Whoo! - Get something good, baby!
- Yes.
- I picked garlic because it packs a lot of flavor
and it's pretty much the base of all of my cooking.
- Mushrooms. - Mushrooms.
- Only two ingredients left.
- We need to get some vegetables on this table
so we can, like, make a actual real dish.
- Okay, Carl.
- Don't fall. Lemon? Vegetables?
"Tomaters."
- Flavor country.
- Jason, you're the last one. Make it count.
- Banana.
- Celery?
- I'm a little bit annoyed with Jason
for choosing the celery and not giving us some herbs.
I don't understand him.
- Okay, chefs, you only have 20 minutes,
and your time starts now.
Good luck.
[energetic music]
- I actually like working with a limited pantry.
It reminds me of just, you know, cooking dinner
on a Tuesday night or something at home
where I have, like, five things in the fridge
and I have to make a dish.
It requires you to focus
and really concentrate on flavor and execution.
¶ ¶
- I'm going to make a roasted chicken breast
with a charred tomato vinaigrette.
When I started working for my old boss,
Charlie Palmer, he always judged the chefs of restaurants
by the way they make their chicken dish,
so I was always taught that, you know,
you have to make great chicken.
- I'm not even using the chicken.
The ingredients that have been chosen
are gonna go better with a New York strip.
I immediately want to go carpaccio.
Last week, I was in the bottom three
because my dish didn't make sense.
Today, it's all about making sure
that my flavors work well together.
- I don't really understand why Isaac chose chicken.
- [laughs]
- I feel like it was a waste. - Curveball.
- To throw you off, Marjorie.
I'm messing with your brain, man.
- Isaac is amazing,
but I think, as the competition goes on,
we're gonna be required to have
a little bit more refinement in our cooking,
and I don't know how he's gonna do with that.
- Stop judging me!
[funky music]
- I'm feeling good about the ingredients.
The time is another story.
- Where the celery?
- It's in here. - Thank you.
I love using celery.
You can cook with it.
You can use it raw.
You can use the leaves as kind of this herbaceous element.
I think there is a little bit of head-scratching,
but I'll bet you everybody is going to end up
using celery in their dish.
- How you doing, Jeremy?
- Doing good, brother. How are you?
- Pretty good.
- I'm gonna take this New York strip,
slice it on the slicer, and give it a tataki feel.
Slightly warm it, it breaks down the meat
just enough to melt on your tongue.
- The chicken was the best idea, right, Jeremy?
- What's that, brother?
- Jeremy has a raw dish again.
I mean, let's go back.
Crudo, ceviche,
and then the Quickfire Challenge,
not cooking his beef.
I can't wait to see him in the kitchen cooking something
and see what happens.
Ha-ha!
- 15 minutes left, guys.
[upbeat music]
- You have garlic over there?
- Yes. How much you need?
- Just one more. Awesome.
- I want to take a few ingredients
and show 'em off in a few different ways.
I'm gonna do a confit tomato
and then I'm gonna cook garlic down with the tomato,
and then I'm just gonna show off
a really nicely cooked piece of beef.
- Can I have one tomato?
- No, I need these three.
- Sháá.
Can I have one tomato? - No.
- Everybody's stealing all the tomatoes.
- Is there no heirloom tomatoes?
- Unless he's making a pasta sauce
to feed 50 people,
he doesn't really need a basket of tomatoes.
I think Carl may be trying to do a little sabotage here.
You need all those?
Can I get one? - Take one.
- One? Thanks, brother.
- Five minutes, everyone.
- Five minutes.
- Hot lava, hot lava.
[dramatic music]
¶ ¶
- Five, four, three, two, one!
- Hands up, utensils down.
[timer beeping]
- Antonia just had a flashback.
She heard the timer go off,
and she just started clicking like this.
[laughter]
Kwame.
- Hi, how are you?
So today I made a fire-roasted chicken
with tomato sauce and celery.
- You picked garlic.
Were you worried that
you wouldn't have enough seasoning?
- I always have to cook with garlic.
- So you chose more for yourself than for the group?
- Yeah, for sure.
- Hi, there.
I did a little shaved mushroom salad,
a little shaved celery.
- I think the celery choice was really smart.
You can have it as a raw application.
The leaves are great as an herb--
'cause I know you guys didn't have any herbs to work with.
- Hi, Amar. - Hello, Padma.
I made a wood-roasted chicken breast
with roasted celery vinaigrette and a mushroom à la grecque.
- Well, I'm glad you used the mushrooms,
since you picked 'em.
- Yes, the flavor goes well
with chicken, poultry, or beef, so.
- Well done. Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Hi, Marjorie. - Hello, Padma.
I wanted to do an heirloom tomato salad
with seared rare steak, celery jalapeño vinaigrette.
- Nicely done, thank you.
- Thank you very much.
- Hi.
- So I did a grilled New York steak
with marinated mushroom.
I did the tomato seeds so it looks kind of like caviar.
- And you chose the jalapeño, right?
- I did.
I always like to cook with a little bit of heat.
- I think you needed more jalapeño.
Beef! - Beef.
[laughter] It's what's for dinner.
- You picked chicken.
- I had a change of heart last-minute.
- You are allowed to do that, sir.
- Thank you. - [laughs]
- I did a seared beef carpaccio,
shaved mushroom and jalapeños with concentrated tomato.
- I wish it just had more acid.
- You could've at least punched out the carpaccio,
just so it looked a little neater.
- I got the prime New York, and I wanted to do tartare.
I fire-roasted both jalapeño and garlic whole.
- Were you worried about doing a tartare
without any egg or pepper?
- I mean, I would've liked to have lemon.
I'd like to have egg.
I'd like to have a lot of things.
- I really love it.
I feel like there's this delicate, soft,
like, supple flavor to it.
It's really, really nice.
- Thank you so much, Chef.
- What did you make for us?
- Just did a shaved beef, not too thin,
so it gives it a little bit of a texture,
and then did a nice mushroom crispy garlic vinaigrette.
- The salt, I think, is beautifully used here.
Everything's seasoned really well.
- Thank you so much. - Thank you.
- I made a grilled steak salad with grilled and raw celery
and a jalapeño vinaigrette.
I would've loved some fresh herbs, but you know,
I wanted to think about what we have and not what we don't.
- For a salad, it's heavy on meat.
Hi, Carl.
- I roasted the New York strip in a pan,
confit tomato, some grilled jalapeño
with raw jalapeño on top.
- You chose the tomato?
- Yeah.
- For me, I think the ratio of the steak to the tomato
is just a little off. I'm getting a lot more tomato.
- Mm-hmm.
Thank you. - Thank you.
[dramatic music]
- Antonia, how do you think our chefs did in this challenge?
- It was really interesting to see,
with the same ten ingredients,
how varied each of your dishes were,
and I thought that was the most impressive.
- Who were some of our least favorites?
- Isaac.
The dish wasn't very pretty.
Just--it was very underwhelming.
Karen, I felt that the flavors of the dish
were really quite beautiful.
There was just no focus to the dish.
- So now for some good news. - Phew.
- Whose are your favorite dishes of the day?
- [laughs]
Jeremy.
Carpaccio, it's been done so many times.
I love that you just kind of warmed the top
to change the texture.
- Thank you so much.
- Amar, you had this really beautiful heirloom tomato puree.
Just showed such finesse and technique.
- Thank you.
- Okay, Antonia, who had our winning dish?
[dramatic music]
- The chef that had the winning dish was the chef
that realized the ingredients and really stood out.
¶ ¶
Jeremy. - Oh, God!
[applause]
First immunity. [laughs]
I've never won immunity, and I think the best part about it
is that I know that I can go all-out tomorrow
and do whatever I want.
I'm not going home, so I think I'm getting
a little buzz on tonight.
- All right, well, if you guys think ten ingredients are tough,
try thinking back ten years.
[dramatic music]
¶ ¶
Ten years ago this year,
the very first season of "Top Chef" was premiering.
MySpace was the top website worldwide...
[laughter]
- And Tom Cruise married Katie Holmes.
[laughter]
- A lot has changed since then.
- Oh, Tom Cruise.
- [laughs]
The picture on my MySpace page was pretty hilarious.
I was with this band called Dead Breed Dying.
I definitely miss doing the old, you know, hair-whip,
you know, for the ladies.
- For this challenge, we want you to create a dish
that tells us where you were ten years ago.
Service will take place
right here in the "Top Chef" kitchen.
- Yes.
- The most beautiful challenges that I had
on "Top Chef" were the most personal ones,
and if you can pull from those memories and experiences
and have that translate into a dish,
it'll be amazing.
[upbeat rock music]
- I think the crazy one about this one is you have to...
- Dig deep. - Take a really good hard look
at, like, who you really were ten years ago.
- So what were you guys doing ten years ago?
I don't know what dish to make
because ten years ago, I was just starting high school.
It was the beginning of my father and I's relationship
starting to deteriorate.
It's not really a memory that I try to go back to.
I don't really even talk about it much.
He was really strict and I was,
like, a fun--kind of like a creative spirit
even at that young age.
I guess it was harder to deal with, like,
a teenager at the time,
and I guess it was difficult for him to be a father.
My relationship never really reconciled.
- It's a very sentimental freaking challenge.
- Yeah, this is bringing it home right here.
¶ ¶
- No running.
- Ten years ago, I had just graduated culinary school.
It's when I actually met Mike Isabella
and worked with him at Washington Square.
I was nervous all the time.
I was very green.
Can I look at that piece right there?
So I am making green curry with seared halibut
and green spring vegetables.
Curry can be very chaotic in the beginning
and then kind of comes together in the end.
I feel like this really emulates
who I was ten years ago.
Why can't I do the alphabet? - [laughs]
- 17 minutes.
- Find what you need?
- Really happy. - Good.
- You know, ten years ago, I had just taken
my first management job,
and I was, like, way over-intense.
So, it's a little bit of a weird place
to think back on that time
'cause it's definitely not who I am right now.
It was kind of a weird transitional time in my life.
At Cafe Juanita, we had a signature trout dish.
It was one of the most difficult dishes to cook
in the whole restaurant.
I was turning into this crazy raging bitch
who yelled at everybody,
expecting perfection, and I realized
you don't need to be an assáááá to everybody.
So this was kind of that point of renewal
where I kind of started to find my own voice.
- There's no lemongrass.
Lemongrass is one of the most important ingredients
in a green curry.
I grab some lemons.
I also find some green curry paste.
I feel like I can get a little bit of the lemongrass flavor.
I hope it works.
- Thank you.
[mellow music]
- Ha-ha!
Ah, this feels good, dude. - I missed this view.
- Yeah, this feels good. - Whoo, y'all!
- Look at that cute little grill.
- We get back to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel,
and weirdly enough,
it definitely feels like coming home.
- Guys! Food's ready, dudes.
- Everything is up for grabs.
- Ten years ago, I was wildly in love with my girlfriend.
I was wildly in love with, like, making pasta.
- You know, pasta's like that feeling of, like--
it's very emotional.
- My entire goal in the world was to go to Italy...
- Yeah. - And live there.
We lived in a shááty apartment.
We couldn't afford to turn on the heat in the winters.
I had pots of water boiling so that the kitchen would be warm
because we were so cold...
- Right, yeah. That's awesome.
- And I, like, would make orecchiette for everything.
- Nice. - So, we'll see.
So, uh, Carl, what did you think
about this burger that Kwame made?
- Mm, I think for everyone's first time here on the roof,
it was, uh, it was pretty good-- pretty good.
[laughter]
Yeah.
- I quit drinking a year and a half ago.
I was 75 pounds heavier than I am now.
The things that were important in my life
were shadowed by me drinking quite a bit.
Since then, I'm completely refocused.
I now feel the most important thing for me is my family.
Ten years ago, if you asked me why you wanted
to win "Top Chef," I would have said,
"I want to win it for me,"
but now, I want to win it for my family.
- They want us to cook food that make the judges happy.
- We don't look for anything in particular.
- The kid is slightly delusional.
- Wake up, bro.
¶ ¶
- What up, dog. - You guys feeling good?
You ready to roll? - Right, brother.
- Got the beard in there. - [laughs]
- "Top Chef" feature!
- I've always been a little bit of an odd guy.
I'm not afraid to wear bright red shoes
and clashing patterns,
so it's never been my interest to fit in.
- We threw up some wings. Had some ice cream.
- Yeah, that's so good. - Yeah, bro.
- But there are definitely some big personalities,
and I find myself being quiet.
It's strange
because that's definitely not how people would describe me.
- One, two, three... all: Kick some ass!
[upbeat music]
¶ ¶
- Today, we need to come up with a dish
that represents who we were ten years ago.
Yo, yo, yo.
Cooking in front of all the judges.
They're watching you cook.
They're watching your cleanliness.
They're watching everything you do.
It's gonna be scary.
- Dominican twist, baby. - Whoo, whoo, whoo.
- There you go.
- The best food you're probably ever gonna cook
is gonna be doing something from the heart, you know?
- Yeah.
- I'm making king salmon with lobster ravioli.
My mom was adopted, and ten years ago, she was curious
about finding her real mother, and we took a journey
all the way across the United States to California.
My grandma was Italian, and we made pasta at her house.
Dude, this is why I love food.
This is where it came from.
I'm taking this one home for Mom.
¶ ¶
- Something about hacking through a spine
just makes my day.
Hurricane Katrina,
something I really never want to experience again.
Come away a lot more appreciative
of just everything in life.
Life's fine. Get the duck seared.
We all evacuated
to my mother and father's house.
Cajun country.
So how do you feed 30 Cajuns?
Well, you make these big pots of gumbo.
So I'm making this gumbo with jalapeno sausage,
duck cracklings, and crispy rice cake.
¶ ¶
Marjorie, how you doing? - Good.
How you doing, Isaac? - Can't complain.
- At this point, I'm making my curry,
and I still just don't have any lemongrass,
and I'm trying to figure out what to do.
I grill two lemons and then put it in a paste.
Oh, grilled lemon has a striking resemblance to lemongrass.
This is awesome.
I mean, ten years ago, I probably would have just cried
if I couldn't find lemongrass.
- It smells delicious.
¶ ¶
- Carl, tell me a little about your story.
- This is really sort of, like, an old-school French dish.
I'm sort of approaching it the way anybody would in France.
Just working with the ingredients
they have around them.
Ten years ago, I walked into Craigie Street Bistro
wearing a pair of flip-flops and shorts
and somehow convinced Tony Maws
that I should get a chance to work in his kitchen.
He said, "You have a lot of potential,
"and I'm gonna kick your ass,
and I'm gonna point you in the right direction."
He took a huge chance on me. I'm forever grateful.
[exhales sharply]
I'm gonna be making a ragout of Burgundy snails,
some spring vegetables, and a farm fresh egg.
First time I had a snail, I was just, like, blown away.
Like, this is so funky.
I just fell in love with the product immediately.
[tense music]
- Being at this halfway point,
do you feel differently than you did in the beginning, Chad?
- I'm reconnecting with who I was
when I was cooking all the time.
- Yeah.
- It feels a bit like the military.
Ten years ago, I was just ending my career in the Navy.
I was a cook.
I joined the Navy on 9/11.
War changes people. - Yeah.
- You see things that you don't want to see.
- Yeah.
- So after I was honorably discharged,
I went and stayed with my grandfather
on the beach in San Felipe.
I tasted fresh ceviche.
It was different than any ceviche I'd ever had before,
and it inspired me about food.
That's the dish that I want to make today.
[upbeat music]
¶ ¶
- It's nice to find fresh bay leaves.
- Yeah, I got some too.
- Poaching fish is a very delicate process.
You can maintain a lot of moisture
and flavor in the trout,
so it has to be perfect.
- One hour, four minutes.
¶ ¶
- Hey, chefs.
- Michael Voltaggio, he's a real bad mamma jamma.
Very highly regarded here in Los Angeles,
and he's the winner of "Top Chef" six.
So he's gonna know exactly what we're going through.
So let's go impress the badass.
- Phillip, hey. - How's it going, Chef?
- I'm good. How you doing?
- I'm fantastic. - Hey, Phillip, how are you?
- How are you? - Good to see you.
- Ten years ago, I was dating a Peruvian girl.
Her grandmother taught me their family's ceviche.
- And now, "Top Chef." - Now "Top Chef."
- How's that going for you? - I'm still here.
We're down to ten.
I thought that I was gonna come in here
and just do my food my way,
and on "Top Chef," they want us
to cook food to make the judges happy.
- I really do feel that the kid is slightly delusional.
Sometimes he just needs to shut up.
- Really learning the palates and, you know, kind of,
uh, like, navigating that,
I think has been what I've kind of taken the most.
- We don't look for anything in particular.
- I think for me it wasn't about food that they wanted to see.
It was about cooking good food. - Yes.
- And that's really what it comes down to.
- I'm looking for a good dish. - Absolutely.
- All right, good luck. - Thank you, guys.
Thank you, Chef. - Amar, what's going on?
- What's happening, Chef? - You guys know each other.
Right? - Yes, we do.
- I actually met Amar ten years ago.
- Ten years ago? - That's a coincidence.
- So, he was working with Charlie Palmer in New York.
- Got it.
So ten years ago you were making lobster.
- Ten years ago, when I was a line cook,
I started working at Aureole.
I was working for Chef Gerry Hayden.
He's very sick right now, with ALS.
So this was his dish.
This lobster dish on the menu
that everybody took when they left.
So this is an homage to him.
It's a devastating disease, and to see such a talented chef
like Gerry sick like that is very sad.
I wanna show him that I still remember this dish,
and I appreciate everything he did for me
when I started cooking.
- He was ahead of his time. - He was.
- I was at his place a couple months back,
he's in his chair, and the chef is, literally,
bringing dishes out for him to taste.
- Yeah. - He's still working.
- It was--I mean, great mentor.
- Yeah, anyway...
Now you got me all...
- I'm, like, the same way too.
Saying his name and, you know, doing this dish, actually,
is, like, very sentimental to me.
- Good luck. - All right, Chef.
¶ ¶
- All right, chefs, good luck.
See you later. - Thanks, Chef.
- Bye, guys. all: Bye, Chef.
¶ ¶
- I wonder what my dad's gonna say when he sees this.
I haven't spoken to him in, like, eight years probably.
- That long? - Yeah.
The inspiration for this dish comes from
the places that my dad and I would go to eat at.
He's half Jamaican,
so he would take me to Jamaican jerk chicken shacks.
When you think of jerk, you automatically think of chicken,
but I wanted to do something different,
so I chose broccoli.
That's my twist. Broccoli and jerk seasoning.
This tastes excellent.
It's, uh, really bringing me back home.
The only thing giving me trouble is having to think
about a memory that wasn't really
the happiest point in my life all day.
Images are popping back up that
I don't really need right now in this competition.
¶ ¶
- That's good. She'll be proud, dude.
Killing it. - [hisses]
Fááá.
[tense music]
- Is it bad? - Uh...
If I peel this back. Ooh.
My head isn't really in the game.
I'm slicing my fingers.
Like, what am I doing?
[sighs]
- Holy moly. [sighs]
- This is just confusing the hell out of me.
You would have gotten yelled at for this.
Bit of a let-down.
¶ ¶
- No way. Zach Pollack?
- They look all busy at work.
- They do, right?
- Nice.
Hi, what're you doing?
- Doing a ceviche mixto.
For this challenge, we're gonna do a chef's table for ten
right here in the "Top Chef" kitchen.
- Sit.
- You have a pretty powerful table of Los Angeles chefs here.
There's Nancy Silverton, and Zach Pollack from Alimento,
and Michael Voltaggio.
Every single diner at this table
is a very talented and experienced chef.
- Well, I want to welcome everyone here.
Cheers. To ten years.
- I can't believe that ten years ago
I sat down next to you, Tom,
and we're still here.
- Yeah.
[laughter]
[dramatic rock music]
¶ ¶
[timer beeping]
- Antonia just had a flashback.
She heard the timer go off and she just started...
- [laughs] - Clicking like this.
¶ ¶
- Marjorie, can you tell us about your dish?
- I made seared halibut
with grilled and roasted vegetables.
A green curry sauce.
When I was 20 years old,
t was a very green point in my career, if you will.
- What goes into your curry paste?
- Cilantro.
They were out of lemongrass,
so I grilled some lemons to try to bring
a little bit of that lemongrass oil flavor to it.
- I think it was cool that you were able to adapt
and make something happen.
- Whatever you've gone through for the past ten years,
you've made some of the right decisions
because I think it was delicious.
- Thank you. Thank you very much.
- I love your vegetable work.
It almost makes me question whether or not
you actually needed fish.
That's how good the vegetables are.
- Thank you. Appreciate that.
- Chad, what did you make for us?
- So, today, I have a shrimp ceviche
with tomato concasse,
shrimp cracker, pickled serano,
olive, and caper.
Ten years ago, I just recently
had gotten out of the military,
and went to visit my grandfather in San Felipe.
One of the things that really stood out to me
was how fresh the seafood was in the ceviches.
- Just the sharpness of the radish
really did it for me.
- Thank you so much.
- Clearly not the same type of dish
you ate ten years ago...
- Absolutely not.
- But it shows a lot of maturity.
- Thank you.
- I think this is a great start to today.
Thank you both. That'll be all.
- It was very nice to meet you all.
Thank you.
¶ ¶
- The trout was a little under-seasoned
when I started to plate it.
Ultimately, the finishing salt,
it's just not something I ever do,
but I hope the judges really love my dish.
- The very first challenge that we ever did was
that they all had to cook us their signature dish.
- What was the budget ten years ago, like--
- It was $20. - Oh.
- $20...period. - No, that's total.
- [laughs]
I always love, like, the early "Top Chef" stories.
Everyone's like, "Yeah, back when I was in 'Top Chef,'
I had to walk through the snow."
[laughter]
[tense music]
¶ ¶
- Isaac, can you tell us about your dish, please?
- We have duck gumbo
with roasted jalapeño andouille sausage,
crispy rice cake, and duck cracklings.
Ten years ago, we were completely wrecked
by Hurricane Katrina.
So, all of a sudden, you have 20, 30 Cajuns,
and you have to feed everyone.
- It's really delicious.
I would love a big pot on the stove.
- Yeah.
- 'Cause it's such a communal feel-good meal.
- Thank you.
- The sausage was done really well.
The casing, for me, was too tough.
- All things considered, really, really good.
- Jason.
- This is a poached trout
with toasted beets, a spring vegetable salad
with a goat milk vinaigrette.
When I went to Cafe Juanita as a garde manger cook,
poaching trout's kind of a technically difficult
thing to do, and I thought that yelling at people
for not nailing the trout was the way to go.
I kind of woke up, and from that point on,
I've been a much calmer person.
- I was stoked that you perfectly poached
a piece of fish,
but then it sort of stopped right there.
- I also found the dish to be really under-seasoned.
- It just-- it doesn't quite deliver
the promise of the concept.
- So it's a bit of a let-down.
So if you were garde manger, and the sous chef--
- I would--
- You would have gotten yelled at for this.
- I would have been chewed out, for sure.
- Thank you both.
[electronic music]
- Five, four, three, two...
Let's go.
- Thank you.
- Tell us what you made.
- Today, I made orecchiette
with pork ragu and broccoli rabe.
Ten years ago, I had been a line cook
for about a year and a half.
I was making pasta,
and it was really life-changing for me.
- I would have chopped up the radicchio,
rather than having it on the side.
- I'm getting a lot of fennel sweetness from fennel in here,
and that's why I think the bitter is
a great counterpart to it; I like it.
- Thank you, Chef.
- All the elements are here,
but you have to find a better relationship
between your noodle and your sauce.
You gotta go to, um, a marriage counselor.
[laughter]
- Hi, Amar.
Tell us about your dish.
- It's a butter-poached lobster
with a sautéed bok choy, tapioca coconut curry,
and tempura onion ring.
This dish kind of takes me back,
when I started working in New York City.
Kind of very sentimental to me
'cause the chef that I learned this from,
he's very sick right now with ALS.
- We were talking about Gerry. He's a talented chef.
He used to push boundaries.
He used to put flavors together that didn't really make sense,
but it always worked; everything was delicious.
- Thank you.
- And I thought that it definitely
was spot-on with your story.
- This lobster's cooked excellently.
Bold choice to cook a lobster tail
under the duress of competition, and I think you did that.
- Thank you. - Thank you so much.
- Thank you. - This dish means so much to me.
I think the judges could taste that.
I know that Gerry will be proud.
¶ ¶
- That looks tight. - Thank you.
Yours too.
¶ ¶
- Hi, Carl. - Hi.
- Tell us about your dish.
- So today I did a fricassee
of some California vegetables,
Burgundy snail with saucisson sec in there.
So, ten years ago, just graduating culinary school.
I was very interested in contemporary cuisine,
and got to travel in France a little bit.
I mean, the first time I had snails, I was like,
"Wow, this is so cool."
It's, like, a funky ingredient
that I was never exposed to before,
so it's something I wanted to show off.
- Everything was cooked really well and seasoned really well.
I love the puree of the spring garlic.
I think it was beautiful.
- This dish makes me smile so much.
I can't stop staring at it.
I can't stop thinking about it. - Thank you.
- Phillip, tell us about your dish.
- This is a ceviche mixto.
It's very lime-driven.
There is tiger shrimp, halibut, razor clams,
squid, which has been pressure cooked.
It's inspired by-- about ten years ago,
I was dating a girl from Peru,
and while we were staying with her family,
her grandmother taught me how to make their family ceviche.
- It lacked the brightness
that I always think that a ceviche has.
- I would have all this deliciousness,
and then I would finish with this kind of
not-so-fresh fish taste.
- Every single piece that I did,
I would slice it and take a bite of every single one,
but thank you.
- I think you kind of shot yourself in the foot
with the plating because
I actually mixed all of the ingredients together,
and that's when it had the perfect amount of,
like, seasoning and a little bit more acid.
- I'm definitely getting frustrated.
I'm a very acidic cook.
I love acid. I love salt.
I mean, it's like I can do no right with these guys.
- Thank you, gentlemen. - Thank you for the feedback.
- That'll be all. - Thank you.
¶ ¶
- [sighs]
Holy moly.
- This fáááing hand busted open, dude.
- Yours? - Yeah.
It's pretty much the worst plate I've ever plated up in my life.
It's a direct correlation of the memories that I was having.
It showed on the dish.
- Let's start with Jeremy.
- I did a lobster ravioli.
My mom was trying to find her real mom--she was adopted.
When we found her, finally,
she was this Italian lady, and she loved pasta.
We hung out with her for the first time
and she-- we made raviolis together.
- The salmon is unnecessary,
even though it's really well cooked.
- When does lobster have to do with salmon?
I think the lobster on its own without the salmon
may have made some sense here.
- Jeremy, it's a good thing you have immunity.
Kwame.
- So I have jerk broccoli
with corn bread pudding and smokey blue.
Ten years ago, this is when
me and my father's relationship really started to crumble.
I haven't really spoken to him since then,
but the last memories I do have being with him
is always going to the jerk chicken shack.
[tense slow music]
- Kwame, this is just confusing the hell out of me.
- We eat with our eyes, right?
And so it has to look visually appealing.
- The pudding itself kind of reminds me
of a very mushy oatmeal versus a pudding.
- It's not my best work.
- I could see it as a vegetarian riff off of shrimp and grits.
Where you have this highly spiced broccoli,
and it's just kind of missing, maybe, the broth.
- You definitely have an emotional connection with food,
and I think that, in this case,
a little bit too much of your emotion
got in the way of your cooking skills.
- Guys, this is not your best effort at all.
I mean, the two of you guys have been crushing it this season,
and these two dishes confuse the hell out of me.
- We'll see you later.
- Thank you.
- There's a lot of space for creativity here.
Maybe that's the problem. Maybe there's too much space.
- I think a lot of them were able to express
how far they've come... - Mm-hmm.
- And some of them got caught up in the story
and weren't able to really show us their food.
- And we really have to get to the judges' table.
Thank you so much.
[dramatic music]
- Bye. Good seeing you.
[suspenseful music]
¶ ¶
- How's everybody feeling right now?
- Not good.
- I was plating up my last components,
and my finger caught, and my Band-Aid came off,
so half my nail was hanging off.
- So you didn't nail it. - No, I didn't.
It nailed me.
[laughter]
- Nailed it.
[tense music]
¶ ¶
- Chefs, we asked you to take a look back ten years ago
and tell us who you were then in a dish.
- I'm not sure if the challenge got in some people's heads.
Usually, at this point in the competition,
where we get down to about ten, people start going home
for making good dishes.
Tonight, someone's going home for a bad dish.
¶ ¶
- Marjorie,
Chad,
and Carl.
The three of you had our...
favorite dishes today.
- Nice. Good job.
[laughs] Cook-off.
- Congratulations.
Chad,
we've had tons of ceviche from a lot of you.
I thought it was beautifully seasoned.
Incredibly fresh.
There was so much acidity and brightness in it,
and that's what you're really looking for in a great ceviche.
- Thank you. - Marjorie.
It comes down to what you put on the plate,
and I thought that was very solid--the technical execution,
but the flavor of the food, it was delicious.
- Thank you.
- Marjorie, I love hearing the story
about how you wanted to use green
because you felt ten years ago you were very green as a cook.
If you were doing that dish now, what color would it be?
- [chuckles] It'd still be pretty green.
[laughs]
I think I was green as a cook ten years ago,
and now I'm green as a chef.
- With the exception of the color of that dish,
there was nothing green about it as a cook or a chef.
- Thank you. Thank you very much.
- Carl, I liked the dish a lot.
If you were doing that ten years ago,
I hope you haven't changed much. - Thank you, Chef.
- Every vegetable was cooked beautifully.
I just loved how refreshing it was
to just eat classic, timeless French cooking.
- Great, thank you.
[dramatic music]
- Michael?
- The person that embraced the challenge,
and honestly, just cooked for us
the best plate of food today was...
¶ ¶
Marjorie. You're not so green anymore.
- Aww. - Congratulations.
[applause] - Thank you.
That's awesome. - Great.
- Having my second win in the competition, it feels great.
Most people haven't even won one.
Looking back in ten years, being that line cook
who would cry when something went wrong
to being on "Top Chef" and winning this challenge today,
I'm very clearly not that green cook anymore.
- Now we'd like to see
Kwame, Phillip, and Jason.
[foreboding music]
¶ ¶
Kwame, what do you think went wrong?
- I thought about where I was ten years ago,
and it wasn't really a good place,
so I tried to bring back a good memory out of the bad memories,
and it showed on my plate.
- You created a bigger challenge for yourself,
and you just didn't get through it.
I just wish that I could have seen more of the good stuff.
- I wish you could have too.
- Phillip.
- Ten years ago, this is what was going on in my life.
I really wanted to embrace that
and give everybody a great ceviche.
- The whole dish to me was just a little bit underwhelming,
and the sweet potato puree
overpowered any acid that there was on the dish.
- I know that this panel really likes
a little bit more spicy.
- So you're trying to figure out what we're looking for,
and you're gonna make a little change here
and you figure out what this one wants--"Oh, they want spicy,
I'll give them spicy. They want this, give 'em that."
We don't want any of that. We just want good food up here.
- The best I've done so far in this competition was
in the beginning when there was no preconceived notion.
- Maybe you should go back to your roots a little bit.
- That would make me feel much more comfortable.
- Jason?
- Obviously the question of seasoning is huge
and kind of unforgivable.
- The components just didn't come together.
I would have never in a million years
thought this was your dish.
I get that it was ten years ago,
so you were cooking in a different place,
but I was still expecting to see the you of now
giving us inspiration from ten years ago.
- Jason, what's going on?
You seem to be really tight.
It almost seems like there's no joy in it for you right now.
Like, what's going on?
¶ ¶
- Jason, you seem to be really tight.
Your food, there's no joy in it for you right now.
Like, what's going on?
- I think it's just something
that I just need to have more courage.
I feel like I actually haven't really been myself.
Two months before this competition,
I left my restaurant
because I was coming to this point
where I felt like things were changing
and I wasn't finding that joy that I was anymore.
- We do sacrifice a lot,
and maybe that's what you're going through right now.
Trying to figure out what is worth it.
I get it.
It's a tough place to be.
I think often we go back to our past
to see who we're gonna be
and how we're gonna sort of deal with the future.
I think too often we forget about
the emotional side of cooking,
and it's this macho experience that we go in there
and there's knives and fire and stuff like that,
and we kind of forget that, deep down inside,
we are all a little fragile.
¶ ¶
- Jason...
please pack your knives and go.
[somber music]
¶ ¶
- Thanks very much. - Thank you, Jason.
- I know. - Thank you, Chef.
- It's hard when you just make an elemental error.
I would definitely chew out one of my cooks
if they seasoned food the way that I seasoned 'em today.
I've always believed, but this show has taught me
even more than that is that, we're constantly in flux.
We're constantly moving from one place to another.
I definitely feel like I'm in that period of transition.
I think people are sometimes afraid of change,
but it really has showed me that,
you know, change can be exciting.
I've overcome some big stuff in my life,
and my journey to become a chef
was definitely one where it was a lot of learning.
It was a lot of mistakes,
but usually, that hard experience makes you
a much more vibrant, vivid, interesting person.
¶ ¶
- Tonight on "Last Chance Kitchen,"
can Jason find the courage to create a winning dish?
- Kind of freaking out. [chuckles]
- Or will he crack under the pressure?
- Jason is shaking.
- Who do you think you're up against?
- Ah-ha-ha!
- Watch now on bravotv.com.
Next on "Top Chef"...
- What's up, bros? [laughter]
- We will not be judging your dishes.
The Instagram public will be. - [sighs]
- Wow. - Easy Cheese.
- I gotta make sure it looks good on camera.
- This is beef steak.
- Now that's a fire.
- You're sure you don't want to do beef, huh?
- Yeah. - Come on, let's get nuts.
- If anyone's gonna excel at this challenge,
it's gonna be Isaac.
That is very dainty.
- No! - A lot of protein.
- No, you just--come on. - Oh, my God.
He did it. Judges' table.
- To learn more about the chefs, go to bravotv.com.