Top Chef New York: Le Bernadin (Or, Something Fishy This Way Comes)

Top Chef: New York
Episode: Le Bernadin (Or, Something Fishy This Way Comes)
February 4, 2009

Previously on Top Chef: Corporate synergy abounded, we celebrated Superbowl Sunday, late summer-style. Everyone stood around as they cooked to the tunes of Hall & Oates. Afterward, Cheftestants Of Seasons Past appeared to challenge the remaining contestants in NFL-related face-offs. Stefan was a total schmuck, picked a challenger he thought would be an easy mark and went down hard. Carla won the challenge and tickets to the Superbowl. Stefan, Fabio and Jeff ended up on the losing end of things. And after a serious assessment of how telegenic they each are their dishes, Jeff was sent packing.

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It's morning at Casa Cuisine. And after the requisite last-time-almost-loser footage (Chef Stefan {"the one with the translucent eyebrows"} ruminating on how he unexpectedly was in the bottom three and Chef Fabio {"the one who will be fan favorite"} holding the crappy cellphone up to the cameras), we move directly to ...

Quickfire Challenge

The chefs arrive in Logoland™ for the challenge and are met by Padma and renowned French accent, Chef Eric Ripert. He also knows a thing or two about sea kittens fish, it would seem. And for their challenge, the chefs will be tested on precision and speed with a three-round fish filleting tournament.

Round 1: Sardine. Sardines are small and delicate. And, as such, are hard to fillet, so this should be a tough one. Chef Eric had already prepared one for comparison. The cheftestants will have to fillet two others in five minutes. Go!

Most everyone freaks. Chef Hosea ("the one who doesn't know the meaning of 'flirting'"), who will never stop talking about how he works in a seafood restaurant, says he's never worked with sardines before. Chef Leah ("the one who's seen Hosea's tonsils up close"), who we've seen wrestle with fish constantly, says she wants to redeem herself, but spends  the five minutes cursing at her fish instead.

Time!

Chef Carla ("the one who cooks though her third eye") massacred her fishy and is wholly disgusted with how she did. This causes her to adopt a severe accent for some reason. Chef Jamie ("the one who would rather be working with scallops"), who has also never cleaned a sardine, has made a fishy mess of things.

Fabio reveals that as an infant, instead of a security blanket, he was given a fillet knife and a bucket of sardines to gut and clean. So, naturally, he has some experience with this.

Chef Eric calls out the two tops at this as Fabio and, surprisingly, Leah. The bottom two who are eliminated from the challenge are, not surprisingly, Carla and Jamie.

Round 2: Arctic Char. They have five minutes to fillet the fish. Go!

Everyone starts cutting and, for some reason, Leah freaks out mid-challenge. And she just just gives up.

Time!

Leah is cavalier about her surrender. Stefan is dickish about how he did. Fabio did well, but wasted a lot of fish. And seafood Hosea is judged to have done a great job.

The tops: Hosea and Stefan. Out of the challenge: Fabio and Surrender Sally.

Round 3: EEL! It's a shocker (though it's probably not an electric eel). Still, even though the fish has been killed already, the creature's nervous system is such that it still twitches, writhes and even gapes at the cameras after it's dead. This, in addition to being kind of gross, should make things tough for the skinheaded rivals.

After the two blow kisses at each other, they tell us how they feel about this. Hosea notes that there are no eels in Colorado. Stefan who has gone from being Finnish, to Californian, to French, to Czech, to Austrian, to Malamute ... is now German. And in Germany children grow up butchering eels in their playpens. So, this should be a breeze for him.

As such, Stefan Of The U.N. instantly knows to secure the critter by (literally) nailing it's head to the cutting board and then ripping its skin off. Hosea, who has been wrestling with his snake (and working with his eel) cribs Stefan's technique, grabs a hammer and does the same thing.

At this point, I'm pretty sure the vegan viewership has dropped to zero.

Hosea makes a valiant effort, but Stefan is so dominating this one that he even takes time out to (prickishly) clean off his work station.

Time!

Yeah, you know how this one is gonna end. Both fillets are great, but Stefan wins for having a cleaner work station.

Everyone groans that Stefan Of The Intergalactic Council has won yet another one.

And here the chefs get a "surprise." They will all get to have lunch with The Great French Fish Chef at his award-winning restaurant, Le Bernadin. This, of course, will have nothing at all to do with the expected upcoming elimination challenge.

Fakeout time! In this week's "please stop for a moment to enjoy a commercial that's not included within the show itself" scene, Stefan leads the cheftestants back at the suite through a mock Quickfire. The chefs offer a hysterical impression of the judging and (tellingly) the most entertaining moment of the episode. Fakeout over!

After Stefan shows off his package for the cameras back at the suite, everyone arrives at Le Bernadin for their lunch which will have nothing at all to do with the expected upcoming elimination challenge. Hosea helpfully explains to us that the restaurant's calling card is food that looks very simple, but is actually quite complicated.

(Since, to me, microwave pizza is complicated, I'll take his word on this one.)

The six chefs will just coincidentally be tasting six different fish dishes. The dishes are served one by one. Everyone (except Jamie, who obviously wanted scallops) is impressed. Leah is most impressed and now wants to mount Chef Eric (now that her "flirting" with Hosea has run its course).

Tom thinks the food is "awesome." And Carla, age 44, wants to be one of Chef Eric's dishes when she grows up. (Since we're both 44 and still speculating on what we wanna be when we grow up, I choose "Hugh Jackman's trousers.")

And for the seventh course (wink, wink), we have ... The Knife Block Of Doom!

Betcha didn't see that one comin'.

Elimination Challenge

It's simple. Since they should have all been paying attention, they should have realized what was coming. They each will have to recreate one of the six fancy fish dishes they just sampled. (Clearly, this is one of those "it's a lot harder than it looks" things.)

And since Stefan won the Quickfire, he gets to choose which one he wants.

He surprises no one by picking the lobster dish, since he loves cooking lobster and thinks it's one of his specialties (along with seducing lesbians and being able to make seventeendifferentwordssoundlikeonehugethingthatneedssubtitles).

Without getting into the details of each dish, the pairings are ...

• Stefan: Lobster

• Carla: Escolar

• Hosea: Monkfish

• Leah: Mahi-Mahi

• Fabio: Red Snapper

• Jamie: Black Bass

Of the, chefs, Jamie is most bummed out since she didn't care for the food in the first place and ended up with the dish she liked the least. She mutters something about not understanding braised celery, as if it was Ulysses.

The chefs head back to the Le Bernadin kitchen for their two hours of testing and prep work. Here, they will have to experiment with the supplied ingredients to discern exactly how to put the dishes together.

Carla, who has the escolar, is nervous because she's never oil-poached a fish before. And Jamie gets to play Flat-Affect Annie this week, since she hasn't a clue about how to braise celery or make a sauce out of ham.

Suddenly, Leah blurts out that at her last restaurant she was the lead fish cook and that she's super-duper confident around fish. It was just a total fluke that she surrendered to the char in the last challenge and made a total mess of fish in two previous challenges. (I imagine it was all that sexual tension with Hosea that was inhibiting her boning skills before.)

Hosea's challenge is that he has to work with some unfamiliar spice called "za'tar." This should prove difficult because, in addition to being rare, the spice has the peculiar flavor of apostrophes.

And Fabio's issue with his snapper is that he's up against the centuries-old conflict between the Italians and the French which dates back to the Italian Wars of 1494. (Who knew that was all about the delicate flavors of marine life?)

Elsewhere, Leah's next issue is figuring out her miso. Since the flavor is way too "schtrong," she decides to cut it with butter. (This, apparently, was not the right choice. ... Like I'd know this.)

Chef Eric arrives to Tim Gunn up the place. He advises Stefan that the asparagus should not be cooked. He tells Leah her miso is too oily and intense. She humps his leg anyway.

Carla seems to be doing well. And Eric feels that Hosea still has too many zithers on his fish. (Or something like that.)

And, in a scene that in no way is indicative of the eventual outcome,  there wasn't time for Eric to taste Jamie's dish.

The judges arrive for their meal. Padma, Tom, Chef Eric and, of course, Mr. Snippy Strained Simile.

Service!

Up first, Fabio and his sourdough crusted red snapper. It's judged to be reasonably close to the original.

Second is Leah's mahi-mahi. She has trouble with how well her fish is cooked. And when she serves it the miso is way off. As for the fish itself, Judgey McRazorburn makes some comment about Leah's tasting like some random fish he's had on holiday in the Caribbean.

Next is Stefan and his Icoulddothisinmysleep lobster. It's ruled to be just about a perfect match, the only difference being that Stefan's hand-whipped sauce is thicker than the blenderized original.

Carla's escolar with potato chips follows and she's having timing issues with her chips. Everyone helps Carla out in plating, which is really very nice. And not only because it spares us the cliché moment where someone has to say, "This is a competition. I didn't come here to make friends."

Once it's served, it's deemed probably the most difficult dish to recreate and she's seen as having done a remarkable job with it.

Hosea, who works in a seafood restaurant, is afraid he's off with his monkfish. And when it's served to the judges, they think the fish isn't really cooked properly and is a bit heavy on the Zuzu petals.

Tom points out that Hosea has a lot at stake since he works in a seafood restaurant, a tidbit about Hosea which had heretofore been a closely guarded secret.

Lastly, it's time for Jamie's "I couldn't care less" black bass. But as she's plating her braised celery, she realizes that it's too salty. And since there's nothing she can do about it at this stage, she just sends it out. But her bass is cooked. And so is her goose.

When it gets out to the judges, they all remark on how salty the dish is. Judge Jibes-N-Hornrims opines that Tom is being "too kind" about the dish and that it is "remarkably poor."

Tom, who does not seem to enjoy the little man, mutters that "it's not as easy as it looks." Judge O'Schmuckface continues his rant with an awful analogy about going on a high wire and then (I presume) being anally penetrated without proper lubrication. Everyone smiles awkwardly with that "I'm so gonna kill Andy Cohen over this fucker" look that people get from time to time.

Judges' Table

Padma pops into the Stewed Room and calls up the top three, Fabio, Stefan and Carla.

Before the judges, Stefan all but says it was really easy for him. Fabio is praised for what he presented. And Carla enthuses over the challenge.

She impresses the judges by explaining in great detail how she detected so many elements of the dish which (I would presume) would stump most chefs. The Judge I Want To Fillet endangers the continuing state of repair of my flatscreen in saying that he would name the dish "Pablo Escolar," since, you see, there was once this big-time drug kingpin named Pablo Escobar and Carla had a fish called "escolar" and the names sort of sound sort of the same and he's been working all day on that pun, and ... oh, yeah ... he's a fuckhead.

Chef Eric gets to name the winner, who is .... Stefan.

Whoopee.

Stefan wins a book. ... And gets to apprentice under Chef Eric in three of his restaurants for a week's time.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

And he gets housing for that time from the Ritz-Carlton.

OK, that tears it!

And when that's done, he gets to go to a food and wine festival with the noted chef.

God freakin' damnit! He picked the easiest one and gets rewarded like this when Carla had to be freakin' Miss Marple and loses out? Agh!

Now for the bottoms, Hosea, Jamie and Leah. Gong!

Hosea, who works in a seafood restaurant, is criticized with how he cooked his monkfish. It seems he worked it on the treadmill for too long and just wouldn't let the damn thing rest. Oh, and he went too heavy on the Zasu Pitts.

Leah is slammed for totally missing the mark on how Chef Eric made his miso broth. Judge Achin' Fer-A-Shankin' makes some witty remark about her fish still being caught in his teeth. Asked if she wants to now give up (like she did in the Quickfire), she says that she "want(s) to be here."

Drink.

Jamie says she's not surprised to be in the bottom. She knows the problem was that her celery over-reduced and was too salty. Judge Why-Am-I-Still-Employed-When-There-Are-People-Being-Laid-Off-Right-And-Left calls her dish "toxic." She looks at the other judges with a "You have to hang out with this dude?" expression.

They head back to the Stewed Room where Leah and Jamie argue over which one of them had a worse dish and got a more pained critique from Judge Quippy The Pinhead.

After the judges deliberate, the losers are called back in.

"Jamie ... please pack your knives and go."

And, with that, Team Rainbow is officially toast. Oversalted toast.

Next time on Top Chef: Who gets to be in the final four? It has to be perfect. Fabio is injured! And someone doesn't cook from his or her guts.