Top Chef Las Vegas: Ceviches Of The Ooooooold West

Top Chef: Las Vegas
Episode: Ceviches Of The Ooooooold West
September 16, 2009

Previously on Top Chef: Two chefs went home in one week. First, Jesse Piercyface was told to “pack your knives and leave” (or “go,” if you are to believe this week’s opening) when she didn’t make a great snail dish. After a veritable Mont Rushmore of French chefs gathered for a meal, Hector was sent away for making a badly hacked-up chateaubriand.

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Note: Gentle reader, be advised that your overtaxed blogger, is at this writing, winging his way across the U.S. of A. to San Francisco and has not had a moment to blog properly. So, what you have before you is a slapdash recap cobbled together from memories of watching this fool thing twice and what I am able to recollect after not enough sleep and hours of being crammed into a 1 X 1 American Airlines coach seat.

Morning. Las Vegas. The chefs are once again startled to realize that each week someone else is being sent packing. The guys gather (in what I can only assume is mandatory outdoor chaise time) in their undershirts and bemoan the fact that Hector went home last week. Especially when Useless Chef Robin is still hanging out.

Chef BrotherMichael, appearing this week in the wrong aspect ratio (someone at Bravo must have forgotten the HD camera for some of the interviews this week!), is most miffed at Hector’s eviction and makes predictions for the end, seeing himself, Chef DoucheyMike and Chef BrotherBryan as the only really talented chefs there.

One wonders what Chefs Kevin Beardy McBearderson and Jennifer The Honorary Dude think of that assessment.

Moments later, we’re in the kitchen at the Super 8 Motel Resort & Casino™ for this week’s ...

Quickfire Challenge

The chefs are greeted by Padma and the (oddly un-hatted) self-taught, Southwestern Chef Extraordinaire Tim Love. And a table of cacti.

Here, Pads stands around and looks pretty while her recorded-in-post-production voice informs the chefs that this time, the Bravo viewers (last season) voted on which of three odd ingredients would be used in this challenge: kangaroo, snake or cactus.

And you’ll never guess which one the viewers picked.

Go!

Chef flurry.

DoucheyMike feels mighty confident of this challenge and retakes his DoucheyCrown (which was abdicated last week) by getting all Mr. Know-It-All on us again. See, he’s the only chef in the whole wide world of chefdom who knows that cactus is gooey and needs to be seared or blanched or some other fancy chef-y thing to de-goo it.

(Have I mentioned that I need instructions on how to boil water?)

The other chefs are, however, somewhat stumped on what to do with the succulent. Chef Picture Not Available Laurine admits to not knowing enough about cactus to make it the “star of the show” and makes a pork dish with cactus salsa.

Chef Cliffie’s CrushObject Ash says he has Hector in his head and, hence, is of a mind to make some kind of cactus tortillas. (Because everyone KNOWS Puerto Rican food is all about the tortillas.)

Chef I Have To Be Really Nice About Him Because I May Meet Him In A Few Days Mattin also knows little about cactus, but feels pretty confident nonetheless. He’s making one of the 37 ceviches we will see in the next hour. His will involve tequila, which should properly adjust the judges’ judgment in his favor.

Chef Sad Ashley, meanwhile, is making a cactus donut hole, which sounds ... not good, actually.

And Chef Ron Of The Crocs informs us that in his homeland of Haiti cacti are QUITE deadly and, as such, he’s making soup.

Here, we get to see BrotherMichael continue what is to become a theme this episode: He complains about being out of his element. Despite his prediction of another Quickfire win here, his manner suggests that he’s a cinch for a bottom three slot at the end of the show.

Oh, and he’s making some kind of a sushi-like roll with cactus.

When time is called, Tim and Padma taste the various dishes. Tim thinks Kevin’s dish is “slimy, but nice,” which describes a boss I once had.

When asked to single out the bottom three, he points out Ash’s, BrotherMichael’s and Ron’s creations. As for the winners, he loved DoucheyMike’s, Laurine’s and Mattin’s.

In the end, the winner is ... DoucheyMike. He enthuses about winning his first $15K poker chip from the Super 8 Motel Resort and Casino and, before we know it, it’s time for the ...

Elimination Challenge

Padma reveals that the chefs will be cooking for lunch for a bunch of cowboys and may or may not have said it would be in the “great outdoors.” They can make whatever they want, but it has to be “high-end.” Oh, and they won’t know a thing about their cooking conditions and such until the next day.

Clearly, this is a carefully calculated attempt to have some of the chefs pick stuff that really won’t work once they see where they’ll be cooking. You know, that whole “Watch What Happens” shit.

Well, after a quick trip to the Healthcare Shmealthcare Market™, we see that none of the chefs have taken the bait. They’re wise to your sneaky ways, Bravo, and will not have any of that.

It’s ceviches all ‘round.

If they’re not going to know if they’ll be stuck cooking with matches and blow-driers while riding sidesaddle, they’re damn sure not going to be planning dishes that involve a deep fryer, liquid nitrogen or Waring blenders.

You’ll have citrus-cured seafood and you’ll like it!

The chefs pile into their SponsorMobiles and are driven out into the desert where they are left for dead.

Or are dropped off before a small circle of teepees amidst the sand.

Same diff.

Some of the chefs take to this well, with Ashley explaining how she’s SUPER EXCITED to see an outhouse, since she was raised on food stamps by a single mother with her twin brother and other brother “literally in the middle of the forest.”

I really don’t know what to say about that. Except maybe it explains why she referred to her brother’s newborn as an “it” during her turn shilling the SponsorPhone for the weekly Sad Call Home Moment.

But then again, I think of those things as “it”s too. And I’d sooner peel and eat a giant cactus with my bare hands than experience an outhouse.

Also on Team Outdoors, Yea! is Mattin, who explains how he grew up in a small Basque hamlet of two dozen red-kerchiefed separatist villagers and is completely comfortable with this.

On the other hand, we have Chef Gnome Eli who eagerly tries to get production to let him sleep in the SponsorMobile and is stressed that this whole thing will make his girlfriend think that he’s OK with going camping.

BrotherMichael is also pissed off, continuing our theme. Oddly, his increasingly emotionless brother seems OK with this whole thing.

Or maybe he isn’t. He does only have one facial expression, after all.

As the day ends, we see that Ron is dissecting a tree in order to strategically place branches around the opening of his teepee as part of what we learn is a voodoo ritual to ward off snakes. (Is there a voodoo ritual to get the judges to think you have made good food too? Because that would be handy.)

Night falls and the chefs sit around the campfire and Ash continues being totally adorable, discussing his fictional past as a film director, firefighter, ringmaster and personal valet to Sir John Gielgud.

Or maybe he just said that bears were nice? I forget. (And did I mention I haven’t gotten enough sleep?)

The next morning, the chefs get to the “kitchen” site and they see that they’ll be working with three fire pits, with only the supplies available on the back of a chuck wagon.

(Here, I have to admit that I cheated a little and saw that Tom mentioned in his blog that the pits weren’t charcoal or firewood-lit, but rather propane-powered. Which makes this entire challenge just a sorry excuse to see the chefs camp in the desert.)

Seeing the pits, Ashley and Laurine go right at them with confidence, with Ashley even having a plan to mitigate (what would have been) the uneven flame cooking conditions of the pit.

But the rest of them, for the most part, don’t come near the flames at all, since we’re all about the raw fish out here in the ooooold west.

BrotherMichael grouses some more as he makes his Asian concoction, Ron runs around looking for a sword and splashes coconut juice in everyone’s eyes and Mattin dances around like a little Basque elf.

Fakeout scene!

Kevin loves horseshoes. He’s particularly in love with the horseshoe pit at the site. He actually grew up with a regulation horseshoe pit in his backyard. ... Which could explain the Deliverance look.

Fakeout scene over!

Finally, the judges and the (attractiveness challenged) cowpokes arrive for lunch.

The food is served and the parade of ceviche is on. As the dishes are sampled, we see that Robin’s “drunken prawns” seem to be drunk on Clorox, which makes everyone gag.

Then they get to the ceviche served 17 ways made by Poor Mattin. (Did I mention that I need to be nice since I may be seeing him soon?) It’s an unmitigated disaster. In fact, it’s so bad that the diners fear that the seafood may be too deadly to actually eat. Tom even gets up from the table and tosses his mouthful of Mattin under a prickly pear.

Ouch.

Otherwise, the dishes seem anywhere from ordinary and acceptable (Ash, Jennifer, Eli) to marginal with a side order of godawful coconut mojito (Ron).

Judges’ Table

Back in civilization, Padma calls up the chefs with the four top dishes: BrotherBryan, BrotherMichael (a-gain) and Ashley and Laurine.

The women get their attagirls from the judges who congratulate them on a.) being just about the only chefs to actually use the firepits b.) finally making something that gets them out of their perpetual bottom-dweller status. And, as good as that is, it seems a foregone conclusion that the two have just gotten their A for Effort award and will go no further today.

It’s the Brother Show again before the judges. Bryan The Cooking Automaton and Michael The Sourpuss have yet again made the best dishes, with Bryan wowing everyone with his fish dish and Michael with his Asian creation.

But in the end, the winner of the useless challenge is ... BrotherBryan! (Yea.)

We expect the noogies and wet willies to continue off-camera.

Then it’s time for the losers ... Mattin, Robin and Ron.

During the Q and A, the judges express their dismay at Mattin and Robin for having served what amounted to inedible food. But while Robin admits that her shrimp were awful (having tasted them only after having served), Mattin, incredulously defends his offering as having been good.

As for Ron, the judges feel that his ceviche was a tad too sweet, but otherwise OK. It was his unnecessary coconut mojito which was so painful that it put him in the bottom three. Asked about this, he admits to two completely idiotic moves. One, he made the drink as a a throwaway item since he had a lot of leftover coconut juice. And, two, he has no idea how to make a drink, since he doesn’t drink.

(Er, excuse me, mister, but I was an expert bartender at age seven when I was mixing highballs for family guests, Mad Men-style. And I didn’t start tossing those back myself for at least another year or two.)

After the usual deliberations, Padma calls the losers back up.

“Mattin, please pack your cute little neckerchief and go.”

And, with that, he was gone. Voila.

Next time on Top Chef: Er, you expect me to remember that, too? Did I mention I’m writing this at 20,000 feet with little sleep. ... Aaaaa! There’s someone out on the wing!!