Top Chef: Leaving Las Vegas

The Pantry of Anxiety

See that wire there? Yeah, well, we're down to it. Top Chef's glittery but stern Las Vegas season has reached a near end and we're left with three scowling chefs and one appley-dappley bacon salesman to bring us on home to the sweet, juicy finale. Padma Lakshmi's yanking at her chains, excited to set off on another cross-country brain-chompin' tour before the next season, probably set somewhere exotic like Boulder, begins filming. Tom's shaking the dust off his big fuzzy bear suit, happy to reenter the world of children's birthday parties and journeys into the psychosexual horror of the way-underground fetish scene. Gail Simmons is packin' up her wine bottle and her cigruts, ready to head on out to the next dusty town that needs someone to complain while swilling large balloons of red wine. Drinkin' and Stinkin', she calls it. It's taken her far. And one chef is already on his way down that lonely trail, sent packing up last night to the mild and simmering delight of his compatriots. Because he was the last who was supposed to go. This is how this show was supposed to work.

Which never happens! I mean usually in the finale there's someone who's sorta undeserving, someone who slithered their way in there while some other chef, some other designuh, some other... formerly-fat person?, who was much better, was eliminated weeks before. Not so, in this case! Here we have the four best chefs who have been the four best chefs since this season began. It's just been a straight and easy ride to the top. Well, that old Lady Who's Gonna Kill You has had her recent ups and downs, but she rescued herself nicely last night, as late-season a save as they come. Other than that, though, it's been smooth sailing to the top, with the Brothers Grim and ol' Uncle Applewood the Ham Scrambler easily flitting their little culinary ways into the final showdown. Now, if you're paying attention, you'll notice that I just revealed who the Top Four are. Which means that the kid who went home last night was...

...Eli! Yes, our frowny-faced meanie Pikachu has been defeated in battle, and will be sent back to sulk in his Poke Ball, where he'll continue to make snide, pissy comments about Robin and the other chefs, the only difference being that now we don't have to listen to him! Yay! Aw heck, I'm sure Eli isn't that bad of a guy. But on the show he was always just so sour and arrogant, saying things that aren't funny in a way that he thought was funny, having dumb hair, throwing his gut around like he owned the place when he's only 25 years old. There was something awfully entitled about his heft and attitude, the sharp snarl of his eyebrows, the cloddish and imposing frames of his glasses. I never liked Eli, and I don't think he ever liked us. He didn't really play well on camera. Would anyone out there say that Eli was their favorite chef this season? I don't think so. And personality aside, Eli never really distinguished himself with his food, it had no personality in the way that the other chefs' did—we had Bryan's refined focus, Michael's edgy flair, the Lady's elegant terseness, and Uncle Applewood's Bixby Barn's Bacon Blowout, but Eli was just sorta there, always. Stinking up the joint with his sarcastic word-farts and annoying, heaving laugh-snorting. Go home, silly blob!

Anyway, last night's challenges were primo difficult. As the five remaining sweaty hopefuls stood sweaty and hopeful in the Killing Kitchen, Padma entered with one weirdo foreign dude and a little tiny munchkin person with a smug smile on its face. Padma picked some suspicious gristle out of her teeth and introduced the tiny munchkin creature as a recent winner of Bobo Beau-coup's Annual Cook-Off, perhaps the most prestigious food challenge in the world. Next to Food Network Challenge: Birthday Cakes, of course. Oh, and ha ha, next to Top Chef too! Naw, but seriously Bobo Beau-coup was an ancient Food Master from the 1940s or something who liked to award one chef a year with a small sachet of money, all the acclaim the chef could ever want, and a two-night stay in Bobo's own Sex-Chateau in the 'south of pants,' as he called it. So it's a big deal. The little munchkin creature won back in 2007 for making the fanciest food you can make: fancy food stuffed with two other fancy foods. No, not like lobsters stuffed with caviar stuffed with Carr's Table Water crackers. I mean, I guess you could have done that. But the munchkin was specifically talking about something called a Balanchine, which is a protein within a protein within a protein. This is called a Balanchine because of the famous ballet dancer's love of backstage threeway train rides, if you get my drift. At the end, you get three proteins, sorta within each other. FILTH.

So it was up to the kids to make a version of a Balanchine for Padma to eat. Uncle Applewood naturally took a whole suckling pig and stuffed it full of pork chops and panchetta, making it, oddly, the least porky dish he's made so far. Brother Michael had to go and try to be different by 'deconstructing' (or whatever bullshit term he used) the assignment, using what I think he said was turkey fat, which is ass-nasty. The Lady Who Will One Day Give Her Thanks, Put On Her Pilgrim Hat, And Carve Your Face made something with both squid and steak, which seems horrifying but I guess it worked out well. Because wouldn't you know it? The Lady Who Will Clean Her Horn-Nosed Pilgrim Musket With Your Tibia done won the damn challenge. When the munchkin and Padma tried the food, the small creature nodded its head quietly and Padma moaned "Welcome back," which made Jen's heart flutter and her mind wander to that lovely sex-chateau in the south of pants, where she and Padma might one day let two become one. In addition to more false romantic hope, Jen was also rewarded with an extra half hour for the main event, which was nice, 'cause that thing was hard.

Kevin's winning dish

What they had to do was choose either lamb or a nice cut of stink-fish and then make two very ornate, very delicious sides to go with it. So it's a one course meal, but the emphasis is on really fancy preparation and presentation. The munchkin said "You could make baskets out of cucumbers," which, I assumed, he was hoping to use when he skips through his fairy-wood collecting buttercups and stink-fish flowers. The schmancy meals would then be served to twelve of the schmanciest people around. There was, of course, our typical trio of TC judges, but also the munchkin, Bobo Beau-coup's withered grandson, Baloo the Bear from way earlier in the season, a bunch of other chefly people, and famous dude Thomas Keller, who is responsible for that hoity-toity restaurant they got over there in Napa, the French Laundry. You eat a $200 meal while having your underpants washed by an unwashed French person in a bathingsuit that looks like underpants. It's brilliant and cyclical. Keller's a really big deal who can't open a restaurant without people farting all over it with joy, so the five remaining shiver-chefs were supes nervous. And the challenge wasn't even done being explained!

The last bit was that the meal was to be served in the style of Bobo Beau-coup's Annual Cook-Off, which is all kind of piecemeal and on an enormous mirror. Yeah, I don't get it either. All I do know is that when Gail walked in for the taping and saw the big mirrors she clapped her hands and shouted "Ooohh! Cocaine!!!" and then guzzled more wine and started excitedly singing "I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight" while doing a chicken dance. After the producers gently calmed her down and informed her that, no, they weren't going to be doing "horking mountain loads of blow" off the big mirrors, and that they weren't even eating chicken that night, a depressed and droopy Gail sat down and service was on.

Bryan stuffed his enormous mirror with various lamb things and then one of those "a play on" things about smacaroni et fromage (that's Classy Talk for macaroni and cheese). He made some sort of garlic flake that people seemed to enjoy, but overall people don't ever seem to like "a play on" smacaroni, they just want damn smacaroni. (BTW, fellow NYC dwellers, have y'all been to S'Mac yet? It's fantasmagorical.) Eli made something with green goop on it that nobody wanted. Kevin just threw an uncooked rasher of bacon at the diners' faces and everyone screamed and clapped and had an enormous Balanchine backstage trainride around the whole table, so it was clear that he was going to win. And he did win! The glory, and thirty thousand s'mackeroos. Michael, who'd been dinged and insulted during the QuiF, made another not-terribly-interesting dress with black piping and a lot of ruching. (What show am I writing about right now?) And the Lady Who Will Festively Adorn Your Body With Strings Of Cranberries And Popcorn Only To Put A Spike Through Your Feet And Toss You Out On The Curb After A Few Weeks When You're Dead And Brown made some things with the stink-fish that proved mildly successful.

In the end it really wasn't a question of who made the best food for Bobo Beau-coup's Mirrorplate All-Stars, it was about who deserved, cumulatively from the whole season, to go to Fashion Week. And clearly the Lady, the Brothers, and Uncle Pigslappy the Bacon Jalappy had long-ago earned their tickets. So Eli was an inevitable end, though Tom pretended to be pained to see him go, we all knew there was no other way. At this point I don't think there's much in the way of Uncle Applewood winning the whole jug of hooch, because he's mostly unstoppable. The arrogant and increasingly unpleasant Michael whines about Kevin's food being too simple, and it's like... Dude, if he makes it simple and it still tastes better and more interesting than all of your flimflammery? Then, ya burnt. Sorry, but, ya totally burnt. I'd love to see the Lady win, though I just don't know if her shaky hands will serve her well in the big final challenge, in which the kids have to cook on a speeding train. And I'm not making that up! That appears to actually be what they have to do. It's like Dinner: Impossible meets... well, um, Top Chef. It should be interesting.

I can't believe it's almost over! Sigh. Remember Mattin? Here he is. Long gone, but not forgotten. Sigh again. Now, if you'll excuse me: