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Top Chef: Texas, Episode 15 Recap

By Carol Shih |
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If you missed this episode, boy do I feel sorry for you. Bev kicked a lot of @$$.

Crazy BRAVO, I guess, was tired of hot-weather Texas and decided to see if the Top Chefs (Paul, Bev, Sarah, and Lindsay) could survive in the frozen tundra of British Columbia. They might as well have been in Siberia. All the chefs, sporting longer hairdos from a couple months off, immediately start hating on Bev the second they reconvene inside Whistler Olympic Park. Sarah’s resolution to “be a really nice person” (… right) turns into a big flop and outcasts Bev from the start. When the final four meet the judges again, Padma begins to explain their elimination challenge, The Culinary Games, which is split into three parts. At the end of each round, one person must die. (Kidding, kidding. Too bad this isn’t “The Hunger Games.”) The winner of each round wins $10,000 and a guaranteed spot in the final three.

Let the games begin!

Round 1: The Gondola

Chefs have 22 minutes to cook a dish on a moving gondola. Paul gets motion sickness, Bev’s scared of heights, and Sarah can’t get it together. But we all know how important it is for the chefs to gain this real-life experience of cooking on a gondola, because one day, who knows, there’s a 0% chance they’ll have to cook for President Obama while he’s riding a gondola up Whistler Mountain.

Unfortunately, mean-natured Lindsay wins this round with her seared salmon and red quinoa. Bev’s salmon tartare comes in a close second, while Sara’s chorizo sausage earns her third place. Paul kicks himself in the foot for not executing his lamb loins with curried mushrooms the way he wanted. It’s okay, Paul. You can’t always be brilliant.

Round 2: Ice Blocks

Judges are preparing Paul, Bev, and Sarah for imminent climate change by forcing them to break big blocks of ice that hold their ingredients. The chefs have to chisel away like eskimos at iceberg sculptures before they can start cooking. Paul goes straight for the king crab that Bev wants, but he’s super duper nice afterwards and helps Sarah and Bev throw ice blocks onto the ground because they’re clearly struggle bus-ing. Apparently, being small and half-the-size of Sarah doesn’t prevent Bev from hacking away at her ice blocks like a madwoman. (I hope I never have to share the same room with Bev and an ice pick. She scares the hell out of me.)

Paul’s poached crab with mango chutney helps him move onto Vancouver (someone please tell me why the next episode is STILL not in Texas?), and Sarah’s “split pea soup gone wrong” means she has to battle with Bev in the final round of Culinary Wars. This, remember, is the last thing that Sarah wants. Despite her attempts to play nice, she has been making underhanded remarks about Bev the entire time. Just give up, Sarah. You don’t know how to be nice.

Round 3: Guns and Skis

“This is your last shot,” says Padma.

Bev and Sarah have to ski around a track, stop, and shoot a gun with only 10 bullets for their ingredients. Even though Sarah is feeling cocky because her family owns a lot of guns (Bev, watch out), Bev blasts Sarah to the ground with her skiing and rifle skills. Meek Bev fights like a tiger in the kitchen, whipping up a slow-roasted Artic char with beet compote while Sarah braises a rabbit leg and heart topped with cherries and sauerkraut. At the judges’ table, Gail Simons thinks Sarah’s dish is tough to chew, and baldy Tom notes that Bev didn’t cook Asian this time, but her dish was still overcooked. It looks like a close one.

Padma tears up for the first time this season when she tells Bev it’s time for her to go.

Goodbye, Bev

Sarah turns nice and hugs Bev as she says, “I’m so glad we got to cook together.” Fakkity fake fake. Somebody – preferably Paul – please take her out in Vancouver. That girl needs to go.

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