‘Top Chef’ 20 episode 5 recap: Were the judges too harsh in the criticisms during ‘Holiday Vacation’?
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Last week’s “Spurred Lines” team challenge on “Top Chef” was a tough one, ending with three friends having to face each other in a cookoff to decide the elimination. Luciana Berry from “Top Chef Brazil” was the unlucky contestant who ultimately had to pack her knives and go just one week after winning the “Cheeky Pints and Pub Bites” challenge. This game can be very unforgiving. So what happened in episode five, “Holiday Vacation”? Read on to find out.
The 11 remaining competitors playing for the $250,000 grand prize are Ali Ghzawi (Middle East and North Africa), Sara Bradley (Kentucky), Charbel Hayek (Middle East and North Africa), Victoire Gouloubi (Italy), Sylwia Stachyra (Poland), Begoña Rodrigo (Spain), Buddha Lo (Houston), Tom Goetter (Germany), Gabriel Rodriguez (Mexico), Amar Santana (California), and Nicole Gomes (Canada).
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Quickfire Challenge
Guest judge Adam Handling, a Michelin star chef and the owner of Adam Handling Restaurant Group, greets the contestants, and there with him is a lot of sweet stuff. “Things are about to get sticky,” host Padma Lakshmi tells them. On the table before them are mead and honey. Mead, which is traditionally made with honey and water, might just be the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage. So their challenge is simple: make a “celebratory” dish using mead and honey. Winner gets immunity in the elimination challenge. No additional cash prize this time, though. Fiddlesticks.
“Quickfire is like the jungle,” notices Victoire as the chefs rush to grab their ingredients. Buddha plans on making dessert crepes inspired by his wife. Nicole also goes the dessert route with zabaione, an Italian dish traditionally made with egg yolks, sugar, and sweet wine. So it seems she’ll be replacing the wine in the recipe with mead. Amar leans into the sweet as well, making a chicken-and-pancakes dish inspired by his son.
On the savory side is Tom, who makes a honey and mead caviar inspired by a dish he made for his brother’s wedding. “My brother is super annoying to be honest … Frustrating perfect person, but I love him.” Sylwia is — surprise! — using potatoes, but sweet potatoes this time for a dumpling dish. And Begoña’s plan involves anchovies, which doesn’t sound like a celebratory meal to me, but I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum.
Unfortunately, Sylwia’s dumplings start to open up while cooking, while Nicole’s zabaione isn’t firming up like it needs to.
Ultimately, Sylwia and Nicole do end up at the bottom for the challenge. Sylwia had strong flavors despite poor execution, while Nicole’s dish was indeed too soupy and too sweet. Speaking of which, Amar also had one of the judges’ least favorite dishes with its excess sweetness, which needed acidity to balance it out. Faring much better were Tom, who showed serious skills with his pine honeyed duck with honey caviar, Victoire, whose shrimp guacamole was the best paired and most balanced dish, and Charbel, whose butternut squash dish was “magical” with its honey and acidity.
But there could be only one winner, and that was Tom, who marveled at his victory. “I never won a single challenge anywhere,” he admits, “not in ‘Top Chef Germany,’ not in ‘Top Chef: World All-Stars.'” He finished third on “Top Chef Germany,” so he’ll also be a first-timer if he wins the whole thing.
Elimination Challenge
The guest for this round is “Top Chef Mexico” judge Martha Ortiz, who warmly greets familiar face Gabri. “It’s super nice to see a familiar face in the judges’ panel,” he says. “I hope you’re rooting for me, bitch!” He says that in an interview and not to her face. And it reads a lot less warm and affectionate than it sounded when he said it. Gabri remains delightful and not vaguely threatening. Love you, Gabri!
The chefs get good news from Padma: they’ll be going on a holiday to the countryside of Kent, “also known as the Garden of England.” But just like in “Pub Bites,” when a delightful pub crawl turned into a team challenge and a double elimination, the chefs know not to get their hopes up for a simple vacation. Indeed, they’ll be spending their time cooking family-style dishes inspired by their favorite holidays. They’ll all be judged separately, but they’ll be cooking for the same meal, so they’ll have to coordinate. Oh, and they’ll have to share 1,000 pounds to spend on groceries. “Luckily London isn’t expensive at all,” Tom says sarcastically.
Eleven stressed out chefs sharing a kitchen and a budget. That could be a recipe for disaster, depending on how stubborn and territorial the chefs are. At this point I’m dreading an episode filled with conflict and anger. I’m not the type who relishes drama on reality TV. If I were to compete on a show, I would 100% be there to make friends.
Some conflict starts immediately as the strong-willed chefs declare what they want to make regardless of anyone else’s plans. Victoire and Sylwia both want to make soup, and lots of other chefs want to make hearty main course-style dishes. Buddha thinks the meal needs to have some sort of progression, though, so he decides to make a room-temperature fish salad to contrast with everyone else’s hot meat. So who wants to do the dessert? … Does anyone want the dessert? … Okay, no one wants to take a chance on dessert. Tom has immunity, so he volunteers to take one for the team.
They also have to plan their dishes knowing that there will be limited counter space and stove burners for all the chefs to use in a home kitchen, so they’ll have to keep their cooks relatively contained. Charbel and Begoña both need to fry their dishes with oil, so they agree to share the same pot. Everyone protests when Gabri says he wants to make another mole — the last time he did that he ended up overspending his budget on a bajillion ingredients. He promises to keep it simple this time. Perhaps most importantly, though, they all work out the money situation ahead of time: they split it evenly, with everyone getting 90 pounds to spend on their dishes.
So how does their spending go when all is said and done? At the register they set aside any ingredients they don’t absolutely need with the chance to add them back in if they come in under-budget. They also sort out redundancies. They stare at the readout obsessively as the number ticks up, and up, and up … and stops at just under 970 pounds. So what do they use the last bit of money for? Tequila of course. I’m pleasantly surprised at how orderly this challenge has been so far. No major dustups, no yelling, plenty of compromise, fair decision-making. The chefs haven’t butchered each other for the meat, so that’s good.
That night and the following morning in Kent, the chefs’ preparations get emotional as they reflect on what the holidays mean to them. Gabri doesn’t care much for holidays since his father died the previous year; he then tells the heartbreaking story of how he wasn’t able to say goodbye before he passed away. His dish is inspired by Dia de Muertos and will be dedicated to his dad. Begoña has also suffered loss: her grandparents are no longer with us. She and a few others are commemorating Christmas with their dishes. Ali is making mashawi in honor of Eid Al-Adha (“feast of sacrifice”).
The chaos of the home kitchen is relatively mild. It’s spacious by normal standards, but still cramped when you shove 11 chefs in there. Nicole struggled to find a free burner. Tom realizes that he’s going to have to do most of the work on his cake in the morning. Charbel and Begoña’s plan to share oil kind of falls apart since Charbel takes too long, which compromises Begoña’s dish. And Victoire wears a mask because someone is cooking with walnuts again and she doesn’t want to die of another allergic reaction. Fair.
And just like that, time’s up, and nobody died. I’m a little relieved.
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Meal Service
The chefs serve all their dishes at once, and they sit down to eat with the judges instead of just waiting for their verdicts. I notice quickly that some dishes get immediate praise while others elicit silence. Sylwia’s Polish borscht is “delicious,” according to Tom Colicchio. Victoire’s stew has a lot of unique flavors and tastes “amazing.” Gabri’s sea bass with mole verde … no comment. Ali’s lamb kebab is something Gail Simmons would like to serve her family. Buddha’s salmon tarator … no comment.
It goes on that way. Nicole and Amar hear “delicious” from Padma. Charbel gets “savory and homey” from Padma. Sara and Begoña get nothing. Tom is the only one who is criticized right to his face, with Colicchio wondering if his cake is supposed to be as dense as it is. Tom insists that he did indeed make it correctly, but even Sara thinks Tom is lucky he has immunity.
Judges’ Table
The judges’ comments during the meal were limited since they were eating right there with the contestants and not just judging them. Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter. And it turns out silence really wasn’t golden. The bottom three chefs all got no commentary from the judges at the table: Buddha, Gabri, and Begoña. And the top three already heard some of the judges’ praise: Ali, Victoire, and Amar.
There’s no mention of Tom’s cake, surprisingly. Maybe he’s not in the bottom three because he has immunity. But his name doesn’t come up at all, so perhaps he just had the fourth worst dish of the challenge and would’ve been safe anyway.
Of the top chefs, Amar is complimented on the braised lamb shank that he cooked overnight. It had great balance, punch, and tang, “really a celebratory dish.” Victoire’s dish was like nothing the judges had tasted before and showed them another dimension of the culinary world. And Ali’s dish was especially well seasoned. The winner of the challenge, on his very first high score of the season, is Amar.
As for the bottom chefs, Gabri’s mole had too much acid and tasted a little burnt. Also, his ingredients didn’t really enhance each other. Gail gets choked up; it’s hard to criticize Gabri knowing what it meant to him to pay tribute to his late father. He himself admits that his melancholy emotions got the better of him and compromised his dish.
Meanwhile, Buddha’s salmon just had too much going on on top of it, and the salmon itself was under-seasoned. And Begoña’s “leftovers” stew had dry chicken (a result of her rushed frying time?) and veggies that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the rest of the ingredients. The judges are surprised given how strong her previous dishes have been.
When they return to their fellow chefs to await the judges’ verdict, Buddha and Begoña are clearly pissed at the commentary they got, though their fellow chefs actually defend the judges’ critiques. The judges were harsh, especially to Begoña, who felt they disparaged her ability as a chef, but it’s also just difficult to receive criticism when you’ve been praised consistently for your work before.
They’re called back out to learn their fates, and unsurprisingly given the judges’ critiques, Begoña is the one eliminated. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for her and Gabri. They had to battle to survive in “Spurred Lines” and then said goodbye to their friend Luciana. Now they’re both at the bottom again and suddenly Gabri is the only one left from his dynamic trio.
“I’m sad to go out of the competition for sure because I would prefer to go out with a really, really nice dish, something that really represents me,” says Begoña in her exit interview. “I’m proud of myself, and for sure people that know my cooking in Spain, they would be proud about what I did. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to go with tears on my face because I know I can sort out in the end. My deal now is to win ‘Last Chance Kitchen,’ come back to the competition, and win ‘Top Chef.’ This is what I’m now fighting for.”
Sadly, to get back into the competition, she’ll have to defeat her friend Luciana again in “LCK.”
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