Well folks, we knew it would happen: The bourbon and beer cheese ran dry, and Top Chef Kentucky had to dip into Tennessee for reinforcements. Let’s mark this momentous occasion with a stupid-long recap, shall we?
As the chefs disembark from their party barge, they talk about what they might be asked to cook in Nashville. Justin thinks they’ll have to cook “Tennessee hot chicken,” which is not a thing, and he also calls us “NashVegas,” so he is dead to me. Michelle says she wants to meet Garth Brooks, and hoo boy, does she need to lower her expectations. In the fun car, Kelsey talks about how she eats chicken fingers all the time, and we are all her. In the sad car, Adrienne asks them to pull over so she can puke. This sums up the difference in the boat parties they threw in the last episode.
The chefs arrive at the Grand Ole Opry, and I am shocked that there is no Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention CenterTM promotional partnership afoot. Somewhere an intern named Kayleigh should be fired. On the stage, Padma explains the significance of cooking on the Grand Ole Opry stage. She name checks Blake Shelton, and we all die a little inside.
Quickfire Challenge. The chefs will cook breakfast, lunch or dinner from an artist’s performance rider, but they won’t know which artist until later. Justin says he’s cooked from a rider before for Ozzy Osbourne, who only ever ate two baked potatoes. I guess when your dinner could include bat heads, you don’t have to worry about loading up on protein.
Sad Adrienne says she plans to put in “minimal effort,” which is definitely in her wheelhouse. She makes a filet that she says is cooked “very nicely,” but from my couch looks so raw it is blue. Eddie complains about getting assigned lunch because droopy is his brand.
via GIPHYÂ Actual footage of Eddie
David explains an omelet should be “wet on top” with three perfect folds, and you can make your own joke. Eric makes oatmeal with “hydrated cranberry and raisin jam,” and I have to ask: What? Did he take Craisins and rehydrated them? I do not understand. But it is oatmeal, so I also do not care.
Judgment time. Padma brings out Hunter Hayes. No one (me included) knows who he is except Kelsey. So I look him up and learn that, on a scale of Waylon Jennings to Florida Georgia Line, Hunter is somewhere around a Rascal Flatts: less bro country and more nasal. Apparently girls don’t take your “sensitive” side seriously unless you sound like you zipped your nuts up in your skinny jeans. But Hunter seems nice, and he writes his own songs and plays lots of instruments, so good on him. But really, Nashville: We couldn’t get Trisha Yearwood or Martina McBride over here? They are both shilling cookbooks and/or TV shows and also happen to be, you know, good. Somewhere yet another PR intern deserves the axe.
Hunter and Padma taste the dishes. While David’s goat cheese omelet sounds great, it looks wet, and the fact that he is forcing me to talk about wetness a second time means he is now the nemesis of women everywhere. Sara makes cauliflower with berries, and Eddie makes a boring salad. Michelle makes a grilled cheese salad with buttermilk and charred jalapeno, which sounds like a delicious, upscale version of one of those Chili’s salads that secretly has 2,000 calories. Justin makes a steak salad with crispy potatoes. He is the second person who’s served “crispy potatoes,” which are, in fact, just potato chips. Adrienne serves her “seared” filet mignon, which looks like it is still mooing, but Hunter loves it.
Results. David’s wet omelet, Eddie’s sad salad, and Kelsey’s shakshuka are on the bottom. Kelsey gets dinged for the dish being too acidic, which makes sense since she soft-boiled the eggs instead of poaching them, and you need that runny-egg richness in shakshuka. On top are Eric, Sara and Adrienne, who gets the win with her “really well prepared” meat. I’ll go ahead and see myself out.
Elimination Challenge. For the main challenge, the chefs will prepare a dish inspired by a music memory in their life. It’s a great concept: personal, specific and very true to Nashville and Tennessee. It’s almost as if Tennessee would have been a better place to host this season, with all our musical heritage and culinary history. I know, I sound bitter, but for real: According to Wikipedia, Tennessee has six James Beard Foundation Award winners (Tandy Wilson, Blackberry Farm (3), Arnold’s Country Kitchen and Prince’s Hot Chicken) to Kentucky’s two (Beaumont Inn, Old Rip Van Winkle), and the fact that they had to come over state lines for this challenge might indicate they needed more fertile ground to build a whole season on. Either way, Kentucky landing Top Chef despite skeptical producers is a feat. Their PR people need a promotion.Â
The chefs run into the Hill Center Whole Foods, and we all wonder what time of day they got there to (a) find parking and (b) not have to mow down three women with strollers and green juice to get inside. As the chefs explain their song choices, we realize Bravo is not going to pay for the rights to any of these, so you’ll need to go listen to them here.
Adrienne picks “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros because she listened to it when she was homesick at her first cooking job in Maine. It’s a fine — if generic — choice, as is her dish: fruits de mer and summer vegetables. David picks the album Morning View by Incubus and yet again forces me to destroy my Spotify algorithm by looking it up. And real talk? Incubus is not that bad. They are just aggressively average, which is all the more ironic since David’s memory comes from his time at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Portugal, which is one of the prettiest places on earth. To me, this is like eating at the French Laundry while listening to elevator Muzak — it won’t ruin the experience, but it could sure as hell be better. David wants to cook octopus, but they’ve only got frozen ones, so he pivots to pork and clams.
Eddie picks his wedding song, “Love You Madly” by Cake, which doesn’t tell me much other than that his wife definitely wore Converse with her wedding dress. He makes a version of a red snapper dish that he made for his wife when he found out she didn’t like red snapper. (If you know any chefs personally, you know that this is the cheffiest thing of all time — cooking a hated ingredient well enough to turn someone around on it is chef catnip.) Kelsey picks “Sunday Kind of Love” by Etta James because she knew she’d found her husband when she wanted to hang out with him on Sundays. I won’t even answer the door on Sundays, so she is not wrong. Kelsey makes her husband’s favorite — chicken pot pie — and talks about how leaving him with a 9-month-old baby is a lot, and to that I say, Hell yes it is. I don’t have a baby, but I have met a few, and that sounds brutal. Sara is making something Cajun because her father used to sing Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya” to her on road trips, which is lovely. Eric is hilariously doing a play on a line from “Big Poppa” by Biggie Smalls that talks about eating “steak, cheese, eggs and grape.” Justin is using his Minneapolis connection to channel Prince with “Purple Rain” (beet gnocchi, cabbage, steak, port wine demi). Prince is a god, so this bodes well, as does Justin’s choice to box himself in, which typically helps people focus on Top Chef. Michelle picks The Beatles because she used to listen to them gardening with her family, which we will get to later, but go ahead and grab the tissues.
Judgement Day. The judges assemble at someplace called “Skye,” which is of course spelled with an “e,” and which is apparently on top of the Sheraton downtown. The judges are the usual suspects plus Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill, model Lily Aldridge (Followill’s wife), Ken Levitan (music manager and restaurant owner of 404 Kitchen and Emmy Squared), and chefs Jonathan Waxman, Sean Brock and Tandy Wilson. Tandy is wearing a formal ponytail and Western-wear shirt unbuttoned clear down to his navel. It is glorious. Graham Elliot and his thirsty glasses are also there. Eric presents his Biggie Smalls dish first (steak with Concord grape reduction), and Sean Brock laughs, which is the auditory version of a French bulldog in a sweater. The dish is good, but the meat is overcooked. Next up is Justin, who forgets a plate and is therefore disqualified, but is otherwise roundly praised for his tribute to The Purple One. Next comes Eddie and his puffed rice, which has been mentioned three times, so you know this is going to be bad. Tandy says the dish is missing texture and acidity, Tom calls it oily, and Ken feels like he’s eating cereal. So...
Thankfully, good news is on the way. Sara’s grouper in sassafras bone sauce (!) is a hit. Tom says it looks simple, but every bite reveals something new. Michelle is next with her red snapper, corn and fava ragu, and citrus vinaigrette. She says, “The smell of corn really reminds me of my father, so for me that’s really important.” It’s here the judges learn what we already know: Michelle’s father killed himself when she was a teenager. She says she’s been angry about it for 16 years and might still be, but she’s grateful for all the beautiful things he gave her, including her love of knowing where food comes from. They show a picture of Michelle’s dad holding her and we are all destroyed, as are the judges. Padma tells Michelle her dish is a great tribute to her father, and we all breathe a sigh of relief because our hearts cannot take Michelle channeling that particular memory and bombing. And then it happens: Tom says it’s the best dish of the season, at which point Tandy says he always wanted to be in the room when that was said. “Today’s my day!” he yells. Indeed, Tandy — today is your day.
Next up we have David, who is hoping the fat he added to his over-reduced sauce will mask its saltiness. It will not. Kelsey’s dish is similarly salty. Adrienne brings out her seafood and says: “Will it win? I don’t know. Will it keep me from going home? I think yes.” And this is my problem with Adrienne. She’s playing for fourth place. Waxman points out that her corn “nage” — which should be a light broth thickened with fat — is not a nage but more of a puree, and this is yet another example of a branding problem. Just call it something else, Adrienne! Caleb makes a joke about why she didn’t do a dish about Nicki Minaj if she was going to do a nage. The room loves it. I want to crawl in a hole and die.Â
Judges’ Table. Coming out on top are Justin (who can’t win due to his missing plate), Michelle and Sara. Tom says he “wouldn’t change one thing” on Michelle’s dish, and that’s how you know she’s clinched the win. Everyone is happy for her, as they should be. Next Padma addresses the chefs who “hit the wrong note,” which puts the pun count at 3,257. In the bottom are the same chefs from the Quickfire: Eddie, Kelsey and David. Eddie’s dish was one-note; Waxman calls it boring and lackluster. He then says of Kelsey’s salty dish: “It was like the Dead Sea,” and I think we can just leave it there. Everyone agrees David’s was salty, too, and Tom says the clams were rubbery and mushy, which are two textures it’s almost impressive to pull off simultaneously.Â
Waxman ends with the big question: “What’s the worst sin: lack of passion or too salty?” Apparently the answer is too salty because David goes home. And that’s what you get for liking Incubus.
Next time on Top Chef: A hilarious cry-fight involves boxed pancake mix, and Padma works in one last “off-key” pun, at which point I jump off the roof of the Sheraton.Â
