Top Chef Miami: Joey From New York Breaks Down
Joey really irked us in the first few episodes, but he seemed to mellow out somewhat and stopped making references to New York every five seconds, so we were coming around. And after witnessing the tears shed when he was told to "pack his knives and go," we couldn't dislike the guy too much. But he's gone, and Sara M., the other cheftestant we thought had a good chance of going home, stays on for another week.
The whole episode felt like one big Bertolli ad (it didn't help that there were Bertolli commercials during the breaks too), but we can think of worse sponsors. (Anyone remember the Kraft Gourmet Snack Challenge in season two?) We thought the Quickfire Challenge was going to be an actual spelling bee of culinary terms, and we got very excited, as we're wont to do when spelling bees are involved, until we saw Padma place a small dish in front of a cheftestant and instruct him to taste it. Boo. Oh well, it was still interesting. Casey won, with the help of some educated guesses (chayote) and some easy ones (bowtie pasta).
On to the Elimination Challenge: the cheftestants drew knives to choose a partner, and then the teams of two had to create one of those frozen Bertolli dinners that we've seen advertised everywhere. The kind that come in a bag, and all you have to do is put the contents of the bag in a skillet for 10 minutes. We've been very skeptical of those things, but after watching the episode, we're intrigued and might be willing to try one. (Today's lesson: advertising works, kids.)
The first thing all of the cheftestants noticed when they inspected the Bertolli bags was that each component of the dinner was frozen individually. Which makes a lot of sense. They all vowed to do the same thing, but in the end, only Tre and CJ (goooooo CJ!) actually did. And it paid off with a win; each of them got the awesome prize of two tickets to Italy.
The judges didn't like Hung and Joey's mess of a dish and Howie and Sara M.'s fusilli. There were some fireworks at the Judges' Table, mostly from Howie, who clearly doesn't work well with others, but what we found most interesting was the terrified look on Hung's face. He was red, sweating, and just plain scared. You could see it in his eyes. He was probably counting the number of times he's been at the bottom lately, and it wiped the cocky attitude right off. We got just a bit of enjoyment out of it.
Photo: BravoTV
