They started last night's very exciting "Restaurant Wars" episode by stating that there were only three female cheftestants left. Then they brought out the hot boys. For the Quickfire we had Bourdain at Le Bernardin introducing the Top Chef hopefuls to Justo Thomas, the seafood master, who fillets 700-1,000 pounds of seafood a night. Justo is a god with a knife and a fish, and for the challenge the contestants had to fillet and portion a cod and a fluke in 10 minutes. No biggie, Justo can do it in just 8 minutes.
The girls were on the bottom with Fabio and Angelo, and the top four guys (Richard, Marcel, Tre, and Dale) had the challenge continue when they had to make a dish with the leftover fish carcasses. During the challenge continuation, Richard told the most awesome story about working at McDonald's and making the Filet-O-Fish avant-garde by leaving off the top bun.
Dale took the challenge and immunity with his impressive two dishes: fluke back-fin sashimi with cucumber and fluke liver sauce, and then a bacon dashi with salt-roasted cod collar.
The parade of hotties continued with guest judge Ludo. (Full disclosure: I am one of Ludo's Bitches.) In case you didn't know, Ludo is the king of pop-ups (no, I'm not talking about my girl boner for him), so it was only fitting that he was there for the infamous "Restaurant Wars."
Since Dale was the winner of the last challenge he was team captain and got to pick the opposing team's leader. Applying good logic, he chose the person who he had the hardest time working with, Marcel. Oh man, our hearts ached for Marcel's teammates who had to explain that if only one person (Marcel) liked one idea and the other four teammates liked another idea, then majority should win. Marcel criticized how Tiffany made her six-minute egg and added foam to his dish even though he promised his teammates that he wouldn't. The judges couldn't knock him for his foam overuse because the diners were the ones picking the winner of this war.
Bodega: The quiet team headed by Dale. Inventive menu that had potato chips, tuna in a can, two desserts, and Fabio with his accent working the front of the house.
Etch: Marcel's team, which no one wanted to be on. The concept was Mediterranean influences: frisée salad, mushy monkfish, lamb, octopus, and pork belly. Tiffany worked front of the house with a nervous laugh while the kitchen yelled.
Best line of the night came from Antonia: "Marcel was like, 'Guys, we did such a great job', but I'm like, 'You ... are .... on drugs.'"
Bodega won by a landslide ― only 17 out of 76 diners preferred Etch. Bourdain was calm and cool when he asked Marcel, "Why foam? Why now?" at the judges' table. After that, Marcel threw everyone under the bus. Then they hit reverse and gave it right back to him.
Richard was the winner who conceived of the potato chips, tuna in a can, and gave himself the title of technical adviser. His teammates all said that he elevated each one of their dishes; we call that throwing someone on top of the bus so they can surf the waves.
Last week we hoped for a shark week on Marcel's ass and we got it. Even while packing his knives he was as big of an ass as ever. According to Marcel, he didn't make any mistakes per se, except for picking the wrong team. With a chuckle and some dumb line about being misunderstood, he was out. Good riddance!
