Top Chef All-Stars Episode 3 Rankings

The third episode of Top Chef All-Stars brought us the always-special Mis En Place Relay Race, this time featuring four teams of four, Red (Antonia, Jamie, Casey and Dale L.), White (Dale T., Carla, Tiffani, and Marcel), Blue (Stephen, Tre, Blais and Spike), and Green (Angelo, Mike, Tiffany and Fabio), with teammates chosen by the order they entered the kitchen.  The prep consisted of breaking down garlic, lamb and artichokes and then making a tasty dish using those ingredients, with the catch that the first team to finish the race would hit a button starting a 15 minute clock – the countdown to when all of the dishes would have to be done.

The first team to finish the prep was Team Green and Angelo organized the preparation of the dish (thyme and garlic lamb with tandoori-spiced yogurt), followed closely by Team Blue, shepherded by Blais (crispy lamb chop with raw, crispy and braised artichokes, served with a chili aioli).  The third team to finish the race was the Red Team who set about making a cold dish (lamb carpaccio with crispy capers, and a salad of garlic, Parmigiano-Reggiano and artichoke) and last was Team White (lamb carpaccio but serve theirs with artichoke chips and raw artichoke salad with garlic oil).

To Angelo’s surprise, the Blue Team won the Quickfire and $5,000 for each member.

The teams were then treated to dinner at four of New York’s finest restaurants, Má Pêche (Team Green), Marea (Team Blue), WD-50 (Team White), and Townhouse (Team Red) with the caveat that in the next day’s Elimination Challenge they would each have to cook a dish representative of that eatery – and that each team would compete against the other members of their team.

This was a great challenge and most of the chefs did very well.  The top dishes included Angelo (turmeric-marinated fish with dill, cilantro (barf), salmon roe, chorizo and white chocolate), Tre (grilled swordfish, artichokes, mushroom panna cotta and basil oil), and Antonia (pea and carrot purees, topped with a seared scallop, pickled carrot and mint oil), but Dale Talde won the EC with a sunny-side-up egg dumpling with braised pork belly, and milk ramen with bacon, beef and pork.  It looked really great and I’m sure it was delicious.

The bottom dishes were Fabio, Tiffani, Dale L. and Stephen and they sent home Dale L. and Stephen.  The exit interviews were quite decent and even though I hated to see Dale Levitski go home, he was very gracious about it.  I had started him rather low in the rankings and was moving him up, but perhaps my original assessment was correct.  Stephen did better than expected, but he was due to go.

So, without further ado, here are my current rankings:

1.         Angelo Sosa.  Last week:  No. 2. 

Angelo’s continued strong showing in the Elimination Challenges moves him marginally ahead of Richard for top spot.

 2.        Richard Blais.  Last week:  No. 1. 

Although he drove the winning team for the Quickfire Challenge, he did not show as strong in the EC, losing his restaurant to Tre.

3.         Marcel Vigneron.  Last week:  No. 4. 

With Tiffani’s slip in the EC, I have moved Marcel up one space, but I’m not yet convinced that he completely belongs here.

4.         Tiffani Faison.  Last week:  No. 3. 

She was so close to elimination that I had to bump her down at least one spot.  She is a terrific chef, though, and I can’t see moving her any further.

5.         Dale Talde.  Last week:  No. 6.  

Dale’s win in the EC allows him to move up into the fifth spot.  He is beginning to show a lot of grit and may make it far in the competition.

6.         Jamie Lauren.  Last week:  No. 5. 

Jamie moves down one spot, mostly due to Dale’s resurgence.

7.         Casey Thompson.  Last week:  No. 11. 

Casey makes a huge jump in the rankings.  I think that I may have underestimated her versatility from the very beginning and she is probably getting up where she deserves to be.

8.         Spike Mendelsohn.  Last week:  No. 8. 

I’m keeping Spike at 8.  He didn’t make a great showing, but didn’t embarrass himself either. 

9.         Antonia Lafaso.  Last week:  No. 13. 

Producing one of the top four dishes moves Antonia all the way up to the 9^th spot.  I think she belongs more in the middle than the bottom.

10.       Michael Isabella.  Last week:  No. 12. 

Mike is showing fairly strong, but he still belongs middle to bottom in this group of extraordinary chefs.

11.       Tre Wilcox.  Last week:  No. 14. 

Tre takes a decent jump forward from his top four finish.

12.       Carla Hall.  Last week:  No. 10.  

Carla moves ahead of Tiffany this week, as she made a decent showing in the EC.

13.       Tiffany Derry.  Last week: No. 9.  

Tiffany just isn’t impressing me like I thought she would.

14.       Fabio Viviandi.  Last week:  No. 15. 

Just hanging on, Fabio is consistently in the bottom and might well be the next elimination.

15.       Dale Levitski.  Last week:  No. 7.   Eliminated.

            Dale is gone because his food was too sweet and didn’t really show the spark of creativity that was needed.

16.      Stephen Asprinio.  Last week: No. 16.  Eliminated.

            Stephen really lasted longer than he probably should have, but he exited very gracefully.

TOP CHEF ALL-STARS Episode 2 Rankings

The second episode of Top Chef All-Stars, Season 8, started out with one of those silly Quickfire Challenges involving children, but this time without the wisdom of health-consciousness to guide it.  Use as much sugar as you like, as often as you like!  The results are pumped up kids on the verge of hysteria.  The look on Jamie’s face said it all.

(I thought one of the coolest parts of the show was showing some of the Cheftestants as kids!)

It started out in the TC kitchen with Joe Jonas and Padma asking for a midnight snack for the 150 kids doing an overnight at the American Museum of Natural History.  The two top dishes were then to go head-to-head with the tweeners as judges.  Tiffani came out in the top with a sweet MG cookie and tied with Spike’s chips and dip.  In choosing up chefs for their teams, Tiffani chose mostly women and Spike mostly men.  That Spike chose Richard and Dale T. (from his own S4) was no surprise and I bet he would have taken Antonia, too, if Tiffani hadn’t taken her first.  Tre was the notable guy on Tiffani’s team and Carla was the notable woman on Spike’s.

It was almost a foregone conclusion that the kids would prefer the cookies, so naturally Tiffani won the challenge and immunity for the Elimination Challenge.  Then came the interesting part.

Given the choice between all meat and dairy (T-Rex) or vegetables, fruits and grains (Brontosaurus or more correctly Apatosaurus), Tiffani chose T-Rex.  While watching the episode live, I thought that was the better choice, but Tiffani and most of her team somehow thought that T-Rex was omnivorous, even though Tom made it perfectly clear that they were limited to meat, dairy and meat bi-products.  I hadn’t thought it through (as I guess Tiffani hadn’t either) because it seemed obvious after a short while that Team Bronto had a much wider variety of products to work with, including a wide variety of spices unavailable to Team T-Rex.

Team Bronto came up with some interesting dishes, including a tasty gnocchi, a surprising gazpacho (for breakfast!?) and a banana pudding with fruit which was good enough to secure a win for Richard, Angelo and Marcel.  This makes Angelo’s second EC win, Richard’s first (after being disqualified in the first episode) and Marcel’s first win (in spite of his carping at Angelo).

Even though the kids and parents formed long lines for Team T-Rex, the food did not offer enough variety.  While the salmon with shrimp sauce produced successful salmon, the sauce was over-reduced and salty.  The frittatas were not cooked uniformly, meaning that some of the egg was runny on the inside – a major problem for the team.  But the big losers were Jennifer and Jamie.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) Jamie cut her hand and was told by a TC medic that she needed stitches, so she was off to the hospital, leaving Jen to tough out the dish herself.  Even with Jamie, though, the dish would not have carried.  It consisted of braised bacon in a sauce with hard-boiled eggs crumbled on top.  It was a wet, brown mess, with tasteless eggs on top.  No one liked it and Jennifer took an early exit.  It was tough to see her go and – like Elia before her – it was emotional and ugly.  I feel for her.  But the judges make their decisions based solely on the plate put before them and, in spite of her fight to defend the dish it certainly looked like the worst dish of the bunch.

So, this really stirs up my current rankings, but here goes:

1.         Richard Blais.  Last week:  No. 1. 

Although he wasn’t in the running for the Quickfire win, he did finish on top in the Elimination Challenge.  He seems to work very well in small groups and I still think he is the most creative of the group.

2.         Angelo Sosa.  Last week:  No. 2. 

Angelo and Richard followed the same track this week, not competing in the QF, but sharing the EC win.  He is still Richard’s strongest competitor.  I thought that he was perhaps right in the little spat with Marcel over cutting up the plums and it certainly didn’t hurt the dish.

3.        Tiffani Faison.  Last week:  No. 3. 

Tiffani solidified herself at No. 3 with the QF win, though she did make a huge mistake in selecting T-Rex for the EC.  She’s still a very strong chef and appears to have learned the most from her villain-edit in S2.  She still could easily win it all.

4.         Marcel Vigneron.  Last week:  No. 6. 

Marcel moves up two spots, due to the loss of Jennifer Carroll from the top five and due to Jamie’s inglorious cut.  He did participate in the winning dish in the EC and therefore gets at least one star behind his name.  I thought that Marcel was a little wigged out in confronting Angelo over cutting up the plums for their dish, but it wasn’t too much over the top or enough so that I think it hurts Marcel’s maturity factor.

5.        Jamie Lauren.  Last week:  No. 4. 

Where oh where did Jamie go this week?  If we can blame Jen for not being fully there in the bacon and egg dish, Jamie was literally not there – at the hospital getting two, count ‘em, two stitches in her cut hand.  Frankly, it looked like much of Team T-Rex was absent under fire, but Jamie looked spaced out and like she didn’t really want to be there at all.  We’ll see if this was an aberration or if she will go into a permanent funk.

6.         Dale Talde.  Last week:  No. 7.  

He also gets bumped up with Jennifer’s collapse.

7.         Dale Levitski.  Last week:  No. 11. 

I’m really beginning to like Dale L. and I think that bumping him up is appropriate at this time – another mid-course correction.  He seems to be very thoughtful about his food and if you combine that with solid technique, I just think he deserves better than tenth.

8.        Spike Mendelsohn.  Last week:  No. 13. 

Spike has made a huge leap from the No. 17 spot that I started him out in my preseason rankings.  As Bourdain put it, he is the “craftiest M-fer ever on the show.”  He has definitely shown so far that he deserves to be here as much for his food as for his craftiness.  This time, he nearly won the QF and he showed very well in the EC.  As I said last week, he seems to have matured, without losing his playfulness. 

9.        Tiffany Derry.  Last week: No. 8.  

So Tiffany falls one spot, but two chefs move in front of her.  Mostly her reason for moving down is that she really isn’t showing me much, while others are.  Last year, she also started out slow, but then got things really going, so we’ll see what happens as the show moves forward.

10.      Carla Hall.  Last week:  No. 9.  

See Tiffany, but in a different season.

11.      Casey Thompson.  Last week:  No. 10. 

Only goes down with Spike and Dale L. moving up.  Her salmon was supposedly very good and only brought down by Tre's reduction.

12.      Michael Isabella.  Last week:  No. 14. 

Mike gets bumped two spots, as I think I’m getting him closer to where he deserves to be.  In fact, he may go higher next week, depending on the next episode.  Of course, after Jennifer’s elimination, he could just as easily be going home.

13.       Antonia Lafaso.  Last week:  No. 12. 

Antonia moves down one spot, based almost exclusively on the EC performance.

14.      Tre Wilcox.  Last week:  No. 15. 

Tre made the disastrous shrimp reduction that made Casey's salmon into a losing dish, so I have dropped him one spot.  Really, Tre, is just a step above Fabio and Stephen.

15.       Fabio Viviandi.  Last week:  No. 16. 

            Fabio moves up solely because of Jennifer’s elimination.

16.       Stephen Asprinio.  Last week: No. 17. 

            Had a notable dish in the EC, but not enough to move him up.

17.       Jennifer Carroll.  Last week:  No. 5

            Eliminated.  Burned out before her time, we will surely miss Jen, but you have to take responsibility for your cooking.  ‘Nuff said.

A double elimination this week – it should be exciting!

TOP CHEF ALL-STARS Episode 1 Rankings

So, the first episode of Top Chef All-Stars, Season 8, was a terrific show - clearly one of the best opening episodes of the series.  It was certainly revealing to show the contestants showing up at their New York digs - in rough seasonal order - with cut-ins of interviews with each chef.  There was a fair amount of Bravado, which one has come to expect from very talented chefs reaching for the higher levels of their profession.  Marcel and Jen particularly kicked it.

At the first gathering in the TC kitchen for the Quickfire Challenge, Padma announced that the prize for winning TC had been increased to $200,000 for this All-Star season, plus another $300,000 in prize money to be given out throughout the season.  That's a lot of dough and a lot more than we've seen in any season past.  Marcel noted that in Season 2 he finished second and didn't get diddly.  How things have changed.

The QF was an excellent challenge for opening this season and it played on the theme of bringing non-winners from past seasons together.  Since each of the first seven seasons took place in a different city, chefs from each season were teamed together with the task of making a dish representative of the city their season took place in.

My favorite season was S4, which took place in Chicago.  So for me it is fitting that the most representatives of any season came from S4 - 4 chefs in all - Richard, Dale T., Antonia and Spike.  Their concoction won - a deconstructed Chicago hot dog - and all four chefs received immunity for the Elimination Challenge.

The EC was even more creative, as each chef was required to make the dish that they were eliminated for and to improve on it, with the winner taking $10,000.  The top four chefs in the EC were Richard, Angelo, Jamie, and Spike.  However, Head Judge Tom Colicchio disqualified Richard because he was plating past the bell.  Angelo won the challenge.  The bottom three included Fabio and – not surprisingly – Stephen.  Elia was also in the bottom group and she was the one eliminated. 

The format of breaking the 18 chefs into two groups and having each nine chefs dine with the judges to taste their competitors’ food has been used before – including the gimmick of having a monitor in the kitchen so that the chefs who cooked get to watch the reactions of the diners.  I thought that the contestants were even-handed in their comments.  Not so Judge Anthony Bourdain, whose memorable comments included a description of Fabio’s dish as resembling “the inside of an animal” and who gave high praise to Dale T., stating that he had “unf**ked” himself with the butterscotch scallop dish.  It was highly entertaining, if a bit over the top.  I like Bourdain, but I still long for the days when Ted Allen’s subtler wit infused the show.

So, with the second episode coming up on Wednesday, here are my current rankings.

1.         Richard Blais.  Last week:  No. 1. 

He certainly showed his creativity in the Quickfire by making the mustard ice cream to go with the deconstructed Chicago hot dog that was put together by his fellow TC Chicago teammates Dale T., Antonia and Spike.  Indeed it was the MG concoction that really put them over the top for the win.  Apparently, his re-imagined pork belly for the EC was excellent, but he could not win because he ran overtime on plating.  From what the others, especially Carla, have said, he did not do it on purpose, but simply lost track of the time.  Dale T., who is a friend and admirer of Richard's, stated that he thought Richard should have won.

2.         Angelo Sosa.  Last week:  No. 3. 

With only a few weeks apparently separating the end of S7 and the beginning of S8 filming, Angelo came in with the most immediate experience.  This could be either good or bad.  On the one hand, he could have - and still may be - a bit burned out from the grind of a season that took him to the brink of winning before he became ill and lost.  But on the other hand, he may still be in the competitive groove and it may give him a leg-up on everyone else.  Only time will tell that.  But in the EC, certainly his failing dish was fresh enough in his mind that he was able to overcome the problems and get the W.

3.         Tiffani Faison.  Last week:  No. 2. 

Tiffani slips down a notch due to the terrific performance by Angelo.  Indeed, placing the top three is somewhat of a challenge and there may be some back-and-forth movement at the beginning of the season.

4.         Jamie Lauren.  Last week:  No. 6. 

A strong performance in both challenges, including a Top 4 finish in the EC moves her up two spots.  I always thought that she was a strong chef - let's see if she can keep it up.

5.         Jennifer Carroll.  Last week:  No. 7. 

Jen moves up two spots also mostly because I think I ranked her too low to start, not because of a great performance or anything.

6.         Marcel Vigneron.  Last week:  No. 4. 

Marcel slips two spots, but I'm not even sure that he should be this high.  I had expected to see a greater level of maturity, but I fear from the first episode that he still just doesn't quite get it.

7.         Dale Talde.  Last week:  No. 5. 

This is also a rearrangement on my part trying to get Dale closer to where he belongs.  I'm just not sure that he is focussed enough to merit a higher ranking.  And there may indeed be some chefs lower than him that will move ahead.

8.         Tiffany Derry.  Last week: No. 8. 

I didn't really see anything from Tiffany D. that would make me move her up or down.

9.         Carla Hall.  Last week:  No. 9.  

Same with Carla as with Tiffany.

10.       Casey Thompson.  Last week:  No. 11. 

Casey moves up one spot and she may deserve to be higher.  Let's see what happens.

11.       Dale Levitski.  Last week:  No. 12. 

I honestly think that Dale L. may deserve to be higher.  He came so close to winning in S3 that I may be underestimating his talent.  However, for now, he will sit in the middle, closer to the bottom than the top.

12.       Antonia Lafaso.  Last week:  No. 10. 

I moved Antonia down several spots to move the two from S3 ahead of her.  I still think that she may deserve to be higher, but I'm not convinced yet.

13.       Spike Mendelsohn.  Last week:  No. 17. 

Spike makes the biggest jump forward - a full four spots.  Part of the reason is that he made the Top 4 in the EC.  But I am sensing that Spike has a much better handle on himself than, say, Marcel does.  He does seem to have matured, without losing his playfulness.  Maybe he should be ranked even higher, but he started out so low that it will take the proof of performance over time to keep moving him along.

14.      Michael Isabella.  Last week:  No. 14. 

I still think that Mike is better than 14th - and his success with the EC dish - taking his leek mess and reworking it into something that everyone seemed to like - was certainly a big accomplishment.  But during his season, he frequently followed a terrific performance with a flop, so I'm not convinced yet.

15.      Tre Wilcox.  Last week:  No. 16. 

Tre moves up solely based on Elia's elimination.  I didn't see anything in his performance that makes me think he's going to be very successful against this particular group of chefs.

16.      Fabio Viviandi.  Last week:  No. 13. 

A fairly miserable performance moves Fabio into next-to-last place, a three spot drop.  It wasn't just his cooking (which I did not think looked as bad as Bourdain described), but his attitude bothered me.  The charm was gone and in it's place was a whiney self-defense that did not seem appropriate.  Come on.  If you fail, admit it.  Don't claim that the dish was good, when no one liked it.  And Tom clearly thought that he hadn't a clue as to improving it.

17.      Stephen Asprinio.  Last week: No. 18. 

Stephen moves up solely based on Elia's elimination.  His own elimination dish was a complete failure of imagination.  I'll grant that he did not actually prepare the dish during S1's wedding episode, but the reason that he was eliminated was that he spent too much time with the wait staff explaining about wines and so on.  If he had contributed more then he may have been in a better position for this challenge.  And at this point, he still seems to be the least inspiring of all the chefs.

18.       Elia Aboumrad.  Last week: No. 15. 

Eliminated.  I thought that Elia would do much better, but if Fabio had a problem admitting that his dish was not good, then Elia was in positive denial.  If you serve raw fish, the least you can do is to apologize to the diners, not to insist that you thought it was good.

I'm looking forward to Episode 2 on Wednesday night!

TOP CHEF ALL-STARS Episode 1

After spending a great deal of time looking forward to the first episode of TCAS, I must say that it was everything I hoped for and more.  It was great just to see all of the chefs getting together at their house and mixing.  For the most part, I thought that they were very decent to each other, especially considering some of the past tensions.


The Quickfire was great fun.  It was a terrific concept to have each season's chefs work together to create a dish that was representative of the city that their season took place in.  Since Season 4 was my favorite, I was glad to see that they won and received immunity for the Elimination Challenge.  When the Quickfire started, I thought that they might actually go with a deep dish pizza and was a little surprised that they worked in the direction of a deconstructed hot dog.  Of course, Blais' creativity once again helped to elevate the dish to a new level with his addition of mustard ice cream.  He just thinks differently than everyone else!


The Elimiation Challenge was for each individual chef to cook the dish that got them knocked out of the competition during their season.  Although Stephen was at a bit of a disadvantage in that he had to cook something that he had never cooked before (he was front of the house during the original elimination), he still failed to take it to any kind of level that would have guaranteed him safety.  Joining him on the bottom was Fabio, whose dish looked like a real mess.  Bourdain may have gone a bit overboard in his criticism, but that is what we expect from Bourdain.  I think that Fabio really over-reacted to Bourdain and took it way too personally.  And the person who got eliminated, Elia, looked really lost and in over her head.  She seemed to be in complete denial about the quality of her dish and - let's face it - raw fish just doesn't cut it.  Although I had Stephen ranked at the bottom, I really felt that Elia deserved to go.


On the top end, I felt bad for Blais, who was plating past the alloted time and thus was eliminated from consideration for the win (Carla maintains that he never heard the bell).  I have had him up at No. 1 on my rankings and I see no reason to change that - everyone loved his dish and he showed really well in the QF.  I was quite surprised to see Spike turn things around and create a really good dish.  Even though I have him ranked toward the bottom, he can be very surprising - and his personality makes him perfect for TC - so I hope he sticks around for a while.  Jaime is the only contestant whose food I've eaten, so I alwasy seem to end up rooting for her.  She did very well last night, being praised for her QF dish and coming close to winning on the EC.  However, it was Angelo who won the first EC, by reimagining the dish that he couldn't perfect due to illness at the end of Season 7.  I expect him to do very well in this competition and I suspect that I'll move him up a bit.


I have to give some thought as to my rankings, but I'll have them posted before the next episode.


On the whole, though, I loved the first episode and I'm hoping that the rest of the season is as entertaining.  Since we don't have to get to know these chefs from scratch, the sense of familiarity with them makes for great viewing - and to see the mix from different seasons is very pleasing.


I'm looking forward to the next episode!