‘Top Chef: New Orleans’ Recap: Lea Michele’s Halloween Bash

Last week, on Top Chef: Captain Vietnam offered to give crash courses in the country from which he so desperately wishes he came, “annoying” pulled ahead in the “Is Michael More Creepy or Annoying” contest and Sara said “I don’t mean to be a bitch,” which is what likable people often find themselves saying.

This week, on Top Chef: It’s the Halloween episode of Glee! The elimination challenge is almost certainly going to involve a mashup. A SPOOKY mashup. With that said, what follows are the random thoughts that came to mind last night as I watched the show.

-Sara and Travis survive, albeit at Janine’s expense. Sara is pretty broken up about it. “I feel like we failed her.”  Travis looks bummed to, but for different reasons “I practically invented Vietnam”).

-Apparently it’s Travis’s day to make a phone call. His dad doesn’t know he’s gay? He probably doesn’t even know his son’s favorite bánh mì spot either. 

-Quickfire time, only everything is wrapped in foil.

-“What happened in here? Who took the time to do this? And why?” Allow me to answer your rhetorical questions, Carlos…

1. They wrapped stuff in foil, just like last year. You should probably have watched last year’s show before going on this year’s show.

2. Poorly paid production assistants.

3. Because their bosses hate them (and us).

-Good news: Gail is here! Bad news: She’s not wearing a Reynold’s Wrap bikini. Oh yeah, all of that foil is Reynold’s Wrap. I have no problem repeating the name of their sponsor over and over again because I too wrap my entire kitchen in Reynold’s Wrap. Because I am insane. Insane for the unparalleled versatility of Reynold’s Wrap.

-Padma and Gail brought their moms. Not sure why. Probably because they asked if their moms could come hang out.

-The cheftestants are split into Team Lakshmi and Team Simmons, based on where they happen to be standing in their very natural Flying V formation.

-Each team has thirty minutes to make three dishes, and the moms will be doing the shopping. The chefs have to use whatever they find. I really hope there is a GE Monogram pharmaceutical cabinet in this kitchen.

-So much foil, so few recycling bins.

-Carrie is very excited that she has the ingredients necessary to make a sabayon. So excited that she says “sabayon” eight times in thirty seconds instead of noticing that she doesn’t have a whisk.

-Team Simmons: Sara and Steaphanie prepared lamb and fonduta with sharp cheddar (lamb with cheese sauce!). Justin and Michael (Sub-Team New Orleans) made red snapper papillote with rice pilaf. Carrie, Louis and Shirley have a frightening looking dish of compressed buratta with pickled apples and balsamic sabayon. That’s a lot of buzzwords.

-Team Lakshmi: Carlos and Travis present clams poached in fish sauce with coconut cream. It looks and sounds like the best dish yet. Nick and Patty follow with snapper and branzino papillote, because Reynolds Wrap insisted that parchment paper get equal time. Bene, Brian and Nina have a foul looking soup of beans, carrots, chiles and okra with a cherry chutney. So basically they got all of the crap that nobody else wanted to deal with.

-Team Lakshmi gets the win on the strength of the two dishes that weren’t mystery horror stew.

-The cheftestants learn that it’s almost Halloween time even though all of this happened months ago. That means that we’re getting a terrible theme episode. And it’s about time. I was starting to worry they’d wait for Thanksgivukah.

-Lea Michele is in the house, and Travis loves it. Come on, Travis’s dad.

-Stephanie outs herself as a big Gleek. She says she and Lea could totally hang out and it wouldn’t be weird. Speaking of weird…

– And “creepy” passes “annoying” on the straightaway.

-Teams of two cheftestants will be responsible for serving two dishes at Lea’s costume party. And if you see anyone dressed as Finn, it’s cool, he was still alive when this was filmed, so it might actually be that guy.

-People seem pretty happy to be cooking for Lea’s party until [record scratch] she’s a vegan.

-Cheese is her favorite food in the world. So she’s not really a vegan, but she does love the vegan lifestyle. And really, the lifestyle is the challenging part.

-Someone asks her for her favorite vegetable. “I like all vegetables.” Somebody asks if she likes beets. “No.” So what we’ve learned is that Lea Michele is a beet-hating cheese-loving LIAR.

-Justin asks about her favorite cuisine. Lea explains that she’s Italian. Justin is pumped because he once ate this great tomato sauce in central Vietnam (three times). That’s a call-back, folks. It’s what they do on Community.

 We’re just blowing right through nap time, aren’t we? 

-The teams all seem to be getting along, except in the case of Michael’s team, where approximately 50% of the team members hate Michael.

-At least two teams are making arancini. To be fair, Lea did say she loved cheese, fried stuff and Italian food. To be unfair, way to be creative, losers.

-So some teams are keying in on Lea’s favorite things, but what are you up to, Justin? “I’m making beet pasta.” Yeah, maybe just tell her it’s real blood.

-Make that three teams with arancini. And all because the producers brought in a celebrity who eats like a child with a cause.

-Bene and Brian are making “spooky spa cuisine.” Their second best idea was an apple bobbing station.

-They’re done with prep for the night, so a group of the cheftenstants heads to a haunted nursing home. Aren’t regular nursing homes scary enough?

-Party time! I think Tom is dressed as Truman Capote.

-Carrie & Stephanie’s dishes are called Doomed Shrooms (charred chicory puree with black garlic mushrooms) and Freaky Leaky (leak ash coated vegetables with fontina fonduta), which looks like a graveyard. Lea and Tom were both digging it.

-Nicholas and Patty have fall-themed dishes. He made a butternut squash cannoli with ricotta salata. The twist? It’s made from butternut squash that was planted on an Indian burial ground. Patty has the first arancini of the night, this one is lemony with smoked mozzarella. It looks perfectly nice.

-Brian and Bene’s Spooky Spa horror show leads off with Brian’s crispy quinoa salad and mushroom espuma. I’m guessing that what makes this dish spooky is the words “mushroom espuma.” Bene follows with an heirloom tomato salad with wilted kale. There is nothing like a summer fruit paired with a fall vegetable served at a summer party where everyone is forced to pretend that it is fall.

-Tom hated that spa crap, by the way.

-Nina and Michael are up next with Candy Corn and Bloody Eye. Nina’s dish dish is a ricotta gnocchetti with kale pesto. The scary part is that she had to work with Michael without stabbing him. Michael’s dish is called Bloody Eye. It’s yellow arancini with a saffron and tomato jam. There is a slice of black olive on top, so it totally looks like an eye. Nina’s gnocchi is perfect, Michael’s sauce tasted like Prego. You know, we talk a lot about how annoying/creepy Michael is, but his deficiencies as a chef are really deserving of more attention.

-By the way, Padma is dressed as a voodoo princess. That seems like the kind of thing that some people in New Orleans may not like.

-Travis and Carlos are celebrating Dia de los Muertos. Travis opens with a vegetable ceviche. The vegetables are all dead. Don’t tell Lea, it will just make her sad. Carlos made a goat cheese fondue with fried zucchini. Both dishes were spicy, and seemed to be well received.

-What, have you never seen a giant bunny drinking an Abita before? F*cking tourist.

-Everybody is talking about Louis’s dish, the Severed Thumb. It’s braised quinoa and onions in phyllo , sitting on top of a potato puree with dehydrated “blood.” Shirley’s dish is Worm Salad. It’s composed of hand-cut noodles and fresh daikon radish. It looks like you can really taste the hand-cutting. Lea and Tom enjoyed both dishes.

-Justin and Sara are up next with Blood Pasta and Evil Eye. Justin hands Lea his dish, and can’t help but tell her that it’s made from beets. She looks like she could kill him. I guess somebody didn’t grow up watching Doug like the rest of us beet enthusiasts. Sara serves our third example of arancini, this one dubbed Evil Eye because it looks like it has a stoma. It is served with a Moroccan tomato chutney. Tom and Lea badmouth the risotto ball, then laugh at the chefs for trying to make their food look like an eyeball. As if it was the chefs who came up with this terrible idea for a theme challenge.

-Lea tells us that Tom is actually dressed as Gatsby, which ugggggggggggh.

-Now it’s that awkward time where the chefs gather to hear what the judges thought of their food. But first, Nina sits Michael down to explain how she feels he put it in cruise control when he found out he was partnered with her. No, Nina, he’s just sh*tty. Maybe next week she will blame a chef for being in awe of her cookery.

-The duos of Nicholas/Patty and Carlos/Travis are in contention for the win. Carlos and Travis take the win.

-Bene/Brian and Nina/Michael head towards elimination. It’s unclear how many people are actually being eliminated, because I don’t recall them ever telling us. Maybe they ALL get eliminated. Dare to dream.

-Lea was bored with the spa food, and didn’t like being served salad and quinoa like she’s some stereotypical Hollywood vegetarian. I can’t imagine how they ever jumped to that conclusion.

-Padma is coming down on Nina for not making sure that Michael’s dish didn’t take like Chef Boyardee. This is so so so stupid. Hugh thinks Nina should go home even though her dish was great. Not you too, Hugh. You’re the reasonable one. If Nina goes home after making one of the best dishes we should all agree to stop watching this wretched show.

-Michael is going home. Sanity prevails!

-I’m starting to worry that we are running out of people to make fun of.

Next week, on Top Chef: John Besh and John Besh’s hair.

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