Top Chef Season Five - Episode 5
"Gail’s Bridal Shower": A Palate Challenge and a Party
Dec 21, 2008
After the elimination of Alex Eusebio in Episode 4, Today Show, only twelve contestants remain in the running for season five of Bravo's hit reality show, Top Chef. Many of the chefs awake in good spirits. Chef Jamie Lauren from Absinthe restaurant in San Francisco laughs with some of the others about a gift a fellow houseguest has given her.
Quickfire Challenge
The contestants enter the Top Chef Kitchen to discover host Padma Lakshmi alone instead of with a guest judge. As the contestants wonder what is going on, Padma informs them that they will be the ones doing the tasting. This week’s Quickfire Challenge is a game of Name That Ingredient. The chefs draw knives to assign them a partner, and will be tasting sauces head to head.
Each pair will have fifteen seconds to taste the food and then bid on how many ingredients they can name. The chef who is willing to go the highest will have to guess ingredients. If they succeed they win the round, otherwise their partner will. The first item to taste is a shrimp and lobster bouillabaisse. The next round’s challenge is a Thai green curry.
The final three chefs standing are Carla Hall, Stefan Richter, and Hosea Rosenberg. During the third and final round, the chefs will have fifteen seconds to taste a Mexican mole sauce, and then they will take turns each naming an ingredient. The last chef standing wins. Carla lost on her first guess, leaving Stefan and Hosea to compete. After several more rounds, Stefan makes an incorrect guess and Hosea is named the winner of immunity for the Elimination Challenge.
Elimination Challenge
For this week’s Elimination Challenge, the knife block is brought back out. The chefs each pull a knife that states old, new, borrowed, or blue. They quickly guess that it is a wedding challenge. Padma announces that she is throwing a bridal shower for a dear friend. Judge Gail Simmons from Food & Wine magazine enters the Top Chef kitchen. She thanks the chefs for catering and lets them know that she prefers not to eat veal or black beans. She also mentions that many of the women there will be colleagues, so they love food and have great palates.
The teams each have a budget of $800 and thirty minutes to shop at Whole Foods Market for a dish that fits the knife they drew. They will also have two and a half hours to cook in the Top Chef Kitchen and one hour to finish their dish and serve it at the shower. Team Old creates a trio of heirloom tomato dishes that are also classic, old world recipes. Team New creates a deconstructed sushi roll and microgreens salad. Team Borrowed cooks an Indian-inspired lamb dish with carrot puree. Team Blue looks for inspiration in the ocean because of the lack of blue food, and cooks Chilean sea bass.
The bridal shower takes place at 24 Fifth Avenue. The teams take turns serving the women, who include Gail, Padma, and guest judge Dana Cowin, who is the editor of Food & Wine magazine. Head judge, Chef Tom Colicchio, tastes the contestants’ dishes in the kitchen because he is not allowed at the shower.
Judge’s Table
Team Old and Team Borrowed were called to the Judge’s Table first, where they are told that they are the favorite two teams. Jeff McInnis is informed that his tomato sorbet was the best component of the tomato dish, much to the chagrin of Stefan who did not think it was a good idea. Team Old was praised for perfectly cooking the lamb and having such interesting spice in the carrot puree. Though Jamie was expecting to win, Ariane Duarte was named the winner and given a set of Calphalon cookware and kitchen electrics.
Team New and Team Blue were called in next. The judges criticized Team Blue for presenting a boring dish, that one guess even referred to as “old people food” because of a lack of texture in the components. Team New created a dish that was conceptually flawed. After deliberation, Chef Danny Gagnon was asked to pack his knives and go.
Stay tuned to see who is asked to go in next week’s episode of Top Chef, “12 Days of Christmas.” New episodes are Wednesday nights at 10 PM on Bravo. Visit the Top Chef: New York Page for episode summaries, cast profiles, and more.
