Being pregnant and all, I’m definitely starting to feel a motherly protectiveness over the remaining chefs. It’s great to see them succeed, and very hard to see them fail. I am also kind of bursting with pride when the season one ‘grads’ join us for this challenge. Their Top Chef Canada experience has really shaped them and their careers, and now they’re here to pass the torch, and help out with the prep. Dusty’s still smiling, Rob’s as feisty as ever, Connie’s serious and focused and Francois is ready to deliver. Love it.

The Elimination challenge is a trunk show luncheon where the competitors’ fashion sense has to show up on the plate; high fashion meets haute cuisine. Some of the chefs took this literally. Haute cuisine is really arty, complexly plated food, but Jonathan played with the idea and what ended up on his plate was a hat, skirt and shoes, as represented by a hikama roll, a prawn dumpling and a mussel shell!

Very cute idea, especially because it was inspired by his wife’s outfit, but unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of flavour, and even worse, there wasn’t a lot of artistry for such a fun idea. I get that Jonathan’s wife’s dress was black and white polka dot, but I really feel he could have used a lot more colour in this challenge. Chef Jennifer McLagan, who’s also a food stylist was at the table with us, and I was totally expecting our chefs to dazzle her. I was so disappointed! For a $10,000 prize, you’d think they would pull out all the stops. That’s a lot of restaurant supplies! Or a good trip to try out some top restaurants in a far away city...

Mark said that David’s lunch dish looked like it came right out of a top notch Japanese restaurant in Tokyo, and I’d have to agree. David’s plate of grilled beef tenderloin in nori, with wasabi pea butter and vegetables looked great -- dramatic even! I couldn’t wait to dig in! But the taste? Really awful. How could that be? At this stage of the game, we found it shocking. I could taste no wasabi and the chives tasted like wheatgrass - blegh. I mean, ok if you’re going for that kind of thing, fine. But we weren’t. I like David and I usually like his work, but I don’t want to be spitting it into my napkin. And that’s just what I had to do this time. So for me he was the obvious choice when it came to deciding who to send home.

For Trevor, haute couture didn’t mean ornate so much as how much work he put into the dish. It was clearly technically proficient and it tasted really yummy - from the mushroom foam to the potato crusted lamb loin. It was deep fried in duck fat but it didn’t taste too heavy. Trevor’s in the finale and so is Carl. Carl wowed me with both the presentation of his crispy fish salad as well as the perfectly crisp crust on the Euro sea bass. This was a dish with a lot of personality and flair, and I was happy to see it coming from Carl because we’ve been critiquing him a lot lately, and it just feels great to see him blossoming. There’s so much talent here and anything could happen with the biggest prize in sight....
 

 

Tags : Top Chef Canada