Meanwhile, the red team looked disorganized from the start with Leia and Jae already deciding on an Asian-style menu while Stephanie would have preferred more of an Italian pasta dish. Buddha wanted to take his immunity and go for broke, deciding to use the beef to create a dessert, spotted dick. And as soon as they started planning you could see early signs of which meals might be promising and which might be problematic. Then the blue team picked loin, brown picked chuck, green picked sirloin, and red was left with round. Though it was still a roll of the dice whether the quickly assembled teams would actually be able to mesh their styles well enough for their meals to complement each other’s.Īs the Quickfire winners, the yellow team got first pick and went with beef rib. Kristen noted that they were getting off easy since they’d be able to create their own dishes instead of all having to collaborate on one. Their challenge was to continue working in their Quickfire teams to create a cohesive three-course menu using one of five primal cuts of beef. Leia was excited to see her idols right there in front of her, but also had a sinking feeling: “You know when you feel like you’re about to get punched and you brace yourself?” Co-host and judge Tom Colicchio and another “Top Chef” all-star and guest judge Kristen Kish emerged alongside several large cuts of meat. Speaking of which … DISCUSS “Top Chef: Houston” in our forums And it was a good thing that they did because it meant that Buddha, Monique, and Jo all had immunity from elimination in the next round. But it was the yellow team that took the win. The best two teams were yellow (Thai barbecued beef with salsa verde salad, charred scallions, and fish butter sauce) and brown (coal roasted eggplant, macadamia romesco, and Serrano creme fraiche). Ultimately, Padma and guest judge Dawn Burrell (a past “Top Chef” finalist) declared the blue team clearly the losing team, while the red team suffered from dry, overcooked, flavorless pork. Lucky for him it wasn’t the elimination challenge. Luke was the last member of that team to cook, but he lost track of time and the challenge was over before he could plate any of what his team had prepared.
Whatever Jackson ended up putting on the plate couldn’t have been worse than what the blue team ended up with … which was nothing, a big bowl of air. Jackson, the last chef on the brown team, was just hoping for something edible since he had COVID a month prior to competing on the show and still had limited taste and smell - a fact he withheld from his teammates. But Leia took the initiative for the red team by going with a Vietnamese-style dish, hoping it would give her teammates some clear direction. Ashleigh was first up on the blue team and wanted to create a blank canvas on which the other chefs would have flexibility in working on the dish. The chefs had different approaches to how they handled flying blind.
So each team was basically its own culinary improv group “yes, and”-ing whatever the previous chef had cooking. Making it all the more difficult, the teammates, who had just met, weren’t allowed to communicate with each other at all. And the number-threes had the final 10 minutes to finish and plate the dish for the judges. Then the number-twos had 10 minutes to continue the same dish. Number-one from each team had 10 minutes to prepare a dish. Their instructions basically came down to blind faith. They all drew knives labeled “1,” “2,” or “3,” and they all had to split up into five teams of three, with each team having one of each number on it. As soon as Evelyn saw the knife block beside Padma, she knew it had to be a team challenge, and she was right. If any of the chefs were intimidated before, it didn’t get any better upon learning what they’d have to do for their Quickfire. What a perfectly relaxing and not intimidating at all way to ease them into the first Quickfire Challenge of the season! SEE ‘Top Chef’ season 19 cast: Meet the 15 chefs competing on ‘Top Chef: Houston’ Quickfire Challenge Then she asked how many of them have worked in Michelin star restaurants - even more hands went up, eight of them to be exact. Just how steep is the competition? As soon as host Padma Lakshmi invited them into the kitchen for the very first time, she asked how many of the cheftestants had been James Beard Award nominees - several hands went up.