About Last Night: Thursday

Mini caps of Top Chef and MasterChef

Top Chef: J-Mo

Boy howdy, did THIS bunch ever give themselves a hard act to follow! After all the accusations, recriminations and obfuscations of last week’s highly explosive Restaurant Wars episode, I was thinking this week would be about as interesting as either reheated pea purée or the Top Ten Favorite Ways KennEgo Likes To Say He’s Better Than You. I was half-right. It was more interesting than anything that’s ever come out of KennEgo’s mouth.

For today’s QuickFire Challenge, the producers FINALLY decided to create a crazy contest that was ripped off fro– I mean, was inspired by that new (and very successful) Food Network show that former Top Chef judge Ted Allen is hosting called “CHOPPED”. The chefs all have a “mystery box” whose contents must be used in their dishes. That’s pretty tough in and of itself, but this time the producers actually got a little creative and so every few minutes another box is delivered (by an Unsmiling Man In A Black Suit And Shades) that contains new ingredients that must ALSO be in the final dish. This is an amazing challenge, especially since the guest judge is Wylie Dufresne and his greasily lank and utterly unfashionable hair.

What’s even more amazing is that JerseyMoobs seems to be intent on taking over the duties as King Anus of StankAss Mountain now that KennEgo’s no longer around to hide behin– er, I mean, align himself with. As a result, he’s doing an awful lot of judgmental trash-talking for someone who has been on the bottom a bunch of times, and I, for one, couldn’t be happier about it because it makes my job easier.

The Elimination Challenge is not quite as innovative or successful in nature, the chefs are asked to “disguise” a well-known dish and then serve it to an entire ROOMFUL of unsmilingly pasty people who work at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. You might remember this challenge by it’s other more obvious name: deconstructed food. Anyhow, they get to serve the Director of the CIA himself, Leon Panetta, who looks like a nice enough guy, so it’s hard for me to believe he’s sitting at the table next to Scar eating a boring salad (made by JerseyMoobs) and knowing where all the space-alien corpses are buried in Nevada and New Mexico and my back yar– I mean, other places.

Anyhow, everybody still pretty much hates Nosferatu (except for his fellow hackchef Bloody Mandy) and are still fearful of OranJello, so most of the show is spent with Miss Swan and JerseyMoobs complaining about one or the other of them. Also, very exciting, Erique The Rippert actually appears on the show, for, like, the THIRD time this season. Come check the full recap in a couple of days!

MasterChef: Dangerously

Last night on MasterChef, the heat was turned up. The evening starts off with us finally being introduced to the MasterChef kitchen. Looks sweet. My kitchen is an 8×8 box. The first challenge of the night is the mystery box challenge. What’s in the box? Pork chops, among other things. The contestants get 45 minutes to create something impressive. The winner gets the opportunity to pick from one of three ingredients to be the focus for the next challenge, as well as 5 minutes alone in the pantry. The silly thing about the mystery box challenge, though, is that no one is eliminated. And the mystery box challenge winner is Whitney! Yay for one of my ponies!

Challenge #2 for the evening: Chinese theme. Whitney got to pick the focal ingredient, which is Mandarin orange. It appears that of the 14 people, only 2 or 3 actually have a clue how to cook Chinese food, and the judges are horribly disappointed. Two people are sent home. You’ll have to read the recap to find out who. The unexpected result of Challenge 2 is that there was a winner selected…Mikey!!!

Mikey’s reward is that he gets to pick his team for the final challenge of the episode. The last challenge for the day is cooking a meal for marines. 400 of them. Red team vs Blue team, with the losing team being subjected to a taste-test to see who the person is who will be going home. Mikey and the blue team win the challenge, and team red is sent to the taste-test pot to cut one of their members. Who was it? Come back later for the full recap!