Top Chef Masters: Exotic Is Another Word For Nauseating

Hi everybody! How many times has this happened to you?… you’re at a party and you spot the fabulous vintage Harvest-Gold™-colored Tupperware Cracker-Snackerwheel filled to the edges of it’s lovely plastic partitions with Ritz and Club crackers, and in the middle of their gorgeous goldenness is a tub of something brownish and semi-lumpy. It could be bean dip, or maybe some sort of opaque salsa, but you can’t be sure and the host isn’t around to answer your appetizer-related questions… so you grab a Ritz and dig in and try some. Hey, it tastes pretty good! Before you know it, you’ve cleared an entire segment of Ritzes and you’re bent over the tub shoveling that lumpybrown stuff into your mouth as fast as you can. Then the host shows up, and seeing you enjoying this muck says “Ahh, I’m so glad you like my mud eel and baby squid paté, isn’t it delish?” and at that exact moment you bite down on a tentacle or an eel eye…

you are likely to have have one of two reactions

Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, at least where food is concerned. Truthfully, if we really knew exactly what was in that can of Easy Cheese, would we still make smiley faces with it on Wheat Thins by the thousands? Fuck no. That’s why chemical names are basically 37-letter words that mean nothing more than “dairy sludge”. And I thank them for it, because who really wants to know the truth about Jell-O, or Chee-Tos, or McNuggets?

The same thing goes for so-called “exotic foods”. I’m no stranger to putting things in my mouth that other people might consider disgusting, but even I have to draw the line at penis-shaped mollusks. Unless I was drunk and they were being real friendly and complimentary to me, then all bets are off. Anyhow, it’s no secret that we in America turn our collective rhinoplastied noses up at a lot of edible things that the rest of the world considers delicacies, and tonight we’re going to learn that our instincts are right on the fucking money. The reason a lot of the world eats things like raw hippo nostrils and jellyfish blubber and pigeon butt is because they don’t have a 7-Eleven or AM/PM around the corner where you can get all of those things in the form of a hot dog.

Well, let’s jump right in and start off with our QuickFire challenge, which is not going to be disgusting (for the most part). Bok Choi is looking mighty cute, and she got herself a Farrah-flip ‘do for this episode…

still looked better when Scar did it

She says some of them have already cooked for TV stars and celebrities this season (which I think is a bit of a stretch to call Mekhi Phifer and that poser assband The Bravery “celebrities” but for the sake of argument we’ll believe her) and she says the people they’re going to be cooking for today are “true icons known in every part of the world”. Wow, even Antarctica? Then instead of that lame-ass Pots’N’Aprons bullshit, she says they’re going to actually draw knives!

The mystery of what sort of icons they’ll be serving lasts about 3 seconds as Tobama draws “Chief Wiggum”, ChicleTeeth gets “‘Mo(e)” and La Marquessa lands “Apu”. Then Sussudio draws his knife, looks at it gravely and says “Ahhhhhh, Marrr-gue!” BWAHAHAHAHA, oh Sussudio made me like him a little with that one, and the rest of the Masters are all cracking up as Reverend Moonie leans over and gently corrects him…

“It’s pronounced ‘Mair-gee-eh’.”

Moonie gets “Homer”, Cougarella has “Lisa” and Waxie got “Bart”. Clearly they’ve all drawn characters from The Simpsons and the challenge is to create a gourmet dish that their character would like. Aw, man! They should have made it hard and given them some tougher characters like Maggie Simpson (who eats all pureéd food) and Krusty the Clown (who eats nothing but booze) and Patty Bouvier (who eats pussy).

In any case, the judges for today’s QuickFire are Simpsons creator Matt Groening (who is also responsible for bringing us Futurama, which has spawned even more disturbing toon pornography than The Simpsons has), voice actor Hank Azaria (who just happens to do the voices for Chief Wiggum, Moe, and Apu, and whom I always remember as Agador Spartacus from The Birdcage) and the third judge is…

the guy who inspired Sideshow Bob

Many of the Masters are peeing themselves a little over this, especially Tobama and Moonie, who are clearly huge fans of the show. Only Sussudio looks baffled and a little lost. Bokky gives them 45 minutes to come up with something worthy of Springfield’s best, and they’re off!

Reverend Moonie’s absolutely flying on Cloud Nine since he drew Homer, who could not be an easier source of inspiration, so he’s planning on making a Sloppy Joe sammich, but he wants to elevate it from your typical Manwich fare, “It’s gonna be a shrimp Sloppy D’oh!”…

this is him being “D’oh!”-eyed

He. Is. So. Adorable. Even more adorable is Waxie who says he and his kids are huge fans of the show, “What would Bart wanna eat? Probably what my 10-year-old eats… spaghetti tossed with a little butter and parmesan cheese.” His other kid loves sammiches, too, so he’s making a grilled ham & cheese & tomato sammich to go with it.

Meanwhile ChicleTeeth is pulling the StarFucker card and says she absolutely loves Matt Groening, “He used to eat at our first restaurant ‘City’ long ago, so I’m excited about that!” Since she has Moe she imagines him to be grumpy and mean and eating a lot of “junk food and… crap!” Don’t forget booze, Chicky. In any case, she’s making him Mexican Hot Chocolate and donuts with strawberry jam, which honestly sounds more Homer than Moe…

she isn’t shy about telling me what I can do with my opinion on how Moe-y her dish is

Moving on to Sussudio, he says he remembers one of his favorite shows he used to watch on American TV back when he was just a kid in Hong Kong, “And dis woman, she’s a witch, she always moove her nose and then something changes, and I always find that very magical.” Awww, how sweet, he’s talking about one of my all-time favorites, Bewitched! Sussudio is making me like him this episode…

especially when I see him rocking his Dorothy Hamill ‘do

Well, he may have been a big fan of both gay Darrins and Endora (and really, who wasn’t?) but he says the last cartoon he watch was so long ago, “Da people dat judging, dey know dese character for twenty-somesing years! Dis one I’m gonna have a problem!” Ah, don’t worry Sussudio, the QuickFire ain’t shit, and we all know that (especially since they stopped making it count towards the final scores).

Over at another station (and not making me like him) is La Marquessa, who naturally feels like there is a bit of himself in Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, “As an immigrant sort of in love with Indian culture, what could be better but show that to Americans through food? So I’m making an Indian soup with all it’s classic garnishes.” Well, I applaud his desire to educate all of us on Indian culture, but he’s only feeding three people, so he’s about 309,294,997 short of “showing America”. Besides, I think he’s kind of missing the point of the challenge… isn’t going the Indian cuisine route a tad too literal of an approach for the character of Apu? Wouldn’t he prefer something more along the lines of a Chili-Cheese Vindalu Dog and a Cherry Squishy?…

or a Bollywood makeover for Marquessa?

Never mind, I think he’s just looking to show off. Let’s see what Cougarella’s up to…

showing the boys she’s got ‘em just where she wants ‘em

She lucked out and landed Lisa Simpson, who is a vegetarian, and so she’s naturally going to make something tasty like barbecued beets. Mmmm, beet-y! I bet those things stain your teefs. Also, she says she wanted something crispy like a potato chip, so she decides to have a bake sale. Huh? OH, she said she was going to bake some kale, and I guess once it gets all dried out in the oven it’s almost exactly like a potato chip. If potato chips were full of chlorophyll and nonflavor. Wait, what’s wrong with making actual potato chips out of potatoes? Isn’t that still vegetarian? Do they only have mammalian taters available in the Top Chef Masters Kitchens? I don’t understand anything going on here.

Oh well, let’s see what Tobama is up to. He’s trying to figure out what Chief Wiggum would like to eat. I can tell you in one word: Denny’s. Anyhow, Tobama’s racked his brains, and all he seems to be coming up with is “fried bacon honey pizza dough” which sounds tasty enough but, really, a pork product???…

you do realize he’s a cop, don’t you Tobama?

Ah well, he says after he’s done with frying up his pigmeat he’s planning on pouring the bacon fat into the honey in order to give it that extra bacon-y goodness and flavor, so he sets his hot pan aside.

Meanwhile, Sussudio says Waxie told him all bout Marge’s tall hair and big eye and how she love pork chop, so he make pork chop dish. He’s also in the process of using a pastry bag and squirting some purple shit onto his plates in the shape of Marge’s hair…

or else that’s Prince’s vagina

Ruh-roh! Tobama comes back to get his bacon-fat pan, and apparently Sussudio used the same pan to toss some of his garbage into, which has apparently ruined the fat, and now Tobama can’t use it in his dish. Because the bacon just isn’t bacon-y enough I guess? Clearly it wasn’t a malicious thing on Sussudio’s part, how was he supposed to know that a random empty pan with grease in the bottom of it was not suitable for garbage placement? Tobama should go find some Bac-O’s. Sussudio feels the same way as me! “I say to Tony, dis is what Master Chef all abou’! You have adapt to change to make it work!”

Time is running out, and Moonie’s running into some trouble, his Sloppy D’ohs are coming out quite a bit more sloppy than he intended…

plus, he’s adding extra seasoning

Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. I know that’s just sweat and not snot, but still, gross, the Reverend needs to invest in a headband or one of those battery-powered fan-visors or something. Anyhow, it’s time to eat Simpsons-inspired food, starting with ChicleTeeth’s offering for Moe Szyslak the Bartender…

which look a tad turdlike

Matt Groening says the writers love to make Moe the most miserable character on the show and he apologizes to Hank Agador when he says he’s also the ugliest of all the characters as well. Because Krusty the Clown is such a sex god. Bokky asks Matt if he thinks Moe would like the dish, and Matt agrees, while Mr. Hanky says (in his Moe Voice) that it would be the happiest moment of Moe’s life. To eat turds and Rice Krispy Treats made out of millet instead. Ah well, I guess that’s about what Moe would deserve, so it’s a bullseye for ChicleTeeth!

Next in line is Tobama’s dish for the Chief Pig Wiggum…

with the sugar star sprinkles it looks more suited to Maggie than Wiggie

I think he kinda missed the boat here, Chief Wiggum is fat, not an alcoholic. Anyhow, all Hank Agador can say after chomping on a piece of the pizza dough is “Oh yeah!” (in Chief Wiggum Voice, natch!). Sideshow Bob Dude comments that “That is a boozy coffee all right!” and makes a face like perhaps it was a bit much. Matt, on the other hand, says he can see Wiggsie drinking spiked coffee. I’d say only if it was spiked with a Pixi-Stick, maybe.

Then Sideshow Bob Dude kills Tobama’s Happytime™ back in the Kitchen when he says “I wish I could taste the bacon more! I was promised bacon taste and I… it’s very subtle.” Hanky says Wiggsie would have wanted more bacon, too…

instead of piss off now Sussudio feel guilty

Well, maybe Tobama will learn next time to drain his damn bacon fact into some other kind of wacky container, such as a bowl. No matter now, we seeing Sussudio’s representation of Marrr-gue…

if someone had beat her in the face with a shovel

Sideshow Bob Dude says Marge would just love the creativity of the dish, and he’s entranced by the purple potatoes making up her impossible hair, but Matt feels like it’s a little weird to be cutting into and eating Marge’s face. Hank Agador says it doesn’t help that the glazed grapes are creating a rather reddish stain that’s seeping down the dish, almost as though she’s bleeding. Sussudio just smiles.

It’s finally Reverend Moonie’s turn to have his Homerliciousness on display…

no fair he gets to have beer!

Mr. Hanky’s eating the tater chips and trying to guess what the flavor is in them. He, Matt and Sideshow Bob Dude guess garlic, but Moonie groans and corrects them from afar “It’s truffle!” Matt still thinks it’s really good, but he and Hank Agador believe if you put it in front of Homer, he’d inhale it and then be mad later when you told him it was made with shrimp and truffle oil. Just like he was mad when he found out John Waters was gay in the now-classic “Homer’s Phobia” episode…

“You know me, Marge… I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals fuhLAMING!”

Remember the Gay Steel Mill where all the big butch workers started dancing to C&C Music Factory? Best. Episode. Ever. Anyhow, it’s time to move on to Cougarella’s vegetarian slop for Little Lisa Lisa…

it’s blurry because it promotes good bowel movements

The first thing out of Sideshow Bob Dude’s mouth is “I see kale!”…

if he’s that excited about it then I think I see a 38 year old virgin

Matt Groening says he normally eats “Homer-type food” so to have a fresh vegetarian dish with this much subtlety is “refreshing”…

also refreshing is his boldness in bringing back Timothy Hutton hair

He mentions that Lisa didn’t start out as a vegetarian, it wasn’t a permanent part of the show until Paul and Linda McCartney agreed to appear as themselves and apparently asked that her character be allowed to remain that way. This one change saved literally millions of cartoon animals from being slaughtered to feed her formerly carnivorous appetite. Thank you Sir Paul.

In any case, once again, La Marquessa’s gone overfuckingboard with the plating…

and I doubt he ever does the dishes, either

Gee, can anybody say TRYING TOO HARD??!? Sideshow Bob Dude calls it a “full stack Indian meal” but then complains “I don’t know where the nuts fit in!” (insert your own nut joke here) Using Apu Voice™ Hanky says “Apu would probably know how to apply them and use them.” Matt feels the dish is authentic, but brings up the fact that Apu’s character often goes through great pains to disguise his Indian ethnicity, and quotes him, “By the nine arms of Vishnu, I swear I am not a Hindu!” See? What did I say earlier? Wait, what did I say earlier? OH yeah, he went too literal with his approach. Ganesh says it’s a great big KARMIC FAIL.

Last in line tonight is Waxie’s dish made just for Brat Bart…

which looks like the kids’ menu at Crapplebee’s

Hank Agador says it’s really good, and he doesn’t even care that he’s talking with his mouth full…

Mmphf glllblphf glrblggl psghtti!

Sideshow Bob Dude pipes up that it looks like fun kid food and that Bart would probably brag about it in the schoolyard to make Milhouse and Nelson jealous. Ha Ha. Matt gives it even higher praise: “This is the dish that would unite Springfield”. Wow. Well, as we all know, the noblest spirit embiggens the smallest man…

or, as I like to say, the Bethenny-bashing embitters the smallest-minded bitches

Let’s get to the star-cards! ChicleTeeth’s Moe-dish got 4 stars! Tobama’s Chief Wiggum plate only gets 3! But he can’t be too upset, because Sussudio’s Marr-gue only got 3½! And for once, he not getting piss off! He’s just happy to have done so well with inspiration from a show that is completely outside of his culture (which is Canadian). What is this crazy universe I’ve entered where Sussudio is being so likeable??!? I must have accidentally skipped my bitchmeds today.

Ahh, wait, they’re kicking back in, because La Marquessa’s Apu Madness™ gets 4 stars also, which I think is mostly because of the sheer amount of dishes he piled onto that plate. I would also like to point out that handing someone a cup of nuts is not cooking. Anyhow, this means he is now tied with ChicleTeeth for first place. And Cougarella also gets 4 stars for her Lisageterian dish, so it’s now a 3-way tie!

Reverend Moonie was thinking he was going to get buttboned after hearing those guys say how much Homer would have hated his Sloppy D’oh! Sammich, so he is extra pleased when he gets 4½ stars! So it’s down to Waxie, and he needs 5 full stars to win… and he only gets 4, so it’s a Moonie win! And $5,000.00 more for his charity, plus he’s still in the running towards becoming America’s Next Top Model. I mean, Top Chef Master.

Here’s where the show veers off into extremely disturbing and unsettling territory. Bok Choi says “Tonight, we’re bringing back one of our favorite elimination challenges!” Who’s ‘we’, exactly? Stick-thin food show hosts? Magical Elves? Miss Andy? Tiny Tewwible Toby? I dunno, but whoever it is, I hope somebody beats them senseless so they never pick this challenge ever again. The kitchen doors open and several servers come in wheeling carts full of the most vile ingredients you’d never want to eat…

oh, Joey, I’m not angry anymore (cuz I’m gonna eat you, I guess)

Yes, that’s a stuffed fucking kangaroo propped up on that table. This horrible challenge dates back to Season 3 when Tre Wilcox won with a roasted ostrich filet, heirloom tomato risotto and abalone sauce. Doesn’t that sound like the perfect dish to serve, say, to your combative mother-in-law? Guaranteed to declare your sovereignty over your own home and kitchen (and husband) for years to come.

Anyhow, so they’re supposed to make a “delectable” surf’n’turf platter using crapshit exotic ingredients, such as: Jumbo Squid (with extra tentacles!), phallic Sea Cucumber, Monkfish Liver and Geoduck (pronounced “GooeyDuck”) which are hard to describe unless I show them to you…

and yes, all men do this with anything that remotely resembles a penis, it’s our version of boob implant shopping

So that’s the “Surf” proteins. The “Turf” stuff isn’t much better: stringy Goat Leg, Duck Tongue, Kangaroadkill, and Black Chicken (w’sup mah cluckahs!). Ugh, this is gross, when do they get to do the fried food challenge again? Or is that what they just did for the Simpsons people? At any rate, there are two servings of each of the 8 ingredients, and since Moonie won the Quickfire he gets to choose what he wants first. The rest of them have to grab a pot (we’re back to that lame-ass pot shit again) to see what order they get to pick…

Fuuuuuuuuuck!

They’ll each have to choose one from the Surf and one from the Turf, and Rick starts with Monkfish Liver and Black Chicken, while Tobama chooses the Jumbo Squid and Goat Leg. Sussudio is clearly gunning for Reverend Moonie, because he also chooses Monkfish Liver and Black Chicken. Ooooh, there’s gonna be a throwdown! Someone could get hurt. Or just barf.

Cougarella decides to go with the Goat Leg and the Geoduck, while La Marquessa goes for the Geoduck and the Kangaroadkill. Waxie selects Jumbo Squid and the Duck Tongue and out of what’s left, ChicleTeeth chooses the Sea Cucumber and Kangaroadkill. Waxies takes a moment to remind us that he’s the “grilled chicken and french fry guy” and believes that he’s pretty much just plain screwed for this challenge because he’s not familiar with any of these ingredients.

like I said before: DEEP FAT FRYING

Then Bok Choi makes everything worse by telling them the guest judge is going to be Andrew Zimmern, who has an entire show dedicated to showing everyone that he can eat the most horrible shit the planet has to offer, and still he doesn’t get paid enough to fix his fucked-up teeth. Tobama says he actually knows AndyZee pretty well, and once ate porcupine with him, “It was probably one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever eaten…”

not to mention ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow

Let’s all go to Whole Paycheck with $200 to spend on enough crap to cover the taste of a crawling shit-factory like a sea-cucumber! Moonie’s saying how he needs to really step it up because he’s got Asian ingredients and is going up against a master Chinese chef like Sussudio. Immediately after he says this, he misplaces his cart!

Meanwhile, Sussudio’s reminiscing about the time his sister took him to a Hong Kong firepot where you cook stuff yourself and dumped something in the boiling water. Then she took it out and gave it to him to eat, “I bit into da side an it burss out into tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny liddle egg. I said ‘What da hell was dat?’… ‘Oh, it was chicken testicle.’”…

this began his love affair with gay chickens

Actually he says it was pretty tasty. I will take his word for it. Not that I’m opposed to putting balls in my mouth, but you’re not supposed to bite them. It cuts down on second dates. I suspect Cougarella has a similar view. She says she’s travelled a lot and that exotic foods don’t scare her as far as eating them, but she doesn’t really know how to cook them all that well.

like I said before: DEEP FAT FRYING

Soooo, even though she’s never seen a Geoduck in person before, she figures since it’s technically a clam and she’s from New England, she’ll almost certainly be able to figure something out. *cough*chowder*cough* Something tells me it’s penile shape isn’t putting her off, either. In fact, I suspect that might be partially why she chose it.

Not nearly as semi-confident is our poor Waxie, who is adrift in a sea of overpriced natural foods and organic packaging. He has no plan, no strategy, no ideas, he’s listening hard for his ingredients to speak to him and all he’s hearing is silence and an occasional burp. He’s literally just wandering around picking out a few things at random. I have never seen him look so lost before, he hasn’t even started cooking and already he’s acting like he’s in the Bottom Two!

Even stranger, when Reverend Moonie stops to get an in-store massage (a clear sign that he’s not troubled by this challenge at all) Waxie gets uncharacteristically pissy about it, saying he thinks Moonie should be more concerned with having his dish right, and snots to us that Sussudio is an amazing chef and that “Rick shouldn’t get too comfortable.” Stop it, Waxie. This petty crap-ass bitchiness isn’t like you at all. I can turn you into an ugly drag queen just as fast as I can do it to La Marquessa.

wah

Back in the kitchen they’ve got 90 minutes to prep, and Tobama tells us that since goat is widely used in Italy, he’s not worried about how that’s gonna work because he’s used it before, but the giant squid is turning out “funkier” than he thought, so he’s doing a super-strong marinade of garlic and lemon to try and “make it better”. I must admit, I’m one of those people who can’t stand squid, the last time I tried to choke down some calamari it was like chewing on foreskin. To be fair, my dining mates had lied to me and told me it was an onion ring, and then they all busted up laughing while I nearly passed out from extended revulsion. I got them all back later on when I passed each of their cell phone numbers to a random diner on the way out with a note that said “Let me be your dirty little diaper boy.”

I bet Cougarella knows exactly what to do with a diaper boy, but right now she’s having nine kinds of difficulty getting the bones out of that tough-ass goat leg, plus she’s trying to shuck the geoducks and everything just looks kinda badly butchered. She drops the bomb that one of her mentors was actually Julia Child, and that the most important thing she ever learned from her was…

always have Meryl Streep play you in a film

Even if you’re a dude. No actually, what Miss Honeychile said was to make sure the cooking techniques are good, and that the quality of the ingredients is also good. “But these ingredients are crazy!” Much like her fuck-me eyes.

Ugh, do we hafta check in with La Marquessa? I just know it’s gonna be all about how awesome he is and how world travelled he is, and how he knows more about food than any of us ignorant Americans with our terrible tastes for things like Velveeta and burgers and tater tots and Pez, and blah blah blah bullshit bullshit Ethiopia Sweden bullshit Sweden Ethiopia dirt poor malaria blah we ate cockroaches bullshit orphan blah I rule bullshit bullshit fish eyes blah blah I married a supermodel blah bullshit blah I’m already Top Chef Master bullshit fuckwad asshat shitdick blah.

Seriously. That’s pretty much the gist of what he said. In any case, he’s making a kangaroadkill and geoduck sausage, because really, how better to combine unpleasant ingredients than to grind them up into small chunks and shove them inside an intestine? He complains that these geoducks are much larger and tougher than the ones he’s used to. I guess maybe these are East Coast Italian geoducks?

Moonie’s trying to work with the black chicken, and dear GOD is that shit ugly!

for realsies, I bet this is what Jill Zarin’s heart looks like

He says these black chickens are a scrawny breed with almost no meat. Since he’s pretty smart and knows that chewing on gristle and tendons isn’t all that fun, he’s decided to make a mousse out of it (and adding some regular or extra crispy KFC ) and says the secret to a great mousse is to not let it get too warm, so he adds a couple of ice cubes to the glop inside his Cuisinart and immediately realizes that was a big boo-boo, because the shit gets so cold that the butter breaks up into little teeny pieces. Oh well, at least he didn’t put it inside the “blast chiller” for a half-hour and then wonder why it froze solid.

Back over in Bitter Waxie Land, he’s still moaning that this challenge just isn’t his cup of tea, the Force has deserted him, he takes a big sniff of his bowl of duck tongues…

this is not the face where tasty food starts

He says it looks like a duck penis and he has no idea how to cook duckdick. But wait! BINGOFACE! FINALLY somebody takes my advice that I’ve been all alone in an empty house yelling at my TV for the last half hour and he fries them up, which makes them taste like teeny-tiny little fried chickens, so that’s all right now. He’s pleased he was able to make them taste good, but he starts whining again that he wants to love what he’s cooking, and right now he’s barely tolerating this crap.

it does not help that ChicleTeeth wandered by his station and accidentally cut one

On the other end of the fear/love spectrum with exotic foods is Sussudio, who’s busy removing all the bones from his black chicken and then restuffing the skin with the Monkfish Liver? I think? Now instead of black chicken it’s more like veiny purple chicken. And Sussudio’s happy as a geoduck! “I not worried about dis challenge. You are talking to a Chinese person! I grow up with all dese things around me!”

Poor ChicleTeeth says she has zero idea how sea cucumber should be prepared. Since it’s basically a slug she’s just kind of slicing it into pieces and guessing. She then proceeds to pound the hell out of it with one of those spiky mallet-thingies and cucumber juice flies all over the place and douses Cougarella, who looks a little disgusted.

The following day they’ve got 2½ hours left to cook, and La Marquessa’s not quite as cocky as he was the day before. It turns out his love affair with his chosen ingredient geoduck has soured overnight and now they’re no longer friends on FaceBook. Then, completely apropos of nothing he trots out his sob story about being orphaned at the age of 3 when his mother died of tuberculosis, “Compared to that, this is not serious!” Um, OK. He’s right, it isn’t, but who said it was?…

“And then, this one time, my entire village died because Sally Struthers showed up to whine on our behalf and she got hungry and ate up all of our food.”

What in the hell did that have to do with anything at all? I mean, it’s sad that his mom died and I’m not disputing that, but I don’t understand why he felt he needed to bring that up in relation to this challenge. Nobody’s acting like this is a life-or-death struggle. Mostly Waxie’s just mildly annoyed that he’s prevented from making anything really tasty and full of buttery unctuousness. La Marquessa needs to shut it.

Tobama’s trying to get his pasta made for his dish (because of course he’s making pasta, he’s Eye-talian) and just when he gets his dough all spread out and ready to go, Sussudio says he needs more room on the table for whatever amazing Chinese Chicken’N’Liver concoction he’s come up with. Actually, he doesn’t need more room, he wants the entire table. I can’t quite tell if he’s serious about that or not, but either way, Tobama’s not happy, especially since his Sussudio-ruined pan of bacon fat from the Quickfire yesterday is still so fresh on his mind. However, instead of getting mad and talking shit (which would have been a lot more fun for all of us) he says he’s just really motivated to beat Sussudio now. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I miss Ludocrous. He would have had something outrageous and inappropriate and incomprehensible to say.

ChicleTeeth seems to be feeling better about making her sea cucumber dish today, she’s also taking my advice and deep frying it. That’s bound to taste better than the product she’s got her hands in right now…

wait, were dirty mop heads a choice of exotic ingredient?

Seriously. Everything everybody is making looks absolutely vile and disgusting. Forget about putting lipstick on a pig, this is more like putting lipstick on a severed cow head and then microwaving it so it’s gross AND hot at the same time. More problems are popping up in Goatville, because Cougarella has discovered that hers hasn’t nearly cooked enough, and Tobama is finding that he doesn’t really have enough actual meat to balance the large amount of giant ravioli pasta in his dish. It looks more like a ravioli dish with slivers of goatmeat, which is a positive in my opinion, but will probably not go over well with the AndyZee folks since ravioli are not that exotic.

In the dining room where the Critics and Guest Judges have gathered, Bok Choi decides to ruin everyone’s appetite by asking AndyZee what’s the strangest thing he’s ever eaten. Andrew says it’s a shark from Iceland and Greenland called Hákarl, which is poisonous to eat raw because it pees through it’s skin, so they have to let it rot for about 2 months before it can be eaten at all…

does anybody else get the feeling AndyZee loves to tell these kind of stories?

Let’s get through these exotic messes so we can all give ourselves a break and have some ice cream! Reverend Moonie is up first, but before he can present his dish Bok Choi forces him to meet everybody…

These dudes are like the “Color Me Badd” of strange cuisine!

Now Moonie gets to present his dish…

someone please flush it already before it clogs the bowl

You can tell that Tyler Florence’s biteback against AndyZee spending all day eating “dried camel-cock” hit home, because he’s trying SUPER hard to sound real megacheffy and smart. He says the pairing of the liver and chicken was “stunningly executed”. That Eddie dude says he wants it to be more “in your face”. NerdMosexual disagrees, he thinks Moonie did everything elegantly right, except for the leeks.

AndyZee pontificates some more about how we in the U.S. have “lost connection with eating out of necessity” and these ingredients that are so weird to us are common cuisine elsewhere. You know, I really wish he’d can the preaching and let Tobama serve his dish. I get it that in other parts of the world they’re forced to eat huge bugs and giant rats and sharks that piss poison through their pores. I’m lucky enough to live in a country where we don’t eat like that (unless we’re being paid large sums of money by the Travel Channel to do so) and don’t think for one fucking second that I’m not super-grateful for that. Just because I don’t know what dried camel-cock tastes like doesn’t make me an automatic ignorant asshole, it just means I have access to better crapfood with more chemicals in it.

Oh well, here’s Tobama’s dish…

perhaps he should have included a map for them to find the goat meat

NerdMo’ says it all smells divine, and everybody is devouring the crostino, which AndyZee says is beautifully balanced, you can taste the squid but it’s not overpowering. This would be a FAIL in my book, because I don’t want any squiddyness on my crostino at all. That’s just how I roll. NerdMosexual immediately latches on to the fact that the ravioli has only a few minute threads of goatmeat to be found on it.

Boy, you just can’t stop Andrew from telling disgusting stories at the dinner table! Now he’s going into great detail about some nomadic Mongolian family he was hanging out with, and how they chopped off their goat’s head, pulled the innards out and then stuffed it with hot rocks to cook it. PETA is SO gonna be protesting on that family’s doorstep before the episode is up.

It’s Sussudio’s turn at bat (hey, they should have made them cook bats!)…

oh, wait, I guess he already did

Sorry, all I can think of is that’s just a really stubborn dogturd on a plate. Sussudio’s calling it “French Meet Japanese”. Is that chicken leg giving us all the finger? Bokky thinks the chicken turdleg has “beautiful texture”, but Gramma Gael and NerdMosexual are busy having playfights with the chicken claws and laughing. AndyZee says he didn’t wanna like it, especially with all of the multiple hoity-toity sauces it came with, but in the end it’s “a beautiful dish that tastes grrrrrrreat!” Easy, tiger. NerdMo says the monkfish liver taste is really prominent here as opposed to Moonie’s far more subtle approach. FugTaser, on the other hand is questioning the existence of the whole puff-pastry pouch, he thinks it’s an “unnecessary affectation” and wishes it weren’t there at all. I wish I had a Big Mac.

Here comes Cougarella’s version of goatmeat…

two words: slop pee

It almost looks like the sauce is trying to escape. Immediately NerdMosexual says this is the absolute rarest he’s ever seen goat, and AndyZee says he needs his cooked a little more, especially since he was just wormed a couple of weeks ago, but the geoduck in a chowdah was a brilliant idea. Let’s see if La Marquessa’s version of it can stand up at attention…

oh, I’m sorry, his THREE versions of it

Jeez, it’s just overkill again. Billy the Food Blogger says he likes the flavor of the tartare, but that there are a lot of elements that are “interfering with the enjoyment of the dish”. Then Marcy Moss, the Weird Food Festival Dude says he’s enjoying the “cacophony” of the dish, saying it “turned into a symphony”. Something’s ‘phony all right. Somebody’s been waiting a looooong time to use those words together just like that.

The minute Waxie’s plate is put down, there are exclamations of astonishment, and he admits that the food reflects his mood, which is “a big mess”…

oh dear, he wasn’t kidding

Edie Lin says it’s some of the best duck tongue he’s had in a long time. Would you ever order that on a date? AndyZee says Waxie’s plate is a good example of a brilliant writer in need of an editor. There’s just too much going on, and BillyBlogger feels like the plate belongs to a teenager turned loose on his first buffet line and who comes back with a not-so-good selection. Waxie’s face back in the kitchen says “Fuck it.”

Finally we get to see ChicleTeeth’s dish…

praise Jesus it’s almost over

NerdMosexual says “The entire plate is A.D.D. for me.” AndyZee sorta agrees, but he also points out that he can’t stop eating it, either, so that’s a plus I guess? Or maybe he’s just kind of a pig when it comes to free food? Mr. Eddie-Father says this is the first time he’s ever had sea-cucumber done in any other way than braising, and he really likes it. I only know I found a video on YouTube of sea cucumbers lumbering about on the ocean floor, and they basically just eat and shit (sometimes they eat shit, too) so there is no way I am ever gonna touch one of those things, even if it was beer battered and deep fried. I’d rather tackle the camel-cock…

or, you know, this guy’s

Back at the Critics’ Table, they start in on Reverend Moonie, with NerdMo’ saying how he wished the black chicken roulade had been poached further and made more delicate. FugTaser says he wished Tobama’s crostini had more salt on it, and NerdMosexual laments the lack of goat in his pasta dish. As for Sussudio, Fuggie liked his stuffed black chicken claw, but NerdMo’s still harping on the “puff pathtry purth filled with vegthetableth” and wants to know why it was on the plate. Sussudio’s like, “Dat dish needed crispyness and acidity from tomatoes.”

Gramma Gael tells Cougarella that initially she was excited thinking that goat could be served rare, “And then I tried to chew it, and I realized that goat cannot be rare.” Without missing a beat, Cougarella’s all “Yeah, well, it was supposed to be EXOTIC!” and cracks everybody up…

“And next time, don’t be such a cheap ass, use more Poli-Grip!”

To La Marquessa, FugTaser says the geoduck and Kangaroadkill were “very powerful flavors” and tasted fine individually, but once they were all together it was too intense. Also, NerdMosexual doesn’t like how he cooked the hell out of the geoduck and made it dry. Waxie and ChicleTeeth both get reamed for having way too much shit on their plates.

The Masters are all having a great time getting drunk in the Kitchen when Bok Choi shows up to ruin their fun and ask for ChicleTeeth, Tobama, Reverend Moonie and Sussudio to come back to the Critics’ Table where they are declared the high scorers, and in the end it’s between Moonie and Sussudio. The Reverend gets 4 stars from NerdMosexual, and 4½ from Gramma Gael and FugTaser. The diners parted with only 3½ stars, so he’s at 16½ total.

Once again, Sussudio gets incredible scores, 4½ stars from NerdMo’ and a perfect 5 stars from Gramma and Fuggie! Wait, what? They have never talked about his dish like it was the best thing they ever ate, and yet he’s always getting these astronomical scores, and it all just looks a bit too fishy to me. Oh well, the diners gave him 4½ stars, so he has 19 and he wins, woo-hoo. Let’s check out the Viewer Poll…

E. A tie between Jessica and Ashlee

So here are our bottom three: Cougarella, Waxie and La Marquessa. Starting with Waxie, he gets 3½ stars from FugTaserl, 3 stars from Gramma, and only 2½ stars from NerdMosexual, who is really being a big bitch this season with the star-scoring shit! The diners kicked him in the balls a little more by only giving him 2 stars, so his total is only 11 stars.

La Marquessa gets 3 stars across the board from all three Critics, plus a diner’s score of 2½ stars, so he’s got 11½ and is safe. Daaaaamn! I would have been SO happy to see him sashay away tonight. Oh well, that just means another drag queen picture of him next week.

It all comes down to Cougarella. She gets 3 stars from Gramma Greene, and only 2½ from FugTaser and NerdMo’. She needs 3½ stars to stay and send Waxie home, and the diners give her… 2½ stars, so she’s leaving tonight…

awww, her eye-rections have gone limp!

As she says her goodbyes to the others, Sussudio continues his streak of weird likeability as he hugs her and says “I love da way you cook.” How sweet was that? What is going on with him? Even weirder, what is going on with me that I’m not hating him this episode? It’s mysterious and amazing and magical. I think he might win. You know, at this point, I’ll be happy as long as it’s not La Marquessa.

What did you think of this episode? Were you wishing they had had more of the voice talent from the Simpsons on to judge the food? Is Matt Groening’s hair tragic enough? Have any of you guys ever eaten any of these vile things that they cooked tonight? I’m curious about those geoducks now.

As always, thanks for stopping by and spending some time with me and my insane ramblings, and for your comment love.

Love, J-Mo