Testimonials

Time to go shopping. Each team sends 2 chefs to Whole Foods, and the other 2 to Restaurant Depot. At Restaurant Depot -- which looks like the inside of the Costco -- we have Yoda and Antonia from Team Bride and Dale and Fleasa from Team Groom. Evangelass wisely stuck Dale with Fleasa, knowing that Fleasa's the only one on their team bitchy enough to handle Dale's outbursts -- and able to stomach his humping-cheese jokes. At Whole Foods, Twitch is doing his best to prevent Richard from assuming too much of a leadership position (although he rarely steers people wrong) on Team Bride while they pick out flowers. Richard thinks he'll do a good job picking out flowers because he has pink shoes and a lot of other douchey things.

At 9pm, the teams arrive back at the kitchens for their 14-hour cook time. Here's the menu breakdown for both teams:

Team Groom:
Assorted flatbreads (app)
Bruschetta (app)
Tortellini
Mixed veggies/cheese
Fliet Mignon
Chilean Sea Bass
Orecchiette with ragu
Chocolate hazlenut cake

Team Bride:
Pizza (app)
Pulled pork sandwich (app)
Short ribs & bleu cheese in phyllo (app)
Crispy chicken
Brisket
Filet Mignon
Creamed Spinach
Potato Gratin
Dark chocolate and lemon cake

On Team Groom, Nikki's making the pasta, Evangelass is dealing with all the veggies, Dale's handling all the proteins, and Fleasa is focusing on the cake. On Team Bride, Antonia's doing the appetizers, Richard has all the meats/sauces, Yoda has the cake, and Twitch is handling what's left.

Right at the start, Team Groom appears to be falling apart. Everyone keeps trying to defer to Nikki, who alternates between saying she doesn't care to having no idea how to answer. Meanwhile, Dale --who has already taken on more than his fair share of the workload -- is running around, picking up the slack for the other three as they ask them. He handles this with his usual bright, cheery demeanor, of course. After a while, though, his teammates realize that maybe spreading Dale so thin that everything he makes is sub-par wasn't the best idea... even though they blame it on him half-assing things. I sincerely doubt Dale is half-assing anything. First, that's not his style. Men who risk breaking all their fingers over a lost relay race do not half-ass competitions. Second, it's his goal to bolster a weaker team, not drag them down even further. Evangelass steps in to take the sea bass dish away, but for entirely selfish reasons of course -- he simply wants to make sure he can point to at least one successful dish he directly created when they inevitably lose.

"Why does everyone keep asking me questions like I'm some self-proclaimed expert Italian chef? God!"

By 2 am, most of the chefs are starting to feel the strain, especially knowing there's still 9 hours to go before they even head over to the wedding. Even Mr. I-Can-Go-All-Night Twitch (ugh, really unpleasant images just came to mind) is getting cranky, complaining to us that it's been hours since he's been able to sneak in a fix, and comparing his creamed spinach prep to Popeye's wet dream. Close, but I think Olive Oyl would have to be swimming in the spinach to be 100% accurate. And maybe Bluto as well. When Richard helpfully offers his teammate some advice on how to make the creamed spinach more presentable for the wedding, Twitch gets all pissy about it and tells us Richard should mind his own business. Hey, douche, you're on the same team! Ah, irrationality brought on by exhaustion. And drug abuse.

Back on Team Groom, Nikki's cranking out her pasta while telling us she was kinda forced into doing it by her teammates. Bullshit on that, dude. She so jumped on the chance to make the one thing she thinks she won't fuck up. Checking in on Dale, she tells us she's worried about the way he's making the ragu, since he's not using a typical tomato base within the sauce. Looks like Dale keeps changing ingredients and aspects of dishes without really clearing it with everyone first, although it's hard to imagine he's making anything any worse. I think to do that, he'd have to urinate in something. Not that I put that past him.

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Posted in Top Chef by LoLo at 6:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Last Comment: elanmilo on May 15, 2008 12:21 PM.