For the Quickfire Challenge, the cheftestants had butcher and a cod & a fluke in portions good enough to serve at Le Bernadin w/in 10 minutes. So, Fabio cuts his thumb nail open & instead of grabbing a bandage, he bled all over his fish. God, he's an idiot! Needless to say he was in the bottom w/ Carla, Tiffany (who's the executive chef at a seafood restaurant!) & Antonia. Then, A TWIST...the top 4 cheftestants (Mike I, EWWWW!, Blais, Marcel & Dale T.) had to make a dish using the fish heads and guts. Uhhh...that sounds delightful? Plus, Mike I was being an ass & kept trying to take Marcel's china cap & bowls. Get off yr lazy and go look for yr prep stuff, jeez! Dale won w/ his fin and liver sashmi. Blech!
As his reward, Dale got to pick his team for Restaurant Wars. Yeah RW is back!! And, more importantly, Dale to chose the other team captain. And we laugh audibly as he chose Marcel. Pretty great strategy I say. Marcel is not a team player and he's even worse when he has to be in charge.
And from early on in the episode, Dale's team, Bodega, communicated well & had some stellar ideas for food. Plus, Fabio is great as front of house. An OK chef but he belongs at the front always and forever. So it's no surprise that Bodega ran away as the winner. 76 out 93 diners strongly preferred their homemade potato chips and mock tuna in a can to Marcel's Mediterranean disaster known as Etch. There was nothing cohesive and too much foam and my poor Antonia over salted her gnudi. Heh heh gnudi, that's fun to say. Gnudi....OK I promise to stop.
Funnily enough, from my experience in upstate New York, a bodega is a place to buy junk food and weed. Must be a New York thing.
Well, it was a real nail biter at Judge's Table. I thought another girl was going to get the chop. There's only 3 ladies left! Bring back Tiffani! Anyways, I actually jumped from my couch and shouted in joy as Marcel was sent a-packin'. And he's exit interview really said it all, "I didn't make any mistakes. I just picked the wrong team."
I hope the cheftestants burned some sage after he left!
2 comments:
In Medium Raw, Bourdain wrote a chapter on that chef from Le Bernadin. I can't remember his name. It is a really good story and the chef sounds amazingly skilled. Good job Dale on knowing your customer: Give Bourdain some form of offal or liver and you win.
I was amazed at how different the two restaurants were. Bodega (which I thought meant news stand with booze) was clearly a much better place. Better food, better service, better vibe.
Justo Thomas, that's the fish guy :D
This was no contest betwixt the two places!
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