Top Chef Foo Fighters Thanksgiving

I'm liking Bravo's Top Chef 5 a lot. It seems like everything about Top Chef as been amped up a bit. Maybe it is due to being in New York City. I don't recollect the chefs being thrown so many curves and twists in previous seasons.

The guest judge in Episode 3 was this wiry little guy with a bad goatee, named Grant Achatz. He's an American chef who the James Beard Foundation recently named as Best Chef in the United States for 2008.

For the Quickfire the chefs had to make a recipe found in the Top Chef cookbook. Then part way in Padma threw them a curve and told them to make soup out of what they'd already cooked. We saw a lot of Swanson's Broth being opened and poured. Swanson's Broth was the sponsor of this episode. Leah's soup won the Quickfire, despite it containing white asparagus, an ingredient she did not like.

For the Elimination Challenge the chefs are told they will be preparing Thanksgiving dinner for the Foo Fighters and their entourage of about 60. As the Quickfire winner, Leah gets to pick her team. She picked both of the Europeans, the sort of annoying Stephan and the funny, likable Italian, Fabio.

Ariane cooked the turkey for the non-Leah team. Everyone liked Ariane's turkey the best, but overall her team was judged by the Foos and the judges to not be the winner. That meant the Leah team got to go to the Foo Fighters concert while the losing team washed dishes.

The chefs had to cook the Thanksgiving dinner at the concert location. With no kitchen. They cooked outside with only a single burner, microwaves and toaster ovens. Eugene made a makeshift BBQ. I like Eugene. He seems to be one of the better chefs. His BBQed pork went over well. As if all the twists being thrown at them weren't challenge enough, Mother Nature made it tough on the chefs too. By raining.

The desserts, as they so often are, were the downfall of the losing team. Richard made some twisted version of 'smores. I have never liked 'smores. No one liked Richard's 'smores. Carla, who is really amusing, made some sort of pie thing that the judges didn't hate. But they all hated Jeff's strange parfait. One of the Foos called it barfait. Those Foos are funny boys.

So, it ended up with Richard packing his knives and going home due to his 'smores. He cried quite a bit. This leaves only one member left of Team Rainbow. That being Jamie. So far one of the Top Chef staples has been missing. That being drama and fighting. There was some indication in this episode that the Top Chef staple of having at least one very angry lesbian might be brewing, with Jamie getting cranky at Dave for being a slob and dropping food on the floor.