Top Chef Review: Restaurant Wars, Part 1

This week on Top Chef, it’s Restaurant Wars! Hooray?

Is Restaurant Wars an episode (or in this case two episodes) that fans of the show love or hate? The cheftestants seem to hate it, and the producers finally realized the flaws in the Restaurant Wars format, now making every chef have to either run the front of the house or the back of the house.

For those unfamiliar with Restaurant Wars, the format is this: the remaining group, usually when it’s down to around eight chefs, split into two teams and have to create and run a restaurant for one service, from the name to the menu to the linens and forks sometimes, to expediting, cooking and explaining the food.

I understand that Top Chef needs to mix things up each season and it can’t just be 17 weeks of cooking pork belly with a quail egg, micro-green foam and a yuzu marmalade, but…well…can’t it? Wouldn’t that be both fun to watch and delicious?

Alas, Restaurant Wars.

“That was a sh*t show.” “This is a nightmare.” Drama! Bring it, Top Cheffers.

Last week, Phillip won, finally, and Isaac lost. He thinks it’s because he doesn’t “tweezify” his food, but instead of getting in his head, Isaac said it’s going to motivate him.

The chefs know it’s Restaurant Wars before they even go to the challenge, and Phillip wants the front of the house. That’s the make-or-break job in the challenge, where you can control everything, but other people are cooking your food.

The cheftestants do some kind of silly Restaurant Wars song to what I think is this:

Have fun getting that out of your head. The song, for what it’s worth, made Padma do this:

Knives are drawn and Amar and Karen get to be captains for Restaurant Wars. Amar has first choice and he takes Kwame. Karen takes Marjorie. This is like the power rankings!

Jeremy and Carl go next, and Amar is left picking the last two kids on the playground, Isaac and Amar. He thinks Isaac is better but Phillip wants to do the front of the house, so Amar goes against his gut and picks Phillip, an unmitigated disaster of a decision.

Isaac makes the kickball joke I think I just made. Isaac also reminds the viewers he worked for Emerill for 10 years and was nominated for a James Beard Award.

The teams have to serve lunch and dinner. That’s crazy. Oh, and Padma drops the bomb that all four have to do one of the two biggest jobs for at least one service.

The four dudes go Modern American food and throw some names out. The Advocate?

Nope. Then this happens.

Jeremy: “How many tables do we have in here?”

Phillip: “Sixteen.”

Jeremy: “District 16?”

Kwame: “I don’t like District 16. Sounds like an alien movie.” (Note that’s when I got this screen capture.)

Phillip: “District L.A.?”

Jeremy: “Let’s go with it.”

District L.A.? Why not just District? Or why not Soigné, guys?

The other team is doing fresh Californian food, to which Isaac jokes, “we can’t do the Cajun Kitchen? Damn.”

Carl, your thoughts?

They’re doing a table-side soup and they’re talking about how Isaac isn’t refined enough. They are ignoring Isaac’s ideas, but Marjorie’s bread idea is, per Karen, “baller.” (I’m on Team Isaac after that, if I wasn’t already.) He knows he has to play along, because the egos are going to flare up when they are in the weeds. He also looked like this, so he’s feeling less great than he sounds.

They go with ‘Palate’ for a name. Or maybe Palette, where everything is served on unfinished wood slats. That would be fun, if a tad heavy.

District L.A. goes with Phillip for front of the house for dinner, with Amar running the kitchen. Jeremy snags lunch chef, which saddles Kwame with running the front of the house for lunch. Kwame said he’s mentally preparing himself for lunch by praying, and he says that his first job in New York was at Craft, which I assume head judge Tom Colicchio knows. There are seriously only 100 chefs on the planet and they’ve all worked for each other. I’m convinced.

For Cajun Californian Palate, Isaac is chef for lunch with Marjorie at the front of the house. For dinner, Carl is chef and Karen is the front of the house.

The chefs go shoping for plates and silverware. Phillip wants mason jars for water and everyone hates that. “Just get some glasses,” Kwame says, “we’re not at a picnic, drinking lemonade.” Phillip’s restaurant uses mason jars. Of course it does.

Palate spends like $3000 on tables and chairs and forks. Then they split up and go to Restaurant Depot and Whole Foods. It’s overwhelming. (Phones can be overwhelming.)

Amar forgot Kwame’s bacon, but Jeremy won’t share his bacon. “If you told Amar that’s a different story, bro. That’s between you and him.”

Yeah, bro.

Should Jeremy be calling Kwame bro? Eh, let’s move on. Kwame got pancetta, so he’s okay.

Palate is making terrine and ravioli and both seem like horrible ideas for this much pressure, but how cares because CRAB LEGS!

Jeremy is making risotto the day before they serve. He’s also EATING FROM THE WOODING MIXING SPOON. How is this still a thing? Again, we’ve said this before, some episodes they make the entire thing about eating from the utensils you use to cook. Other times, it’s just b-roll.

This is unacceptable. As both a viewer and a consumer.

The next scene, Phillip shoves a rubber spatula in Kwame’s face, then puts it back into a blender. It’s an epidemic. If the best chef, sorry, the TOP CHEFS, are doing this, everyone is.

Alas, Phillip’s strawberry champagne salad is very complex, and he’s on front of house, so the other chefs ask him to limit the steps. Kwame asks if he can combine the olive oil and lemon juice for the dressing in advance. Phillip says if one of his cooks asked him that he’d say “work harder.”

Phillip is probably a terrible boss. Also, he uses mason jars as water glasses. He demands perfection, and Kwame basically told him to go screw, which Phillips says will make him angry if he doesn’t respect the dish. Respect the dish, Kwame. Oh, and there’s a crumble and arugula and nine other things. Respect those nine things, Kwame.

“You ready bro?”

“Yeah, bro.”

“We just hope those egos don’t get involved, you know?”

That was Jeremy talking to, I assume, that wooden spoon he was eating from before using again.

Wait. It took this long to learn that Isaac had a ponybraid at his wedding? I may be jumping off the team Isaac wagon soon, bro. (Can I say bro?)

Isaac calls his wife, and she says “I swear to God if you come back with some, like, douche L.A. accent, we’re over.” Back on the wagon, bro!

There are three hours to prep for lunch and open the place. Isaac is running lunch and he says, “I will lead and I will command. And you will like me, and you will fear me. But you will like me first and fear me second.”

This is the point in the show where we notice a lot of Isaac, and with him on the bottom two last week, I fear Team Isaac may be on its last stand at Restaurant Wars. They’re getting their money’s worth for sure.

Here is a look at Palate’s menu.

They’re all behind. Carl’s terrine looks horrible. He’s nervous.

District L.A.’s menu looks nice.

Actually, the menu looks like words. True story: we went to dinner with a huge group one time to some Thai place in Philly and the restaurant had a regular menu with nothing particularly special. One woman with us said “the menu looks delicious,” and I thought, “It looks like a menu. The menu itself is just words on paper, and it wasn’t even described very well. When people go out they want to love the food. Loving the menu is a whole different level of love.”

It’s go time. Jeremy wants to give Kwame a Xanax. Everyone is nervous. Karen is pissed that Isaac’s station isn’t organized and, hell, let’s just say every problem with Restaurant Wars that happens every year happens here. Slow service, confusion, drama. Only by Bravo!

Palate is doing well, despite Marjorie’s “frowny face.”

At District LA, Kwame is filling water. Like a Top Chef should. Then the judges arrive. HELLO JUDGES.

This is one of those moments where you realize that Padma could be the host of a show where hamsters cook food for other hamsters and we’d probably watch and it would probably be glamorous and amazing and we wouldn’t be entirely sure why.

The judges hop to the start of the line, so Jeremy dumps on the rest of the tables and gets theirs out first. Phillip thinks they should serve everyone in time, as the judges notice when tables are slow. This is surely going to come back and bite Jeremy. Bro.

The judges like Kwame’s soup and Jeremy’s salad. Tom thinks it’s good lunch food. Well dressed. (The salad, not the judges.)

Back to Palate where things seem to be going well, and Karen is surprised at how well it’s going. There’s a shoe about to drop, for sure. Marjorie is pissed because people are lingering after they eat and she needs the tables.

But back at District, Jeremy is totally blowing off the regular tables in favor of the judges full meals.

Let’s review: the guy eats from his wooden cooking spoon, says bro all the time and doesn’t give a rats ass about his customers other than those who can send him home, without realizing that not serving the other customers will probably send him home. If we were doing power rankings this week, he’d be at the bottom for sure.

Kwame is struggling out front, as people need silverware and drinks constantly. But the food looks nice.

The two main dishes are okay, but not great. They think Amar was too safe with another chicken dish. They didn’t like Phillip’s ratatouille on top of his fish. (That’s a great movie by the way, but impossible to spell.) Gail Simmons didn’t think they were creative enough.

The judges are moving to Palate, and Marjoire is getting people up with champagne, but when the judges show up there’s nobody out there. They are seated quickly, though, which makes me think the drama was a bit overblown, and food is quickly out to them. Carl and Marjorie are up first.

The terrine isn’t good. “Texture is off, it’s not seasoned well. It’s chewy, almost Spam-like.” Tom is the best. The food, is not. Marjorie has one dish, and they were underwhelming. It seemed easy, said one random guy who has no idea how hard it must be.

Back and District, here’s the line. That’s like 20 people deep. Where are these people coming from?

Phillip and Jeremy are fighting the entire day. We are jumping back and forth a lot today, Bravo.

Palate has a beef salad and seafood stew.

Padma loves Karen’s dish, saying she could eat it every day. Isaac’s stew could use more oomph. Overall, they think both menus weren’t that exciting, which is probably because they’re making these chefs each come up with two dishes and build an entire restaurant they have to run all in 24 hours. So you get what you get, judges.

Palate is done service for lunch, and Isaac did a great job running things. District is a mess, and Jeremy is still plating and still seating people, with six new tickets. Jeremy, thoughts?

“F**k me, dude.”

People are still waiting. Or that’s creative editing because that looks like the same line as before. There’s a clock on lunch, and there are just four minutes left. District didn’t get all their plates out with five or ten tables not getting food.

“This is a nightmare.”

Okay, as Restaurant Wars go, this one was really good. Let’s hope next week’s is just as good, with more drama. Drama, you ask?

(I love Tom.)