Top Chef Review: Yan Can Cook…a fast casual dish with frozen waffles? Seriously?!?

Last week on Top Chef, Jeremy shocked the world by not being sent home. Instead Karen and her pink hair were sent packing. Amar won the challenge last week and is now the leader in this cooking clubhouse.

Marjorie says she plans on sticking around, as she’s not going to let it become some “sausage party” for the finale. That wouldn’t be the worst thing, as making your own sausage is a really difficult…oooooooh she was taking about penises. Yep. I got it.

Jeremy wakes up and calls his kid. His kid got honor roll, to which he tells her she’s smarter than him. Your dad is right.

For the quickfire challenge, it’s time to wok and roll!

The chefs get a nice fire display before meeting Martin Yan! The chefs have 30 minutes to make chop suey, and they each get their own wok station.

Always remember, folks, RESPECT THE FOOD YOU COOK.

Amar is having some trouble with his wok. It’s probably too hot, and he’s trying to make fried rice too. This could be a disaster.

There are some episodes where the quickfire is half the show, but in this it felt like 10 minutes. Jeremy is up first, adding crab to his chop suey. It was spicy and pretty.

Marjorie’s is prettier, as she used lobster and her plate just looks more refined for sure. Yan said the essence of Chinese cooking is about control, and Marjorie managed to do that. She’s in good shape here.

Carl also used lobster and scallops too. Carl says he grew up watching Yan on TV, probably in between rap sessions with those M.C. Hammer tapes he brought to his all night jam sessions with friends. Carl needed more vegetables.

Amar went pork chop suey. Pork, chop suey not pork chop, suey. Either way it sounds and looks good. He nailed the texture and his dish was refreshing.

Isaac went General Tso’s chicken. He pronounced it General “So’s” chicken. I’ve often heard it pronounced General “Chow’s” chicken, which is surely a horrible Americanization of the real name. But “So’s” sounds like that too. The chicken seems starchy, because he used too much starch, which he knew before he cooked it, whatever you call it.

Kwame went beef and eggplant and an oil blanching technique, which is hard to do. Yan didn’t exactly say Kwame did it right, but he seemed pleased.

Right on cue, Kwame is in the bottom three, because the oil soaked into his eggplant. Yan also didn’t like Carl’s dish because it was too light on veggies and Isaac’s dish because the chicken was too starchy.

Yan liked Jeremy, Marjorie and Amar’s dishes. The winner is Marjorie, which seemed clear based on her feedback earlier. She doesn’t win immunity, but it’s her first quickfire win, so she’s excited.

For the elimination challenge, they have to create a fast casual restaurant idea that can be scaled around the country. The guest judge for this is Adam Fleischman, who talks about taking classic foods and bringing them to people in an accessible and new way. Padma mentions Tom Colicchio’s Wichcraft chain as well. This is a harder challenge than it seems, just given the judges involved.

They have to cook one dish for 150 diners and potential investors. And they have to name a restaurant and make a fake menu. And they get help, from the chefs who have been recently kicked off the show. Hooray?

Marjorie gets to pick her sous chef, and she picks Angelina because she’s a beast with prep. That’s fascinating, given how Marjorie started this episode talking about how much she liked Karen and wanted her to stay until the end. Marjorie, by the way, gets to pick every sous chef for every contestant.

She puts Jeremy and Jason together. They look pleased.

Carl gets Chad, while Amar gets Karen. He’s happy because he didn’t want Phillip. Isaac is going to get either Phillip or Wesley, and neither can make him too happy at this point. Isaac gets Wesley, and gives him a huge high five, which means Kwame is saddled with Phillip. He seems…nervous.

Marjorie sees Kwame as a threat, so she put him with the most difficult sous chef, but Kwame thinks Phillip is fine because he works fast. Let’s see how that goes.

Carl admits he’s been giving some thought to a fast casual concept. I’m sure he’s already got the music picked out. He wants to use North African flavors or Turkish flavors, so for this he’s going south Mediterranean. Marjorie is doing Italian. Amar is doing rotisserie chicken.

“I have a two and a half inch dish,” Jeremy says.

“Two and a half inch what,” Phillip jokes.

Nothing. Like a blank wall of surf, broisms and soigné. Jeremy’s place is going to be called, I swear to you, “Taco Dudes.” Funky cool tacos. Octopus, pork belly, tripe. Jason says he can “bro” out. That should be fun.

Kwame is doing mini chicken and waffles. As a concept, he wins. He then said he’s making frozen waffles.

Wait.

WAIT.

He’s making chicken and waffles, and he’s using frozen mini waffles. Like the ones I have in my freezer right now that I give the kids for breakfast with Cookie Monster on the box? Frozen waffles? He’s using frozen waffles on Top Chef.  Why not just come over to my house and use the organic dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets we give the kids too? Shit, Kwame, I make chicken and waffles all the time, can you help me get an investor? I call the place “Lazy Dad’s” and damn if the prep time isn’t quick.

@DanLevyThinks fatigue. I'll cover it in a blog maybe, or we can chat it out… But there is mental fatigue on Top Chef, this was an example

— RichardBlais (@RichardBlais) February 26, 2016

I like Kwame, and I can say I’ve been rooting for him this season to do well, but if he isn’t talked out of this frozen waffle thing, I hope he goes home. This is a cooking embarrassment. I’m actually embarrassed both by and for him.

Now I’m upset. Let me lighten up with this: Here’s Jeremy calling people bro and carrying slabs of meat on his shoulder.

Isaac has stupid ideas. Burger? No. “I might as well do gumbo,” he joked. Wait. That’s actually a great idea. Is there anywhere outside of Louisiana you can get good gumbo? And you can cook that in the morning and it will last all day. It’s a smart fast casual idea, but he better make some cornbread too or something like that. Seriously, Isaac, don’t sc…roux this up.

The other chefs destroy Kwame for buying frozen waffles. “It’s fast casual, not fast frozen,” says Amar. Burn. Freezer burn.

In the kitchen, it’s cooking time. Carl is making lamb stew, and he wants a million dollars right now. Isaac and Wesley are making gumbo and yelling a lot. Amar is calling his Spanish rice “sexy” and then he and Karen dance like chickens. Is there a gas leak in that kitchen, guys? If Carl starts rapping, someone call 9-1-1.

Kwame is already regretting his waffle idea, because it’s a bad idea and he’s an absolute moron for thinking Tom will be okay with that.

Marjorie is making house-made spaghetti and poached tuna. How is this fast casual? Tuna? Fast casual? That’s a disaster, isn’t it?

Tom and Adam come into the kitchen to make fun of Jeremy’s Taco Dudes concept. The fast casual taco market is a little saturated, but Jeremy doesn’t seem to mind.

Kwame told the judges he’s using frozen waffles. This is Adam’s face, and I swear to you it was frozen (pun) like that for at least 30 seconds. Just blanked. Tom has quit on Kwame. Totally quit on him. He might as well not even put food on the plate. Seriously, look at Adam’s face.

Marjorie doesn’t have a way to cook her pasta, so this could be fun. Before they go to cook, she asks Kwame what his restaurant’s name is and he says “Waffle Me.” Waffle me, with the waffles frozen. It’s like he got bored and decided he wanted to go home so he tanked the week. He’s the Sixers of Top Chef right now.

Marjorie figured out how to cook her pasta. She’s going to fill her fryer with water. What could go wrong?

Carl’s name is Savory Med, which he says has an awesome ring to it. Then he says he hopes people don’t think it sounds like a drug company.

Marjorie’s pasta came out well, and her tuna is to her liking. Jeremy admitted that he pulled this out of his ass, but he’s offering lettuce wraps.

Service begins and this is Kwame’s line. He’s happy. The customers won’t be.

Do you know how easy it is to make waffles? Seriously, you mix the batter and put it in a giant bucket then ladle in the mix onto the iron and it takes, what, 4 minutes to cook? Get an iron that cooks giant round waffles and split them into four and you are set with a triangle waffle everyone will love. I am literally SO MAD about this.

Carl is up first, and the judges don’t seem to mind his huge menu of Chipotle-esque choices. Tom seems skeptical, but Richard Blais thinks the idea of mixing and matching is good.

After tasting, Tom agrees, saying he doesn’t think it would be easy to pull off as a chain, but if you have to eat five days a week for lunch, this is one of those days for sure.

Isaac is next, and he went gumbo, with other options for other kinds of gumbo to fill out his menu. They really like the concept, and the food is good too. Padma points out that Isaac’s idea of going to get a big bucket of gumbo for the family is really smart.

Kwame is up next. The judges seem less than impressed with his frozen waffle. Blais says he thinks it tastes good, but if that’s the size he’s selling, Kwame has “a disaster of a business plan.”

Padma had a soggy waffle. You cannot serve Padma a soggy waffle.

Marjorie is up with Pasta Mama. Tom loves the smart idea to cook using the fryer.

And everyone loves the idea, from the name to the cooking to the pasta itself. There are a lot of somewhat fast casual pasta places, but maybe nothing quite as fast as Marjorie is thinking. This could really work.

Taco Dudes, on the other hand, cannot. The menu is confusing, but Tom thinks it could work using social media. He’s really trying to help Jeremy there.

Jeremy says he’s trying not to be a typical taco shop that serves carne asada, so instead he gives them pork belly, the most cliché’d cheffy food in America.

His concept is “gastropub” with cool beers on tap, a rooftop garden and “hot chicks serving you.” Padma, your thoughts?

They hate the concept and they don’t like the food. Jeremy was almost sent home last week, so he might be saving Kwame’s frozen ass.

Last up is Pio Pio, which is rotisserie chicken, but all chopped up and put together, losing some of the benefits of the rotisserie. Tasty, though.

Going over the dishes, Blais and Tom liked Pasta Mama, and think it will be the most successful brand to franchise. They enjoyed Isaac’s dish too, and think it could really work and would be easy to reheat.  Carl’s food and concept is well liked as well. (Lifehack: if you are doing a fast casual concept, just steal Chipotle’s idea and use a different kind of food.) They rip the waffles AGAIN and then rag on Amar for not selling his concept enough.

And then they get to Jeremy. They hated the idea, the execution and the decision to use pork belly not fish. He really might be gone.

At judge’s table, they celebrate Marjorie and Carl for having the best two dishes. This is the second week in a row that Isaac was talked about glowingly but he didn’t get picked as one of the top. It doesn’t matter, as he’s surely safe, but you have to wonder if he knows what we know, and if not winning will start to get in his head a little after taking home the Restaurant Wars crown. He’s been right there two straight weeks, so it’s odd they didn’t include him in the best dishes. Alas, Marjorie is certainly taking this home.

The winner is, indeed, Marjorie. Wait…did they say Carl? Holy cow, this show continues to surprise. Carl won with the diners too, so it was a clean sweep with Club Med or whatever the hell he called his place. It’s his first win, which is a great time to get it.

Jeremy and Kwame are the bottom two. The judges didn’t understand Jeremy’s concept at all. Two dudes off the beach doing pork tacos with hot chicks at a gastropub with a rooftop garden. What’s not to get, Tom? (Ugh.)

He’s really just been the worst chef on this season almost the entire competition and somehow skates by on a few early wins and this laissez faire surfer attitude where he doesn’t ever say anything to get him in trouble. I don’t know. I just don’t get it.

Kwame is hammered for the lack of actual cooked waffles. Had he just made some batter, he’d be fine. Let me say this as someone who makes frozen waffles literally three or four days a week and homemade waffles almost every weekend, even if Kwame got a box mix but actually cooked the waffles he’d be fine. It doesn’t take more than 20 minutes to prep waffle mix for 100 or so people and he could have made them nearly á la minute. Just a horrible idea, and it sent him home.

Kwame talks to Tom about how four years ago he was a server at Tom’s restaurant, and looked in the kitchen and knew this was for him. Tom got choked up thinking about it, and knowing he had a hand in Kwame’s rise. The final six is great for Kwame, but he had a real chance to win this competition, he was just to raw (pun) and needs more seasoning (pun) to go from good chef to Top Chef. Also never cook anything frozen!

Power Rankings:

1. Marjorie – Probably the favorite to win it all now, after a down week last week. She got her groove back.

2.  Amar – He was in the top spot last week, and could be lower, but he was dinged for his salesmanship this week, not really his food.

3. Carl – He won with both the judges and the patrons. He deserves the top spot this week, but is middle of the pack overall.

4. Isaac – Two weeks ago he was on top, last week he was second, but two middle-of-the-pack finishes has him in fourth. Which given how close the top four are, isn’t that bad.

5. Jeremy – We’re down to the end here, and Jeremy is not long for this competition. The other four are so close and Jeremy would be 10^th if there were any other people left.