Top Chef: Just Desserts episode 5 recap – what, lettuce isn’t a dessert?
13 Oct 2010, Posted by Top Chef, Top Chef Just Desserts: Season I inAnyone who saw tonight’s episode of Top Chef: Just Desserts must have been asking the same question: Is lettuce really a dessert? Tonight there were two contestants who seemed to confuse vegetables, like lettuce and radishes, with normal dessert ingredients like chocolate, sugar and flour. Danielle and Heather C must have been sucked into a time warp and brought back to Bravo’s old Project Runway when Austin Scarlet made a corn husk dress. More on this later.
Tonight’s guest judge was Sherry Yard from Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant empire and she brought with her pleasant (she danced like Ellen a few times) but frank assessments of the desserts she tasted.
Before tonight’s episode I was intrigued because Gail Simmons tweeted that the judges got “a little feisty” on tonight’s episode. I’ve always wondered why they never show the judges arguing over the success of a dish. They must disagree at least some of the time, especially when there are a lot of chefs are still in contention. Sadly, I never saw the feistiness rear it’s ugly head tonight.
Elimination Challenge: The chefs had to design an edible dress inspired by a pair of shoes which they got to choose at the beginnging of the show. The winner also gets $20,000.
As I mentioned earlier, Danielle and Heather C had a lot of produce on their dresses and not a lot of pastry or dessert components. The judges made fun of Eric’s cro-magnon dress which was made of cookie plate mail.
Bottom Three: Heather C (Shocker!) , Danielle (didn’t see that coming!) and Eric (I thought the Cookie-dress was a good idea in concept)
Top Three: Yigit, Zac, and Morgan – Morgan wins (again).
Heather C’s teary-eyed parting video is here. “I learned a lot about myself and that lettuce apparently isn’t a dessert!” (Ok, she didn’t exactly say that. I added that last part)
Zac Young Quote Watch: “Not just Bloggers, but you know, real fashion journalists!”
Notes: Creepy contestant update: My wife commented at the beginning of the show that Morgan was “creeping her out”. This was before he said he had a women’s shoe fetish, before Heather pointed out how “old school” his treatement of women on the show show by calling them “babe” and “honey”, and before he wished that it could be just “him and the mannequin tonight“. Crying update: They almost broke the streak but Heather C did cry at the end and it looked like Eric did too when she left the judges table. so the streak of contestants crying on TCJD is still alive.
Craft : Karen DiMasco’s killer souffles (she’s at Locande Verde now):
More Top Chef: Just Desserts coverage on DessertBuzz:
For Fabio Viviani’s take: Go here.
Go here for an interview with contestant Zac Young from New York’s Flex Mussels
Go here for an interview with contestant Eric Wolitzky from New York’s Baked bakery.
For a recap of episode 4 go here.
For a recap of episode 3 go here.
For a recap of episode 2 go here.
For a recap of episode 1 go here.
Go here for a look at Johnny Iuzzini.
Go here for a closer look at Judge Danielle Kyrillos.
Official Bravo Bios for the judges: Johnny Iuzzuni – Executive Pastry Chef Jean Georges, Hubert Keller – Owner/Chef Fleur De Lys, Gail Simmons – Food and Wine Magazine, Dannielle Kyrillos – Daily Candy
Go here for the DessertBuzz Top Chef: Just Desserts preview page.
This show should be called Top Chef: Just Divas…
I find it enjoyable except for Morgan’s constant
insistance that he represents the straight man. I’ve never encountered such an obvious case of denial about one’s sexuality in my life.
He’s overly chauvanistic to try to convince himself and others that he’s straight.
Jim, I think you nailed it. It does seem to me like he is overcompensating quite a bit. Although he did allow himself to cry a few episodes ago – and he in order to really keep the ruse up he would have acted a bit more macho throughout that segment.
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[…] For a recap of episode 5 go here. […]
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