Mention It All - Fast & Furious & Full of Feelings (Top Chef)

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

On this week’s Top Chef episode, Dylan starts by celebrating the fruits of his manifestation: Last Chance Kitchen is finally easy to find. Then, he gets into another roller coaster of a recap, featuring street food from around the world and an appearance from Vin Diesel. In the fastest elimination challenge ever, tensions run high, and Dylan starts to get stressed about saying goodbye to his precious favorites. Check out our latest promo codes here: https://betches.com/promos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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See Store Online for details. Betches Media presents. Ha ha, laugh, funny. Mention It All, a Bravo by Betches podcast. We don't say that, but now we said it. With me, Dylan Hafer. We're going to check me, though. Hey, everyone.

Welcome back to the Mention at All podcast. I'm Dylan Hafer, and it is Friday. We have made it to the end of another week. We finally got an O.C. trailer. We had another banger of an episode of Vandapump Rules. The Jersey ladies made it through their Ireland trip. And now, as our sweet little treat, We get to talk about Top Chef.

I love coming back to this every Friday. It is a roller coaster of an episode and a Last Chance Kitchen this week. But before we get into that, I have to give a little shout out to the good people at Bravo, Peacock, Tom Colicchio's Kitchen, whoever is making the decisions around there. Earlier in the season, if you might recall, I went on an impassioned, if slightly misinformed rant about the difficulty of finding Last Chance Kitchen. I thought it wasn't on Peacock. It turned out it was.

It was hard to find. Eventually, they started queuing up the Last Chance Kitchen after the normal episode. That was a great step forward. And this week, they made another inspiring step forward, in the words of Elizabeth Holmes, if you've seen the dropout. At the end of the episode, usually they say, watch Last Chance Kitchen on demand. or wherever you watch Top Chef. And this week, Tom Colicchio pulled a switcheroo, and he said, watch Last Chance Kitchen

on Peacock, or wherever you watch Top Chef. We did it, Joe. We accomplished the mission. I don't know if anybody at Top Chef HQ has been listening to me throughout this season. Maybe they have, or maybe I'm delusional. But I'm going to believe that I manifested this change into existence. And thank you so much for everyone who's stuck by me, stuck by us in this battle for Last Chance Kitchen accessibility. We made it.

We did it. Mission accomplished. Let's get into this episode. Because we're flying around the world. We're on a fast and furious journey. We've got Vin Diesel. We've got lambs. The Quickfire, we've got guest judge Judy Jew and a big ass map of the world on the wall with passports on a bunch of different countries.

And this challenge is about street food from all around the world. It's the best way to learn about culture, eating food on the pavement. So they have to run up, take a passport in the country they choose. There's going to be an assigned dish. This is, it's a little bit tricky because, you know, people are making, you know, educated guesses about what they might. might get, you know, Gawbray has spent time in Canada, so he chooses that. He gets puteen. He's excited about that. Amar chooses Colombia, hoping it might be empanadas. Instead, it's a repus. Charbel chooses Japan just because he wants something outside of his comfort zone. And boy,

does he get it. He gets taco yaki, which are like octopus dumplings. I actually had those for the first time when I was in Hawaii a few weeks ago. Very delicious, but also unlike any texture of anything I've eaten before. So to get assigned to that, if you've never experienced it, I can't imagine anybody really doing a good job of that. Victoire, she does Jamaica, she gets jerk chicken, that looks delicious. Sarah chooses Argentina and she does get empanadas, or as she says, empanadas, I feel like that's something. It's very, like, Midwestern. Yeah, like empignatas. she doesn't really know how to make an empanata.

When they present the dishes and Sarah's doing her explanation and she's like, yeah, so like I made my dough from scratch and then, you know, there's this, that, and the other thing inside of it. And sweet Padma, Padma's just like, okay, thank you, Sarah. It's funny because the judges really, a lot of the time don't give away too much when they're tasting the dishes. But sometimes they'll be like, oh, that flavor is really nice or this is a beautiful dish or, you. you know, you can kind of tell when they're like into it. And then sometimes they're just like, thank you, Nicole. Who's next? It's got to be devastating. I mean, granted, this is only a quick fire, but it's a little bit of a tough look. Buda, meanwhile, chooses Vietnam and he's making Banzio, which is this like crepe thing that sounds delicious. I don't think I've ever had that.

But I love Vietnamese food. But he's struggling to get his crepe batter, the correct consistency. you know, it's a tricky one. Tom chooses India. He's making Balpuri, and he says that no one probably took Indian food because Padma is like a scary judge and she knows her shit when it comes to Indian food. And we've seen that before that people are, you know, cooking outside of their comfort zone. And it's just like, yeah, this isn't, this wasn't what I wanted. But Tom, in fact, does a great job. Buddha also does a great job. They're in the top, along with Gabri, who makes a poutine that had parsnips instead of potatoes. Like, patine is traditionally like French fries.

I don't know. I mean, I think if I ordered a dish that was supposed to be fries and then it was parsnips, I would feel like I was mad about not getting the fries, personally. There was a study that came out this week that apparently French fries caused like depression or something, which is just rude. Like, get a life, leave me alone. Anyway, apparently his dish was great. Buddha ends up being the winner. It's back-to-back quickfire wins, which means back-to-back immunities. That is a big deal. I mean, we're getting down to the wire here. There's nine people left, eight by the end of this episode. To have

immunity two weeks in a row at this phase of the competition, there's probably only a couple more weeks where immunity is even a thing. So, I mean, props to Buddha. He's really, I mean, he's a very talented chef. I don't think he would be struggling otherwise, but I mean, he's sitting pretty right now. The bottoms happen to be Charbel, Nicole and Sarah. No real surprises there. Nicole picks China. She's supposed to make egg waffles. She tries to do this like individual like bubble waffle thing, which sounds delicious, but apparently it's too doughy. I don't know. It's too doughy even a thing. I like dough. I don't know. Chewy, yummy. Anyway, so Buddha is the winner there.

From there, we head into our elimination challenge, which is fast and furious themed. I personally, like Victoire, have seen all of the Fast and Furious movies. This was a pandemic project at some point for me, catching up. I saw the most recent one in theaters. I'm excited for the new one. It does feel like a little bit of a stretch when it comes to the Top Chef theme. I know NBC Universal Comcast loves their, you know, interchannel product placement. I can't fault them for that. There's nothing I love more than when a housewife has to, like, do a little plug for a universal movie.

It just, it sings to my soul. But, you know, wheeling out the TV for a message. from Vin Diesel. It's a little silly. Vin is wearing a four-Paul shirt, which is just like, okay, so now I'm basically crying. Michelle Rodriguez is like, you know, Padma might have a few twists and turns. It's so dumb. I mean, whatever. Like, what is there to even say? I guess, good work to all the teams involved in this. If it is, Diesel was there in person. That would have been really cool, but whatever. So they're competing, not only to move on in the competition, but to attend the world premiere of Fast 10, Fast X, Fast X, Fast

10. This is like when they did the iPhone 10, but it was an X. And I feel like everybody always just said iPhone X, iPhone 10. I don't know. Whatever. That's probably the last time I'll have to say it. So for this challenge, it is the fastest elimination challenge in Top Chef history. That's very clever. It's going to be a two-part challenge. The first part is a Misan Plus race, which they've done on other Top Chef shows. Usually it's a quick fire. Here it is part of the elimination challenge. So in teams, there are going to be three rounds of a Misan Plus race.

Then based on each round, they're going to choose ingredients. And then in the second half, they're going to have to make three dishes using those ingredients, spotlighting those ingredients. So basically, in each round of the Misan Plus race, there is a protein. a fruit and a veg. And each team member is going to have to do one of those items. And then the order they finish is the order they get to choose the ingredients. So in the first round, the ingredients are inspired by Fast and Furious movie locations. This is all kind of like superfluous.

It's just like ingredients. I don't know. So the first round is avocados, oranges, and hamachi, the fish. The second round is prickly pears, shrimp and peas. The third round is dates, red peppers, bell peppers, red peppers, yes. And I'm like losing my, I'm like, is a bell pepper? What is a bell pepper? Dates, red peppers, and lamb.

And this gets pretty spicy because the red team wins the first two rounds. And their strategy, Buddha's like little, you know, galaxy brain strategy, is to take the protein off the table. because then the other groups won't have protein to use because they have limited access to the pantry. Tom tells us later, the only proteins that they can take for the pantry are bacon and chorizo. So there's no, there's no chicken back there. There's no beef. There's no shrimp anywhere. You know, they really are limited to what they win. So in the first round, Red takes the hamachi. In the second round, they take the shrimp. And then in the third round, Green manages to win. so they take the lamb.

So if you're doing a little bit of mental math here, that means that yellow ends up with no protein. So we have the avocado, the peas, and the bell peppers. You know, there's only so much you can do with that. Right? Wink, wink, wink. That's going to be tough because they don't have a protein. So good, so good.

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sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. So the yellow team just, I don't know if I said who's on what team. Yellow is Ali, Tom, and Gabri. So they're the ones with no protein. The red team with two proteins is Buddha, Nicole, and Victoire, and then the green team who has lamb, they are Sarah, Amar, and Charbel. And then they only have 30 minutes to make their dishes. So here is where we diverge in strategy a little bit. So the green team decides that because they only have one protein, the lamb, they're all going to make dishes with lamb. But Charbel's dish will be

the like lamb spotlight dish. Sarah's dish will be the orange spotlight dish and a mars dish will be the prickly pear spotlight dish, but they're all lamb dishes. Interesting strategy. The second they said it, I was like, I don't think that's the assignment. That doesn't sound like what they wanted you to do. But, you know, respect to the creativity, respect to the resourcefulness, I guess. Meanwhile, the red and the yellow teams, they each are only using their set ingredient. So, like, on the yellow team, Tom is doing a bell pepper dish. Ali is doing a peas dish.

And Cabri is doing an avocado dish, which to me sounds like that's the challenge. I mean, half of Top Chef is doing the challenge correctly. And half of Top Chef is, like, executing the best dish. That's something we've seen, you know, many people on this show struggle with actually, like, accomplishing the prompt that they're given. So I think the green team, I got what they were going for, but ultimately, they end up losing the challenge because Charbel's lamb dish wasn't that great in general. Amar's prickly pear dish was basically a lamb dish with a sauce that just happened to have prickly pear in it. Sarah was the only one who actually managed to highlight her ingredient. You know,

The red team and the yellow team, yellow ends up winning. Tom is the overall winner, which is tough for me as a general non-Tom lover. But all of them do well. The red team, Nicole does a tempore up prawn with coconut curry. Victoire does a hamachi tartar. Buddha does a date cake with miso caramel. That sounds delicious. All of them are good. I thought between red and yellow, it seemed like kind of a toss up who was going to win. But I think yellow probably got bonus. points for kind of how creative they were without having any protein, whereas red kind of just executed strong dishes, but they had more to work with. But yeah, the green just falls short. Sarah kind of gets off the hook because she did feature the orange prominently in her dish. So Amar and Charbel are, you know, in actuality, the real potum too. And Charbel ultimately gets the boot because they all made lamb dishes and his was the one that was supposed to spotlight the lamb and it was just probably the weakest dish overall. Look, this made me really sad.

I have been riding for Charbel. But the problem is, so there are the nine people left in this episode, there are really only a couple people here that I'm not super vibing with. Like, Tom is definitely my least favorite person left. But then, like, I love victoire. I love Buddha. I love Ali. Gopry's like my baby boy.

Nicole, I think, is really fun and, like, spunky. Charbel is, like, a father figure, even though he's only 25, and I just, I love him, and I think he's really good at what he does. Amar, Amar is, like, my uncle. Like, I enjoy him so much. I think he's very talented. The only two people that I'm not, like, kind of obsessed with are Sarah and Tom. So, you know, these next few weeks when we're watching the show and these people are starting to get sent home, this is going to be, it's going to be a tough journey.

For me, I would think for a lot of you listening probably, like, what are we supposed to do? Like, something's got to give. I'm going to, I'm going to be a mess when these people start going home. I'm already upset when Charbel goes home. He goes straight to Last Chance Kitchen, which, like I said, was very easy to find this week. Dale is there. Dale, another one of my least faves. They have a tomato challenge. Sylvia rolls in with her cart full of tomatoes. Sylvia, I have to say, is a damn delight as the Last Chance Kitchen sideline cheerleader. She's like, oh, she's like picking up the tomato that Dale knocked on the

floor. She's great at kind of talking to each of them about what they're doing. She's funny. She's cute. She's like, God, everybody on this show is just, they're my friends. I have a parissocial relationship with like everyone on this show. That's what's really at work here. Dale says, apparently Saskatchewan Canada is known for tomatoes. This is breaking news to me, not something I would have ever guessed. But Charbel does a tomato four ways and ends up really impressing Tom. and he gets to stay.

Dale, after five last chance kitchen, wins, is finally sent packing. When Tom said that Charbel was the winner, I actually, like, screamed. Like, audibly, I mean, I was sitting in my bed alone,

and literally, you would have thought, like, my favorite team just won the World Series if that was something I cared about. I just, I care too much about all of these people. It's going to be really tough. There's still eight people left in the competition. Nine, if you count last chance. Tough choices are going to have to be made. It's going to be like losing family members left and right. I, I don't know how I'm going to do it, but, you know, somehow we will get through together.

I'm curious, let me know via DM, review, whatever, who you're kind of riding for this season, who you're loving the most, because really, of the nine people still left in the competition, it's extremely difficult for me to even try and pick a top two or three. Like, the level is so high. The personalities are so enjoyable. It's just, it's, it's, it's rough, it's tough out there. And I'm so grateful because it's a, you know, fantastic show. But anyway, you know, let me know what your thoughts are. But thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for listening all week. Come back next week. Don't forget to rate, review and follow the show so you never miss an episode. You can follow me on Instagram at Bravo by Betches, at Dylan Hafer. And until

next time, be cool. Don't be all like uncool. Mentioned at all is produced by Dylan Hafer, Sean Kilby, Jorge Morales, Pico, and Rebecca Sousa McCat. Editing by Horace Pico, social media by Dylan Hafer, guest booking by Dylan Hafer and Ali Friedlander. Be sure to follow. Follow at Bravo by Betches on Instagram and Twitter. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage

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