Mention It All - Puttin’ on the Ritz… Cracker (Top Chef)

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

On this week’s Top Chef episode, Dylan begins with a rant about why Last Chance Kitchen isn’t available on Peacock. What year is it??? Then, he gets into the Ritz cracker-themed Quickfire, which requires Padma to take some unnecessarily large bites. The rice challenge proves underwhelming, but a high-stakes LCK kickoff ends the episode on a high note. 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 am Dylan Hafer, and here we are. We have made it to Friday. We are halfway through March. We are two weeks into Top Chef. The vibes are perhaps mediocre, but we're going to make it, we're going to make it work today. Episode two of Top Chef,

episode one of Last Chance Kitchen for this season. I have a bone to pick with the good people at NBC Universal. I don't understand now that we have Peacock. And all of these episodes are available on Peacock, just hours after they air on Bravo. Why? Why? Why? do I still have to go to bravo tv.com, which barely works half the time, to watch Last Chance Kitchen? There, if you go on Peacock, I'm going to go right now.

So I, you know, peacock.tv.com. If I go to the Top Chef show page, there is a tab on the page that says extras. Now, what? better to put in the extras tab than the accompaniment program that you need to watch for the entire season to make sense that comes out every week. But no, when I click on the extras tab, all that shows up is the trailer for this season, which good for them putting the trailer up there. That is not what I care about. Why do I still have to go to bravoTV.com to watch 13 minutes of Top Chef in the same format that they would put like, you know, some random style video that nobody's going to watch.

Put it on Peacock if you want people to watch it. Okay. That's my little rant for the day. I feel like every week I'm going to have one of these rants. Last week it was about Gabri spilling water in Dawn's dish. This week it's about Last Chance Kitchen still being on bravo TV.com. Like it's, you know, 1997 or something. get it together. Corporate synergy. Come on, people. Don't make me go to the other website.

Okay, I said the rant was over and then I did it for, you know, 20 more seconds. But anyway, let's get into the episode. We are, you know, fresh off of some well going home. Buddha says every challenge here is like the finale because the level of talent, it's, you know, it's tough. Sarah reveals that she has two little babies at home. She's still breastfeeding and she's shipping her milk home to her family while she is competing. I, oh my God, I cannot fathom. People are incredible. Women are incredible.

Like, good for Sarah. I could never. Like, I can't. The Quick Fire, we have guest judge, Michelin Star Chef, Santiago Alastra. He is very handsome. That is a theme. I'm noticing this season. there are just some delectable men heading to London, and I am not mad about it.

But the Quickfire challenge is that they have to make an amuse-bush featuring one of these special ingredients, and it has to fit on a Ritz Cracker. Like I said last week, I always like to see who the prizes are furnished by. And this week there is, I believe, a $5,000 or $10,000 cash prize along with immunity for the Quickfire, furnished by Ritz crackers. As Padma says, Ritz is on a mission to make the world a more welcoming place. I'm like, okay, it's a cracker. Great.

I have enjoyed a Ritz Cracker in my day. Is it something that I am constantly returning to? Not particularly, but, you know, I'm not mad at it. But to make things a little more interesting, they are going to be competing in groups of three, but not as groups. They are competing against their groups. and they must use all three of the special ingredients that those group members have chosen. So this leads to some interesting ingredient groupings. We have wasabi, capers, and plantains, yeast extract, hibiscus and cumquat,

Botarga, don't know what that is, piquio peppers, some kind of peppers, don't know what those are, and oyster leaves. I'm like, what are all of these things? This group was stressful to me. Begonia only got one of her tasting crackers put together. If you have Michelin Stars, you should be getting your dishes on the plate, on the cracker, if you will. I don't know.

Maybe I'm being rude. Then we have caviar cream. Again, I don't know what caviar cream is. We're told it's fishy. Probably not my thing. Jackfruit and tamarind. And then horseradish, goat cheese and guahoe peppers. Some of these people are putting so much shrews.

shit on that cracker. Padma is trying her best to eat these in one bite. And some of these crackers, I'm looking at it, I'm like, there is a solid inch of topping on that cracker. I can't unhinge my jaw. This is supposed to be one bite. Come on. You should not have like a thick layer of some goo and then another topping on top of that and then a garnish. Like, You, like, they specifically mention, I think it was Nicole, had a really good, you know, understanding of the balance on the cracker. And it's like, yeah, because this isn't supposed to be the fucking leaning tower of pizza of food that you're shoveling into your mouth in one bite. I love to hear, Padma say, hands up, crackers down. It's so stupid.

Padma makes me laugh. I don't know. and they're like turning around to discuss, you know, the winners of each little thing with their bottles of Saratoga Spring water in hand. Anyway, May wins the overall challenge. She had the yeast extract, hibiscus, and cumquite. The quick fires are so funny because it's like, I don't really know what's going on with the food, but it's exciting. I'm into it. That brings us to the elimination challenge, which this week is.

Rice. We have a guest judge, Lorna Maseko, who is the host of Top Chef South Africa. Love seeing all the people from these different Top Chef franchises. And I think it's so smart that they have obviously contestants from 11 different franchises, but then they're bringing in guest judges and other people from even more around the world. Like it really, I didn't know how many Top Chef franchises we had around the world, but it's cool. So anyway, they have to make a rice dish for 100 guests. And it's important that rice is really the star of the dish. We saw this last week. They had to make a dish where vegetables were the star. It's a classic top chef move to basically pick something that seems like it would normally be the side or the base and be like,

no, no, no, that needs to be the thing that we are tasting first and foremost. And inevitably, there are always some people in challenges like this who don't quite do the assignment and give you, you know, a bit of rice with chicken on top. And, you know, we have a few people who do that. And last week it was the same, where it was people were giving things where the vegetables were just kind of an afterthought or a side piece. You know, it's tough. It's tough. Because when I think about rice, I'm like, I eat rice all the time. But rarely am I like savoring. The rice part of it. Do you ever think about that?

The rice. It supports us. It lifts us up so much. But do we really give it the attention it deserves? I'm not sure we do. You know, Tom is not used to cooking with rice because they don't eat rice in Germany, I guess. Sylvia from Poland, you know, neighboring country to Germany. She's more of a potato kind of girl.

I like that her strategy is. in this challenge is basically like, I'm going to do potatoes, but there's going to be rice there, and I'm going to kind of do a mind trick to make you eat the potatoes and think about rice. And then also I'm just going to dump some vanilla salt on top of the dish, because why not do that? Gabri is really stressing me out this episode because they are at the grocery store, at the Whole Foods, I guess, because, you know, I learned last week that they have Whole Foods in London, very cool for them. And so he's listing off like 47 million different ingredients, different types of pepper that he's going to be getting. And then he also says that on his original show, the Mexican top chef, they didn't have to do any of their own shopping.

So I guess they were always just in the kitchen and the pantry was like ready to go, which the shopping is a, you know, a classic piece of this. the Top Chef U.S. puzzle. So it's wild to me that they were never sent into a store with a budget and, you know, a list of ingredients. But he is really struggling with the money. He ends up having to spend money from someone else. It's like there are a lot of moving pieces to this show. And I think we underestimate it.

But we're really seeing some of that this season. So good. So good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom Rack stores now and up to 60% off. Stock up and save on. the brands you love like Vince, Sam Edelman, Frame and Free People. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free.

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Like always, you know, as a Don fan, I've just accepted that she is always going to stress me. out. And it is what it is. The dishes overall, most of them look good, but there was nothing that I was particularly wowed by. As a culinary non-expert, maybe that is like an asshole thing to say that I'm looking at all this food. And I'm like, eh, you know, the coconut rice with Thai curry that Sylvia makes. I do feel like I could get that at, you know, 10 Thai restaurants within a 15-minute walk of my apartment. Tom makes a lambriani, and that, again, just kind of seems like, you know, a delicious thing with rice in it, but it's not like, I don't know. Charbel makes a spiced rice with chicken and a yogurt sauce. Ali makes a lamb thing.

for a cocky rice. You know, like a lot of these do just seem like they are kind of like any old dish that happens to have rice. I think people really struggled with the, with the rice brief. But anyway, the tops in the challenge are Gabri, Ali, and Bay. Gabri's quest around the grocery store for his 50 ingredients paid off. Ali, who I said made the lamb oozy. He ends up winning the challenge. Congrats to him. May also in the top after winning the Quickfire, she is establishing herself as a real threat in the competition. And she seems very sweet. I like her a lot. The bottoms, unfortunately, are Dawn, Luciana and Sylvia. Luciana, of course, from Brazil, she is ashamed of herself because Rice is such a big thing in Brazil.

She's like, if I go home on this challenge, I don't think I'll ever be able to show my face in Brazil. Sylvia, like I said, is more used to potatoes. This ends up being a big thing because the judges feel like Sylvia tried something that she doesn't normally do. It didn't work out and she understands that. Whereas they feel like with Don and Luciana, there's not so much of an understanding of what they did wrong. And even Dawn, when they go back after judges' table, she's like, well, you know, I did what I did. If they didn't like it, it is what it is. and I think the judges would like to see a little bit more of like, oh, you know, I know I fucked up so bad. And I made this uncharacteristic mistake. And I don't want to ever do it again. So if your attitude, I don't think it's a bad attitude, but to have a little bit more of like a, yeah, shit happens.

Not everybody's going to agree. It's like that's not quite the energy that the judges are going to be like, she knows what she did and she's sorry. So such as to say Dawn gets sent home. And, you know, I was really sweating. I watched this in advance so the Last Chance Kitchen wasn't out yet. I was like, oh, God, I just talked to Dawn earlier this week. This is going to be rough.

But we go to Last Chance Kitchen. And so it's Don and Samuel. First of all, I got to say, a note to how they are formed. matting this season. When you announce one person as the winner of Top Chef France, that sounds extremely prestigious. I know French cuisine is very

fancy, renowned. And then you announce the other person as a finalist of Top Chef Portland or the winner of Top Chef Houston or Top Chef Kentucky. I think they would be

better off saying top chef U.S. Because I got to say, Top Chef Kentucky doesn't quite sound like it carries the same weight as Top Chef any other country. Top Chef Brazil. Top Chef Italy. Top Chef Germany. Like, unless I'm mistaken, the U.S. one is like the original Top Chef, the flagship show. This is the show that we are on right now.

like it's Top Chef on Bravo, they're selling themselves short by saying, well, I mean, Don was a finalist in Portland. It's like, no, she was a finalist of America. Anyway, that's a different issue. So for this challenge, they are given ingredients from their most memorable Top Chef finale dishes, which doesn't end up really meaning anything except for that. Don has to use lamb and Samuel has to use salmon. They only get 30 minutes. Samuel says in the Top Chef France finale, they had 10 hours to prep. I'm like, how do you even work for 10 hours? Isn't that like a labor dispute issue? Is there a chef's union that can get involved? I know there's not, but there should be. I don't know. It's so stressful. 30 minutes. Dawn has to make lamb. She puts her tomatoes in the woodfire oven and then it turns out

it's like not even on or not hot or something. I feel like she should get extra time for that. Like they fucked her up with that. The oven clearly is supposed to be on. Tom is over there like putting his hand in it. He's like, oh, I don't know. Like, maybe we should put like an out of order sign on the oven so people know not to use it.

Just saying. So Don has to improvise with her tomatoes a little bit. Somewell's making a salmon terriaki with mushrooms. He says he won the finale of his own show with a similar dish and he serves it at its restaurant and it's a great hit which uh when people say that it always is it's a little bit of like molly you endanger girl energy because it's like look you have this thing at your restaurant at home that you spend all this time perfecting and you've made a lot of money off of you trying to recreate that in the top chef kitchen it's not always going to go great

and you know as we see some well gets sent home. Now, as a Dawn fan, I was personally very relieved at this outcome. Last Chance Kitchen is so stressful. Top Chef is one of those shows where it sneaks up on you. I'm like, yeah, it's just, it's like fun cooking, whatever. And then it's Last Chance Kitchen and I'm like fully not reading. But anyway, Dawn lives to fight another day.

Tom loves her dish. She's there. She's going to fight. She's glad she doesn't have time to overthink anymore. That's how she thrives. And I wish the best for her. Can't wait to see what happens next week when I will be back with all of you. Thank you so much for listening.

Don't forget to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen. You can follow us on Instagram at Bravo by Betches. You can follow me at Dylan Hafer. And until next time, be cool. Don't be all like uncool. Mention It All is produced by Dylan Hafer, Sean Kilby, Jorge Morales Pico, and Rebecca Sousmaqat. Editing by Horpearlahe. Social media by Dylan Hafer.

Guest booking by Dylan Hafer and Ali Friedlander. Be sure to follow at Bravo by Betches on Instagram. and Twitter. All. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person

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