Mention It All - We’re On An All-Carb Diet (Top Chef)

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

Dylan returns for another solo Top Chef recap, and he’s mostly excited to gush about his feelings for Padma. After a queso quick fire that makes his mouth water (and his stomach churn), he tries to make sense of the football-inspired rules for the elimination challenge. He also picks out his boyfriend for the season, and rejoices as his nemesis is eliminated from the competition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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With Dylan Hafer. We're going to check me, though. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Mention at All podcast. I am Dylan Hafer, and it's just me today talking about Top Chef. You know what it is. First of all, I just want to say thank you so much everyone who sent great feedback about last Friday's Top Chef episode.

It's the first time we've ever done. it and I'm so glad you guys are enjoying it. And this season of Top Chef, I was going to wait and record this in the morning on Friday, but I watched the episode tonight. It's Thursday. It's like 9.40 p.m. right now? I couldn't wait to get on the microphone. This episode was so good. First of all, we got to talk about this quickfire. We walk in. There is cheese everywhere. There is a fondue fountain. I'm immediately in heaven. The guest is this sweet chef woman, Irma. She's a Houston legend, as Evelyn tells us. And the challenge, they are. are making queso. My mouth is watering. Just thinking about it. I don't have queso in the home

right now. I would love to have some. Basically, they're all making queso, and they have to have a dipper along with their queso, but it cannot be a tortilla chip. That's like a fun twist, because I feel like queso is one of those things where everyone is used to eating it, but you don't really think about what is queso. Like, I mean, it's like cheese, obviously, like, I like took Spanish in high school, but how do you make it? Well, Do you just, like, do you melt the cheese in the pan? I don't understand how that works, but I've only really ever eaten it with a tortilla chip. So you gotta get a little bit creative.

Um, but Jay tells us that she has never seen or tasted queso, which I feel sorry for her. Hopefully while they're in Texas, she can get out and about and try some. Meanwhile, Joe was talking about how she gained, quote, Koso weight when she moved to Austin. And that is deeply relatable to me. Um, I love. of this. Honestly, the biggest red flag in this casso challenge is Jackson, who decides that he doesn't want to do a normal gooey queso. He wants to do something a little different. So he is making a

crispy spaghetti cracker version of queso. When Padma sees this, tastes this, experiences this, she is deeply distraught, and I have to say, I am on the exact same page as Padma. Obviously, I didn't get to taste it. But just, if you're giving me, given, if you're given a challenge and the challenge is to make queso and something to dip in it, you need to make something dippable. Like, it's not a hard concept. And it's one of those things where, like, there are certain foods, you know, if you're telling me like, oh, we're going to make, like, we're going to make bread and you want to get creative

with the bread, it's like, that's great. But there are certain foods that just don't need to be fucked with. I feel like pizza is in this category. You know, like, you can get creative with your toppings. You can do a different type of crust, but it's like pizza is pizza is pizza. And I feel like queso, it doesn't need you to reinvent it. Put a different cheese. Put a little spice to it.

Get creative with the dipper. Like, that's your room to experiment. But, like, if I tell you I want queso, there needs to be a bowl of something hot and liquid and cheese and delicious. And so I absolutely would have told Jackson to pack his knives and go right at that moment. Padma, she plays by the rules. She's just, you know, not quite there for it. So Jackson is obviously on the bottom. As are Sam, the boyfriend of the season already, I've decided, at least my boyfriend of the season, you can choose for yourself. And Robert is also on the bottom. He had never made queso before either. So I feel like it's kind of like,

And it happens. The tops, meanwhile, are Evelyn, Nick, and Damar. Damar wins the challenge overall. They loved his, like, Serrano pepper vibe. Honestly, all of these look delicious. There weren't, I get, like, some of them kind of nailed it a little more than others, but eating, like, 15 casos in a row, I would be on the toilet, but I would have, it would be worth it.

But Damar wins. They loved his pepper situation, and he has immunity going into the elimination challenge. Oh, my God. guys, this elimination challenge, I have never been more confused listening to the rules of a top chef challenge be explained. So Padma tells us that football is obviously a big thing in Texas. This is not shocking to me. I've never watched Friday Night Lights, but like, I think it's a Texas thing. Let me know in a five-star review if Friday Night Lights doesn't take place in Texas, or let me know in a five-star review if it does. Should I watch it? Tell me. But basically,

they're going to a high school football stadium. They're going to be split up into two teams of seven, the Wildcats and the Cougars. They each have team coaches, Don Borell, and Sam Talbot. I love, love the way they work in the All-Stars, just chef's kiss always. So each team has to make seven dishes loaded with carbs. Everybody's making their own dish. This is where I get confused. Padma is explaining to us all of these football-themed rules, but none of them are like actual football. Like, I sort of know the rules of football, but I don't know the rules of, like, Top Chef inspired football. So they're flipping a coin to decide whether they start on offense or defense. Offense decides which dish to put up first, and defense gets to decide

who they're facing off against. Like, who's going up, like, I'm, see, I'm already, like, I'm already unclear about what's happening. Why are there so many sports metaphors? Padma's talking about gaining yardage. Like, this is not what I signed up for. But, basically, I will do my best to explain it. So basically, there are five judges. The teams are facing off for each of their seven dishes. Each judge out of the five votes with a pom-pom for which dish they preferred. Each pom-pom vote represents five yards on the field. And you're trying to get to 100 yards for your team. So basically there's like seven rounds, there's five potential pom-poms. so like 25 yards per round, but obviously some of them are going to be split.

The goal is to get to 100, basically. But, um, see, like, I'm explaining it to myself. I just watched this episode, like, an hour ago, and I'm already, like, I think I missed a rule. But it doesn't really matter because we see them, you know, they're shopping, they have their coaches. Brooke Williamson is going to be a guest judge, which, like, again, I just, she's a favorite of mine. I like Brooke a lot.

But, you know, there's like some team issues, like two of the cougars want to do rice and their coach Sam is like, uh-uh. Each team has like one person doing a dessert, which Jackson wants to do the dessert. And I'm like, okay, ballsy because you like just got creative with your quick fire. And it was the worst thing Padma had ever tasted. But overall, you know, things are not going that bad. Stephanie is making cooked. She's buying pre-cooked chickpeas in a can, which sort of feels like, cheating on Top Chef. I always like, I don't quite know where the line is on a show like this,

because obviously they're supposed to be able to cook everything. Like, if you're making, like, if it's a dessert challenge and you're making like a piece of pie with ice cream, you're expected to make that ice cream from scratch. You can't be like, okay, so I made the pie and then I just like scooped out a thing of Ben and Jerry's. That's not okay. I don't know. You know, it's like, do all the ingredients have to be 100% from screys? And then I just like, I don't know. I don't cook enough to know like where the lines fall on these things, but clearly the chickpeas out of a can that are pre-cooked are like, there's like a question mark raised, you know, like a check engine light is on about those chickpeas from the beginning.

And let me just say, it's only downhill from there for Stephanie, for Miss North Dakota, who let me just say, I was not team Stephanie last week and I feel very vindicated in that opinion right off the bat. Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play? you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end DJ, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings.

Visit redbull.com slash bright summer ahead to learn more. See you this summer. Okay, let's skip ahead, Challenge Day. They're at a high school football field, but this is not a football. This is a football stadium. and it looks like I know everything's bigger in Texas, so they say. I've never been.

But like, how is this a high school right now? The judges are set up in the middle of the field. Padma has her microphone over the loudspeaker, and I swear to God I was laughing the entire time throughout this challenge because just Padma sitting under her tent just basically shouting across the field

and all of these contestants just was extremely pleasing to me. I just, Padma Lakshmi is like, one of my favorite celebrities, not even one of my favorite Bravo Lebrities. I just think as a personality and a public figure, first of all, like, she is very political, which I am into, because she has good politics. But, like, she's so knowledgeable. She's so beautiful. She's so, she carries herself so well. I just love Padma. Padma over the loudspeaker. Chef's Kiss, literally. But so we're sending people up in these pairings. To be honest, the strategy of it is a little bit uninteresting to me. They

sort of are talking about it beforehand, and then it's like, I don't really know, like, and I feel like it's not that important. Like, for the most part, they're kind of just like, oh, grains with grains. And then, like, grains with other grains. Like, the thing about a challenge like this is that they're all making carbs, but of course, for them, nobody's carb is just like French fries. Nobody's carb is just like pizza. So basically all of the dishes feel like they're just like different versions of the same thing. You know, it's like, oh, this is like a, this grain salad that I've never heard of before. And then now, like, this person's making like a grain porridge that I've also never heard of before.

And then there's like, you know, a sweet potato thing and another sweet potato thing and a mushroom taco. And it's like, I know that they're like officially different on paper, but to the untrained eye, I'm like, I would eat all. of these, but I don't feel like the differences are as meaningful as they sometimes are in these challenges. But anyway, Damar, who won the Quickfire, is declared the MVP. Once again, he won both challenges this week. Demar is on a role. It's safe to say. The judges are big fans of his Dirty Pharaoh. He's in the first group to go up. So it's pretty impressive that they, like, even remembered what he made, because trust me, I had to check my notes just now. Um, But the bottom three, unsurprisingly, it's Sarah, Luke, and Stephanie.

So Stephanie, she made this fichwada. It's a rice thing with like a cilantro salad and there's supposed to be meat, but she takes the meat off because, let's face it, she's dumb. Sarah is the one with the cooked chickpeas. And her dish, I got to say it's pretty tragic. She says it's a celebration of chickpea. What she means is that it's like a hummus bowl with like some other chickpeas on of it. And when Padma's like grilling her about her decision making, she says that she wanted to go

with hummus because she thought, she said it was an unthought of angle. And Padma, savage as she is, just goes hummus is an unthought of angle. And honestly, Padma is right. I can go to Kava and get like a hummus bowl down the street. Like, babe, it's been thought of. It's been thought of. I don't know. It just, a bad idea. And then Luke. is making a pumpkin comfy. And I guess a pumpkin is a carb. Yeah. Like squash is a carb. But it's not... I don't know.

I don't want to like eat a pumpkin. Does that make sense? I want pumpkin pie. Give me a slice of pumpkin pie. I don't want to eat a pumpkin. That sounds weird. But anyway, Stephanie gets sent home. Her broken rice was too much for the judges to get over. She really should have put the meat on that plate. I don't know what she was thinking. But anyway, Good riddened Stephanie. North Dakota girl. She's so proud. We love her.

but not really. And then our first last chance kitchen then is Leah versus Stephanie. Leah went home last week. She was like a little sicky. So she wasn't feeling her best. And then Stephanie waltzes in straight off of her North Dakota elimination. They have 30 minutes to make Houston centric dishes. And they each have to pick a tough ingredient.

Leah gets rattlesnake and Stephanie gets alligator. I've eaten alligator before. I've never eaten rattlesnake. But it's funny because they're like, these meats are really tough. and then they both just cut them up into chunks and fry it, which sounds delicious. They both look good, but like I expected a little bit more creativity, but they only had 30 minutes, whatever, the flavors. Honestly, Leah's rattlesnake dish looked really good. Tom clearly really liked it because he keeps Leah. He sends Stephanie home, and I just got to say, I'm not going to miss Stephanie. I knew she was going to get sent home.

I knew that Leah had more in her, but at the same time, is Leah somebody that I see, like, soldiering through the next several. weeks of Last Chance Kitchen. Let's be honest. I don't think I do. I think there are some really, really interesting people left in this competition. And I think Leah has more potential than she, you know, showed the first week. But also it's like some of these people, I'm like, if, if some of these people that I am already forming emotional connections with get sent to Last Chance Kitchen, like, Leah better pack her knives and go. She better get the fuck out of the kitchen. That's all I'm saying. If my boyfriend, Sam, who, by the way, Sam says he moved out of his apartment in Brooklyn to come on this show.

I have to say, Sam, baby, if you come back to New York City and you need a place to stay, there's a spot in my bed. I don't mean on my couch, I mean in my bed. Sam, just know that. With that, thank you so much for listening. I will be back, of course, next week for all of our episodes. But on Friday, we're talking Top Chef. In the meantime, don't forget to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen.

Throw a five-star review if you're loving this Top Chef coverage because I'm enjoying it. I'm certainly loving this season. I'm loving this show, and I'm loving this little casual solo format. You can follow us on Instagram at Bravo by Betches. And until next time, be cool. Don't be all like uncool. Mention It All is produced by Sean Kilby and Jorge Morales Pico. Editing by Sean Kilby.

Social media by Dylan Hafer. Guest booking by Nicole Pellegrino. 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 a $1.6 million dream package.

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