‘Top Chef Masters’ review: ‘Days of Our Lives’ makes for killer challenge
While we are a few days later than usual for our review of “Top Chef Masters,” even those of you who watched on Wednesday may be celebrating what was an excellent hour of television. Thanks to the likable group here and the mostly-effective use of product placement, this may actually be starting to surpass the flagship show when it comes to entertainment.
For one, we’re down for this “Battle of the Sous Chefs” twist when it plays out like this. The elimination challenge this week was to design some sort of dish celebrating one of three themes of “Days of Our Lives” as the show celebrated its 12,000th (!) episode: Sex, greed, or murder. One member of each grouping was forced to undergo a pretty simple punishment: A delay of 30 minutes, inspired hilarious by some sort of soap-opera cliche. Seeing Bryan Voltaggio go to prison was funny, but not as funny as seeing Franklin Becker become the first person ever to continue speaking while trapped in a coma (only on this show).
Away from the chuckles, we had a sense that everyone on here made a real concentrated effort to actually showcase some great, creative techniques, whether it be a duck being “murdered” (complete with a knife) to a take on foreplay to an interesting interpretation of greed: A dish with a ton of really expensive stuff thrown onto it. The cast of the show helped with the voting, which probably was not a great thing given that their palettes did not seem to level with that of the critics for most of the night.
In the end, though, there could only be one winner … and it was Jennifer Jasinski for her murdered Duck! Sang Yoon gave us a serious scare courtesy of his panic and a salty piece of chicken, given that he is a personal favorite and one of the strongest chefs in the competition. However, Odette Fada was sent home, strangely using a dish that she is in part known for outside of the show. Let this be a lesson to all of you aspiring chefs out there: You have to be prepared to get creative with every plot twist. She was in the bottom last week, so we guess the elimination still was not too great of a surprise.
Are you enjoying this “Top Chef Masters” season as we are, even if the sous chefs make the quickfire pretty useless for anything other than money? As always, we want to hear your thoughts below!
Photo: Bravo