‘Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen’ review: Did Doug Adams defeat Adam Harvey, Katsuji Tanabe?
What was somewhat interesting to us about this week’s “Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen” was that no matter what, we were going to lose a favorite this week. When it comes to both cooking style and personality combined, Doug Adams, Adam Harvey, and Katsuji Tanabe were probably three our favorites this whole season. All of them have had some pretty great moments on the show this year.
So the moment that we saw that this was a challenge about making quality liver, we immediately felt bad for all three of them. We’re not picky when it comes to proteins, but we’ve never been able to handle liver. We have no idea how to cook it, let alone make it taste great. The problem for some of these chefs seemed to be that even they were fairly inexperienced in this field.
By the end of this episode, though, it was pretty clear that Adam had the much-coveted bonus points from Tom Colicchio for making liver the same way he would make it, and the quality of his protein was enough to keep him around. Doug, who was there for redemption after a foie gras failure on Wednesday night’s episode, ended up being declared the winner for the night. (Other than safety, winning a duel doesn’t get you anything other than praise.)
Sadly, this means the end of the road for Katsuji, the thoroughly-entertaining Mexican kosher chef who was probably one of the most unique people on the entire season. His food was apparently really tasty, but in choosing goat liver, he picked probably the hardest protein of the bunch to clean properly. It wasn’t quite up to the other two.
The excitement from this episode came from the three chefs. Creatively, this wasn’t the most exciting challenge. There are only so many things you can do with liver, which meant that all three dishes had some similarities to them. We prefer tasks that really test creativity, and actually excite the chefs a little more than this one did. Episode Grade: B.
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