‘Top Chef: Boston’ episode 11 review: Family matters

Wednesday night’s new episode of “Top Chef: Boston” was in many ways a case of good and bad. We had an excellent premise and idea behind the challenge, as we saw the remaining four chefs in Mei, George, Gregory, and Melissa all forced to hire on a family member to be their sous chef for the day. From there, these people then had to figure out how in the world to cook a dish completely on their own with only instruction as their guide.

As for the bad, where were the stakes here? There really were not many, at least in that the chefs knew going in that nobody was going to be sent home at the end of the episode. Instead, the winner would get an automatic ticket into the finale against two other chefs, and the winner of “Last Chance Kitchen.” We wish that the judges would have revealed the twist after the challenge, just to give it that much more of an added amount of stakes behind it.

Now that we’ve said this, we did find the majority of the episode to be entertaining. Namely, Mei’s relationship with her brother, who had zero cooking experience whatsoever, stole the show. George’s dad did not look interested in the least in being on TV, and at least Melissa’s mom and Gregory’s sister were nice enough as they used locally-sourced ingredients to make an appetizer and a main dish. In particular, Gregory spent so much time helping his sister that his own food actually suffered a little bit.

The winner at the tail end of it was Melissa, who cements her position in the finale. Going into this episode, we would have ranked her third behind both Gregory and Mei. Therefore, this makes this victory for her all the more impressive. We just wish that there was a little more to discuss here to go along with it. Episode Grade: B.

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