‘Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen’ review: Louis Maldonado, Travis Masar square off

On tonight’s new episode of “Top Chef: New Orleans,” we saw what could be known for some time as The Great Biscuit Tragedy. Despite having at times some flashes of brilliance, in addition to looking quite possibly one of the greatest front-of-the-house performances ever during Restaurant Wars, Travis Masar still struggled with his Southern biscuits enough that he was placed in the bottom, and was perhaps the most predictable elimination of the season when you think about how all of the other chefs did cooking something that was so near and dear to their hearts.

So was he able to redeem himself on “Last Chance Kitchen” tonight? Well, he had quite a chance against Louis Maldonado right away thanks to the theme: Cooking unusual Asian food. As you may remember, Travis fancied himself on being quite possibly the greatest cultivator of Vietnamese food ever earlier on in the season, only to slightly fall on his face.

The good news for him is that using bitter melon, he ended up creating something that was significantly better than he did the first time he went through this. The bad news? It was still not enough to top Louis, who combined a number of difficult foods and created something that was still very flavorful and different. It also probably didn’t help that Travis cooked something that Tom Colicchio claims to not particularly enjoy, even if that did not really favor into his decision.

We are getting down to the point now where you have to wonder whether or not Louis really has the momentum to go all of the way back to the competition … personally we doubt it. It’s not an indictment on his talent so much as there are just some great chefs left this season, and one of them is probably going to be eliminated before their time thanks to some sort culinary disaster where things just start to follow apart. Every great chef has at least one bad night.

But this, overall, was a fun but predictable ten minutes of web series to watch. At least some of the enormous commercial overloads you have to deal with to check out the series are getting better. Grade; B+.

If you missed it, click here to read our full take of exactly what did happen on Wednesday night’s “Top Chef: New Orleans” episode.

Photo: Bravo