Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen episode 2: Did this eliminated chef have a chance?

Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen episode 2 came online tonight, and as you may know, last week we actually saw Jennifer Carroll eliminated from the competition. Melissa Perfit was the first chef eliminated from Top Chef proper, and she was effectively thrown tonight into the Top Chef fire tonight. She was forced, right away, into competing against three all-star chefs — Kwane, Lee Anne, and Marcel. They’ve all been in the main show longer than her, let alone being in Last Chance Kitchen. This was bad news for her, especially since she entered this season without a whole lot of competition experience.

The theme of the second episode as a whole was cooking interesting things with potatoes — basically, it was a direct continuation of what happened in the Top Chef: Colorado premiere. Melissa was intent on proving that she knew what to do with potatoes, and with that she decided that she was going to pair this with something that she knew how to make really well in salmon. It was a smart idea, but we were immediately worried when she said that cooking fish comes easy to her — that’s typically the editing curse of doom. Also, you had Marcel busting out the liquid nitrogen — it turns out that it was actually a pretty smart application for French fries since he had to flash-freeze and then fry them.

When the food all was done, we were immediately worried for Melissa just because she didn’t have the pedigree — yet, we did see some of the other chefs make some potential mistakes. Was there actually a chance that she could take out one of the veterans? This was basically the David vs. Goliath battle of the ages.

The end result – Melissa was eliminated. She seemed to know that this was coming, as her attempt to keep the dish from being too dry didn’t quite work out according to plan. The door was actually open for her through much of the challenge, since it turned out that Tom wasn’t all that much of a fan of what Lee Anne put out for him to eat.

What was a little bit of a surprise here was that Marcel actually won for making those aforementioned fries.

What did you think about Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen episode 2? Share in the comments below right now!

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