Top Chef: Colorado episode 2 review: Farm food fights

Top Chef: Colorado premiere

Top Chef: Colorado episode 2 was very much about teamwork. It began with the Quickfire, and it then carried over to the farm-to-table-based Elimination Challenge later.

Was this the right move for the second episode of the season? Personally, it was a little too much, too soon. Putting the chefs in a team environment so earlier makes it a little bit hard to get to know them eventually — yet, it probably is good for the sake of causing drama. Take, for example, Mustache Joe getting upset at Tu over the butchering of the lamb; or, Adrienne and Claudette having a hard time getting their dish on the plate the way that they wanted.

We don’t want to waste too much time here on the Quickfire, mostly because we’ve seen it before on Top Chef in other forms. Also, it wasn’t necessarily all that exciting. Congratulations, though, to Joseph Flamm a.k.a. non Mustache Joe for taking it home. Maybe we’ll just call them Joseph and Joe from now on — just know that Joe is the one with a ‘stache.

Side note — did we really need Top Chef product placement this early in the season? We have a hard time thinking that you did.

What did we learn from the Elimination Challenge?

We consider the voice of one Chris Scott to be the voice of an angel and we want him narrating our life.

For the second week in a row Tu gets completely lucky — he probably would’ve been going home tonight were it not for the Green Team winning the overall challenge. He blame him more than Joe for what went array with the lamb — and also suggesting that eating it with your hands somehow made it better.

The Blue Team lost the challenge despite some pretty good meals; unfortunately, there were a few chefs who didn’t produce winning dishes. Despite winning this past challenge Tyler Anderson’s lamb dish with Rogelio Garcia just didn’t work. Meanwhile, Adrienne and Claudette’s attempt at smoking their fish didn’t end up going anywhere. What do you go after more — a dish with bad conception or a dish with bad preparation?

In the end, it was Claudette Zepeda-Wilkins who found herself eliminated over the failures in the fish dish. That was a tough pill for her to swallow and for us — if it’s true that Adrienne was behind more of the conceptualization of the dish, she probably should’ve gone home instead.

CarterMatt Verdict

Product placement aside Top Chef remains Bravo’s premiere franchise and episode 2 cemented that more. While we’re not going to say that it’s different than what we’ve seen in the past from the show, sometimes staying the course isn’t a bad thing.

What did you think about Top Chef: Colorado episode 2? Be sure to share in the comments below!

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