Remember the good-natured camaraderie on the first two episodes of
Top Chef Masters? Meet Ludo Lefebvre, a hot young French guy with a massive ego and a grab bag of arrogant one-liners like “Give me my score and tell me I win.” Charming.
There’s playful competition—like last week’s sparring match between Graham Elliot Bowles and Wylie Dufresne—and then there’s the
I’m-not-here-to-make-friends-because-this-is-a-competition mindset that gets so tiresome on these reality shows and was so far refreshingly absent from this one. Lefebvre snarks about Rick Bayless after Bayless offers to help him pack his food (“Don’t tell me how to cook”) and pours on the French accent when talking to Gael Greene. The guy might look like Gael Garcia Bernal, but he acts like Chef Boyardouche.
Lefebvre’s attitude doesn’t generate much drama here, since his competitors don’t pay him much mind—the softspoken Cindy Pawlcyn, Puerto Rican superchef Wilo Benet and uber-cheerful Bayless, a Midwesterner famous for his Mexican cuisine. This unlikely foursome must serve street food at Universal Studios. There’s a catch, of course—they each must use offal (internal organs) and make it palatable to the general theme parkgoing public. Bayless gets tongue (“I love tongue!” he chirps), Pawlcyn stomach, Benet beef hearts, and Lefebvre pig’s ears, which he boasts having worked with before (shut it, Ludo).
Pawlcyn explains that offal means “the interesting parts." Interesting, indeed. Though in the beginning of the episode Pawlcyn comes across like the group’s den mother, talking about how she’s not as quick as the young folks, she eventually confides how much she loves eating spleen and testicles, how she started her own club called “Girls Who Eat Guts,” and how the soup she’s making can cure hangovers. She finishes in last place, but keeps us guessing along the way.
In general, seeing the competitors contend with their unwieldy proteins is interesting, but the street food angle is a letdown. Watching decorated chefs dishing up tacos and pitas just isn’t as satisfying as seeing the complex dishes they produced in the first two weeks.
At least justice is served at the Critics Table. Despite the utter seriousness with which he vows “I am going to beat them with my quesadilla,” Lefebvre goes down—overcheesing his pork, mouthing off to Jay Rayner (who I like more each week), and coming in third.
Bayless, who guest-judged a taco quickfire on
Top Chef 4, gets the win . . . for his taco. The challenge is underwhelming, but Bayless proves for the third week in a row that being gracious and professional gets you further than being offal.
What did you think—did this meaty episode go rotten or make the grade?