Top Chef: Street Food Fight
May 22, 2023 5:52 PM - Season 20, Episode 8 - Subscribe

After a quickfire featuring Judy Joo themed around street food, the cheftestants face the dreaded movie tie in episode, with a Fast X themed mise-en-place relay turned team challenge.

The street food quickfire asks cheftestants to
Charbel was baffled by takyoyaki from Japan, Nicole made a heavy HK style bubble waffle, and Sara did a dry Argentinian empanada. Buddha wins by pulling off an authentic Vietnamese Bánh xèo, edging out Gabri's take on Canada's poutine and Tom's Indian-inspired Bhel Puri.

The cheftesants team up for the complicated elimination challenge; the three teams compete in three mise-en-place relays. Each relay features three ingredients from countries destroyed by Fast and Furious street racing in the 9 previous films. The winner of each relay picks from the three ingredients, second place picks second and last place gets what's left over. Once all the mise-en-place is done, the three teams have 30 minutes (big deal is made of this being the shortest elimination challenge) to prepare a three dish meal for the judges.

Green team - Sara, Amar and Charbel - come in 2nd (orange) / 3rd (prickly pear) / 1st (lamb) - they choose to do a multi-course meal each featuring lamb, and wind up losing the actual challenge badly. Charbel winds up going home.

Yellow team - Ali, Tom and Gabri - come in 3rd (avocado) / 2nd (peas) / 3rd (red peppers) - after a particularly bad performance in the 3rd relay where Gabri winds up assigned to french lamb, something he's never done, after Tom decides he wants to show off his elite pepper prep skills. But they win the actual cooking challenge, with Tom's pepper dish coming on top.

Red team - Nicole, Buddha and Victoire - come in 1st (hamachi) / 1st (shrimp) / 2nd (dates) - do a great job in prep and Buddha is all 'strategy says we should take the protein', but come in the middle.

One big quibble: How do they do a Fast and Furious tie in but don't require the chefs to serve their food family style? I thought F&F was all about family?

Note: Sorry for the break, I'm hoping to do a post every couple of days to catch back up in time for the finale, or at least the actual final episode.
posted by Superilla (4 comments total)
 
I started listening to Watch What Crappens and now I have brainworms. “Please welcome my dear friend and fellow famous person, Vin Diesel’s Head on a Television.”
posted by sixswitch at 6:28 AM on May 23, 2023


I sometimes wonder why they don't listen when someone says I've never done this before. Like yes, you wanna look super cool, but your teammates is telling you he has zero experience. I guess it's similar in that Gabri actually going along with it. But hey, they win in the end so it's not a huge deal I guess.
posted by Carillon at 10:55 PM on May 23, 2023 [1 favorite]


Tom is the closest this season has to a scheming villain.
posted by sixswitch at 5:41 AM on May 24, 2023


This episode gave our kitchen a new quote to use and re-mix: "You give to the Mexican the avocado? Wrong. Wrong."
posted by Emmy Rae at 2:54 PM on June 7, 2023


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