Top Chef: Door County Fish Boil

May 23, 2024 10:14 AM - Season 21, Episode 10

Celebrating a Wisconsin classic, this week’s Quickfire Challenge has the chefs participating in a meat raffle. Guest judge and chef Art Smith joins Kristen, Tom and Gail to determine which protein dish reigns supreme. For the Elimination Challenge, the heat is turned up when the chefs host their very own Door County fish boil to 100 hungry guests, including six “Top Chef” All-Stars at Grant Park Beach.
posted by Frayed Knot (10 comments total)

Man how embarrassing for Tom to lambast a candidate about how you can't play it safe, only to reward them for playing it safe.
posted by Carillon at 9:11 PM on May 23

Kristen and Gregory were actually seeming kinda mean / bitchy on Dish with Kish! Plus the format of “have a random all star show up and do a failed challenge PROPERLY” sorta rubs the failing cheftestant’s nose in it lol.
posted by sixswitch at 6:09 AM on May 24

I'm not surprised by the result, but it felt like a surprising misstep-- Soo seemed really thrown off by not shopping for himself. That kind of "toss everything in" hasn't been his MO up to now.

Danny (never low, 3 MC and 2 QF wins) and Savannah seem like front-runners at the moment.
posted by supercres at 10:09 AM on May 24

Kristen and Gregory were actually seeming kinda mean / bitchy on Dish with Kish!

This doesn't surprise me, as I thought Gregory came across as vaguely condescending during his interactions with Soo. (Which, fair enough, the guy's dish was apparently subpar—but it always irks me when a previous Top Chef contestant returns to the show and patronizingly talks down to the current crop of contestants, as if they themselves weren't also once lowly strivers on a reality TV show.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:02 PM on May 24

Man how embarrassing for Tom to lambast a candidate about how you can't play it safe, only to reward them for playing it safe.

I was really surprised, especially since Manny has struggled lately, that they kept him over Soo. I guess you have to actually win the Quickfire for it to help you to stay. Michelle is still my fave, so I'm hoping she's recovered from her few weeks of trouble.
posted by gladly at 12:14 PM on May 24

Yeah, very disappointed to have Soo out of the competition(s), but it was funny that he grabbed a beer when he took his position to the side of LCK.

Manny seems to just consistently deliver kind of mediocre Mexican dishes and just coasts on it. The other Power Bottom, Kevin, at least seemed to be consistently delivering good French food so it's a shame that he got cut first of the two.

Of course Dan was going to have one of the top fish boil dishes after he so clearly showed his disdain for the entire concept.

Now I want to to see some sort of ingredient-picking challenge where someone goes out of their way to make sure Danny doesn’t get carrots, because they appear to be the key to his turbo mode.

I'm glad that Savannah’s knife slip didn’t knock her out of the competition, she was really riding a wave until that happened.
posted by jimw at 7:42 PM on May 24

This was a bit of a 'meh' episode for me, as I thought everyone's food looked very unappetising, probably because the idea of boiled fish reminds me of school dinners (yes, we call lunch 'dinner' in the UK, particularly in relation to school meals).

It also looked hella dangerous for the random guy whose job it was to pour accelerant on the wood and set it alight. He needed to anticipate both the size of the flame and the direction of the wind and a couple of times it looked as if he only just managed to dodge being immolated. I also wondered whether the use of an accelerant generating so much smoke would affect the flavour of the food.

The way it's going, we're probably looking at Dan and Danny in the finale, with either Savannah or Laura. Although Michelle's a dark horse, I don't think she's got the finesse to take her all the way. I have no idea how Manny has survived this long, and I suspect that, unless he does something radically different next week, he'll be gone if it's yet another mole with store-bought tortillas.
posted by essexjan at 4:31 AM on May 26

Torch! You just know that he lives in a van down by the river lake.

I think it was on Dish with Kish that she pointed out that none of the boils actually boiled over when gassed up because the chefs hadn’t really let them get to a boil.
posted by jimw at 10:58 AM on May 26 [1 favorite]

Torch! You just know that he lives in a van down by the river lake.

He was the best part of this episode -- his name and no more explanation than that of who and what he does.
posted by gladly at 7:40 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]

I love it's call out that even with the accelerant it didn't actually boil over.
posted by Carillon at 12:34 AM on May 27 [1 favorite]