After a weeklong hiatus, we were hungry for our Dale Levitski fix—and boy did this week deliver. Our man Dale was front-and-center almost all night. But did he make the cut? Read on to find out.
Episode 4 gets off to an auspicious start when we learn that the Quickfire Challenge will focus on cocktail and food pairings. Dale consulted at posh cocktail lounge Stone Lotus, after all, and we know he has chops when it comes to mixology.
The chefs draw drinks, then they have 30 minutes to taste ’em and whip up a food pairing. Dale gets a Sapphire Sherry, which is basically four parts Bombay Sapphire to one part Pedro Ximenez, a super-sweet, raisiny dessert sherry. In other words, it’s pure alcohol. Aiming to “cut the heat of the booze,” Dale opts for a rich foie gras dish, searing the foie and topping it with candied parsnips and orange and a rice wine vinegar gastrique.
Jamie Walker, Bombay Sapphire’s global master mixologist and the guest judge for this Quickfire Challenge, declares it’s going to work before he even tastes it.
Then, the moment of truth: “It works.”
Jamie gives Padma’s glass a flirty clink. (Hey, she’s about to be a single gal again—nothing wrong with that.) Cheers, dahling!
Jamie continues his rounds, commenting, it seems, more on the chefs themselves than their dishes. He tells Tall C.J. he’s very tall: “Hello, you’re very tall.” When he gets to Joey’s dish, he proclaims it “too robust, too heavy, a little bit clumsy.” Hmm … not unlike Joey. Hung’s dish, he says, is “a little muddled.” Again, consider the source.
Tre, Casey and … Dale! … come out on top. But Casey bests Dale with her foie gras French toast. Alas, no immunity for our hometown mixologist.
On to the Elimination Challenge. The chefs must divide themselves into teams of three; each team will create one course, which must be a trio of the same ingredient. They’ll have two hours to cook in chef Barton G. Weiss’s kitchen for 10 members of the Chaine des Rotisseurs Dining Society, a group of folks who reputedly possess very well developed palates. (And, rather conveniently, a hoity-toity name to prevent people from calling their palates into question.)
Rather than accentuate burgeoning kitchen alliances by choosing teams, the chefs draw names. Dale winds up with Howie and Casey. But when Howie starts ranting and sweating and sputtering about menu choices, Dale makes a split-second decision and volunteers to move to the pastry team.
“I can futz a great dessert,” he proclaims. That’s the attitude, Dale! Go Team Pastry!
Since no one in the kitchen knows pastry all that well, Dale’s move appears altruistic. But as we watch Casey, Howie and Joey move toward a collective meltdown, we realize that this was actually a very shrewd move on Dale’s part.
Strategic moves, shifting allegiances, small-scale breakdowns. This is getting good. But wait—it’s time to break for a Bombay Sapphire ad. And to mix a quick martini. (Hey, why not? Let’s hear it for inspirational product placement! Now if only those Glad ads inspired us to take out the garbage during commercial breaks …)
Back at the market, the chefs have $150 and 30 minutes to shop. Hung runs willy-nilly through the aisles, as usual. Team 1 discovers the scallops are frozen, not fresh. Team 4 is quite taken with the pineapples. There are intense negotiations at the cash register involving blood oranges and limes.
Finally, everyone loads up the Toyota RAV4s for the trip back to the GE Monogram kitchen.
Cooking ensues.
In the dining room, members of the Chaine des Rotisseurs Dining Society wait with bated breath. They appear to be wearing sashes. Some of them look to have medals as well. (You can win medals for eating? Sign us up!) Barton G. Weiss is there too.
(A note about Barton G. Weiss: We have no idea who he is. All of these Miami chefs in Season 3 are really throwing us off. We google him during a commercial and learn he is a big-time Miami caterer and the owner of Barton G., a posh South Beach restaurant.)
Everybody eats. (And nobody spills anything on their sashes, thank heavens!)
Brian, Lia and Hung, who went with shrimp for their course after a game-time decision to ditch the frozen scallops, serve first. Brian’s dish looks good. So does Lia’s. Hung, apparently channeling Season 2 runner-up Marcel Vigneron, smugly presents a dish involving shrimp foam. Foam and smugness aside, everything wins nods of approval.
Still bickering, Howie, Joey and Casey bumble through a trio of tuna.
Tall C.J., Sara N. and Tre win the table back with their beef tenderloin course.
Dale and co. are up next, and thanks to some foreshadowing—namely, Joey’s “dessert looked like a circus” comment—we already know it’s not going to go well. Sara M.’s attempt at a pineapple semifreddo topped with what she calls a “reduced pineapple reduction” looks too mushy and sort of scary, kind of like something we might have been forced to touch between a pile of cold spaghetti and a bowl of peeled grapes at the neighbor kid’s haunted house on Halloween night 1985. Camille’s pineapple upside-down cake with ginger sabayon looks like a tiny, rubbery hockey puck. Dale’s “free-form” tropical tart, a macadamia nut pastry with cardamom-roasted pineapple served atop hibiscus-marinated raspberry sauce and vanilla-coconut pastry cream, looks, well, free-form.
Onward to the judges table, where the shrimp course takes top honors. Ted calls it “poetic.” Barton G. appears smitten with Hung’s dish. But Lia’s olive-oil poached shrimp wins it all, scoring her an invite to the Hamptons, where she’ll be the guest chef at a charity event of some sort. A summer cooking shrimp for the jetset in the Hamptons! How delightful! Maybe Diddy will be there!
Lia delivers the bad news to the rest of the chefs: tuna course and dessert course are wanted at the judge’s table.
Let’s start with the positives: Ted thinks it’s admirable that Dale’s team chose to tackle dessert. “You jumped on a big sword,” he says. And also … well, actually, that’s about it for the positives.
The judges use the word “hideous” for the first time this season. The word “hodgepodge” also comes out. Sara M.’s semifreddo and Camille’s upside-down cake draw universal ire. Dale, on the other hand, is knocked more for his free-form decision-making skills than his free-form tart.
Dale disagrees. “We threw our asses on the line,” he says. “[True chefs] will extend themselves … take risks … and I think the rest of the teams played it safe.”
In the end, while Tom calls Sara M.’s dessert “one of the worst desserts I’ve had in 5 years,” nothing was quite as bad as Camille’s pineapple upside-down brick.
Padma asks Camille to please pack her knives and go, and she does.
Camille, we hardly knew ye.
Dale, clearly the team leader this episode, laments Camille’s departure. Nothing wrong with a little survivor’s guilt, Dale, but don’t dwell on it. You barely made the cut this week … better sharpen those knives and come out swinging next time around.
Find out what our friends at The Stew are saying about last night's episode.
