Top Chef Masters, Season 3, Episode 5: The Drive Thru - Class or Crash?

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With the ability to purchase ingredients from a table set up in the Top Chef kitchen, the Quickfire challenge is to make a tasting dish for under $1. How much for one almond? $.48 for an onion? Ouch. If they screw up, they’ll end up over budget. No do overs. Hugh breaks an egg, a loss of $.18. Alex creates a dish with calamari, one carrot, one cherry tomato and  four almonds to the tune of $.98. Mary Sue makes a salad with bacon, but won’t taste test the pork because there is barely enough to feed the judges. Isn’t this contrary to Chef 101, taste everything before it leaves the kitchen? 

Naomi really is a “Beast” in the kitchen. She’s confident and not at all afraid to exhibit this trait. She’s also been a bit bossy lately. Not Star Jones bossy, but still…. 

Quickfire judges Brendan Newman and Rico Gagliano, from NPR’s ‘The dinner Party Download’ see this challenge as a great Dollar Store concept. Celina’s carrot soup impresses the judges. She spent $.96. Funny, so too did Naomi. Is it me, or is Naomi all about one-ups-manship? Mary gets clocked for none other than too much salt. Dayum, Every season, salt seems to be the evil spice. Alex’s spiced squid works for Rico. Curtis concurs. The grilled calamari salad George serves up doesn’t thrill the boys, but he’s holding firm to his style, judges be damned. Traci’s chicken paillard with asparagus get’s an A-OK. She’s safe for sure. Traci is really good at simmering just under the radar.I hope she breaks out at some point. Floyd’s fricassee of shrimp is warmly received by all. George and Mary Sue land on the bottom of the heap. George poo poos the entire ordeal as beneath his talents. That attitude will get you far George, keep it up.  Alex, Naomi and Celina rise up. The winner of $5K and immunity is Naomi. She’s safe and her charity, Seed Savers benefits as well. 

For the Elimination Challenge, the chefs must serve up to 100 people who will not have the benefit of cutlery. One entree and one side per chef. Traci fears they may become carnival foodie barkers selling cotton candy. Her plan is to make a burrito. It had better be awesome, this is southern California, home of the wrap. The contestants fly around the market with grandiose ideas. The next morning they find themselves in front of ‘Farmer Boys,’ a couple steps up from Mickey D’s. The main difference is food is cooked to order and delivered to each table, not picked up by the customer. This takes time. They are warned that to make this work, think 5-7 minutes per meal from order to delivery. 

While four chefs are back sending out meals, the other half works the front of the house, including a drive thru. NICE! Mary Sue is making quesadillas. Patton Naomi informs Mary Sue they’ll be hitherto and forever more knows as queso’s, because she says so. Um, OK then. For those who recall her last shot at running the show, she didn’t rise to the level of The Donald, but I digress.

The next half hour is one major clusterf*#@&. Naomi takes off her drive thru headphones just as Alan and James appear at the megaphone. After a few car horn blasts she makes some lame excuse of it’s so loud in here I can’t hear you. LAME, but she gets an ‘A’ for “How do I get out of this,” effort. As far as anything running expeditiously from either side, forget it. The food took forever, James ran out of gas waiting, and the fire department had to step in to liven things up by tossing in a package of cherry bombs under their azzes. Neither team scored well on the delivery end, including Hugh who stuck by the cash register like it was his life saving’s inside. Back off Bro, just order your food! Floyd couldn’t find ice for the sodas. The kitchen was a mess. No one could keep up in the back. I kept praying Gordon Ramsey would show up to save them, but alas, different network. Still, this week’s episode is a new reason why I’m losing interest in the season overall.

If your job is to multitask, then what happens out front should count. Don’t hand me the “Golly gee, the chefs are so advanced they couldn’t possibly understand how to work a fast food joint. We never should have thrown a major monkey wrench into their world.” They’ve done how many Quickfires now? Don’t they plan their own kitchens to accommodate rushes? The challenge wasn’t a four hour pate tasting with YoYo Ma playing cello in the background. They knew this the day before. Think people, think! This masters’ episode again focuses on the food alone so to spare them the embarrassment of not being capable to work in an environment that let’s face it, a few of them wouldn’t be caught dead in. All is forgiven, you are special. I say BS! Quit kid gloving this group. 

The only thing worse than the front of house service was James’ shirt that screamed, I saw it at the hole in the wall pizza joint Boots and Saddles store and just had to have it.  James devoured Traci’s Chicken chili verde burrito with ease, but needed that red/white checkered tablecloth shirt to catch Celina’s open faced pancake with stuff on top. 

Alex, Celina and George are called out first to discover they are at risk. In the kitchen, Floyd insists those who took too long to get their food out will be on the block. This includes Mary Sue and Traci. Hugh concurs. “It should be about the food.” Does he mean taste or receiving your lunch hot? Yeah, I know, I’m obsessing at this point.

Lo and behold, Mary Sue, Traci and Floyd are called to critics’ table. Take that Floyd! Curtis makes a passing remark about how lucky they are that service didn’t count. Yep, that kind of crap is beneath any head chef. Cutting to the chase, Mary Sue’s quesadillas with fritters takes home the prize. She’s on top and Share our Strength now has a total of $40K.

Back at the critics’ table, Celina’s must have cutlery dish fails. Didn’t she read the fine print? Alex’s salmon burrito took too much of a chance flavor wise, ultimately a lesson in distraction. George is hammered for his blobs of pork in a sea of it takes a zillion years to disintegrate foam containers. What was he thinking? 

Finally, we say goodbye to George. Buh bye.