MAYHAPS Combining the best qualities of the terms "maybe" & "perhaps" into a single superior word

Top Chef Vegas Gets Rolling

Ironically, this week's episode of Top Chef Las Vegas shared a lot of similarities to this week's Hell's Kitchen, Gordon Ramsey's cooking competition show on Fox.  Both shows started off with a challenge involving a roll of dice.

Top Chef's roll was for how many ingredients your dish had to use with salt, pepper and oil being a freebie.  Each chef rolled two dice at a genuine craps table to determine.  The lowest was a three and the highest was a ten.  (For those curious: Hell's Kitchen was a multi-sided die with letters of the alphabet on the different sides.  Each teammate would roll and pick an ingredient starting with whichever letter they rolled.  Working together, they had to create 1 dish with the 5 ingredients.)

The winning dish came from one of the bros, Michael, who rolled an eight.  The producers jumped for joy as his brother, Bryan, was in the bottom group of the quickfire.  Let the sibling rivalry begin!  Michael made a unique "Roll With It" Gazpacho Frozen with Liquid Nitrogen.  You can watch him cook it here.

Hell's Kitchen always offers a prize for the winner of the challenge as incentive.  Top Chef did it last week and continued last night as well, giving the winner $15,000 in what they call a 'High Stakes Quickfire.'  They haven't made it clear if this is a random occurrence or if its a permanent thing, but like I said last week: I hope it continues.  Chefs don't make a lot of money for one thing and it will plant seeds of jealousy if someone keeps winning.  I want some drama.

The elimination challenge took a page right out of Gordon Ramsey's book: battle of the sexes.  Every season of Hell's Kitchen starts with the men fighting against the woman, but it is not something that they usually do on Top Chef.  The chefs found out they will be catering bachelor and bachelorette parties.  The men will cook for the bride's friends and the women will cook for the groom's posse.  To complicate matters, they have to create canapes that pair well with one of three shots offered at the party.

I'm not going to keep you in suspense... the men won... overwhelmingly.  They were cocky, but had the goods to back it up.  The top four men pictured above were commended by the judges, particularly the normally stern Tom Colicchio.  Guest judge Todd English had to make a decision about the winner.  He made it clear that it was between the two brothers.  In a nice juxtaposition to the beginning of the episode, Bryan took the win.  Michael may have won the money, but Bryan got the judges attention which is far more valuable.

Bryan's dish was a unique take on guacamole and chips in the form of a Sweet and Sour Macaroon filled with Guacamole, Corn Chips and Corn Puree.  It think it looks perfectly delicious and in proportion to the size of the shot.

The bottom four women summoned to the judges table were by far the weakest of the team with the exception of one:  Ashley.

Ashley decided that they had enough time to do an extra dish, so she took it upon herself to make it.  And of course, she attempted something of the dessert persuasion, which wasn't very good.  Most of the judges liked her first dish a lot, but the second one got her sent to Judges' Table.  I hope she learned her lesson.

Preeti's dish wasn't bad, just the shiso leaf used was wilting in the sun, so she was safe as well.  Jesse was in trouble.  She had been in the bottom of the elimination challenge last week and in the bottom for this week's quickfire.  But thoroughly clueless Eve had to get gone.

She looked confused and out of her league.  Her Shrimp and Avocado Ceviche with Smokey Tomato Salsa and Popcorn was not liked by any of the judges.  She used shrimp last week which lead to her being in the bottom four, so why not use shrimp again, right?  There was even a shot of Jennifer having to warn Eve to watch her knife, as it was inches from Jen's face.  And she had a really annoying voice.  Adios!

Let's see how my picks are doing:

Bryan recovered from his Quickfire flop to outshine everyone else at the Elimination Challenge and win.  Jennifer was a solid rock on her team and warned Ashley to stick to one dish even though she was ignored.  She's sassy too, I like her.  Kevin got the highest roll at the Quickfire, but did a good job incorporating all of the ingredients.  His dish was enjoyed by the judges, but he wasn't in the top group.  All three doing OK so far, let's see how it goes.