Top Chef Masters - 8.11.09

(I'm late, this is from last week's show)

Next round of the Champions Round!

The chefs entered the kitchen and saw a table overflowing with burgers and fries. Not-Padme introduced them to their Quickfire. They have to make burgers. Hubert sells a $5000 burger at one of his restaurants. Crazy. They also have to make a side dish. Spike from Season 4 will be judging them, along with Sang Yoon, who won best burger on the Today Show, and Morgan Spurlock, of Supersize Me fame.

Everyone worked on their burgers, and Anita decided to make a cheddar soup with mini burgers.. hum. Not the best decision, I think.

Rick did a Queso Fondito burger with 3 kinds of guac. Seems like the 3 kinds of guac was overkill.

Art made a corncake burger with fried green tomato chips. They seemed to like it.

Michael made an enormous hamburger with yukon gold potatoes and truffle something.

Anita made a cheddar soup with grilled burger and ketchup croutons, and onion rings. No one seemed to like it. Someone called it a Wish Burger. As in - I wish there was a burger.

Hubert made a Beff and Roquefort cheese burger with caramelized onions, with yukon gold potatoes. Didn't get grand reviews.

Hubert got 3 stars. Art got 3 1/2 stars. Anita got only 1 1/2 starts. Michael got 4 stars. Rick also got 4 starts.

For the elimination challenge, they will be catering a lunch party for Zoey Deschanel. I love her, but she's a nut when it comes to food. She is a vegan, and she is gluten intolerant and doesn't eat soy. No wonder she's so skinny.

They have to do lunch for 20 diners, and each chef is in charge of one dish.

Art went easy and bought rice ice cream, because he doesn't know how to make rice ice cream himself. Rick was helping out in ingredient help, because he is more familiar with the kind of restrictions. Michael found a quinoa pasta, which is gluten free. It's all about being flexible when your diner isn't.

Rick is making fresh corn tamales with black beans and mushrooms. Looked good.

Hubert is making a White Gazpacho, Timbale with avocado and asparagus, and a red beet salad.

Anita is making a spicy grilled eggplant with lentil salad, Indian style.

Michael is doing Quinoa pasta, salsa verde, and some pine nuts and meyer lemon.

Art has a strawberry soup mixed in with his rice ice cream (which he didn't like the texture of alone), and an almond brittle.

Zooey Deschanel is a huge fan of Top Chef, and is excited to have someone other than her mom cooking for her.

I love that these chefs work together, instead of sabotaging each other.

Hubert had a couple of his glasses of gazpacho fall over, but luckily, he had some extra. The diners liked his soup a lot. His avocado thing fell a little flat. Gael Green's hat loved the beet salad.

Anita's fish was kind of monochrome and black. Some of the diners thought it was a little overseasoned, and the lentils were a little "sturdy." That's a nice way to put it.

Michael's pasta dish was welcomed by Zooey, who missed pasta. Gael Green's hat had never heard of quinoa pasta before. Zooey said she wanted to go hug Michael for making her pasta.

Rick's tamales were called probably the best tamales Zooey had ever had. Good job, Rick.

Art's rice ice cream with strawberries, and strawberry champagne soup and almond brittle did not go over super well. Zooey prefers coconut milk ice cream, and while the brittle went over well, one diner said it felt like it needed more fat.

Time for Critic's Table!

Gael Green's hat picked up on my monochrome criticism for Anita's dish (and she left the eggplant sitting in oil overnight so that it sucked up the oil. Yuck.)

Art was criticized for buying his rice ice cream and then doing something lackluster with it. They were impressed with the butterless brittle (so was I)

Hubert ended up with 19 stars. Michael got 22 stars. Rick got 19 stars. Michael is the winner this week, and his charity gets an additional $10K. Anita's dish only got 2 1/2 stars from the diners, and it didn't get so much better from there. Her final total was 13 stars. Ouch. Art got reamed by the critics for buying the ice cream, and ended up with 12 1/2 stars, and he is out. Anita survived only because of Art's supremely poor performance, not because her food was anything to write home about.