Top Chef recap: Let’s get chaotic

“I have this sneaking suspicion that something is going to happen today,” Milwaukee Dan sagely introduced Wednesday night’s edition of Top Chef: Wisconsin. And he was quickly proven right: Even before host Kristen Kish could delight the chef-testants by bringing out baking great Christina Tosi—the James Beard Award-winning mastermind behind Milk Bar—to announce this week’s dessert-themed QuickFire Challenge, things were looking surprisingly crowded in the Top Chef kitchen.

That’s because not only had Kaleena clawed her way back into the culinary competition via Last Chance Kitchen, but the spinoff show also produced a second victor and our surprise sixteenth contestant, the Seoul-born, Chicago-based toque Soo Ahn. “For two people to come back, that’s like extra digging to do, man,” Rasika worried, before adding about the newcomer: “To beat four people in Last Chance Kitchen? He must really be a badass.” (For Ahn, he’s just happy for Kristen Kish to say his name: “I can die happy now!”) Even more worrying for the remaining cooks: Because there’s two more chefs back in the rotation, a dreaded double elimination can be looming on the horizon.

Thankfully, Tosi helped sweeten the shock with a QuickFire centered on dairy-based desserts. (Think the buttery, flaky kringle, Wisconsin’s state pastry, or frozen custard, for which Milwaukee is famed.) Along with impressing one of the world’s foremost dessert experts, the winning chef would take home $7,500 in QuickFire cash. For Danny, the biggest hurdle was impressing his wife, who he dubs one of the best pastry chefs in New York (“If I do a dessert and I fuck it up, she’s never going to let me live it down”), while Kaleena was less than excited about having to do dessert in her first challenge back, especially after being eliminated for that unfortunate cheesecake crust a few episodes back.

Alas, Danny’s wife probably wasn’t going to be all that impressed by his cream puff with black sesame pastry cream, which Christina and Kristen found undercooked. But Kaleena’s salted caramel and rum custard was praised as “smart and savvy” and joined Amanda’s so-weird-it’s-good cheddar shortbread with banana pastry cream and Michelle’s “really beautiful” corn cake with mascarpone and basil cream in the top three. “The first person to make cake in 45 minutes,” an impressed Tosi said of Michelle’s plate, which scored the pitmaster her first QuickFire win of the season.

And the big names didn’t stop there: Chef-restaurateur and The Bear star Matty Matheson joined as guest judge of the Elimination Challenge and he immediately infused the Top Chef kitchen with his brand of boisterous humor and culinary “chaos.” “I want you to take something, create it, destroy it, build it up again, throw it on the floor, throw it on the ceiling…” he instructed the chefs, an open concept so loosey-goosey and meandering that even the show’s host declared: “I’m already confused.” Basically, the powers that be wanted the chef-testants to “break the mold of culinary convention,” with 20 minutes of planning, $100 of specialty-store shopping, and the full stock of the Top Chef pantry.

Some competitors were energized by the creative broadness of the challenge—“I feel like this is my wheelhouse,” Amanda proclaimed, a sentiment shared by risk-taking Rasika—while others, like Michelle, were clearly daunted by Matheson’s prompt. (“I’m more chaotic neutral than straight chaotic,” surmised Milwaukee Dan, who had the cushion of immunity this week.)

However, Savannah had a personal stake in the challenge: A decade earlier, she had a FaceTime conversation with Matheson during which the actor-chef disparaged a dessert she had boldly topped with mustard greens. “I’m gonna do it again and make it make sense,” she promised him, though she declared her potato souffle with golden milk, tropical fruit, and mustard greens not only the riskiest dish she’s cooked thus far in the competition but “the riskiest dish I’ve made in my career, period.” Matheson was still unsure: “I’m probably gonna say the same thing! A creme brulee but Dijon? I’m dying over here; I don’t know what’s happening!”

But Savannah’s boldness paid off: “She did it!” Matheson declared of her mustardy dessert, which earned the chef a spot in this week’s top crop among the judges, which included our usual suspects and fellow guest judges Phillip Foss (of Chicago’s EL Ideas) and chef-influencer Sophia Roe. Savannah’s dish was joined by other chaotically delicious standouts like Milwaukee Dan’s over-the-top okonomiyaki funnel cake topped with seafood, bacon, pickles, and caviar; Danny’s “technical, luscious” scallop chou farci (“To make that mousse out of the scallops?!” Matty cried); and new kid on the block Soo’s “General Soo’s shrimp” with salsa verde and salsa roja. (“I can eat 600 of those,” Sophia declared.) Thankfully for both Danny and his wife, he ended up taking home his first solo win with that stunning scallop.

Though operating on opposite ends of the excitement spectrum for this week’s chaos-themed challenge, Michelle and Rasika both ended up in the bottom: the former for her Vietnamese shrimp and pork stuffed pita (“Meh,” Tom Colicchio succinctly critiqued) and the latter,for her “slug-like” crab-stuffed eggplant with mushroom conserva and garlic tahini. We’ll admit, this viewer was very much expecting for sweet Michelle to be sadly told to head home to Houston, but in another shock, it was Rasika—the sole contestant to have two Elimination wins under their belt and seemed a surefire top-three challenger—who was sent packing her knives this week. Like Kaleena and Soo, she has the chance to return to the main comp by winning Last Chance Kitchen: “I take bigger risks than I should sometimes,” our dearly departed cook announced. “You have not seen the last of Rasika!”

Stray observations

• It looks like the passive-aggressive feud between Milwaukee Dan and the more cutthroat Laura continues to simmer: The latter cook seemed to purposefully ignore Dan when he was asking for dark chocolate to balance out the tang of cream cheese in his QuickFire pudding. “ It’s not that I think that Laura is inconsiderate; it’s that sometimes she’s in her own little world,” Dan tried to reason. Chaotic neutral, indeed.
• Every time a challenge takes place directly in the Top Chef set, are we the only ones who wonder if something happened production-wise that made them change the setting last minute? There surely had to be a venue more chaotically themed than the stew room, no?
• From grunting in the gym alongside his fellow “Power Bottom” Manny to adorably enquiring after “kookoo butter” (cocoa butter, natch) at the grocery store to making cheesy puns with Kristen, Kévin continues to be the French himbo we didn’t know we needed,
• Next week’s guest judges are a true motley crew: We’ve got Top Chef alumni Brian Voltaggio and Amar Santana joined by Pitch Perfect star Brittany Snow? Aca-scuse me!