Top Chef recap: In da (supper) club

It’s official: We, and our plucky contestants, have made it to the top 10 on Top Chef: Wisconsin. But before our chefs can get even remotely comfortable with that reality, Kristen Kish bombarded them with an early-morning video message (“It’s always something!” Kévin cried in French. For their QuickFire Challenge, the chefs had to descend upon the unsuspecting Dane County Farmers’ Market, “like bats out of hell,” outside their hotel in Madison, WI and spend $100 each on farm-fresh ingredients. That sounds like a lovely morning, except that they wouldn’t know the specifics of said QuickFire until after they already secured their loot.

With no way of knowing the requirements of the challenge (“Give us a hint, dang it!” bemoaned Michelle), their market hauls were weird and wide-ranging, with Rasika alone snagging bratwurst, granola, and jalapeño popcorn. Later that morning on the rooftop of L’Etoile, Kristen and our guest judges—James Beard Award-winning chef Tory Miller and comedian-activist W. Kamau Bell—relayed that the chefs would have to take that random assortment of ingredients and transform it into a composed plate paired with a select sauce from Carson Gulley, a pioneering Wisconsin chef who was the longtime head cook at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

After a quietly cutthroat moment in which Laura sifted through the recipe cards choosing one to her liking—much to the mild-mannered chagrin of Milwaukee Dan—the chefs reckoned with their selections, many they’d never heard of before. Exampe: Michelle’s “raising sauce,” a sweet, vinegar-based option typically served with ham, which she chose to pair with a baked egg frittata. Kévin, who initially had shakshuka-based plans, had to discard those after selecting Gulley’s mushroom sauce, instead opting for a rahmschnitzel-inspired number.

With $7,500 on the line, the rooftop challenge was the heftiest QuickFire so far this season, and unfortunately both Michelle’s frittata and Kévin’s schnitzel didn’t make weight. (“The sauce and the egg, it was like Taylor Swift and Slipknot happening at the same time. I love both those things but it was a lot!” Bell joked.) Ironically, it was Rasika’s shakshuka—yes, topped with that popcorn and bratwurst—that delighted the judges, as did Laura’s fattoush salad with fried tomatoes and herb sauce, and Charly’s fingerling potatoes with roasted pepper creole sauce. The NOLA cook ended up taking the win there, a big boost to his wedding fund. (He only proposed to his fiancé a day before leaving for Top Chef. Cute!)

Straight from the Dane County Farmers’ Market, the chefs next delved into another grand Wisconsin tradition for this week’s Elimination Challenge: the supper club, the type of social-focused taverns, resorts, and dancehalls where fried chicken and perch were served along with a beer. After getting inspiration from Madison’s great the Harvey House, the chefs were split into two teams—Amanda, Charly, Danny, Laura, and Manny on the Green Team, and Dan, Kévin, Michelle, Rasika, and Savannah on Team Purple—and tasked with coming up with their own five-course fixed menu highlighting the traditions of the supper club, from the opening relish tray to a classic beef course to a finishing dessert. With two hours to cook and $1,000 to split amongst the team, they would be serving not only the judges’ panel but 40 other diners the next day at the Harvey House.

And that budget was a problem immediately: Two-hundred dollars each already was tight enough without having to serve 40-plus people for dinner. And while the Purple Team managed to make it work, Team Green was a nightmare at the Whole Foods register, with Laura’s “four leches” course sucking up so much of the budget that Danny was barely left a rogue radish for his pickle tray. “After the shop last night, there was definitely a menu overhaul,” the chef crankily declared the next morning.

Those early team issues seemingly plagued the Green Team: Worried about undercooked fish, Charly unwisely pan-fried his epis-rubbed trout a solid half-hour before service, resulting in some seriously overdone seafood, and Manny’s plan to sous vide his ancho-crusted New York strip for the beef course backfired, leaving meat that was oddly both near-raw and jaw-testingly tough. The team also called out Laura for attempting to do both a dessert and beverage on a tight budget, while Danny barely had a carrot to his name, but her “soggy” tres leches course wasn’t nearly as offensive to the judges as overcooked fish and underdone meat. Kristen, Tom Colicchio, Gail Simmons, and our guest judges decided that the seafood was the more offensive option and sadly sent Charly home to his fiancée.

In happier news, the winner of the quintessentially Wisconsin challenge was our most quintessentially Wisconsin chef of the season: Milwaukee Dan’s relish tray—a vibrant, varied array of crudites in breadcrumb “soil,” chicken liver mousse, pickled shallots, and fried seed toast that was a throwback to his own supper-club memories as a child—nabbed the Midwestern boy a much-deserved win.

Stray observations

• Feeling physically sick during the challenge—she might have eaten something weird, she surmised—Amanda wasn’t there for judging, but thankfully hers was the one plate on the Green Team that the panel actually enjoyed. A freshly-fried filet of hot chicken katsu with apple-miso-mustard sauce and red cabbage does sound stupid-good.
• Michelle has been serving up some of the season’s most delightful talking heads, and this week was no exception. After she and Rasika both mildly butted heads after wanting to do the fish course on Team Purple, Michelle resigned to the dessert course. (Both the judges and the diners loved her coconut milk-bread pudding with pineapple sauce, FYI.) Speaking on her natural inclination to compromise: “I’m a damn good team player. I’m a twin! I was born with a teammate!”