While it’s always a treat to watch Palm Beach’s Chef Lindsay Autry cook on Bravo TV’s “Top Chef: Texas,” perhaps the best moment of last night’s episode 8 of the show was an exchange between guest judges Emeril Lagasse and Patti Labelle, the legendary singer.
As Lagasse and Labelle tasted, with displeasure, one cheftestant’s elimination-challenge dish of beef stroganoff, Lagasse said, “The cut of meat—I don’t even know what it is.”
Labelle: “It’s Big Foot.”
Autry, executive chef at The Omphoy, is among 10 chefs still standing in “Top Chef: Texas,” which airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m., with one chef eliminated each week until the final chef wins $125,000.
Last night’s episode began with the 10 cheftestants leaving Fort Worth and checking into a hotel in Austin.
At a nearby Le Cordon Bleu campus, they’re confronted with the 30-minute Quickfire Challenge. This time, they have 30 minutes to cook a dish based on viewers’ real-time suggestions on Twitter.
First tweet: bacon. About 10 minutes later, as the chefs are cooking bacon dishes they’ve conceived, another tweet: hash, which means the chefs now have to incorporate that into their bacon dishes.
A few minutes later, this tweet: Each chef should choose an ingredient from the pantry and give it to another chef to incorporate into his/her dish.
The cheftestant now dubbed Malibu Chris—he’s a looker who cares an awful lot about styling his hair—hands Autry siracha.
What she does with it, we’ll never know. Autry’s final Quickfire dish is never shown because the judges don’t deem it among the best or the worst.
The Quickfire winner is cheftestant Paul for a dish comprised of seemingly strange bedfellows: blackberries, bacon, clams and asparagus. He wins $10,000.
The chefs then are ushered into their hotel’s bar. A few drinks in and, surprise, Labelle appears on stage, singing “Lucky Marmalade.” Labelle then informs them that for their elimination challenge, they’ll have to each prepare a dish that tells a story about someone who first influenced their love of cooking.
Cue the tears—the producers of “Top Chef,” now in its 9th season, will do virtually anything to prompt emotion—as some chefs understandably get nostalgic talking about mom, dad, grandma, Uncle Ned or whatever.
The next morning, the chefs head out to Whole Foods (sponsor! brand placement!) to shop for ingredients (Chef Autry is shown shopping at right). Then they have two hours to prep and cook in the kitchen of their hotel.
Autry explains her grandmothers—one’s Greek and the other’s “very Southern,” she says—were her first cooking influences. She begins to prepare a trout spanikopita with crispy leaks.
As the judges, including Lagasse, Labelle and “Top Chef” head judge Tom Colicchio, wait in the hotel’s dining room for the chefs to serve their dishes, Lagasse says to Labelle, “Tom and I are coming over to your house. What are you cooking?” Labelle: “Fried chicken with macaroni and cheese…”
After all of the dishes are presented and eaten, the chefs whose dishes are considered the worst are Grayson (she prepared a tough and chewy ribeye dish), Heather (bad beef stroganoff) and Malibu Chris (a salmon dish with the fish’s white fatty tissue seeping out).
Phew! Autry isn’t up for elimination and will advance to episode 10.
Among the three chefs whose dishes are deemed best is Sarah, who wins with pork sausage-stuffed cabbage, an homage to her grandparents.
Regarding which chef got sent packing last night, keep in mind that at one point, cheftestant Beverly justifiably notes Heather’s having bullied her too much and she says that’s bad “karma.” In other words, what goes around, comes around.
Ka-ching: Bully Heather gets eliminated. So who’s gonna dare bully Beverly now?
Once again, good luck to Palm Beach’s Chef Autry in the next episode of “Top Chef: Texas.”
