A Little Something To Throw Up Later

What? Mohawk's gay? Well, that explains the manpris last week. Pardon me while I feign surprise. Aw... and he's got a little buddy. Just so there's no confusion, Sara explains that he's her new gay boyfriend.

You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream For Cauliflower Foam
It's the Coldstone Creamery Ice Cream Quickfire Challenge and Govind Armstrong is the guest host. Hey, if I give Govind a dollar, will he sing? Quick, somebody get me a buck!

Most people play to win, but not everybody is into that whole conventional "not making the customer vomit" style of cooking. Casey At The Bat decides to piss away her shot at immunity this week by dumping Sriracha over the ice cream without bothering to taste it. She tells the judges, "We joke around that it goes with anything. I guess we'll see." Yes, Casey, yes we will. Hung tells us that his monkey can put fruit on ice cream. Hung's monkey obviously knows more about cooking than Hung, who has about 90 different ingredients including tempura flakes, cauliflower, and some kind of foam.

Tre helpfully explains to us that the guest judge is an african american. Thanks. I'd missed that.

What a surprise. Hung is at the bottom again. Does anyone still consider him the chef to beat? You know, unless they mean "with a mallet". He humbly accepts the guest judge's criti... I kid! I kid! He manages to be even more condescending than Micah about what common people want to eat. What a dick.

Tiny Bald Howie makes something with... masturbated berries? WTF? Oh! Macerated... my bad. Last Mohawk Standing wins it with something I would actually eat. His Grand Marnier peach cobbler ice cream sounds delish.

In Da Club
What? Nobody saw this coming? Are you kidding me? They must have forgotten their very first experience on Top Chef: "Hey guys, we're throwing you a party. Welcome to Miami! Have fun! Woo hoo!... Psyche! Now make us an amuse bouche out of the leftovers, bitches." They're cut off from phones, TV, books, the internet, and apparently common sense if they think they're really going to get a night out on the town. They get dressed to the nines (Does anyone say that anymore? Probably not.) and the limos take them to a pair of mobile kitchens parked outside a trendy nightspot. The chefs are surprised. Nobody else is.

Mohawk actually does get the night off, and everybody hates him for it.

To the knife block! Oh sure, Tre's on the Black Team. Why'd you have to go there? Racists. Joining him are Hung, Second Sara, and Brian the Token Dog. That puts Lurch, Casey at the Bat, Sara, and Tiny Bald Howie on the Orange Team. Why'd you have to... oh, wait... I've got nothing that goes with orange.

Everybody there knows that the Orange Team is boned already, and so do you. The chefs on the Black Team are so relieved that Howie isn't on their team that they're practically dancing.

The teams check out the mobile kitchens, figure out a menu, and go to the store to buy ingredients. Then they come back and start cooking for drunks.

For the Black Team, Hung is on the fryer station and he's making onion rings and chicken wings. Hey, Hung, your monkey can make rings and wings. They're also serving... oh, god... Raw oysters on top of heavy drinking? Does the raw bar come with a stack of barf bags? I hope they have a hose handy. If you're surprised that the Talking Dog made ceviche, then this must be your first episode of Top Chef. Welcome! Tre is making bacon-wrapped shrimp, but he's putting it on grits, because nothing says "outdoor eating convenience" like a big glop of slop? That said, Second Sara's goodies are on display and they look fabulous. Hey, get your mind out of the gutter! She's making jerked flank steak tacos that look delicious. She can jerk my steak any time. What? Again with the gutter? I just like a little hot, spicy Caribbean now and then... That's all I'm sayin'. Oh, you people are awful. Moving on...

After your reaction to the previous paragraph, I refuse to even use the phrases "chocolate-dipped banana" or "covered with nuts". Wait... oops. Casey's making those and she's also making quesadillas with salsa verde. Tiny Bald Howie is making some kind of sweaty faux cuban sandwich. Lurch is making ceviche. We get it, you're in Miami. Enough with the ceviche already! Sara's obviously seen drunk people before, because she's making sliders.

Sara is also on milkshake duty and wants to add ice to them, because that's how she makes them. Interesting choice. Trivia for the day: did you know that about 90% of asians are lactose intolerant? I wonder if she's used to making something more like a smoothie or a lassi to cut the amount of milk in her shakes. Tiny Bald Howie starts to argue and then decides that he doesn't really care if someone else screws their dish up.

The Talking Dog is having some kind of reaction to being crated last episode, because he's become a huge camera whore. He's channeling his inner frat boy, and I agree with Lurch that Brian is the most annoying contestant out there. Lurch says he's going to turn it up in response, and the result is pathetic in a sort of gangly, shambling, incoherent kind of way.

The Orange Team's food takes forever when Radicchio shows up. That doesn't bode well, hunh? He waits and waits and it's nearly as awkward as Govind and Mohawk's little dinner party. The food inside was, I'm told, "awesome"... no seriously, it was awesome. They give us some other shots of judges tasting food and then it's off to the judges' table.

Asshole: It's the New Bulldog.
Obviously the Black Team won, and they are called in first. Interesting. Grits, like hot sweet cousin lovin', moonshine, and country music sung by toothless hillbillies, is an acquired taste mainly confined to the south. I know they're in Miami, but I'd assumed Tre was going to be hosed for slopping gruel on a paper plate. It just goes to show that booze, cheese, and bacon can overcome just about anything. Tre wins a book on late night snacks and some kind of platinum VIP access to all of Govind's clubs. Yay?

The Orange Team are called in to find out who is going home. Somebody forgot to give Casey and Sara the memo that they were supposed to smile and lie about their reaction to the challenge, and the judges hate them for not being robots. Casey says something about gouging the eyes out of any of her staff that see her outside the kitchen or something like that. I may not have been listening carefully.

Can somebody buy the judges a fucking dictionary already? Tiny Bald Howie's sandwiches can't be both "dry" and "doughy". Words mean things, people!

Aaaaaaaand there it is: Howie throws Sara over the bus. What an asshole. Drink! Casey the "expediter" says that she had no idea that things were going badly in the kitchen... the kitchen that she was standing in... expediting. Wha? Lurch didn't know they were having problems until just this second? Really? I think they're trying to defend Sara without going too far out on a limb, but would it kill them to come out and say that Howie can't lay all the blame on Sara? Apparently nobody has the spine to admit that they all sucked today.

Chef Radicchio is, unsurprisingly, a dick. Yet again, he gives completely impossible-to-follow direction that contradicts his comments in previous challenges. He tells Sara that if the team shot down her ideas, she should have ignored the team's decision, bought her own ingredients, and done her own thing anyway. Right. Because that wouldn't have come back to bite her in the ass... Does he even listen to himself any more?

The team is sent out to await the final verdict, and there is a palpable sense of doom and resignation in the air. Tiny Bald Howie is unrepentant, Sara is pissed, and this is all for show because the outcome is not really in doubt. This is just a chance for the chefs to yell at each other before commercial. Everyone, Howie included, concludes that Howie is an asshole. Drink twice!

Tiny Bald Howie has the producers' Greyhound: Over The Bus Immunity this week because I already made a joke about assholes (Drink!), and so Sara packs her knives. The general consensus afterward is that all the chefs want Howie to go die in a fire. That dude is such a disaster to work with that you just know the judges will keep him around until the end.

Next week, if history tells us anything, is Lurch's week to leave.

Yes. I do know I predicted that last week. Why do you ask?