First Reaction, Part 3: Discomfort Food

Now comes the much-hyped hot tub scene, which is remarkable mainly because Brian “Asshat” Malarkey actually gets into the hot tub without his hat. We’re shocked. As it is, we sort of envision his headgear as a kind of talking, Harry Potter-style Sorting Hat, whispering into Brian’s ear, “You’re so money, baby,” and we can only imagine the distress at their parting. After all, what’s an Asshat without his hat? Merely an ass. In a brilliant example of Bravo Foreshadowing™, Asshat jokes how it’s all fun and games until you’re before Colicchio during Judges’ Table. Cue Bernard Herrmann.

It’s the next day, and everyone is at the Elks Lodge. Tom is doing his troop inspection, during which he learns that Camille loves “chuna.” We remain fascinated with her speech patterns, the way she speaks…so…slowly, and the way she pronounces her “t”s. We still remember how, during one Quickfire Challenge, she talked about how she loves to flavor things with “cheese,” only to realize, as she kept talking, that she meant “teas.” We’ll get to our fascination with her eyebrows in a different post.

CJ mangles yet another French word in this episode. Having set him straight on “froots de mare,” we feel compelled gently to point out that “tuile” is pronounced “tweel,” not “twill.”

Sara and her chicken à la king are joined by Howie at the oven, and we clearly hear her ask Howie to “turn it up to 300 for [her].” She returns later to find that the oven is on cool-down. Hung tells the camera that he turned the oven off after his chickens finished roasting, but he tells her that he didn’t turn anything off. It’s a fabulous, eyebrow-plucking, Gong Li move, but be careful, Hung, lest someday the chickens à la king come home to roast.

CJ confesses that he is struggling. He is having difficulty plating his dish, which repeatedly crumbles: “I know it’s not going to totally stay up; it’s not going to stay all erect.”

Of course, we chortle, as Bravo no doubt intends us to, but then we wonder whether it is right for Bravo (and us) to make erectile dysfunction jokes about a man with a Neuticle.

And Miss XaXa reminds us that there was female imagery as well: “My sauce broke” and “When I added the tuna, it leaked out all its juices.”

He greets the judges (Alfred Portale, Tom Colicchio, Ted Allen, and Padma, Lady Rushdie) thus: “Hello, chefs and Padma.” There’s something quite right and quite droll about this, everything in its place; Ted can be a chef, but Padma can’t. And then he mispronounces “tuile” again. Ted pronounces CJ’s dish “very grassy, green,” which prompts Miss XaXa to yell, her eyes atwinkle, “Of course! Jowly Green Giant, that’s what we’ll call him.”

The other chefs present their dishes, and then it’s Micah’s turn. In introducing her meatloaf, she notes, “I know Americans like to put ketchup on…” and Alfred Portale and his slender-fingered musician’s hands, crossed across his chest, are not pleased with what he terms “a little attitude.” Verdict: “It’s terrible.”

Asshat—did he think the old folks would look kindly on the retro chapeau?—presents a lobster dish, but, surprisingly, no cutesy name for it.

And we’re back at Judges’ Table, where Ted Allen describes CJ’s dish as a “big, green blob.” Ho, ho, ho, Green Giant indeed. Tom torpedoes Micah’s dish as “the meatloaf that keeps giving.”

“Like herpes,” Miss XaXa chimed in.

The two favorite dishes are Howie’s and Dale’s. Having been in the bottom, and now in the top, Miss XaXa points out, makes Dale officially versatile. Good news, Gays. Nonetheless, the dead father narrative arc wins out, and Howie is the victor of the challenge.

There are five people in the bottom this time around, Micah, Sara, CJ, Lia and Brian. Fittingly enough, with five people and CJ standing right in the center, it looks like a giant middle finger being given to the judges.

The Bravo Foreshadowing™ is justified by Asshat’s presence in the bottom five, despite having immunity, and by the dressing down Tom gives him: “You’re gonna have to start looking at meat at some point.” Asshat resists the obvious comeback, as do we. It was all fun and games and stupid hats, wasn’t it, until he was indeed in front of Colicchio. Asshat silently swears (we surmise) never again to joke in the hot tub.

The U.S. citizen who went to middle school and high school in Massachusetts and who admitted in an interview to having made turkey meat loaf for her clients pretends never to have seen meatloaf before: “They showed it to me yesterday and it was just a round of ground beef and brown gravy.”

Sara also tries the foreigner defense for not being familiar with American comfort food: “I’m from Jamaica.” Ahem. Why, then, didn’t she pick the fried chicken and macaroni cheese when she had the chance, since, as she told the Jamaica Gleaner News, “Both my grandmothers were excellent cooks. One was a very rustic cook. She was from the Turks and Caicos Islands, so she cooked macaroni and cheese and fricassee chicken and all that good stuff”? In other words, she knew how to cook mac ‘n’ cheese and all that good stuff. Indeed, as the paper points out, “[s]he started out making French toast and muffins for her family as a four-year-old.”

Portale tells CJ that his dish was “so green, so green that it was frightening.” Yup, Jowly Green Giant is definitely sticking.

Lia is chided for not doing enough, which prompts her to utter the immortal line, “I guess I didn’t really understand how complex franks and beans are.” Honey, welcome to Gender Studies 101. FTMs across the land salute you.

There’s a commercial break, and then Bravo is about to announce the results of the phone poll as to whether Joey or Howie is the better cook, but not before showing Padma spanking Tom with what looks like a wooden spoon. “Oh my,” says Miss XaXa. We’ve got it taped, but if anyone has a screencap, we’d be mighty grateful.

In the end, Fauxmicah is pykagged and, rednosed and crying, manages to stir the depths of Jamie Lee Curtis’ soul in a New York bar.

And so it goes, possums.

First Reaction, Part I: Dick Around the Conch Tonight (Apologies to Bill Haley and the Comets)

Oh possums, never, not even during the run of “Sprockets” on Saturday Night Live, have we wanted to touch anyone’s monkey less, and yet, following this week’s episode (which we have subtitled, “Elks and Whelks”), Hung Huynh’s monkey is all we can think about. As Miss XaXa put it, “Is it a rhesus piece or is it a macock?”

And yet, it was in part thanks to his monkey that Hung made another stab at transforming into Hatsuhomo, demonstrating that he’s still in the running towards becoming America’s Next Top Potentially Gaysian Villain. (This made up somewhat for last week’s performance, where the self-anointed CPA, Certified Professional Asshole, acted more a like a real CPA and less like a real asshole as he helped Sara Nguyen figure out that 20 times 10 equals 200, and that she was using up her whole budget on meat, thus helping her into the top three during the Elimination Challenge.)

As Hatsuhomo, Hung finally answered the question, What Would Gong Li Do?

Well, for starters, how about hogging shellfish, leaving defenseless crayfish to die on the floor, turning off ovens, referencing your monkey, and dissing Beard Award-winning chef Alfred Portale as not getting the concept? In fact, as we learned, it takes big croutons to mock Alfred “Master Chef of the World” Portale.

We were introduced to Chef Portale during the Quickfire Challenge, announced by Padma as “catch and cook,” which unforgivably reminded us of that horrible Jennifer Garner movie. (We were extremely impressed by the flourish with which Lady Rushdie pulled the cover from the fish tank holding the live seafood; it suggests a history, or a future, in game shows and magic acts.) Upon seeing Chef Portale, we thought he looked vaguely familiar. “Doesn’t he look like Adam West’s gay, nerdy accountant brother?” we asked hesitantly. “Gayer than the original Batman?” scoffed Miss XaXa. “I don't think so. Besides, Alfred was the butler on Batman. Try Stanley Tucci in The Devil Wears Prada.” Why, of course!

Joey Pickles helpfully informs us that Chef Portale is known for his plating techniques, and references the Sistine Chapel, making this the second Michelangelo reference of the season. Given what happened to Micah, the first person to reference the old sonnet-penning, marmoreal poofter, we wonder about Joey’s fate in the next two weeks. Is there, as Carrie Bradshaw might type on a PowerBook filling the screen, a Michelangelo curse? (“Make that a Micahlangelo curse,” suggested Miss XaXa.)

The contestants had mere seconds to scoop up shellfish from the tank with a net. Hung went first (though we’re not quite sure why; is it because he won the last Quickfire?; if so, how was the rest of the order determined?), and demonstrated a thing or two about Vietnamese fishermen. Even Sara Nguyen was forced to say, “Save some for the rest of us.”

A crayfish plunged to the ground from Hung’s heaping bowl, or, as CJ puts it, the “crawfish falls awry.” (He’s got the oddest locutions; is it an Orange County thing? Linguists of the world, get to it.) Mr. “How You Walk, How You Talk, How You Approach the Ingredient Tells Me Who You Are” apparently doesn’t believe in the five-second rule, and, in a move designed to endear him to PETA, leaves the wee beastie gasping for air, shell(fish)-shocking and awing the other cheftestants. Hasn’t he ever seen The Little Mermaid, or Finding Nemo? Doesn’t he know? It’s the perfect Hatsuhomo move, demonstrating his contempt for crustacean life to his competitors (Hung the Merciless!) and creating a potential slip-and-fall, premises-liability issue to wipe one of them out. He’s almost like a villain in one of those godforsaken Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker movies.

Invisible Gay Dale Levitski takes off his Invisibility Cloak, giving us the best line of the night, “I don’t really have time to dick around with a conch,” which sounds better and gayer with a Chicago accent. Indeed, it almost sounds like his coming-out statement, or, as Kanye West might have put it, “I ain’t saying he a conch-dicker, but I never seen him with no clam-digger.”

“Actually,” Miss XaXa reminded us, “clam-diggers are all he seems to wear in the kitchen.” Well, we’ve never let truth stand in the way of a bad Kanye West pun.

Hatsuhomo dismisses his competitors for mixing shellfish with white wine because “my monkey can do that.” We can’t decide if this is of the “Aw, snap” or “Meow” variety. In any event, Hung still has a ways to go in the “cutting remarks” department of Gay Villainy. Where, oh where, is George Sanders when you need him?

Pretentiously-behatted, alliteration-and-assonance-addicted poseur Brian Malarkey tells us that he had better win this seafood Quickfire, since he works in a seafood restaurant. If he didn’t win, his employers would fire him and his whole world might dissolve. “Actually, Brian,” Miss XaXa snarled at the television, “my whole world might dissolve if you don’t take off that fucking hat. Asshat! You’re losing your hair, deal with it.”

Howie, who’s got the cockteasing Bravo Redemption Edit™, makes ceviche, and, since this is a Quickfire, speeds the “cooking” of the seafood in citrus juice by adding salty sweat dripping from the end of his nose to the dish. CJ serves “fruits de mer,” which he pronounces as “froots de mare,” which in turn positively gave us the vapors. CJ, possum, it’s pronounced “FROO-EE,” like “Phooey” with an “r”; hell, you could even get away with pronouncing it “free.” But “froots”? Froots?!? We sat there clutching and kneading an antimacassar for a good five minutes before we calmed down. We won’t go so far as to say that if you can’t pronounce the name of the dish, you probably can’t cook it, but we do say, If you can’t pronounce the name of the dish, why don’t you just call it what it is, e.g., “assortment of shellfish”?

In the end, though, Asshat, his soul patch, liberal use of white wine, and his fucking habit of giving cutesy names to everything (“eyes with fries,” “medusa,” “electric venom soup,” “tres rios” [WTF?]) prove too powerful, and he and Hung’s white-wine-addled monkey win the Quickfire Challenge, which, though it makes our world dissolve, grants him, alas, immunity from elimination.

Scary But Harmless: Casey Thompson Fries Up Fellow Competitors While Amuse-Biatch Expresses Pronounced Disapproval

While you wait for tonight’s episode, possums, let your brain turn to mush as you watch this morning show segment from NBC5 in Dallas featuring cheftestant Casey Thompson as she tries to fry a fish and talk to a blowsy, vaguely nurse-like hostess while saying absolutely nothing.

(Miss XaXa thinks the nameless hostess resembles not so much a nurse as the meddling female neighbor on Small Wonder, that creepy but compulsively watchable, long-ago syndicated show about a pinafore-wearing robot named Vicky. On closer inspection, we think she’s more like the Philip Seymour Hoffman drag queen in that Robert DeNiro movie Flawless.)

During the segment, you will learn nothing about frying fish, and next to nothing about Top Chef. The two things we gleaned from Casey were that (1) the restaurant she works in and the restaurant Tre Wilcox works in are both owned by the same people; and (2) she thought the other contestants were scary but harmless.

Casey herself seems harmless, and the scariest thing we’ve seen about her has been her headscarf, but we do have a bone to pick with her.

During the Quickfire Challenge last week, she was picked as the Definition Girl, the Vanna White of sorts (last year it was Ilan Hall) who helpfully defines the term “amuse-bouche” for the audience. Naturally, we winced as we heard her pronouncing it, “AH-moose bouche.”

Of course we blamed her, as she really ought to know better, but we were willing to cut her just a teensy bit of slack because Padma, Lady Rushdie, pronounced it the same way while introducing the challenge.

But she really got our goat when, later in the episode, she scoffed and sneered at Clay Bowen’s apple-sized amuse-bouche. “I’m an executive chef, I know what an AH-moose-bouche is.”

Look, Junior Missy, Elle Woods, Floaters, Mini-Spice Rack, Sweet Potato Queen (we haven’t quite settled on a nickname), you may know what it is, but you cain’t hardly pronounce it. For the love of God, it ain’t that hard. It’s pronounced just the way it looks—ah-MEWS—like the English word “amuse.” (Padma certainly knows better; witness her asking Tom, after the tasting, “Were you amused?”).

So, darlin’, if, despite being an executive chef, you cain’t pronounce the word, don’t you go bein’ all stroppy about it with poor Clay.

And while we’re at it, why is it that, as the brilliant and ever-perceptive Eric3000 points out, Fontainebleau is being pronounced “Fountain Blue” rather than the correct “fawn-ten-BLOW”?

Oh well. Plus ça change....

My Abalone Has a First Name

And it ain’t Tom.

Now, we should preface this, possums, by saying that we admire and respect Tom Colicchio. He’s knowledgeable as hell, and, based on his blog, he’s undeniably the best writer on the judging panel, except, perhaps, for Anthony Bourdain.

This is why we were so baffled during the premiere to hear Chef Colicchio repeatedly pronounce “abalone” as “a-ba-lawn.” We checked a few dictionaries (Random House, Merriam Webster, American Heritage) and we didn’t find this pronunciation.

And so, of course, we wondered, Have we found this season’s lychee? (The “LEE-chee”/“LIE-chee” debate went on for several weeks last season after Otto Borsich left.)

So we’re not saying Chef Colicchio’s pronunciation is baloney, but can any of you, possums, help dispel the mists of “a-ba-lawn”?

Or is Tom Colicchio led astray
Just like P-A-D-M-A?

First Reaction: Fried or (Half) Baked?

Oh, possums, just when she was doing so well....

Watching Top Chef: 4 Star All Stars (surprisingly, it was not subtitled, “The Grudge”), we were paralyzed for many reasons (about which we will have much more to say later). But it was the 28th Most Beautiful Lady in the World, Padma Lakshmi, who gave us the biggest jolt of botulinum.

Her hair looked good. Her clothes were sexy but tasteful—the black polka dot dress looked good, the pants ensemble looked good, the cinnamon-colored dress looked good. Heck, even her scar looked good. No hot pants, Ugg boots, or shearling vests in sight.

Our unfurrowed brow began to furrow.

And then she corrected Marcel’s pronunciation of “gelée,” just as we were in mid-wince after hearing “jell-EE.”

Aghast, the twin figures of Henry Higgins and Mr. Blackwell, who daily battle for such scraps of our soul as remain, stood mute.

Would there be anything for us to do on Season 3? Would we have to retire? Would we be perennially doomed to sweetness and light?

Fortunately (for us, at least), last night’s premiere of Season 3 revealed that there is, indeed, a reason for us to go on living. You ought to have seen the grin of relief on our basement-dweller faces, possums, as she mispronounced “amuse-bouche” yet again. Ah-MOOZE? That’s nooze to us.

And then, of course, she went on to utter the immortal line of the night, “You could fry my toe, and batter it well, and it would taste good.”

Though Tom Colicchio rolled his eyes, we positively purred. We may well have cackled. Miss XaXa, momentarily lulled into compassion by the booze, pleaded, “Come on, give her a break. She’s still making progress.”

Remembering those hot pants from last season, we had to concur. From camel-toe to fried toe is quite a journey indeed.

Is it any wonder she married the man who wrote The Ground Beneath Her Feet? (We will have much more to say about this as well; here and now we call Top Chef 3, “The Foot Fetishist’s Season.”)

Still, Padma, fried or baked, we’ve missed you, possum. Welcome back. And to you, possums, we say, as our other theme for the season, “Welcome to Meowmi.”

P.S. Regular posting will follow, including a full-fledged, Amuse-Biatch recap.

First Reaction: Good Sports, Bad Sports, and Water Sports

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First Reaction: Amuse-Biatch Did Not Try to Choke Marcel Vigneron or Call Him a Faggot

We’ll try to bring the funny, possums, but we warn you that it was a little more difficult than usual with this episode, and we have had to scrape the sides and bottom of the barrel.

First, a synopsis.

The Quickfire Challenge was to create a dish using Nestlé’s new line of baking chocolate. The winner was Sam “Let me once again trot out the fact that I’m a diabetic” Talbot. The Elimination Challenge was to create a “romantic” five-course dinner for a contingent of couples (including the Bravo-mandated token gay couple) celebrating their anniversaries at a restaurant in Santa Barbara reportedly owned by Kevin Costner. (This seems rather fitting, inasmuch as, if the reported allegations of masseuses in Scotland are to be trusted, KC definitely believes in happy endings.)

Later that night, the cheftestants requested a video camera from the producers, and Elia Aboumrad decided to shave her head. Her Kim Kardashian, Ilan Hall, also shaved his head. Cliff Crooks decided that Marcel should have his head shaved, too. They went into the living room, where Marcel was sleeping on the couch, and Cliff put him in a headlock on the floor while Sam giggled and Ilan videotaped the whole thing and incited Sam to have a try at shaving Marcel’s head.

For his pains, Cliff was dismissed from the show, and the remaining four moved to the finals in Hawaii.

One would think that someone whose name is Ilan might, oh, you know, be sensitive to the resonance of an unpopular minority being assaulted in the middle of the night and having his head shaved while others cheer, but what do we know? And some people might have thought it less than classy for Bravo to run a poll in the first commercial break after the incident in order to determine who hates Marcel the most, with one of the answer choices being “Me,” since it might be construed as piling up on Marcel and as giving its imprimatur to the impulse behind the hazing, but what do such people know?

So what did we find amusing?

OK, here goes:

That Ilan, Elia and Marcel reenacted the Paris Hilton-Nicole Richie-Kim Kardashian triangle, with Ilan moving into Elia’s bedroom so they could wear oversize shades in bed, and paint each other’s toenails, and, as it turned out, “do” each other’s hair.

That Bravo Foreshadowing™ had Cliff declaring earlier, “I don’t plan on doing anything to screw up.”

That Sam smarmily declared, “Marcel is very adolescent.”

That Padma Lakshmi called the cheftestants, “You idiots,” in her most maternal tones.

That the token gay couple, Buck and Barry (it must save money on monograms), were celebrating their third anniversary while a few of the straight couples had been together for something like 20 years, since three is the equivalent of 20 in gay years.

That a Bravo graphic described one of the elements in Elia’s Quickfire Challenge dish as “carmelized,” which, to the extent it’s a word at all, would better describe what happened to Clint Eastwood after he became the mayor of a wealthy seaside town in Northern California.

That Cliff, who was given to wearing scrubs during the season, managed, only two days after the Golden Globes, to become the new Isaiah Washington.

That Marcel unwittingly found himself questioning being a bottom and munching rug (as well as nursing rug burns) mere seconds after the notion of being awakened by an attractive man on top of him went from being a closeted wet dream to a reality-show nightmare.

That the NBC synergy and cross-promotion machine is so well-oiled that, during the Quickfire Challenge, Padma appeared in costume for the NBC/Bravo series, Grease: You’re the One That I Want. Padma, you are….(excruciatingly suspenseful pause) NOT Sandy.

That we got to see a photo of Elia and her boyfriend on the night-stand, but no photographic evidence of a relationship between Ilan and “Carolina.”

That there was a battle of the accents and wills between Slippery-as-an-Eelia Aboumrad and Eric “Your Deesh is Beyond” Ripert.

That hot French cyborg and full-lipped “demigod” Eric Ripert declared Cliff a more authentic Mexican than Elia.

That Ilan pronounced “offal” as “ah-FALL,” since pride goeth before offal.

See? We told you it would be hard to come up with funny stuff.

Amoose-Biatch's Rocky Relationship with Bullwinkle

Among Cliff Crooks' manifold sins on last week's episode, there was a sin even greater than the clumsy, chilly service he provided during the restaurant challenge. (We especially loved that his rationale for handling front-of-the-house duties on the challenge was, "This is what I do at my restaurant anyway." If that's the case, his restaurant must be a particularly welcoming place. That the restaurant where Cliff works is called Salute!--after the cheesy, stereotypical, faux-hearty Italian toast--is an especially piquant detail.)

So what sin warrants a scarlet "A" on his chef's whites? Well, nothing less than the sin of pronouncing "amuse" (in this case, Marcel's chicken dish) the way Padma Lakshmi does, as "ah-MOOSE," which still sets our teeth on edge and makes us reach for the nitroglycerin pill to place under our forked tongue.

Is it really too much to expect chefs and cookbook authoresses to do what the average English-speaker can do, and pronounce "amuse" correctly? Perhaps it is. We don't know if Cliff says "ah-MOOSE" instead of "ah-MEWS" because of Padma's pernicious influence or because he is tone-deaf as well as color-blind.

So, for absolutely, positively the last time, this is a moose:

















(Miss XaXa's last word on the subject: "I'm a muse, Charlus is the biatch.")

For Immediate Release: OutKast Unveils Cover Art, Track Listing, for New Album

We've just received the following press release in our inbox:

It's official! Astro Boy and Big Boi, together at last, together forever and livin' large, are proud to announce the release of the new OutKast album, on Tuesday, January 30, right before the finale of Astro Boy's latest gig, Top Chef, on Bravo (1o p.m. Eastern /9 p.m. Central).

We are sharing with you, our fans, a sneak peek of the cover art for Foam on the Range, a concept album. We're still mixing a couple of tracks, and getting a couple of more guest artists to lay down some phat beats for us, but here's a little taste of some of the choicest cuts:

There's No Place Like Foam (featuring Gelee Furtado)

When in Foam

The Darker the Cherry, the Sweeter the Foam, featuring a sample from Gelee Roll Morton

Foam for the Holidays (Christmas in Ibiza Remix)

Foam (If You Want To)

Foamo-Homo (Which I'm Not), a power ballad, OutKast style, meant as a "foamage" or "fauxmage" to Astro Boy's boy, Ilan Hall, and as a call for an end to homophobia in the white hip hop community

And Foamin' at the Mouth aka Foamin', Frontin', Part V, another track dedicated to Ilan Hall and inspired by R. Kelly

Release date: 01/30/07

Amuse-Biatch Shameless Plug: Carlos Fernandez for Fan Favorite

Although we love our paisana Elia Aboumrad, it is no secret that, from the very beginning, our wee, wizened bloggers’ hearts have belonged to one man, our Chulo Chef, Carlos Fernandez. Heck, from day one, Miss XaXa* proclaimed herself his BFF (Best Fruit Fly), and will tear the weave off anyone who tries to take her title away. And so it should come as no surprise that we are blatantly, shamelessly, giddily stumping for Carlos in the Fan Favorite contest.

The XaXa for Chulo PAC met this morning over a café cortado and pan dulce, and decided to jump into the fray. Maybe Don Carlos wasn’t fated to be the Top Chef, but he was a gentleman, a true caballero cubano, to the end. He demonstrated, along with our Elia Aboumrad and Michael “Beer Bong” Midgley, that it is possible to compete in the volatile and stressful atmosphere of the kitchen without turning into a rabid member of a baying pack of hounds. For that alone, he deserves the $10,000 prize. (And for reminding us, when we see this photograph, of what’s better than roses on your piano.)

So be sure to vote for our Chulo Chef, Carlos Fernandez, at http://bravotv.com as Fan Favorite.

* For those of you who have asked, it's pronounced "Cha-Cha," as in the immortal Eartha Kitt disco classic, "Cha-Cha Heels."

First Reaction: “Fucking Soigné!”

Well, possums, what can we say? We were simply out-biatched this week, and it's not often we can say that. Which means, of course, that Gail Simmons has returned. God, we missed her and her Prime of Miss Jean Brodie ferule-bearing hauteur. Welcome back, Gail. We've got Elton John singing "The Bitch is Back" just for you, and you know that, coming from us, it's the greatest of compliments.

The Quickfire Challenge this week was to create a snack food using a Kraft condiment: mayonnaise, Italian dressing, or barbecue sauce. Michael "Beer Bong" Midgley, after professing his love for eating mayonnaise "straight from the can," found himself taking elocution lessons from Padma, who tried to teach him how to pronounce "chipotle." He kept saying "chipote," which he undoubtedly didn't know is, like "chipotle," a real word in Mexican Spanish. It means a blow to the head, as when a kid is clumsy and keeps running into things, thus giving himself a great, big "chipote." Beer Bong being dropped on his head? Who'd have thunk it?

(A propos, our paisana Elia Aboumrad went back to her roots and demonstrated the best "Ay Dios mío!" hand-fanning we have seen in years.)

There were two winners in the Quickfire Challenge, Sam and Marcel (although Padma, who is grammatically in our good graces this week, bought herself an even bigger chunk of goodwill by confessing that she thought our Elia Aboumrad should have won instead of Marcel). Each then got to pick two cheftestants for the team Elimination Challenge--to come up with and execute a restaurant concept in an empty space in a mall.

Sam, Ilan, and Beer Bong named their Italian restaurant by fusing the names of their womenfolk into the oh-so-mellifluous "Lalalina," which sounds rather like a fat drag queen in a Fellini film, or a Teletubby even gayer than Tinky-Winky ("A post-op Teletubby?" Miss XaXa suggested).

So yes, we learned from a smirking Ilan Hall that he has a girlfriend. WTF? Mr. Str8tacting is gonna have a lot of 'splainin' to do when he gets "home to Carolina," because the sexual tension between him and Marcel continued to be so thick and so clichéd that you could cut it with the proverbial chef's knife. We had Ilan paying "homage" to Marcel, trying unsuccessfully to "foam" and being unable to keep it stiff, and then "poking" fun at Marcel, and making redundantly named "little napoleons" in honor of Marcel. (To this we say, don't knock the shorties; we'll tell you sometime about Toulouse-Lautrec and why they called him "the Teapot," or about the one Miss XaXa called "My Little Pony").

And then--to, er, top it off--we had Marcel proclaiming, "Everybody loves meat on a stick!" We expect the DJ who remixed the Barbra Streisand "Shut the fuck up" tirade to take this catchphrase and remix it in time for the Gay Pride parade. Could this be the greatest Top Chef catchphrase of Season Two after "crap on a plate"? (Still, no one who can so misuse "soigné" deserves to be gay. In so doing, Marcel took the cake as well as the rap.)

Matters weren't helped by the name of Marcel's restaurant, MEC, which, as anyone with the rudiments of the language will tell you, is French for "guy." (In fact, we seem to remember a bar in the Marais called MEC, but that's neither here nor there.) Yes, the acronym stands for "Marcel Elia Cliff," but oh what a koinkeedeenk.

We learned that Ilan's front-of-the-house skills are the pits. We learned that Sam "Il Siciliano" Talbot couldn't spell "asiago" on his restaurant's menu, but that his parents are loaded. We also learned that Sam is a snob about line cooks, as long as it's line cooks from the Central Valley and not line cooks from a Mario Batali tapas joint, in which case he's not snobbish at all.

Both MEC and Lalalina were disasters, and the customer comments reflected this ("the chef was on crack!"). Despite wearing her Greek goddess lace-up sandals, Padma was forced to wait 10 minutes for her food at MEC, and was fed watermelon and cat-sick at Lalalina (funny that it was Marcel's foam last week that was likened to cat spit). Such infractions were not taken lightly, and no winner was declared. At this point, Top Chef turned into Project Runway, with Chef Colicchio telling certain cheftestants that they were "safe," and that they could "leave the kitchen." He was even more Teutonic than Heidi Klum; in fact, he's a dead ringer for Erich von Stroheim. We loved it.

In the end, we learned that Beer Bong can't shop to save his life, and Padma sent him packing. (We delighted in how Tom winnowed the cheftestants down but let Padma administer the coup de grâce to Beer Bong.)

This gave us the opportunity to learn that Marcel has not, after all, forgotten his manners, as he told Beer Bong, "It was great to meet you," and gave him a hug.

And so we bid "Adieu, dude" to the Central Valley's Great White Hope, the Stockton Socrates, good ole Beer Bong. Say what you will about the man (and we did), he had perhaps the best disposition of them all.

First Reaction: Irony is the Eighth Deadly Sin

Well, irony in the Alanis Morrissette sense, not in the true sense, but we'll get to that.

So, after two weeks without a new episode, Bravo treated us to a "supersized" episode packed to the gills with sin. We encountered all manner of deadly sins, and learned that fuglitude is the ninth of these, as Padma Lakshmi made our new year by returning in an outfit so whorendous that it really must have required the full two-week hiatus to come up with it. It was a fuck-you to viewers' corneas, and we almost had to admire Bravo's brazen disregard in showing it without a warning stating, "Some Viewers May Find the Fugly Outfits Disturbing. Viewer Discretion Advised." Raggaydy Andy is lucky the FCC levies fines for swearing and not for fugly clothes.

The Quickfire Challenge was to create a dish based on a color. As Miss XaXa pointed out, it was the gayest of challenges, as it involved recreating the rainbow (well, with the exception of blue and the addition of brown). Beer Bong, enervated by the Vicodin in his system following an emergency tooth extraction, won the Quickfire Challenge, but, alas, no immunity.

The Elimination Challenge was to create a meal for yet another busty B-list celebrity with a gay following and a group of sketchy friends. Instead of Jennifer Coolidge, we got former Madonna BFF Debi Mazar hosting a seven-course dinner based on the seven deadly sins. The top three dishes were created by Sam, Elia, and Beer Bong, and wouldn't ya know it, the result was a tie, a win to be split equally between Beer Bong and Vicodin. The bottom three were Marcel, Betty "Spice Rack" Fraser, and Ilan Hall. And just like that, Spice Rack was in the soup and undone by the nitty gritty of the thing. She packed up her knives and readied herself for the ten-minute drive home to her restaurant in Hollywood. As we pointed out this morning, Spice Rack, honey, we named ya but we hardly knew ya.

So what did we learn?

We learned that getting a good performance out of Michael "Beer Bong" Midgley really is like pulling teeth. As Tom Colicchio put it, he should cook on Vicodin more often.

We learned about Alanis Morrissette irony (AMI), with the "brown girl" (Elia Aboumrad) being assigned white, the African-American (Cliff Crooks) being color blind and seeing black, and the chef who drew the sin of wrath waxing very wroth indeed. (We also learned, together with Sam Talbot, just how handy it is to have Sicilian blood to blame one's anger on; we wonder whether Frank "El Bully" Terzoli left behind little Sicilian heritage cards to pull out whenever the holder throws a hissy fit in the direction of Marcel. No doubt we'll find out next week that Ilan Hall yells at Marcel because he's a Sicilian Jew.)

A propos, we learned that Ilan Hall is unnaturally fixated on Marcel's cherry, all the while insisting that cherries lower libido. Of course, AMI struck back when Padma described Ilan's effort as "limp and flaccid."

And we learned that Marcel Vigneron still can't pronounce "gelee" to save his life or his virginity.

Amuse-Biatch Answers Rachael Ray Christmas Hate Mail

We weren’t going to write any more about Rachael Ray for a while. Really, possums, we weren’t.

But then, when we and Miss XaXa checked in (from Gstaad and St. Bart’s, respectively), we found that one of Rachael Ray’s anonymous elves had been by in the night and left us some reindeer droppings in our mailbag.

Committed as we are to answering reader mail, and energized by raclette and conch fritters, respectively, (“Watch the pronunciation,” Miss XaXa admonished, “there is an ‘n’ in ‘conch.’”), we are delighted to turn to the task at hand.

Responding to a post that consisted only of a Rachael Ray wedding photograph and the headline, “Rachael Ray Wedding Album: Is That a Spitcurl Over His Eye?” a Gentle Reader calling herself “Anonymous” wrote us this:

You snide losers.
You wish you had the energy and success that she has. Didn't you learn in Psych 101 or from Dear Abby, at least, that you're tearing her down so you can forget about your own failure and self-hate?

Dear Anonymous, thank you for your charming note. It warmed the stainless-steel cockles of our pea-sized hearts.

Your forbearance in not putting an exclamation point after “You snide losers” gave us the chills. It’s so much nastier, and delicious, in that twin-set-and-pearls, secret-drinking, ethnic-surname-concealing, compulsive-ironing-of-linen-at-two-in-the-morning way. Really, it’s always the repressed snarl that thrills us to our hollow core.

Your excellent grammar and impeccable use of commas not only were as catnip to us (a well-placed comma can be the equivalent of a kiss behind the ear), but also suggested that you are an educated woman, and thus, clearly, not Rachael Ray’s target audience.

We understand why she appeals to men. She’s non-threatening and has [...]* bazooms. She appeals to men for the usual reason that women with big mouths appeal to men. And we mean big mouths in the literal, rather than metaphorical, sense. Not wishing to be vulgar, that is all we will say on the subject; consult an anthropologist or Maxim if you need to.

But why you should come to her defense puzzles us.

We know that in some quarters Rachael Ray is held up as some kind of example of American populism, but this is pure poppycock. Since when did populism have to be equated with idiocy?

The woman talks as if every member of the audience were a thalidomide chimpanzee, as if we might not be able to figure out breathing if she didn’t break it down into cheery, manageable steps for us. (“Now, open up those alveoli. Can you feel that Oh-Two entering your lungs? Yum-o! Now get rid of that See-Oh-Two into the garbage bowl of the atmosphere!”)

But, to quote Edwina Margaret Rose Monsoon, “We’re not all blithering idiots. We don’t all need nursemaiding.”

We find it loathsome that she should be used as prima facie evidence of the truth of H.L. Mencken’s statement that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence (or taste, as some versions have it) of the American public. What can it mean about us as a country when a woman with the intellectual heft of plankton is talking down to us? Verily, it offends our patriotic sensibilities. That’s right; you heard us—liking Rachael Ray is un-American. Rachael Ray is hurting America! Get Bill O’Reilly on the case. Surely he would object to television hosts dumbing down discourse and patronizing the American people.

Now for the substance of your note, Gentle Reader. We appreciate your keeping your references (Psych 101, Dear Abby) simple and Yum-o! for us. Given, as we are, to mentioning Anaïs Nin and Søren Kierkegaard in the context of Ms. Ray, your throwing out references to Jungian shadow selves or the letters of Lord Chesterfield might have reduced us to mouth-breathing stupefaction. (That “at least” after “Dear Abby” was an especially piquant flick of the cat-o'-nine-tails; hurt us good, Bad Connecticut Mommy!)

Just one little thing. Darling—and here we hesitate to be logical and what-not—but mightn’t one say that by calling us “snide losers,” and intimating that we are listless and unsuccessful, you are, um, “tearing [us] down so that you can forget about your own failure and self-hate?” And wouldn't that then make you into a “snide loser”? Mind you, we don’t say that; we are listless losers, after all, so what do we know? (Though Miss XaXa disagrees, saying, “We’re failures, but at self-hatred.”)

At any rate, thank you for writing, luv. And if you ever feel like calling us “snide losers” while wearing a leather bustier and Lucite heels, your comma and our period joining together to make sweet, sweet semicolons, well, just drop us another line. We promise you a good time (or, as Miss XaXa defines it, a vodka stinger, a cheese log, and a cheap motel).

* The adjective "large" was removed as per reader observations.

Amuse-Biatch's Handy Clip-N-Save Pronunciation Guide

Here at Amuse-Biatch we're not just about serving it up, we're also about serving (though we won't deny a fondness for dishes best served cold).

We have been asked why we harp on mispronunciations by cheftestants, guest chefs, and hostesses alike. We assure you that there is a method to our folie (and not just of the La cage aux variety). We do it not just because we're haughty, anal, obsessive compulsive, neo-Victorian, post-Carson Kressly mini-despots with a twinkle in our eye.

We do it because these are people who ought to know better, who are supposed to be food professionals, and that entails being knowledgeable about food. And we would feel a lot better if the people making our food knew enough about it to at least pronounce it correctly.

We won't make fun of our Aunt Lavinia for mispronouncing "amuse-bouche" at the Thanksgiving table. But when a self-described "egghead" polyglot married to a Booker Prize-winning novelist and possessed of a penchant for displaying her breasts to all and sundry repeatedly mispronounces "amuse-bouche," even after Chef Suzanne Goin pronounced it correctly in her presence several times, why yes, at that point, the yellow dogskin gloves come off.

And so, without further ado, and in the interest of service and avoiding further bloodshed, we present our handy clip-n-save pronunciation guide.

Amuse-bouche, pronounced (can you hear us, Padma?), "ah-MEWS boosh." Not "AH-moos." Not "ah-mew-SAY." "ah-MEWS boosh." Got it? Good.

Gelée, pronounced "zhell-AY," and not, as certain meringue-headed cheftestants who ought to know better insist, "jell-EE."

Lychee, pronounced "LEE-chee," a fruit of the soapberry family which, when mispronounced "LIE-chee," is known to cause lying, cheating, spasms of self-righteousness in flat-chested pastry chefs, and reality tv hara-kiri (yes, yes, bushido-heads, we know seppuku is more accurate, but we're writing for the masses here).

Offal, pronounced "AW-ful," and pronounced awfully by a couple of the cheftestants, one of whom, after pronouncing it "ah-FALL," suffered a fall from grace and was told to pack her knives.

Episode Five, Part 1: Shock and Offal

This episode begins with a toxic cloud of suspicion choking the bluebird of happiness that sprouted its delicate, crispy meringue wings after Team Black, composed of Spice Rack, Madame de Pompadour, and Frankie the Bull, won the Elimination Challenge after the Herculean task of convincing a group of overweight children at a fat camp to eat pizza and chocolate-peanut butter cookies. The subsequent accusations that Spice Rack had cheated by replacing Splenda with sugar in her cookie recipe resulted in no one being sent home and has tarnished the Black Team's victory.

Freshly bepompadoured and looking like Jerry Lee Lewis, and with the dramatic intensity of middle-period Lana Turner, Marcel tells the camera, "I was feeling all sorts of distraught and disappointed." What did we tell you about his retreat into a world of hair gel and alliteration?

We see Elia putting on mascara in front of the bathroom mirror (so that's how she gets her eyes so es-mokie) while Spice Rack, like a dental Lady Macbeth, tries to wash the taste of treachery out of her mouth at 500 rpm and tells us that she is not a cheater.

Then Josie, sporting the hairdo of a lesbian egret, takes us into her gap-toothed, Chicleted confidence. (As Miss XaXa relates, folks in the South say, "That girl could eat corn through a fence," whereas in France a gap in one's teeth is considered a sign of sexual voracity, e.g., Madonna). "Marisa and I have been really good friends through all of this. We're the only ones that really trust each other." You could almost hear the Bernard Herrmann music on the soundtrack. That, mes enfants, is called foreshadowing. That's the gun that's going to blow someone's head off in the third act. As previously noted, the Bravo editors are masterful at this, telegraphing plot points with the subtlety of Judith Regan-O.J. Simpson specials. To seal the deal, Josie and Tarte Titass are shown sharing what looks like (oh please, saints in heaven and the MGM pantheon, grant us the strength not to make a bad pun) a HoHo, but might be a plum, and will turn out to be the fruit that turns them out of paradise.

Haute couture scullery maid Padma greets the cheftestants in the Kenmore Kitchen to tell them about the Quickfire Challenge. She hasn’t even opened her mouth, and already we have a problem. The hair, through the overeager ministrations of a gay hairdresser armed with hot tongs and a grudge, is ironed so flat that it looks like Salman Rushdie slept on it. She’s back to wearing pink in the kitchen, though long-sleeved (even if unbuttoned to the third button), and she’s brought back those damned black bicycle shorts with riding boots again. We hate them not only because they’re preposterously unattractive but also because they give her the sort of bowlegged posture of a Dickensian orphan. We half expect her to break into a chorus of “Food, Glorious Food” or “Consider Yourself.”

And the make-up! We’ve refrained for weeks from talking about this, but the flat hair sends us over the edge. Padma, cara, would it kill you, just once, to wear lipstick a shade darker than Sheer Ambition or Unblushing Bride of Paunchy Postcolonial Pasha (available from MAC, with 1% of all proceeds going to fund Elton John’s ego)?

Padma is joined by guest judge Chef Michelle Bernstein, of Michy’s in Miami. The newest war bride in Jeffrey Chodorow’s culinary seraglio, Chef Bernstein used to be a dancer with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and now stands in her wrinkled linen-dyed-to-look-like-denim dress with her hands on her ample hips. Tactful as ever, our chulo Chef Carlos says on his blog that Chef Bernstein, his “fellow South Floridian,” is—how does he put it?—“saucy.” You can tell that about her. She looks like a cross between Sandra Bernhard and Punky Brewster, and has the pugilistic intensity of Judy Davis incarnating Judy Garland on that tv movie of a few years ago. “You wanna piece of me?” her very stance seems to say. Miss XaXa also picked up on that half-drag queen, half-welterweight pose. “Raging Bull?” says Miss XaXa. “Try Raging Bitch.”

Padma announces that the Quickfire Challenge will be devoted to leftovers. Of course! Padma, how could we have had so little faith? That’s why you wore that heinous outfit. It’s leftovers. Of course! We keep forgetting that you try to dress for the theme. We’ll have to watch for the semiotics of your Quickfire Challenge outfits, like when the Washington press corps used to interpret Madeleine Albright’s brooches for hints to foreign policy.

The challenge will deal with offal, the “leftover” pieces of the animal after the flavorless filet mignon, etc., has been removed. The cheftestants must make a dish using one of the ingredients gathered for their gory delectation—pig trotters, lamb kidneys, beef hearts, fish heads, pig’s blood, veal tails, beef cheeks, honeycomb tripe, chicken feet, lamb hearts, veal tongues, and sweetbreads.

The food preparation montage isn’t going to have Eisenstein quaking in the great beyond. It’s rather a dull affair, with only two pronunciation clunkers, Josie saying, “OH-fal,” and Josette Eber saying, “ah-FALL.” Spice Rack tells us, “Marcel went for that pig’s blood. Kinda looks like a vampire, dontcha think?” We yawn and flick the ashes from the clove cigarette in our Syrian malachite cigarette holder.

Darling, is this really the best you can do? That whole cheating thing must really have shaken you up if you can’t come up with something bitchier, and we refuse to do your work for you. Bravo doesn’t help matters by throwing in cheesy F/X when she says the word “vampire.” Besides, it’s also unfair to those recappers who are really good with PhotoShop, as it deprives them of the opportunity to stick Marcel’s face in a photograph of Eddy Munster for fear it will seem too derivative.

Elia tells us that she’s going to clean the kidneys and sweetbreads she’s using, and tells us that sweetbreads are the glands of the veal, pointing to her neck to show us. It’s rather a sweet gesture.

It’s time for the judging. Tarte Titass tells Chef Bernstein that she’s made pappardelle and used the beef cheeks. Miss XaXa’s head turned violently toward the television. “Oh,” Miss XaXa explains, “when I heard her say ‘beef cheeks,’ I thought she was talking about herself.” We’re so amused by this that we forget to correct Tarte Titass’ pronunciation of “pappardelle.”

As Chef Berstein tastes, Miss XaXa says, “Is it me, or is she being bitchy to the female cheftestants and flirty with the men?” She chortles when Chef Bernstein breaks into a grin and purrs to Cliff, “The oxtail’s really good.” We decide not to pursue the implications of making such a statement to a beefy and attractive black man, and instead focus on something else. There was no mention of oxtails before, only veal tails. Veal is a young calf and an ox is an adult castrated male cow. Not the same thing at all.

Miss XaXa is chortling again, because Chef Bernstein is back to the oxtail: “I cook it everyday…” “So you’d know,” says Padma sycophantically. “Mmm…you would hope,” retorts Chef Bernstein in a sort of icy bitchiness that takes our breath away, as if to say, “Look, you vapid, social-climbing bitch, how dare you cut in on my monologue, interfere with my pick-up, and try to impugn my competence while appearing to do the opposite?” We wonder if Padma’s scar is tingling the way Harry Potter’s does when in the presence of Lord Voldemort.

In picking her least favorite dishes, Chef Bernstein tears into Josie, telling her that at a restaurant, such a dish would be sent back. Then she tears into Elia, telling her that the kidneys weren’t cleaned properly, that she made no attempt at a sauce, and that she made something that Chef Bernstein loves to eat hard to eat. Elia’s eyes are smoky, and not from the mascara, but from the flames shooting out. “Ees thees woe-man for real? I’m supposed to make keedneey taste like ah-leevs with a sauce?”

In the end, Chef Bernstein picks the dishes made by Cliff (surprise, surprise), Ilan, and Sam. In the end, the greasy Lothario, er, “hot diabetic,” wins, and we know exactly why. As he tells us, “I was excited about my dish. She was excited about the dish. Really excited to have immunity.” Sammy, we’re about to lose control, and we just can’t hide it.

Episode Four, Part 1: Junk in Their Trunk

The episode begins so peacefully, with the native fauna waking up, that we feel as if the Peer Gynt Suite ought to be playing, with the Discovery Channel logo in a corner of the screen. Travel with us as we observe the native species in their habitat. Look, there’s Eliada aboumradia doing yoga. And Spicea rackia and Josetta eberia talking in their beds about how they have to kick it up a notch.

Hush now. Be very still; make no sudden movements. There, sleeping the sleep of the beached, is Beerus bongius. What, we ask ourselves, is the meaning of those curious tattoos on his lardo-smooth biceps? Could they be dolphins? Has anyone told him that tribal tattoos on biceps are like, so gay, dude? Have you ever seen a less tribal specimen in your life? And why is he sleeping on the couch? And wait. What’s that whisper, that suggestion, that merest scrap of blue near his head? Why, it looks like a thong.















We are reminded that on his very first day in the “Top Chef” loft, Beer Bong let it be known that his “wife” had packed a pair of her “panties” in his luggage. Beer Bong now tells us that he is “hurtin’,” that he misses his wife, and that he needs “a new pair of panties.”

Leaving aside the question of how anyone, let alone a supposedly married straight man, could refer to a thong as panties, Miss XaXa plunges into the fray. Miss XaXa, having gimlet eyes and firsthand (firstcrack?) experience of thongs, immediately pounces: “That thing looks awfully small. Could it be that….?” She trails off, and her nose wrinkles with distaste, and her eyes widen with dawning horror. Her voice, when it returns, is an octave higher. “Could Beer Bong actually have married someone hot?” Is the situation for women in California’s Central Valley so dire that even hot women have to marry specimens like Beer Bong? “Couldn’t they start importing men from Alaska?” Miss XaXa asks. “Look at that crap show Anne Heche is on. Surely,” she concludes, “even in Stockton things can’t be that bad.”

We whip out Occam’s razor, test it for sharpness on one of Madame de Pompadour’s hairs, then use it to come up with another theory. Maybe Beer Bong isn’t married. We remember some chaps from our varsity days who had photos in their rooms of women who were supposedly their girlfriends from back home, but the photos were decoys, because in one instance the chap was gay, and in the other, too geeky to get a girlfriend. We are now convinced that this is a decoy thong. Call us doubting Thomases if you like but we won’t believe until we see a marriage certificate. (Also, notice how people who really are married, such as Carlos or Josie, aren't depicting lying around and moaning that they miss Chuck and Caitlin.)

The one who does act like Beer Bong’s wife is Madame de Pompadour, who takes a pair of tangerine flip flops and repeatedly bangs them together above Beer Bong’s head, telling him it’s time to wake up and go to work.
It was like watching a hybrid of “The Bird Cage” and “The Honeymooners” starring John Belushi and Liberace. We squinted at the television to make sure that Marcel wasn’t actually wearing a house coat, house slippers, and a headscarf. What did we tell you about Beer Bong being a great argument for gay marriage? At any rate, Miss XaXa agreed that Marcel's gag was the best use of the has-no-reason-to-exist monstrosity that is the flip flop since the days of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. And oh the choice and delicious irony of the flip flop, emblem of the Dude, all that is wrong with American manhood, being used to torment its primary exponent.

















Padma comes out to announce the Quickfire Challenge, which provides immunity for the winner, in the company of Chef Suzanne Goin of Lucques, A.O.C., and The Hungry Cat. Our “Lez is More”-dar immediately goes off. Now mind you, we aren’t saying that Chef Goin is actually a lesbian (we know she’s married to the beauteous Chef David Lentz of The Hungry Cat [we’d never make anything of the name, we swear]). It’s just that even Marcel looks butch standing next to Padma, and Suzanne is no exception. Let’s just say that she is lesbolicious and leave it at that. She was named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs in 1999 (in the same class as Rocco diSpirito), and in addition to attending Brown University and the London School of Economics, she worked at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Arpège in Paris, Olives in Boston and Campanile in Los Angeles. And she’s lovely and slender and has beautiful hair. And we wish we were lesbians. But we digress. Yet again.





Padma tells us that the Quickfire Challenge is about “attention to detail” and will involve the creation of an amuse-bouche. Padma, luv, if we may be so bold as to tap you on the shoulder….about that “attention to detail” business…first of all, it’s ah-MEWS-boosh (as in ah-MEWS-bee-yotch), not AH-moos-boosh. Oh, there, she said it again. Stop, stop, it’s hurting our ears. And second of all, since we’re paying attention to detail, what in fug’s name are you wearing? We were down with the whole slumming thing last week, but jeans yet again, and with a black suede vest that was stolen from John Stamos and the wardrobe department at “Full House”? Simply unacceptable.

Madame de Pompadour muses about an amuse-bouche (correctly pronounced) of oysters with apple jel-LEE (uh, we thought “jelly” was pronounced JEL-lee, and if he’s talking about gelée, it’s jel-AY, so, Mark Vines, what the hell are you talking about?).

The cheftestants set out to do the shopping for the challenge, but they don’t have far to go. The ingredients are in the room next door. In two vending machines! Mais non! Ce n'est pas possible! Is this supposed to give us the vapors?

Given the provenance of the ingredients, Beer Bong is singled out as the early favorite. As Cliff, our Valrhona Bear, puts it, “I’ve never seen a man put more crap into his body.” Well, Clifford, garbage in, garbage out, n'est-ce pas? Beer Bong himself wants “a frozen burrito and a pastrami sandwich, dude,” and proclaims a commitment to “keepin’ it Mike-style.” Madame de Pompadour observes with wry defeatism, “No oysters in the vending machines.” And Beer Bong, with no note of wryness but a symphony of defeatism, announces that he has reached a decision, “Screw this! Screw the Quickfire today.” Giving up, he buys Cheetos and Snickers, which we half suspect he is going to eat, as he did with the beer on last week's challenge.

It’s time for the preparation montage. We see Frankie the Bull in a BERET! Yo, Frankie! You forgettin’ your stereotypes or somethin’? Frankie, you are EYE-talian, and don’t you never forget it. Pepe le Pew wants his beret back; seems Che Guevara wants to borrow it.

Marcel tells us about making his amuse-bouche (correctly pronounced), and confesses that he prefers the “sweeter side” for the ah-mew-SAY. Um, Mark Vine, dude, seriously, don’t even like, try, to speak French. The plural of amuse, if you so choose to abbreviate amuse-bouches, would be "amuses" in any language, not "amusés."

Beer Bong makes a dish, a thing, consisting of a seemingly engorged Cheeto arcing from a round base of Snickers pieces. As our chulo chef Carlos puts it, “Mike’s Cheeto vending dish was the most phallic thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” And as we pointed out, Carlos knows from phallic.

As Marcel puts together his dish, the closed captioning service informs us that he is imitating the Muppet character Beaker, but we disagree. To us it sounds more like the Swedish Chef, or the faux French Valley Girl Chef. Ilan not only embodies, but also provides, a perfect definition of amuse-bouche: “An amuse-bouche is supposed to be something very small that you can just pop in your mouth or eat in one bite, that tickles your appetite.”

Spice Rack prepares a “fromage frittata chiffonade.” We wince and wrap our astrakhan coat more tightly around us, and our white Paraguayan parrot, Iphigénie, lets out a screech. Spice Rack, honey, neither you nor Mark Vine should tackle the furrin tongues. We, more than anyone, understand the temptation of alliteration, but really! Fromage is French, and it means “cheese.” Frittata is Italian, so why not say “a formaggio frittata”? You and Frankie the Bull are really doing your best for the Franco-Italian thing, aren’t you? (We won’t even get into the whole chiffonade thing.)

Elia has whipped up a chicken salad to be served on a mini-tostada made from a Dorito. A witty and smitten Chef Goin says to her, “You make a Dorito sound better with that accent.” Yet another pick-up line that is immediately going into our arsenal.
















It’s time for the presentation of Beer Bong’s dish. Faced with a dish that looks like a sex-ed film on the dangers of syphilis, Chef Goin observes, with that quicksilver wit of hers, “You’ve got a playful presentation there.” “Yeah, it’s playful,” answers Clarence Thomas. No, wait, it’s Austin Powers. No, it's Bill Clinton. Ah, no, it’s Beer Bong. “Is it finger food?” she asks, clearly giving him the finger. Her sarcasm is like fleur de sel. Noting that it’s just Cheetos and Snickers, she delivers the coup de grâce. “It’s an ode to the ingredients,” she says as she twists the knife. And we are in love.

Carlos has made a mini loaf of cilantro, carrots, and sunflower seeds garnished with Squirt grapefruit soda and lime juice. Chef Goin pronounces it “nice and bright and clean, and tastes good.” Just like Carlos, purrs Miss XaXa.

Mia is another one who falls prey to the furrin tongue twister. She presents what she calls “la bocadita delicioso,” which she translates as “the little mouth.” Josette Eber, honey, we know that trying to hide weird things under a foreign name is a time-honored tradition, like hiding one’s peas under the mashed potatoes. But you’ve gotta be able to talk the talk. And let us tell you, “la bocadita delicioso” (we won’t even get into the whole subject and adjective gender agreement) does not mean “the delicious mouth.” Mouth is "boca," or, if you’re feeling cute, “boquita.” “Bocadito” means “morsel.” So, que tengas mejor suerte next time, Josette, delicious morsel that you are.

And she’s going to need all the luck she can get, as she is one of the bottom three. Joining her is—surprise, surprise—Beer Bong, whose fat carcass Chef Goin uses to make a chiffonade: “I get this vibe from you that you could not care less. And I feel like, you know, nobody kidnapped you to put you on this show to try to win against all these people who are trying really hard.”

Iphigénie falls off her perch in a dead faint and has to be revived with poire William. We, too, momentarily lose consciousness from sheer giddy joy. Did someone on television actually refrain from the stupid and illogical “could care less”? And did she just rip Beer Bong a new one? We decide right then and there to chain ourselves to the door at A.O.C. until Chef Goin declares that she believes in polyamory relationships and marries us.

The top three are Frank, Carlos and Ilan, whom she chastises because his dish is too sweet (the very problem with Marcel’s dish): “It’s like you guys have to walk past that pear nectar; you don’t need it in every dish.” Amen to that; the woman is a prophet as well as a goddess. She said what we’ve been longing to say for a good while (hey, Chef Ludovic Lefèvre, are you listening?). Our dreams of marriage are dashed. We’re just not worthy.