Mazel tov, oh fortunate Jews of the world! Behold the Lioness of the tribe of Judah!
Of course it ought not have been a surprise that radiant, lissome, buxom, leonine, McGill summa cum laude graduate Gail Simmons should be the most alluring literary Jewess since the Biblical Esther, Rebecca in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Rachel in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Still, it’s nice to know.
It should have been Gail judging the Top Chef holiday episode (Michelle Bernstein is simply not an adequate replacement); on the other hand, given what an abomination the episode turned out to be, it was probably for the best that Gail not be tainted by it.
So, we didn’t get Gail in the holiday episode, but now we get to watch her make latkes, courtesy of WPIX. Enjoy, possums.
Yes, possums, this is the episode in which the refrigerator doesn’t work, but human refrigerator Martha Stewart does; in which Fabio poses for clothed pics with a naked-pics-disgraced Miss Universe from Venezuela (beauty queens being the country’s top export along with oil and bad telenovelas), and the chefs cater an event for amfAR hosted by Natasha Richardson.
(Natasha’s daddy, Oscar-winning director Tony Richardson, died of AIDS. Despite being married to Natasha’s mum, Vanessa Redgrave, and leaving her for Jeanne Moreau, the late Mr. Richardson liked bangers with his mash. Of course, it should have been no surprise; trailing after Vanessa Redgrave and Jeanne Moreau is the classy, European arthouse equivalent of marrying Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli (we’re looking at you, Vincente Minnelli, Peter Allen, David Gest). We should know; both Nessie and Jeanne are two of our supreme faves. Speaking of which, for God’s sake, the man was directing Diana bloody Ross in Mahogany (until Berry Gordy took over); can it get gayer than that?
And let us not forget to mention that Vanessa Redgrave’s father and Natasha’s grandfather, Sir Michael Redgrave, also sailed, as the French so charmingly put it, à voile et à vapeur. We remember reading with delight this anecdote in The Guardian: “The billboard outside the Odeon cinema, Leicester Square, said: ‘Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde [another famously closeted British actor, if you’ll forgive all the redundant adjectives] in The Sea Shall Not Have Them.’ Passing by, Noel Coward said: ‘I don't see why not. Everyone else has.’”
Is it any surprise, then, that, perhaps unconsciously, Natasha Richardson herself has married an incredibly desirable man who is also the world’s least likely to go gay, i.e., Liam Neeson? We think not. It all makes sense, possums, and now you have a glimpse into how our minds work when we see Natasha Richardson holding a canapé on a Bravo catering show.)
Oh, and the ever constipated-looking, South Florida chef Michelle Bernstein also appears. Woman, please get some more fiber in your diet.
Elia, hon, we didn’t think we’d have to talk to you again so soon.
It was only two weeks ago that we sat you down, agua de jamaica in hand, because we were quite worried about you during that week’s episode, when Joker-lipped neurotic guest chef Michelle Bernstein criticized your kidney dish for tasting too much like kidneys, and you responded with Marcel-inspired eye-rolling and essentialist arguments about the nature of ingredients. While we understood your reaction, we were concerned that after spending too much time with Marcel, you were developing a little bit of a Jekyll-and-Hyde thing.
To tell you the truth, there was something else in that episode that really worried us, but we didn’t want to mention it, just in case we were wrong. What set off alarm bells was the portion of the Elimination Challenge where you and Carlitos were plating your desserts. You said that you didn’t really like to have people helping you because “too many hands freak me out.”
We immediately thought of that Roman Polanski movie, Repulsion, where Catherine Deneuve is left in her sister’s apartment and goes stark raving mad, walking around in her nightgown, and at one point hallucinating that she is walking through a hallway with rows of hands protruding from the walls and trying to catch her.
We thought to ourselves, Oh no, are we going to see our Elia in the next episode walking through the loft in her nightgown and going stark raving mad in heavily accented English?
Well, we weren’t far wrong, for on the Thanksgiving episode, we had to witness you doing the loca-motion. We understood why you were upset. Tom Colicchio did send you mixed signals during the Quickfire Challenge. He told you that the meat hash and the fruit salad were great and wonderful, and yet he named you one of the losers. (By the way, this combination of hash and fruit salad for Christmas—is this just your family, or this is a Lebanese thing, or a Mexico City thing? We always had tamales and champurrado for Christmas, but perhaps that’s just us.) And Cliff was one of the winners, even though you tasted his food and “speet eet out.”
Unlike others, we don’t think you were just whining. You strike us as far too tough-minded for that sort of thing. As Chef Colicchio so understandingly put it in his blog, you “couldn’t handle losing faith in someone [you] had respected.” That strikes us as rather touching, and we think it struck him the same way, and that he was flattered by it. You can only lose faith if you had it to begin with.
As we say, we understand, and are touched by it. But tell us, was it like when the PRI lost the elections in Mexico for the first time in 60 years? Was it that kind of devastating, upending loss of faith? Because we don’t know how else to explain the moment when you pulled a Deneuve.
You were standing in the kitchen, whisking melted chocolate (presumably to help that ungrateful bitch Spice Rack with her thankless pseudo-crèmes brûlées), and then you suddenly announced, as if you were about to storm the Bastille, “At my school, they taught us never to leeck the wheesk,” which you then proceeded to do.
We have to tell you, for a second there, we thought we had gone from the Deneuve of Repulsion to the Deneuve of Belle de Jour. (First of all, “licking the whisk”? We chose it, right then and there, as our favorite euphemism for certain acts inconceivable to Queen Victoria and legalized by the Supreme Court only three years ago, thus replacing our previous favorite euphemism, “tipping the velvet.”)
And then, as the madness took hold, you proceeded to smear your face with chocolate, and then did an art project in chocolate on your chef’s whites, as if Yves Klein had been raised in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Do you realize, Elia, that an attractive woman with an accent smearing chocolate all over herself is the reason people went to artsy European films in the 60s? It’s a foodie’s Cinemax, softcore pure and simple, I Am Curious—Chocolate. Can you see why people are Googling “elia aboumrad bikini shot”?
We’re glad that you eventually sorted things out with Chef Colicchio and came to your senses, but Elia, really, we can’t let this happen again. Or if you’re going to pull another Deneuve, at least give the people what they want and wear a bikini while you are having your chocolate-smeared crisis of faith. ¿De acuerdo? It'll make our job a lot easier.
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.
We're just wondering--were Padma Lakshmi and Chef Michelle Bernstein classmates at Miss Ernestina Thesiger's School of Deportment for Young Ladies? Though, to be precise, in the second picture, Chef Bernstein's posture doesn't seem so much a product of training and decorum as a precautionary measure to catch her breasts should they droop any farther. May we suggest a bra? It's the only way to ensure that one's sweetbreads are kept, in the words of Nancy Grace, locked and loaded.
But the ladies weren't the only ones suffering from Contagious Posturing Syndrome (CPS), as becomes clear in this photograph.We'll keep our eyes peeled in further episodes for signs that CPS is spreading.
We like to think of this episode as an after-school special, where we learned about the importance of choice and consequence, caring and sharing, and getting a good lab partner.
We also learned that Gail Simmons did listen to Miss XaXa’s advice. She was the most fabulous woman on last night’s show, and we saw her in a situation that involved swinging and chandeliers…earrings, that is.
We learned that Tom Colicchio is pro choice, and that he makes a terrible beat cop and probation officer. For him, it’s all about the execution.
We learned that our sweet Elia has been hanging around Madame de Pompadour for too long and has started to pick up his eye-roll and his ‘tude. We’ll explain later in more detail, but we think that, as with much else involving Madame de Pompadour, it involves hair products and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
We learned that sweetbreads are neither sweet nor bread. In consequence, we learned just how tasty lymph nodes can be, so tasty that they gave Sam the win in the Quickfire Challenge.
We learned, much to our shock, that Frankie the Bull doesn’t like “subtle.”
We learned that Madame de Pompadour apparently drinks pig’s blood and may, in fact, be a vampire. Most importantly, though, he had an on-camera therapeutic breakthrough, and we learned about the traumatic prom incident from his youth that led him to retreat into a world of hair gel and alliteration.
We learned that Jennifer Coolidge is a cultural, perhaps even sexual, litmus test. Miss XaXa’s first reaction: “Jennifer who?” Beer Bong’s first reaction: “Stifler’s mom!” Our first reaction: “The hairdresser from Legally Blonde! Snap and bend!”
We learned that, for perhaps the first time in his life, Miss XaXa’s Carlos was forced to bottom, but that he can take it like a man. And a gentleman.
We learned from Chef Michelle Bernstein that, contrary to popular belief, dark lip liner is not a Latin girl’s best friend.
And finally, after Tarte Titass and Josie were sent packing (omigawd, a double execution!), we learned, for the second time this season, that butch girls do cry. (Confidential to Padma: We have it on very good authority that if you keep making the butch girls cry, the Lesbians will make sure you never get within sniffing distance of Stephanie Seymour. If we were you, we wouldn’t go out alone after dusk in New York. You might find yourself in a dark alley with Rosie O’Donnell and a dental dam. If you see a hulking figure in a leather jacket from the Broadway revival of “Grease,” run the other way as fast as your Louboutins will carry you. That’s not the kind of “pink lady” you’re looking to meet.)
