Top Chef – The One Where We Eat Traditional Texas Rattlesnake

“Not a lot was great.  A lot of things sucked.” – Ty-lor (I’m not umlauting his name every time he gets mentioned)

Time to get week three rolling and we start with Beverly who is taping an inspirational message up on the mirror.  She may be talented, but her inspirational messages and proneness to unprovoked crying is already grating on my nerves.  Padma comes out with Johnny Hernandez instead of Jake “The Snake” Roberts (seriously, how is he not dead?) who would have been appropriate because it’s a Quickfire centered on that traditional Texas staple, rattlesnake.  I’ve lived in Texas all my life and if I had to count up how many of dem der varmints I’ve eaten, it’s 1, 2, 3, 0.  This Texas-ifying is already old. 

You’ll never guess, but hardly anybody likes snakes or ever cooked them.  Keith and Dakota are particularly averse to them because, well Keith is black and Dakota who knows.  This is where the challenge could’ve gotten really fun because each chef has a box in front of them.  They open up the boxes  and!!!  The snakes are dead and skinned.  Yawn.  At least tell them that one box has a live snake in it just so, you know, we see a real Man vs. Food.  Alas, no dice and Padma shows off her dirty vocabulary as we begin.  Now I realize I need better notes as my notes say “Tattoo – snake fritter.”  “Tattoo” could be half of these people.  Paul makes bbq snake with an Asian slaw.  Beverly does a snake nigiri.  Sarah flash fries hers with brown butter and capers.  First the worst…Paul, Richie, and Nyesha.  Best of the rest…Beverly, Dakota, and Sarah.  The first Quickfire win goes to…Dakota and her beer battered rattler. 

Elimination Challenge is a team challenge between Team Pink and Team Green.  Blanca Flores comes out and we have our quinceanera challenge before us.  Maybe it’s not so bad we missed out on the “Houston, We Have A Problem” Quickfire, but hopefully we’ll get, as @ApeDonkey, a Buccee’s challenge.   Anyway the teams meet with Blanca, menu plan and off to the grocery stores they go.  I’m on Team Green with Paul and Edward because that team has a clue.  Unlike Pink which is completely unorganized.  We understand that right out of the box as they decide to do a shrimp cocktail and while we see several of them at the seafood counter nobody stops Keith from asking for precooked shrimp.  Keith just became -800 to go home tonight.  Who could possibly think that’s a good idea?!  Of course this team also thinks that store bought tortillas and tilapia in ceviche are good ideas.  Tilapia ceviche, just wow and vomit-inducing.  Not even a grocery store would put that in its sushi display and this is “Top Chef?”  Pink is going with dishes like cochinita pibil, huaraches and green chile posole while Dakota handles the cake.  Green offers up shrimp ceviche, carnitas, chicken mole, gazpacho, short ribs and former pastry chef Heather does a tres leches cake.  It looks like a blob, but a delicious blob. 

The party starts and here come the judges who are introduced to Blanca and then introduced to the chefs because the chefs might have forgotten I guess.  First up Pink which comes across as pretty underwhelming.  It decided to not even use the shrimp, but Keith managed to use flour tortillas for his enchiladas.  Wow.  How he’s never had enchiladas is beyond me, but not as much as how nobody told him to roll with corn.  Dakota’s cake doesn’t grade out well because it’s covered in icing, but she has immunity.  Green up next and they also used store bought tortillas.  Seriously, you knew the show was going to be in Texas and nobody thought to learn how to make tortillas?  Green fared much better in the judging especially Chicago Chris’ empanadas and Heather’s cake that while not easy on the eyes was pleasing to the stomach.  Dinner is over and it’s time for the traditional father/daughter dance.  Beverly starts bawling because something about how even though she’s a daughter she can do as much as a son.  I don’t know.  I can see her having a mental breakdown before we got too much further in the competition. 

The judges inform Pink that it lost and they summon Keith, Ty-lor, Sarah, and Lindsay to the table of doom.  The shrimp fiasco comes out and nobody has Keith’s back even though nobody stopped him.  They admit they were unorganized which prompts Hugh to ask, “You guys are eight chefs.  You can’t lead?”  Truer words.  For all the accolades that crew has achieved it’s amazing they were this bad.  We all know it’s inevitable that big Rick Ross looking teddy bear known as Keith is as good as gone.  He’s chopped, whoops, sent to pack his knives.  Next week “Padma on a horse is pure beauty” so we have that going for us.

Tagged rattlesnake, slider, tilapia ceviche, top chef texas