This week's episode of Top Chef Canada was double the trouble with challenges in pairs, teamwork and possible hook-ups.
Vancouver's Shelley Robinson showed that she is a team player by working well with her partners, but Karine Moulin and Lauren Marshall were sent home for letting their partners down.
Monday's episode started with Vittorio Colacitti and Evelynn Takoff's romance, that's starting to be more apparent to everyone in the house. Given the seriousness of the competition, Robinson was surprised at their budding romance.
Colacitti and Takoff were “pairing up” and the chefs' Quickfire Challenge had to do the same thing. The chefs were put into teams of two and had to create one dish. But there was a catch — the competitors were tied up, three-legged race-style, and had to operate as one unit.
Robinson was paired with Terry Salmond and they managed to squeeze through the challenge without a mention, good or bad. Vancouver's Matthew Stowe, season 3's winner, was there to judge each dish and named Rich Francis and Rene Rodriguez's duck breast with chanterelle mushroom ragout and sour cherry gastrique as the best dish, giving them immunity.
For the Elimination Challenge the chefs were paired off anew. This time their challenge was to make a dish inspired by arena food. (Yuck, right?) Robinson was paired with Pierre Lamielle and they had the daunting task of making a dish inspired by chili cheese fries and caramel popcorn.
The chefs soon found out that not one chef would be going home this week, but two, creatng double the pressure. They were given 15 minutes and a $250 budget to get groceries. After grocery shopping, the chefs relaxed in the hot tub and Lauren Marshall's worries about the Elimination Challenge came up. She was worried because her partner, Rodriguez, had immunity and might not feel the need to push himself. Rodriguez assured her that they'd be fine.
On the day of the Elimination Challenge, the chefs were thrown a curveball by adding an extra task to their already planned, dishes. Each pair was given a sport to model their dish on and everyone gathered at the Real Sports Bar & Grill in Toronto. Sitting with the judges were Amir Johnson, forward/centre for the Toronto Raptors, and Tony Glitz, Real Sports' executive chef.
Salmond and Jesse Vergen lucked out with their sports pairing for their arena food, chicken wings and funnel cake. Football went perfectly with their plan to use chicken skin in their dish. (Get it? Pig-skin? Chicken-skin?). Francis and Karine Moulin were paired and stresses were high (for Francis, anyways) when they discovered they had received chicken breast instead of chicken skin for their hot dog and mini doughnut-inspired dish. Marshall decided take the back-seat to Rodriguez because of his immunity and follow his orders instead of actually putting in any effort. She said it would be easier to just follow instead of creating conflict.
Robinson and Lamielle did the exact opposite — they split their tasks down the middle and did an equal amount of work. In the co-operative spirit of teamwork, Robinson even stepped back when she felt Lamielle's dish didn't have enough chili taste.
When it came to presenting to the judges, Robinson and Lamielle were commended for their soccer-inspired chili-cheese meatballs with popcorn fries. The only criticism was it was slightly lacking seasoning. They were named the second-best dish, while Salmond and Vergen won the challenge with their chicken ballotine with buttermilk waffle tulle. The remaining contestants were told they had the worst dishes.
Francis and Rodriguez were safe from elimination, leaving Marshall, Moulin, Takoff and Colacitti up to be sent home. Colacitti was reprimanded for his chocolate mascarpone calzone, letting down his partner, Takoff, who did a great job with her peanut butter ice cream. In the end, Marshall and Moulin were sent packing. (Marshall was sent home because of her lack of leadership skills and Moulin because of her bad mini doughnut-inspired gnocchi.)
The women are getting scarcer as the competition goes on, leaving Robinson and Takoff as the only two women left fighting for the title of Top Chef Canada.
Top Chef Canada airs Mondays at 10pm on the Food Network.
