Top Chef Masters introduces us to basil gelato

July 15, 11:43 PMTop Chef ExaminerChristine Fu

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Top Chef Masters Michael Chiarello Photo: Bravo TV

Tonight's episode of Top Chef Masters featured another round of four all star chefs from around the country. The cheftestants competing were seafood aficionado Rick Moonen, Swedish head chef of the French Culinary Institute Nils Noren, Colorado prodigy Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson, and television chef Michael Chiarello.

The episode started off with the much looked forward to junkfood challenge. While I as a viewer loved this challenge from season 1 of Top Chef, the cheftestants were not quite as enthused.

I guess high end chefs really cringe at the thought of junk food, and in Chiarello's case can't even seem to recognize a lot of the foods most of us grew up on. A little pretentious much? But I guess there's no such thing as fried food in Napa Valley.

After landing the first choice, Chiarello chose to recreate fish and chips, Patterson went with the hot dog, Moonen on the corn dog, and Noren with fried shrimp.

It was in the quickfire in which we saw the worst performance on Top Chef Masters thus far. If you thought Wylie was chaotic, with Besh trumping that performance last week, Moonen takes the top prize for most frenetic and crazed performance in a quickfire challenge coming up with a big fat zero from the judges.

In something never seen on Top Chef, Moonen was unable to complete his seafood corn dog resulting in an unfortunate zero stars, leading guest judge Jeff Lewis of Flipping Out to declare "Didn't they have 45 minutes? We were robbed!"

Patterson barely cooked his tomato stew with pork sausage and Noren's poached and shrimp landed each of them 3 stars.

Interestingly, Chiarello, the seemingly underdog chef due to the fact that he hasn't been cooking in restaurants for years, came in first with 4.5 stars for his swordfish meatballs.

Going into the elimination challenge with zero stars, Moonen was determined to make a comeback. And sure did he go for it. In a comeback reminiscent of Rocky's, Moonen came in just shy in his attempt to do the impossible.

The cheftestants were tasked to cook a three course mini meal inspired by an appetizer, entree and dessert for one hundred Top Chef fans. As Patterson correctly pointed out, that means three hundred dishes. Since most of the chefs haven't gone solo in years, this proved to be a very daunting task. Cooking and preparing three hundred dishes while also entertaining a crowd played to the different chefs' strengths.

At the cocktail party, Chiarello shined as he proved to be the consummate entertainer given his years as a television chef. The master of using all his resources including his waiters and even his guests, Chiarello appeared to rely heavily on charm in order to move on ahead. In the end his three course meal and quickfire win proved too much to overcome a very valiant effort by Moonen.

With an almost perfect trio of ceviche, brandade and a lemon panna cotta, Moonen scored the highest with both the fans and the critics in the elimination challenge. Unfortunately having earned no stars in the quickfire made it nearly impossible for him to catch up to Chiarello. Only a total meltdown from the other chefs would have made it possible.

In the end, Patterson fared the worst in the elimination challenge with an odd combination of a fried pineapple and speck appetizer that made it difficult for the rest of his meal to compensate for. Noren had a wonderfully executed effort on his appetizer of sliced scallop and entree of slow cooked salmon, but faltered on his strangely smoked dessert dish. Message to Nils - we know the Swedish love smoking their food, but maybe not their desserts.

With a total of 19.5 stars and the win locked in with his complex dessert featuring basil gelato, television chef Michael Chiarello defied the odds and walked away with the fifth place in the championship round.

While he beat out his fellow competitors in this round, I think he enters the championship as perhaps the weakest of the five thus far. Prove me wrong chef Chiarello!