Top Chef Power Rankings 08/11/10

Restaurant Wars is normally one of my favorite episodes. It was originally a task given to the team to transform a room into a restaurant concept basically over night. This season, (and last) the refs were given a restaurant and basically had to cook food that loosely tied together. The judges even commented about the restaurants concepts sounding nice, but then receiving something completely different.

Bravo gave us the old switcheroo (I actually called this) and showed us how much the red team was struggling to get along and how there was no way they could win not working together, while the blue team worked hormonally together and with their staff on a way to what looked like an easy victory. Well, not so fast my friends. The red team ended up winning and tempers flared.

Everybody hates Alex. The red team was trying to hide him by giving him mundane tasks, like chopping meat and they didn’t even like that, then sending him to the front of the house so he couldn’t screw up the food. The blue team called him out for not creating a dish, a requirement of the challenge. I honestly can’t say I blame them.

In the end, Kenny was sent home. I can’t say that I blame the judges for this decision. He has been up and down all season and his mistakes on his dishes were the same he always has done. He tried to show off everything he knew, and ending producing too much on one plate that didn’t go together. I personally would have voted Amanda off, but I didn’t eat the food.

On to the power rankings. Not too much movement this week cause no chefs really shined.


1. Angelo Sosa (last week #1)

Angelo looked flustered for the first time this season. He was almost clueless on what to do as the anchor in the quick fire. He also was going crazy at seeing what Alex was doing. In the end he still produced some good food, but nothing special.


2. Kelly Like (last week #2)

Kelly is still in prime position to pass Angelo. She finished the dish in the winning quickfire and her chocolate dessert was one of the judges favorites. She did this on top of doing a decent job as front of the house, even though I have no idea what she was wearing. Saying all that, her corn soup apparently was not so good. She’s still right there ready to pass Angelo, she just needs to take the next step.


3. Tiffany Derry (last week #3)

After going two for two last week, Tiffany had a pretty quiet week. Her food came out good, but nothing spectacular. I think she could very easily win this competition. I think she is one of the most calm chefs in the kitchen, always a good thing, and stays composed in tough situations. She we’ll need to put out some great dishes compared to her normal good dishes to win though.


4. Ed Cotton (last week #5)

Ed gets the win on what looked like a good dish. That win is enough to put him into the top shelf group, but not good enough to pass up Tiffany. I am not really sure what Ed did in the quickfire, so that doesn’t hurt or help him. Right now I have him as a finalist and I think he makes the finals. It wouldn't suprise me to see him move up these rankings more as the season winds down.

Middle of the Pack


5. Kevin Sbraga (last week #6)

Kevin finally seems to have figured the competition out. He has been cooking a lot more consistent these past couple weeks and probably would have won his second elimination challenge in a row if the blue team would have won. The judges loved his fish dish, even though they were a little disappointed he only attempted one dish. I think now the Kenny is gone, Kevin defiantly has a shot to make it to the finals. He is not that far behind Ed in my mind.


Chopping Block


7. Amanda Baumgarten (last week #8)

Yes, there is no 6 this week, we have two sevens. These bottom two chefs shouldn’t be hear. I find it hard to believe that Andrea, Kenny and Arnold are all gone and these two are here. Amanda is our first seven because, even though she didn’t cook her steak well, at least she cooked. The biggest problem for Amanda, was trying to cook something she didn’t know. She was trying to use the wood burning stove, which is good, but she had no idea what to do. For a wood burning stove, you need to be cooking on only coals, and from what I saw, she was cooking on top of flames, which pass a lot of gases to the food. She was also cooking with grass fed beef. Grass fed beef is generally considered better tasting, but she had never cooked it before and it handles differently the corn fed beef.


7. Alex Reznik (last week #7)

I pretty much summed up Alex in the intro, but the Bravo cameras showed us how Alex prepared the staff and seemed to be an jerk for being a jerks sake. He was a very nervous front of the house and even screwed up the presentation to the judges. He didn’t make a dish, and survived. There is a huge gap between Kevin and these two chefs. I don’t see how he will make it to the finals.