Top Chef Season-Premiere Recap: Great Northern Exposure

Throughout the hundreds upon hundreds of hours of TV episodes logged into my rotting brain, there’s still no show that brings me immediate comfort like Top Chef. You know how people feel about the Law and Order “dun dun”s? That’s how I feel about the Top Chef credits with all its clashing knives and wailing aughts guitars (“dununnunun DUNUNUN nunun DUNUN! DUNUN!”). Against all odds and producer intentions, this show just soothes me, and I’m thrilled to be diving in with you all almost 20 years (crikey) after I first fell for it. So! Let’s do this.

The opening montage gives us a few shaky vlogs of contestants heading out to compete, some impressive resumé lines, and the first of what I’m sure will be a million extended shots of the Delta logo. Once they all get to the same Canadian parking lot, they find the infamous Top Chef knife block, which almost made me as nervous as them. Season 21 (a.k.a. “Haaave You Met Milwaukee?”) used Kristen Kish taking over Padma Lakshmi’s host seat as an opportunity to shake up the show’s format, but many of the gambles — whether in format, editing, and pacing — didn’t exactly pay off. So while I absolutely get and support Top Chef wanting to experiment a bit after so long, last season’s constant deviations mostly ended up confusing a perfectly good formula.

Thankfully, this immediate knife pull twist isn’t quite as twisty as it seems. It’s just a scary way of dividing them up into five carpools of three people each. Then again, everyone’s right to suspect that their travel mates are also about to become their teammates. Once all 15 of our intrepid chefs are in the Top Chef kitchen, it’s time to learn about their Quickfire challenge — and another chance for me to breathe a sigh of relief. When last season’s premiere skipped the Quickfire, I missed it, and I think the contestants did, too. Quickfires might be incredibly stressful pressure cookers, but they’re also opportunities to get to know your competitors and judges, shake out some jitters, and just dive into cooking without thinking too hard.

Before the Quickfire, though, let’s address the Canadian elephant (would that be a moose…?) in the room. Kristen, Tom, and Gail greet the chefs in their all-denim tuxedo best to honor this season’s host country, which has unexpectedly become a much more political choice in our fresh new hellscape than anyone could’ve anticipated last summer, when this season was filmed. Can you imagine saying to Gail’s lovely face then that Kristen welcoming her home would feel like #resistance now? It’s absolutely ridiculous, but unfortunately, here we are!

Anyway, back to the actual cooking portion of this cooking competition show. Yes, this season’s Quickfires will still provide cash prizes instead of immunity, but I’m not mad at that. (Chefs make so little money! Give them more money!) Plus, this week’s Quickfire is vintage Top Chef. After each contestant gets 30 seconds to grab one (1) ingredient from the pantry, they have to combine their ingredients with the rest of their carpool’s to create a single dish. See? What better way to get to know each other than trying to pair maple syrup with king oyster mushroom as well and as rapidly as possible?

A surprising number of people go for corn, with one team even ending up with it as two out of their three ingredients. (Runners-up include apple and, interestingly, fresno chile.) Luckily, the judges supplement their ingredients with three more of their own choosing, thus rounding the requisite number up to six in honor of Toronto’s nickname of “The Six.” Kristen gives them tomatoes, Gail offers up chives, and Tom (of course) dictates at least one of their proteins by unveiling a pile of clams.

Maybe the Canada of it all got to them because the vibe in the kitchen for this Quickfire is … dare I say … pretty chill? The first Quickfire usually inspires way more open panic and flailing Muppet limbs, but everyone seems to be full duck’ing it, with most keeping any nerves under the surface while remaining outwardly focused. The most dramatic moment comes when Bailey Sullivan presents the blue team’s dish and fails to mention Anya El-Wattar or her cabbage contribution entirely, making it clear that she and fellow Chicago chef Zubair Mohajir might’ve forgotten they had a third teammate at all.

Other Quickfire highlights include inevitable main character Massimo Piedimonte wanting the prize money because his “kids need shoes!”, Tristan Epps sharing that he’s “a true Virgo major” (birth chart context is always key), and Mimi Weissenborn laughing through the pain of her recent ex taking all “the pots, pans, and pets” (need that Maine lesbian gossip ASAP).

Also, soup. So, so much soup. We have a puree, a nage, a broth, and a “charred corn sauce.” The red team even serves their corn and clam chowder inside of a hollowed apple at Vincenzo Loseto’s insistence — a move teammate Lana Lagomarsini side-eyed as a gimmick, but which pays off when Tom scrapes the bottom and gets a delicious bite of apple and chowder and chive relish. The judges were apparently down for soup that day, though, with all agreeing that the food was overall strong enough to keep Tom from being “grumpy,” for now. Still, the winners of $15,000 are Mimi, Katianna Hong, and César Murillo of the yellow team, whose apple and fennel soup with potato and chorizo proved the best puree of the day. Go get yourself some new pots, Mimi! Treat yourself!

With that, it’s on to the Elimination Challenge. I was once again relieved to realize it would be fairly straightforward. Out come Canadian chefs Sheila Flaherty, David Zilber, Jeremy Charles, and Top Chef World All-Stars Dale McKay and Nicole Gomez. Each holds their own baskets of ingredients representing five different regions of Canada. The Quickfire teams are now Elimination Challenge competitors, with each taking on a different region/basket to create their own dish from at least three of its ingredients. One person will be on top, another safe in the middle, and the unlucky third on the bottom.

Anya immediately wants the North basket, which reminds her of the Russian food she grew up eating with such ingredients as beets, arctic char, and crowberries. I immediately want her to get the North basket after her teammates so disrespected her during the Quickfire. (Accidentally, I’m sure, but still!) Luckily, even though they’re one of the last teams to pick, she gets her wish. Otherwise, the winning yellow team’s first pick is Central (including pork, peaches, and rainbow trout). The purple team goes for Prairie (including beef, walleye, sour cherries), red for Western (including lamb, hazelnuts, plums), and finally, the green team gets Atlantic (including Snow crab, potatoes, and blueberries).

For as much as I can love a wacky theme, this is my favorite kind of Top Chef challenge. It smartly ties into the episode’s setting and provides enough parameters to inspire some creativity but gives the chefs enough room to just show off what they can do. Of course, that doesn’t mean they can’t still screw it up for no reason, as when Bailey decides her first individual dish on Top Chef will be risotto. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen chefs on this show walk into the risotto trap; I will always yell at my screen like I’m watching someone in a horror movie check their basement for a serial killer, because I essentially am! Don’t go in there unless you know you can actually avoid the knife that’s definitely coming for your face!!

Without The Bear-style visuals that made last season so disorienting, this Elimination challenge cook feels, once again, pretty straightforward. There are inevitably fuckups, like Paula Endara losing track of her lamb chops’ cooking time and Mimi losing track of just about everything. Maybe lulled into a sense of security by how well the Quickfire went, final plating issues also start to plague this crew. Tristan forgets the entire curry element of his dish (though the judges ultimately think his dish might’ve been better off without it), while Kat ends up haphazardly throwing elements over her dishes at the final buzzer like she’s feeding pigeons rather than judges.

One of the first dishes served is also the ultimate favorite. From the red/Western team, everyone goes gaga for Vinny’s confit salmon with mushrooms and hazelnuts cooked in miso butter, all sitting on a consomme using all the above. (Will “consomme” become this season’s “dashi”? TBD!) He secures the win and immunity for next week’s Elimination challenge.

Other contenders include Anya, whose dish leans into her Russian roots after she explains that she “can’t delete” her home country’s significance in her upbringing despite her complicated relationship with it now. Shuai’s steamed cod with braised daikon in egg drop sauce impresses with its many textures. Cesar thoroughly delights Tom, in particular, with a little radicchio-wrapped peach he practically coos at, calling it “so sweet!” in a voice I usually reserve for my dog when she … well, okay, when she does basically anything, but in my defense, she’s so sweet!!

As is the danger with grouped challenges, some of the teams overall do far better than others and end up sending perfectly good dishes such as Massimo’s French cod “love letter” to the bottom when he could’ve placed way better elsewhere. But after giving Kat a quick but educational scare for her sloppy plating, the judges’ table comes to an abrupt end when Kristen tells Mimi to pack her knives and go without any further discussion.

An elimination like that’s always jarring, but in this case, it makes sense. The quality was otherwise high across the board, and the second Mimi introduced her dish with, “I wanted to do [not what I ended up doing],” she knew it, they knew it, and the subsequent shellacking of her “elevated hospital food” (ouch) made it too obvious that she’d be the one to go.

And so off Mimi goes to Last Chance Kitchen to fight for more pots and pans and pets, and off we go to the rest of a new Top Chef season that will hopefully delight us as much as a radicchio-wrapped peach.

Spare Crumbs 

• This year’s Top Chef prize pot is, frankly, bonkers. Not only will the winner get $250,000 and the requisite Food & Wine feature and Aspen festival spotlight, but their own headline dinner at New York’s James Beard house, Delta “SkyMiles Diamond Medallion Status,” and $125,000 for Delta travel. That last one would have me stomping on heads to get to the finale, so I can only imagine how cutthroat that kitchen might get.

• With apologies to Kat explaining her job as Billy Corgan’s personal vegan chef, my biggest gasp of the night went to Katianna, whose (very lovely) story about connecting with her Korean-American roots also included a casual reveal that her adopted brother is….actor Reid Scott?! (Okay, she didn’t actually say that, but I did in fact pause the photo of them together to confirm that I was looking at Dan Egan, so you’re all welcome, I confirmed it.)

• Biggest laugh of the night: Massimo blowing out the judges’ eardrums and Tristan’s wry, “you get used to it.”

• As a fan of Kristen well before she got the hosting gig, I’ve also been impressed with her stepping into the role with such casual confidence — a quality that also serves her well when stepping into a Technicolor array of suits I would do unspeakable things to own. So for this week’s Kristen Kish Suit Envy Watch, I’m ranking her crimson pinstripe suit at a comfortable 9, because I actively drooled at the sight of it and need my own for lounging at a lush Christmas party, please.

• At time of writing, I don’t know anything about Last Chance Kitchen. But it sure looks like we have another new contender rising out of its ranks, which … I don’t love. We’ll see! Discuss!