Watch enough competition shows, and you’ll learn to recognize the moment when competitors hit the wall mentally — when they get to that place where they just, in the immortal words of Tim Robinson’s Karl Havoc, “don’t want to be around anymore.” The moment doesn’t have to be explicit. It can just be a sort of energy, a kind of shift, that signals when people who were winning suddenly stop doing it. They’re tapped out, and there’s something a little tragic and bittersweet about watching it. That’s what happens to Savannah and Laura in Top Chef: Wisconsin semifinal “Set Sail,” and it’s a bummer. Both women had been on such a roll recently, and yet they’re definitively on the bottom this week. Maybe six weeks off was too much?
To be fair, it’s an off week for nearly everyone. Contestant-wise, Danny and Dan each serve a dish that the judges identify as having major technical problems. Top Chef production-wise, they get the legendary Masaharu Morimoto to appear and cook the chefs a meal, but then they don’t have him stick around and judge an elimination challenge partially inspired by his work, which is very weird. And person-wise, Dan gets further in my “ugh, this guy” category when he boasts, over and over, that Tom “sopped up” one of his dishes while the episode cuts to Tom insulting his food. (Whichever editor made that choice, I salute your bitchy energy.) No one sticks around at the judges’ table long enough to see how much of their dish the judges are going to eat! Why would Dan have this impression? If this braggadocio was an intimidation move to try and get in the other chefs’ heads, it totally failed since Tom later told Dan, to his face, that his fish was raw and his dish a mess. I know I’ve turned on Dan in recent weeks, but there’s a smugness there that I am exhausted by, and this moment was a particularly indicative example of how he’s walking around like the automatic next winner of Top Chef when I’m not so sure he’s done enough to deserve that big-headedness. And to see Laura and Savannah collapse from their upswings — it hurt me.
The episode picks up six weeks after “Goodbye, Wisconsin” and gathers Danny, Dan, Savannah, and Laura in the island nation Curaçao. Their Quickfire is to pair lionfish, an invasive species in the Caribbean that local chefs like guest judge Helmi Smeulders are encouraged to use, with Dutch gouda. Because the lionfish have poisonous spikes, the chefs will have the fish preemptively cleaned for them — which seems like a missed opportunity to really test how well versed the chefs are in seafood, given that this whole week is seafood-centered, but fine. With only 30 minutes, nearly everyone chooses to do a raw preparation of the lionfish: Dan makes a tartare aguachile, Laura a ceviche with guava, and Savannah a crudo inspired by the national dish of keshi yena. Only Danny breaks away from that by cooking the lionfish in deep-fried croquettes. The judges praise Danny’s dish because it was different, but Tom thinks it didn’t focus on the lionfish enough. Savannah and Laura both did well, too, but it’s Dan who walks away with the win and $10,000, with Gail specifically praising his use of Kewpie mayonnaise in the tartare binding. If you’re not using Kewpie, you should; it’s luscious and delightful.
The final elimination challenge is far more involved. The chefs will need to present an eight-course fish-tasting menu, a challenge inspired by the cruise company Holland America Line’s commitment to serving fresh seafood. (I will not repeat more of Kristen’s advertising for this cruise line, but be assured that there was a whole spiel about it.) In order, the courses need to be raw, steamed, mousse, poached, fried, roasted, smoked, and blackened, and each chef needs to prepare two courses and pick two different kinds of fish. Savannah’s advantage from winning the last episode’s elimination challenge is that she gets to choose her fish and her preparations, and she goes with raw salmon and fried striped bass. She decides this after the chefs shop in a local floating market for whatever ingredients catch their eye and after they’re served dinner by legendary Iron Chef Morimoto, who happens to be the cruise’s Fresh Fish Ambassador. (I deeply resent that my brain has been damaged enough by The Boys that I thought, “Fresh Fish Ambassador” would be a good secondary name for the Deep, actually.) There’s a little bit of friction when Laura and Dan butt heads over who gets the snapper, but otherwise, the division goes smoothly. Danny takes mousse sea bream and smoked rainbow trout, Dan poaches dorade and blackened snapper, and Laura roasts grouper and steams black bass. (A thought: I didn’t care for Danny and Dan trying to pressure Laura into giving up snapper and doing roasted monkfish instead. If that dish would be so great, you two do it!)
The next day, the four make their way to the Eurodam cruise ship’s (cramped) kitchen and get to work cooking for Kristen, Tom, Gail, Top Chef alumnus Edward Lee, and a number of guest judges who work for the cruise line. Everyone seems pretty confident in the kitchen until things start going wrong, fast, when the judges dig into the food and discover that most of the fish they’re served is cooked incorrectly. It’s honestly a little shocking how inconsistent everyone is. Going chef by chef, the judges say Savannah’s sake-cured salmon roll with ginger dressing was too safe and the dressing too grainy, and her fried striped-bass sandwich had too much bread and not enough fish. Laura serves steamed black bass in a banana leaf, which the judges say wasn’t cleaned correctly and gave the dish a dirty taste, and her grouper roasted with guajillo chili and pineapple broth is another failure; nearly everyone’s fish was raw, and her aioli sauce split. Danny’s mousse didn’t steam correctly and is also raw, but the judges praise his Scotch bonnet and green garlic spheres and his sauces and then go gaga over his smoked rainbow trout with smoked rainbow-trout foam and hazelnut-lemon relish. And Dan has a bad dish in his (raw) poached dorade with coconut turmeric sauce and a (greasy) yucca fritter, but he also does better on his second offering, blackened snapper with Chinese five-spice and butter-poached potatoes. The judges love that he switched up traditional Cajun blackening spices, and Kristen says it was the best-cooked piece of fish they got all day, which is a real shocker since it’s the last dish they were served of the eight.
It’s pretty clear going into judges’ table that Danny and Dan are safe for each making one solid dish, and Danny gets the win for the creativity of his Scotch bonnet and green garlic spheres and his smoked-trout dish, which Ed Lee calls brilliant and unexpected. He’ll be in the finals, and Dan will, too. When it comes time to decide between Laura and Savannah, the judges wonder what’s worse: Savannah’s safe but unremarkable dishes or Laura’s more adventurous but badly executed dishes? When Tom says that Laura had the worst dish in the roasted grouper — which she more baked than roasted, since she didn’t treat it with any fat before putting it in the oven — that seals her fate. Next week, Danny, Dan, and Savannah compete for the Wisconsin crown, after being told by Tom and Kristen that they’re all cooking scared and need to have fun with it. Sure, sure. Personally, I’ll be having fun with the fact that Emeril Lagasse is back. An icon!
Assorted amuse-bouche
• Tom hat watch: another straw fedora! Do you think Tom bought a special one just for this trip?
• The dishes I most wanted to eat this episode: Danny’s croquettes and Savannah’s fried-fish sandwich. Yes, I want crisp and crunch.
• If someone makes an agua chile for the final challenge, I swear I will track down Tom and eat one of his hats.
• I’ve never had quenepas before, but they look like lychee and rambutan, both of which I love. Can someone report back on similarity?
• If Morimoto’s “It’s good because I made it” description of his tuna pizza charmed you, you can watch old Iron Chef episodes for free on a ton of streaming services, including Pluto and Tubi. Also available on Peacock for that Bravo and NBCUniversal brand synergy.
• I do appreciate how this show has treated Danny’s Muslim faith matter-of-factly by showing him praying, drinking a nonalcoholic drink, and talking about his decision to convert. Anything’s better than that time Jeff Goldblum was on Drag Race.
• My partner and I were big fans of the judges talking about how the Dutch just happened to introduce gouda to Curaçao centuries ago. (“That’s crazy. Why were the Dutch there?” may have been said in a deadpan tone in our home.) Top Chef has gotten better about being like, “And this was because of colonialism,” but this whole episode felt so tourism-spon-con influenced that I’m guessing they wanted to avoid talking about the evils of the Dutch East India Company and slavery. Here’s some academic writing on how residents of the island feel about its colonial history and a broader look at colonialism within the Caribbean and its lingering effects.
• Thank you to Khadjiah Johnson for writing the recap while I was away last week! You can follow her on Instagram and X.
