Last Week on ‘Top Chef’: An Intersection on the Venn Diagram of Things That We Love

A new Top Chef in just a few hours.  But can anything top last week’s episode with featuring Sesame Street AND Target?  Probably not!

A few highlights!

• COOKIE MONSTER.  DUH!
• Elmo suggests perhaps making a cookie out of zucchini and daikon and dirt and cobwebs and rice cakes and Canadian pennies.  Luckily, Cookie Monster tells him to shut the fuck up.
• Cookie Monster invokes the five second rule and is pretty much just the best.

• Carla mentions that she’s a caterer.  WE GET IT, CARLA, YOU’RE A CATERER.  Also, you used to be a model. WE KNOW.
• Dale makes a cookie with potato chips, even though Momofuku Milk Bar already perfected that.  Guys!  Stop ripping off Momofuku.
• Telly Monster opened some eyes with some real insightful, informed commentary.  And the award for least-used Sesame Street monster goes to Telly Monster!  Although, we have to admit, Elmo gets in a pretty good, if somewhat nonsensical, line in here.  Gotta give it to him.

• Then Elmo starts working a little blue.  Totally NSFC.
• Blaise makes ice cream cookies which is totally okay with us because we have no doubt they were delicious and that’s all Cookie Monster should care about.
• But even though Cookie Monster has a problem with Blaise’s cookies he has no such issues with Dale’s potato chip cookies and awards him the Quickfire win.  C’mon, CM!  A little hypocritical, don’t you think?  You’re still the best, but don’t you think you’re trying to have your cookie and eat it too?
• It’s really fortuitous that the Sesame Street monsters visited the chefs this week, because we’ve been thinking for a while that Richard kind of looks like a Muppet when he talks.  Not so much like these monsters, but more like a Guy Smiley, wide-mouthed, square jaw type.

• Then it’s off to Target for a shopping spree!  Which is literally our adult fantasy.  Go to it, cheftestants!

• Blaise wishes he could grab some of the TVs.  To which we say: GO FOR IT!  If anyone could figure out a way to integrate a WiFi-ready Samsung 1080p HDTV into a dish it’s Professor Ricky Blaise.  Just freeze it or make it into a foam.  Boom!
• Carla spends 4 hours shopping because she’s like “What kind of tablecloth goes with nothing?” And “What type of babies breath complements food that I haven’t had time to cook because I’ve been waking up and down the Target aisles for the last 4 hours?”  and “What kind of picture frames work best with a bland, unsatisfying soup I’m going to have to haphazardly slap together because I’ve wasted my entire cooking time.”
• Dale makes grilled cheese with an iron.  Which is totally awesome and something that makes total sense and something we’d totally try if we had an iron and didn’t have basic human cooking amenities.  Totally!  And guest judge Ming Tsai, himself a cheftestant on The Next Iron Chef, remarks that Dale’s use of the household appliance was perhaps an effort to become an “Iron Chef.”  Get it? IRON chef.  NICE ONE, MING TSAI!  If Elmo ever decides to leave Sesame Street, you’re in!  Although, Tony Bourdain is not amused.
• 200 Target employees arrive and are like “I can’t believe I had to get up at 3 in the fucking morning for this” (although, if it was us we’d be like “This is the best 3am-4am of my life.  I can’t believe they’re fucking letting me come in for his).
• Angelo thinks he could sneak in some Fiji water as part of the shopping spree haul.  Sorry, Angelo, YOU’LL HAVE TO PAY FOR THAT!
• Bourdain and Tom Colicchio know that 3am challenge time is also sweater time.  That’s just Chefology 101.

• Carla has an existential crisis and feels nothing.
• Dale wins!  Duh!  Even though he knows he won because he thought like a stoned frat boy.  25K, bitches!
• Angelo admits he’s suffering from a fatigued palette.
• Tiffany knows that her jambalaya was terrible and makes a convoluted, misguided last-minute “I’m not a fancy big city lawyer, I’m from Beaumont, Texas” plea.
• Tom knows that Tiffany’s jambalaya was terrible and she’s going home and her convoluted, misguided last-minute “I’m not a fancy big city lawyer, I’m from Beaumont, Texas” plea won’t work.

• And it works!  Angelo goes home!
• And Mike I. knows that Tiffany’s jambalaya was terrible and can’t believe Angelo went home and is a total asshole about it and is all “YOU?  HUH?? WHA??? DER????”

ANGELO YOU ARE THE WEAKEST LINK PLEASE PACK YOUR KNIVES AND GO SORRY ABOUT YOUR FATIGUED PALETTE EVEN THOUGH EVERYONE THINKS YOU’RE A JOKE AND IS SKEPTICAL OF YOUR RUSSIAN GIRLFRIEND YOU ARE A BETTER CHEF THAN TIFFANY YOU SHOULD HAVE DELIVERED A CONVOLUTED MISGUIDED LAST-MINUTE “I’M NOT A FANCY BIT CITY LAWYER I’M FROM BEAUMONT TEXAS PLEA” YOU CAN GO HOME AND PLAY BASEBALL WITH YOUR SON NOW GOODBYE

Next week: Intersection on the venn diagram of things that we hate: Paula Deen, Carla’s bandanna and Marcel!  At least there’s no Ina Garten (yet).