Recap Roundup - Top Chef Texas Episode 13

Minxeats on the big adventure: "For the Elimination Challenge, we get to share Pee Wee's bad memories of the Alamo. In the 1985 movie, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, his precious bike gets stolen; Pee Wee is told that it can be found in the basement of the Alamo. So he travels across the country only to find that...the Alamo has no basement! Twenty-seven years later (!), he's still quite bitter about the whole deal and intends to take out his anger on someone...anyone. Ed, Paul, Grayson, Sarah, and Lindsay will have to do."

David Dust on the Quickfire Challenge: "This week, the chefs enter the Top Chef kitchen and are greeted by a table full of Padmas and a pancake (or vice versa, my notes are sketchy). Pancake Padma explains that they’ll be making the favorite food of today’s guest judge. Grayson immediately thinks they might be cooking for Miley Cyrus, but if that were the case there would be Funyons and cigarettes on that table instead of pancakes. Duh."

My Monkey Could Do That on the problems with the bottom three: "Sarah’s cooking was perfect, but it is too late in the competition to not have seasoning. Poaching chicken in beef fat was a strange way for Ed to cook chicken, and the texture turned out strange. Grayson had huge chicken breasts (I guess that’s a thing with her) and mixing butternut squash and tomatoes is like mixing a summer dish with a fall dish? Yeah, I can see that."

Max the Girl on Ed: "Finally, when he gets to Edward, who has made this nifty dish with the pancake crispy bits and ends, Edward jokingly recites the line along with him. (And is it just me, or has Edward gotten looser—and I don’t just mean his jaw—over these past few episodes? He’s smiling more, he’s sleeping in funny suits, he’s bending himself around chairs. If he keeps this up he might actually become—gasp!—likable!) Aaaand . . . Edward wins! (Hey, that’s 5 grand toward jaw-anchoring surgery. Don’t knock it.)"

A Just Recompense on sadistic producers: "So it’s pretty much a matter of, let’s kill the chefs.

"Seriously, think about it. First they plan all these outdoor challenges for summer in Texas. What, no one thought it might be hot? Add in bees. Now riding bicycles in traffic. Was a requirement of this season that the chefs be able to ride bikes? What if someone never rode a bike? What if someone has hemorrhoids? Beverly can’t even walk through a supermarket without crashing into shelves, can you imagine her on a bike? Maybe that’s why she was eliminated, come to think of it. And at one point Grayson is riding a bike through traffic with a foil container of hot chicken in one hand."

Eater on bicycle racing: "Each chefs gets a bike, and they've got three hours to bike around and scrounge for ingredients and a restaurant kitchen in which to work. They only have a hundred dollars to spend, and no more than one chef can be in a restaurant at a time. After that, they've got to make a family-style lunch for Pee-Wee at the Alamo. Bikes? Random restaurant kitchens? What IS this challenge? We are about three episodes from the finale. Don't some of these people have James Beard Awards? Grayson says it's tough, that 'we could fall, we could not find a restaurant to cook in.' Falling off a bike and not getting permission to borrow a burner are certainly two of the realest challenges, testing their real-world cooking abilities, a real chef could face. As Jacques Pepin once said, 'Cooking is about technique, and technique is about repetition, and also make sure your helmet fits good and that your bike horn is trés loud beep-beep coming through!'"

Entertainment Weekly on the ghost of Beverly: "My first unwarranted Beverly mention of the night: How much do you want to bet that Beverly would have made a Korean scallion pancake (pajeon) for this challenge? I would literally bet my left pinky toenail that she would and that they'd be delicious."

Gail Simmons for PopWatch on the real Pee Wee: "The most amazing part about meeting Pee-Wee Herman was also meeting Paul Reubens. We get so used to this persona, this stage personality that he’s created, that we forget that that’s not Paul Reubens at all. He turns off [the persona] and opens a beer and sits down and wants to talk about music and food. [He] told us some really amazing stories about his life over the years and [about] how the character Pee-Wee Herman came about. We had so much fun with him. We were with him for two days and it was really exciting. He was really one of my favorite guest judges ever. He just brought so much joy and nostalgia and fun to the set."

Jordan Baker on getting ready for adventure: "The next day at the chef house, they’re all getting ready for their 3 hour bike ride. They get their red Schwinns with personalized plates on them. Lindsay puts her helmet on backward. 'We’re like a biker gang,' Ed says. They’re starting off as a group at the Farmer’s Market, and then it’s every man for herself. Paul tells us about how he rides his bike to work every day, but was in an accident a few years ago."

Posted on AllTopChef.com