Winner James Briscione with Ted Allen.
It was a time for mac and cheese, cola and bacon on last night’s Chopped!, which included the show’s first West Coast contestant, chef Gypsy Gifford of L.A.’s Cafe Pinot. The other contestants were David Goldwhite, a “private, personal” chef for an Upper East Side family; William Lustberg, a sous chef at the Waldorf-Astoria; and James Briscione, an instructor at ICE whose style is “French cooking with a Southern drawl.” For the first time, both Aaron Sanchez and Alex Guarnaschelli were absent from judging. Usually, they come as a pair, or there’d be one or the other, but last night’s lineup of Chris Santos, Amanda Freitag and Marc Murphy was pleasantly Food Network employee free.
The appetizer round had the chefs working with boxed mac and cheese, artichokes and tilapia. Upon seeing the fish, Gypsy—who works only with wild line-caught seafood—wasn’t having any of it, “to see tilapia that’s farm raised, this is just straight-up gross.” Suck it up, Ms. Whole Foods. Her tilapia with macaroni salad and fried artichokes was praised for its use of lemon, but she was reprimanded by Freitag for failing to remove the choke from her artichokes. James used sour cream to make his mac and cheese creamy, since Ted Allen pulled a “whoopsie!” and removed all milk and cream from the kitchen. And William got a slap on the wrist for refusing to use his cheese sauce packet. But it was David and his oversauced, overly large-portioned tilapia with stir fry and mustard cheese sauce that got chopped first.
For the entrée round, the chefs cooked with eggplant, ground pork, poblanos, avocado and cola. Here we found out about one of William’s many food allergies. It seems the poor fella is allergic to eggplant. Undeterred, he cooked a judge-pleasing “colanata” from the nightshade veggie and reduced soda to accompany his pork burger. In his words: “If it takes an allergic reaction to win $10,000, I’m gonna do it.” Love that tude, bro. James put forth an overcooked pork-and-poblano patty while Gypsy suffered from the opposite problem and served undercooked-pork-stuffed eggplant with ginger-avocado cream. Though the judges praised her for creativity, between the raw pork and the chokeworthy ‘chokes, she was doomed to be chopped.
Dessert found William and James facing off with oranges, grapefruit, chocolate and bacon. From these ingredients, William made an undercooked bread pudding using none of the aforementioned items, opting to use them as garnishes by dipping his bacon in chocolate and plating the citrus as a mini side salad with mint. James presented a beautifully composed plate of sweet and spicy bacon with orange sabayon and a shot of citrus juice, and it was with this dessert that he took this week’s Chopped! title. Asked what he was going to do with the money, he made a point of saying it would go toward his new bride-and-baby-to-be. Chopped!: bringing on the warm and fuzzies every time.—Zachary Feldman
William got robbed. James dessert was no more than a peice of bacon dipped in sweet and sour spices with some sauces and that won him 10 grand? They made it as william sabotaged James by using all the bread. More like William was faster on his feet to use the bread. William should of won hands down.
I definitely agree. Will was the most entertaining and talented contestant. He should have his own show, I would definitely watch. Will was able to make 2 of the best dishes of the show out of things he couldn’t touch or taste, and James couldn’t find an alternative to using the bread? It is obvious who is a better chef.
If you think sabayon and French toast go together I question your abilities as a chef. Will had the best ideas the whole show. He clearly deserved to win.
Will had the much better dishes. James won based on plating. I’m not taking anything away from James, but common. It seemed that as Will was studying the pantry for ingredients to make his dish pop, Judge Amanda was judging Will more on wasting time. To me, it seemed that Judge Amanda had her mind made up since the beginning.
Will shoulda been kicked the first round for not using the cheese packet. It’s Mac AND CHEESE.
One of the judge’s comments was interesting and, I felt, pretty right-on. They thought Will was playing for sympathy when his food allergies became an issue, and he was making puppy dog eyes and wringing his hands and pacing the floor. Maybe that’s just how it was editted together, and kudos to him for working through it, but yeah, he did seem a little too overdramatic about it. Bottom line, though, they both did a great job.