Queso, football challenges serve cringe moments
Have you ever shrieked with such glee that you set off a coughing fit? It happened to me during the second episode of
Top Chef Houston, which aired Thursday night on Bravo.
Irma Galvan’s dry and deadpan delivery while guest judging a queso Quickfire Challenge was what set me off. Our local TexMex goddess had already convulsed me with her one-word response to contestant Jackson’s admission, as he stood for judgment on his queso riff, that “I don’t make a lot of queso.” Muttered an impassive Irma, “yeah.”
But it was her response to Sam, a product of David Chang’s Momofuku combine, that made me lose it. “Sam, I didn’t like the scallion pancake, and the sauce was kinda thin,” she said in a tone that I am sure froze her kids in their tracks when they were growing up.
Poor Sam. His gruyère mornay sauce ended up in the bottom three, along with entries from Jackson (aka COVID Man) and last week’s winner, Robert. The 30-minute contest provided, for a Houstonian, exactly the kind of hilarity, snobbery, panic and confusion that makes us feel smugly superior on the subject of our beloved cheese dip.
Texans Jo and Evelyn, our homegirl, held the advantage of course. Evelyn “was raised on queso,” she said; and Jo swore she’d put on “15 pounds of queso weight” when she moved to Austin. Meanwhile Robert worried that his Mexican roots and Bay Area experience wouldn’t help him with Tex-Mex. “I couldn’t give you the definition of queso,” he lamented.
“I’ve never seen or tasted queso,” offered Jae.
Well, there it was in the opening shot, at the center of a table holding cheeses of all varieties: a tall queso tower dripping cascades of shiny golden cheese from level to level. I had never seen such a thing. Now all America will think we’ve got a queso fountain at every Houston party.
Which come to think of it, might be fun. The 14 contestants scurried around picking cheeses off the display and planning their attack. They were charged with making “a warm bowl of this Texas classic” and serving it with something dippable that was not a tortilla chip.
I scoffed when Jackson swore he’d go his own way rather do what he imagined everyone else would do —“a big vat of creamy, gross cheese.” Poor thing. His caramelized cheese with crisped “spaghetti crackers” fell flat with Irma and Padma. “Jackson, there wasn’t anything to dip into,” quoth Irma. “It was probably my least favorite.”
Well, yeah. Don’t go disrespecting, mister.
The ultimate winners weren’t the high-and-mighty resume kings, as you might suspect. Nick from Mississippi put a little lump crab on his queso and added pork belly, with sweet potato and beet chips, for a surf-and-turf theme that beguiled the judges.
Evelyn did Houston proud with her mini skillet of adobo queso served with baby taro chips that landed in the top three. “Best presentation,” judged Irma. “You get the gooeyness, the heat and the crunch,” added Padma, to whom I would like to offer honorary Houston citizenship.
The queso champion and immunity-getter was Damarr, whose queso had a crumbly crust on top that was never identified, to my frustration; and whose vehicle was toasted serrano pepper spears.
And then, alas, it was time for 40 minutes of a maddeningly complex faux football-game team challenge set — and I am not making this up — in an empty Tomball ISD stadium that looked like something out of a De Chirico painting, spooky and desolate with its stark evening light and shadow.
The theme was Friday Night Lights. Which, sigh. I am not going to bore you with the ins and outs of the rules, which were just as diabolical as the ones for last week’s first team challenge. I refuse to discuss the corny mascots and team yells, the red and blue tinsel pompoms with which the judges — including Houston’s Chris Shepherd — signaled their votes for team red or team blue. Even the worldly Padma can’t help sounding like a camp counselor when she’s laying out this cringey stuff.
Past finalists Dawn Burrell and Sam Talbot served as hands-on coaches. As a former Olympic long jumper, Dawn set out the parameters for the seven fortifying dishes each team had to produce: “nutrient-rich carbs that are not too heavy.”
Dishes loaded with carbs! I liked the sounds of that. But then everyone started talking about ancient grains this and esoteric grains that, and somebody asked “are chickpeas a carb?” and my brain switched off.
Sam burbled a little hymn to the potato, which made me like him. And Buddha confessed to a love of carbs in a way I found endearing. “Growing up, I was quite a large and happy kid,” he said, as a round-cheeked photo of him popped onscreen. “So I got the nickname Buddha.” My man.
Various scenes of plotting and strategizing among the teams ensued. When, I wondered, would the backbiting and subtle sabotage start?
Not this week. Instead I got to wonder how Jo was going to make her congee interesting (needs some oomph, Dawn told her), and to imagine what the texture of Ashleigh’s turkey-and-teff meatballs might be like. I worried over Evelyn’s rice-noodle fail when they turned out slimy and chewy, and she had to scramble to beg surplus grains from her teammates to swap out in her sea bass and tamarind nuoc cham bowl.
I really perked up when Damarr uttered the words, “dirty farro,” though, and it turns out I was onto something. As was he: after much tedious awarding of yardage to one team after another in head-to-head match-ups, Damarr’s dirty farro earned him MVP status.
Steph’s unconvincing feijoada interpretation got her sent home. Sam emerged as a wouldbe master strategist whose maneuvering went bust. Luke, the Noma alum, again was foiled by overthinking a pumpkin dish that proved unpleasantly oily.
Sarah earned a side-eye from Tom Colicchio over her use of canned chickpeas. Jackson again proved he could cook without his senses of taste and smell, to my amazement, and his polenta cake with whipped yogurt and blueberry sauce gigged with miso earned a rave — and a whistle of approval — from Shepherd.
Our gal Evelyn lives to see the next episode, even though Padma judged her cobbled-together hail mary “one too many things going on in a bowl.”
Too true about too much.