Top Chef Recap: Biker Brunch With Pee Wee

Hi everyone! Happy Post-Superbowl! I hope that everybody enjoyed the game, that whichever team you were rooting for won, and that Madonna didn't crack one of her brittle osteoporotic hip-Bones trying so hard to stay relevant (watch and listen for her next single, "Give Me Some Boniva" from her forthcoming album G.R.M.A.). I know, this really doesn't have anything to do with top chef Texas, other than to remind us that no one stays young and fresh forever... which is why it was a little disturbing to see this week's nearly sixty-year-old Guest Judge wobbling around on a bicycle and looking more than a little afraid of taking a fall himself... also, beware the cyclist who rides like he's hiding a boner
But we'll come back to Pee Weird Herman later on, right now we need to ponder the Lessons Of Last Week, starting with us learning... children ruin everything sexual chemistry can be achieved with The Help of chicken salad and having a topknot does not make you a samurai

(just like me having a big fat belly does not make me a sumo wrestler)
It's morning at the Casa Del Cheffo, and Jobless says she is feeling crappy because Penis-Hair got sent to Casa Del Redemption Kitchen, I guess the two of them got to be really close (hopefully not the Hoser/Stalker Leah In Season Five kind of close) and now she's missing her Motoman... this raccoon eye's for you, Penis-Hair
Meanwhile, Ninja Eddie's just waking up and we are forced to watch him struggle out of bed with morning wood... aaaand BAM, I'm no longer gay
For some reason he's wearing a blazer over a button down and his pee-stained sleepytime shorts, and he staggers down to the living room so everyone else can feel uncomfortable, too... oh look, I made tinkle-front
Mousy's sitting there, too, but she's happy as long as the Korean-American in the room isn't a female named Bore-verly. Abruptly she tells us her parents weren't "esstatic" about her decision to become a chef, they were hoping she would go into something that was "more financially rewarding" but she says they've always supported her... you need to move out of the basement, Mousy, your dad clearly wants his man-cave back
So it's back to the ole top chef Kitchen where the chefs find a giant pile of pancakes... and a random Ken Doll
Oh, how I wish for a Barbie-related challenge, but it is not to be. GroanyBooger says there must be 80,000 pancakes there, and that she's never seen so many pancakes at the same time... at least, not since breakfast
Scar tells them that their challenge is going to be to make pancakes for their Guest Judge, and Jobless is thinking that it's going to be some little kid or bratty child star, or possibly Miley Cyrus... eh, same level of maturity
Yes, it is Pee Wee Herman, and he dances on a bar better than Miley Cyrus any day. Anyhow Pee Weird says he's exhausted with biking over there and has worked up an appetite, he's super-excited and starving and... I. am. already. exhausted.
In any case, Scar says that the QuickFire Challenge is for the chefs to make pancakes in 20 minutes, and advises them to let their imaginations run wild. Of course, Pee Weird has to chime in that he loves pancakes... but he's not gonna marry one (which is exactly what Michele Bachman and her ilk are afraid would happen if the horror that is gay marriage would ever be granted). Anyhow, Pee Weird continues that he'd like them to be creative, dress the pancakes up (???), make 'em exciting, happy, funny, and most of all... delicious. Jobless breaks in here to tell us that she remembers her mom making pancakes for her and then she would go watch Pee Weird on TV. For some reason they choose to show a picture of a teensy Jobless looking guilty in a kitchen that has been tornadoed by flour... soooo, I guess this was taken about 30 seconds before Jobless' first spanking?
Winner gets a prize of $5,000.00 and some more dated 90s schtick from Pee Weird. And their time starts now. GroanyBooger is whining that she hasn't won any money yet, and she knows her fiance is expecting her to pay for their wedding, so her brilliant idea of being super-creative is to dump a bunch of multi-colored confetti sprinkles in her pancake batter... whee
Miss Mousy is also reminiscing about her dad making pancakes while she watched Pee Weird's Playhouse on TV, so in honor of her dad's sour look from a few screenshots ago, she's making pancakes with ricotta cheese and lemon. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Meanwhile, Ninja Eddie says his favorite part of pancakes are the little dot drippies around the edges that get crispy and extra-browned when you make them, so he's using those as his inspiration.
Hey, wait a minute, what are those wispy fumevapors I'm seeing wafting out of the corner of the kitchen? Is that TexAsian? What is he doing?... planning to shatter Pee Weird's denture adhesive
Other things he's having a great time doing?... trying to blind himself
He's actually using the liquid nitrogen in order to make "champagne dippin' dots", and he explains that they just got some liquid nitrogen in his restaurant and he's been playing around with it. He asserts that "it is not a focus of what I do", but if there's a practical use for it (such as being asked to make something unusual for a mincing manchild), he'll put it to work. Somewhere deep in the city of Chicago, there is a nerdy galumph of a goofball flipping off his TV set and snarling.
As for Jobless Grayson, she's doing a more traditional ricotta/buttermilk pancake with peach compote, but she's going to fabricate them into the shape of Minnie Mouse. My heart sinks a little for her, because this technique is something that is done on Boy Scout campouts all the time, it's not exactly innovative or original... in fact the only difference between Jobless' cakes and the Boy Scouts' version is... hers aren't surrounded by a miasma of unwashed boystink
With only five minutes left, Ninja Eddie's been trying to make his crispy little dot drippies nice and brown, he's not even really making a pancake, it's just dribbles of batter strewn across the pan. I dunno how that's gonna work out. Also dubious, Miss GroanyBooger has discovered the hard way that you can't just dump colored sprinkles into batter and then work them around too much, the colors will bleed and now she's got a bunch of Pepto-Pink Pancakes... only these don't relieve heartburn, they cause it
Pee Weird and Scar walk into the kitchen and Pee Weird screams "TIME'S UP!" with a weird look on his face. I'm pretty sure he barely restrained himself from doing it like this... time'sUPtime'sUPtime'sUPtime'sUPtime'sU Ptime'sUPtime'sUPtime'sUPtime'sUP
So Jobless is the first one they visit, with her pancakes that she makes sure to explain are Minnie Mouse... if Minnie had Taylor Armstrong Terrible plastic surgery
That looks more like a teddy bear. Anyhow, Jobless can barely get her description out without cracking up at the quirky faces Pee Weird is making over her creation, but she's not enjoying those faces as much when he actually starts eating her pancakes... did you use real mice in these?
After having an extended mugging and flailing session, Pee Weird says it is "Prolly the best pancake I've ever had!". Jobless giggles and they move on to GroanyBooger and her Amazing Technicolor Dreamcakes... done in the style of a ceiling fan
The BoogerWoman says she has never made anything like this before. Pee Weird says he's now got a piece of confetti stuck between his teeth... either that, or Scar just grabbed his ass
What, why are you looking at me like that? He is kinda in the age range she finds attractive! In any case, Pee Weird follows it up with "I have to say... the best pancake I've ever had!" Cue a sour and semi-betrayed look from Jobless... awww, she thought he was being serious when he said it to her
Next in line is TexAsian, who not only managed to use liquid nitrogen in his dish... he also made it look like a Pac Man murder took place
Pee Weird says he has an open mind, and TexAsian admits this is his first time ever making pancakes. Pee Weird snaps back with "Oooh, you probably can't tell, though.... I'm hoping..." if this sucks, I'm calling out Large Marge on your ass
Some more wacky faces later and Pee Weird says... "I have to say this is the best pancake I've ever had."... yeah, I'd say that joke is losing a little bit of it's lustre
Now we come to Mousy Lindsay's take on her nostalgic cake...

which has all the visual appeal of something pre-chewed
Can you guess what the critique was?...

I have to say this is the bitterest pancake I've ever had
Ok, ok, I may have misheard that one. Finally bringing up the rear is Ninja Eddie...

with his dribbles'n'bits
I guess we know by now that Pee Weird would have to say (and Ninja even finishes the sentence with him) that it's the best pancake he's ever had. Once he and Scar mince their way back up to the front of the kitchen, he says they did fantastically overall. Scar wants to know who the winner is, so of course Pee Weird says it would have to be the chef that made him the best pancake he's ever eaten...

aaaand, dutiful yuk-yuks
He goes on to say that the winning chef changed things up and surprised him, making it original and creative, which means of course that it was Ninja Eddie!...

who just made a brand new tinkle-front stain on his jeans
So yay, Ninja Eddie finally wins some more money, snags his first QuickFire win, and says something about how he hopes this means he's going to start "streaking late"...

and then (completely unbidden) this is the image that rose in my mind
Ewie. Time for the Elimination Challenge! Scar mentions the fact that they began this season at the Alamo and now they have to go back there. Why, you may ask? Well, normally it would be because the Alamo is a very historic site, and the location of a tragic and horrific battle between Mexico and Texas in which a lot of people were killed. But in this case, it's a reference to the movie Pee Wee's Big Adventure, starring Pee Weird, and he's kind enough to give us a verbal recap of the plot: his precious bike is stolen, a psychic under the employ of LaToya Jackson tells him it has been hidden in the basement at the Alamo, he hitchhikes across the country to Texas, and then finds out the Alamo has no basement and LaToya has no clue about anything in the Universe, so it was all just a big stupid waste of time...

and I had this same look on my face the first time I saw it, too
So Scar says Pee Weird has "terrible memories" of the Alamo (not nearly as terrible as, say, Susanna Dickinson would have had, but whatever) and now it's up to the chefs to give him some nice, new memories of it... so they have to give him a handjob make him a family-style lunch the following day. The twist is (and it's a pretty damned big one) that Pee Weird has given each of them a brand new bicycle of their own at Casa Del Cheffo, and they will have a map to the Alamo and $100.00. The chefs will have to ride around San Antonio and find their own ingrediences... and a restaurant to cook them in. Not only that, but only one chef can cook in a restaurant at a time, so most likely they'll need to find five different places that don't mind some random sweaty stranger showing up and asking to cook on their equipment. This means that Ninja Eddie has to whine about how haaaard it's gonna be to create a shopping list when they don't know where they're going, and how are they supposed to figure out what they're going to cook when they don't know what the kitchen is going to look like...

so much for your whole "streaking late" idea
And now they have ten whole minutes to talk to Pee Weird about what kind of food he likes... He prances over and tells them he likes chicken, egg salad sammiches, healthy food, spicy food, non-spicy food, American food, Zimbabwean food, Ho-Hos, vichyssoise and Tic-Tacs. TexAsian thinks to ask if he has any food allergies, and Pee Weird replies "We'll find out tomorrow!"...

oh, and underdone risotto gives me hives
GroanyBooger would have **** her pants. The next morning at Casa Del Cheffo, early, we find Ninja Eddie has donned his backpack and is jumping up and down in the living room simulating riding a bike...

or he's doing The Running Man
I'm not sure what this is supposed to accomplish, but when he starts noisily clomping up and down the stairs his motives become clear...

he's trying to annoy a muzzy Mousy and groggy GroanyBooger
Eventually the chefs stagger outside in the semi-darkness to find five brand new Schwing bicycles with personalized plates on them...

shoulda said BOOGR
Everybody laughs at Mousy when she tries to put on her bike helmet backwards. Mousy says her brother does triathlons and owns several bikes, she wonders if this mistake is a little bit of karma for her having given him such a hard time about it. I think she should pay no mind to the stupid bike helmet bull**** and instead be wondering if any karma's going to come back to her for being such a bitchass to Bore-verly?...

other than some skin blemishes and lank hair
As they pull out of the driveway, Ninja Eddie jokes that they're like a "biker gang"...

whose scariest feature is how hard GroanyBooger is breathing
As they're riding TexAsian tells us he often rides his bike to work, but he had an accident a couple of years ago, hit his head on the pavement and now he says if he drinks alcohol, the left side of his face gets all red...

and here I thought Asian Flushing was a genetic trait!
Or it could be brought on by head injury, who knows? In any case, the chefs have all agreed to go to a Farmer's Market together, but after that, they're totally on their own. And it looks like this is possibly the tiniest Farmer's Market in the nation...

like two neighbors with coolers full of stuff from their backyard gardens
GroanyBooger says she has to be really choosy with what she's picking out because, as she straight-facedly puts it: "I don't wanna weigh myself down on the bike, since I'm gonna have to be carrying everything to the Alamo..."

and that extra weighed-down feeling would be the fault of the... fresh vegetables you just bought?
As a Fat Man you quickly learn never to say anything that remotely resembles a remark like that. But, self-awareness is somewhat overrated... I guess. In any case, most of the chefs are buying chicken, except Mousy who snagged some beef cheeks. Ninja Eddie for some reason is looking for shrimp. At a tiny Single Farmer Market. About 150 miles from the ocean. Surprisingly, he doesn't find any and decides to rely on whatever restaurant he winds up at to supply him with some proteins. He hopes that by cutting short his shopping time he will find a restaurant to barge into much faster than the other chefs.
Riding, riding, riding, sunshine, sunshine, sunshine, sweat, sweat, sweat, Jobless admits she is "completely competitive" in nature...

even over little things like dental hygiene
She goes on to say that Game Night in the Schmitz Household often ends with someone in tears. I don't think that's such an outlandish thing, what if the game they were playing was Who Gets To Put The Medicated Cream On Grandma's Foot Corns? Anyhow, she's riding along (in her pretty pink and day-glo green sneekies) fairly close to TexAsian and says that they are "neck and neck". TexAsian calls it "breathing down my neck and following me" and when they both spy a restaurant called Rosario's, they both head for it at the same time... and TexAsian gets there first, but goes to the wrong door... and when he sees that Jobless has grabbed her stuff and is headed for the front entrance says "**** it!" and takes off again. "That's ...

0 Comments