On last night’s episode of Top Chef: All-Stars, the cheftestants had to cook Italian food for some illustrious Italians, including the team behind New York’s legendary Rao’s restaurant and Sopranos star Lorraine Bracco. But among the polenta, pasta, and pork chops, there was one offer the judges could refuse. SPOILER ALERT! Click ahead to find out whose dish it was and what the eliminated cheftestant has to say.
Despite making a winning risotto in season 3, Tre Wilcox was sent to the chopping block last night for — shockingly — a nearly identical risotto. But it wasn’t just the Elimination challenge that wasn’t in Wilcox’s favor. His performance got off to a shaky start with a too-simple Quickfire meal, in which the cheftestants had to create a meal based solely on presentation. For Fabio, it meant depicting fashionable women via chunks of tuna; for Tre it meant an array of colorful dots… and little else. Here, the 34-year-old Dallas resident dishes about what went wrong, his All-Stars experience, and who he thinks will win.
The Quickfire conundrum: “I wasn’t so concerned with the taste. I tried to do too many things that I couldn’t get done and it took a toll on my overall presentation. My thought process was to have a lot of different colors, contrasts, and shapes, but when it came down to making the curry chip with the nitrogen, it just didn’t pan out for me, and I think it took a toll on my presentation. Instead of doing pools of sauce maybe I could’ve done streaks of sauce. Putting something out there that you know doesn’t taste good, that was a challenge in and of itself.”
His take on Fabio’s tuna “women”: “What everyone did was their own take with what they could do within the given time. I think it was clever that he had the little note that he wrote. Everybody has their own unique mind and different ideas that they come to, none wrong, none right — just different perspectives.”
The return of the risotto: “It’s something I’ve been making for a long time in my career. I’ve enjoyed making it and have been for 15 years, so it was the thing to go to. Dale and Mike were doing pasta so I wanted to do something different. I would’ve put another couple ladles of stock in it. I think the overall thing was it wasn’t loose enough, and they wanted it to spread when it hit the plate. I would’ve changed it if I knew it’d get me to the next round. If I wanted to go further, sure, but honestly, how I’ve been trained and if I put into perspective my original competition of Top Chef, the first challenge, I put risotto on the plate and three of the four judges said it was great and I won that challenge. I really think the judges should get it together. Which one is it? I made it the same way as I did in season 3 as I did in All -Stars. But you know what? It’s all good. When you make something true to how you’ve made it, how you’ve been trained, and how you serve it in the city you come from and people love it, then I feel like that’s a difference of opinions. I can’t disagree with someone who is truly Italian, like Tom Colicchio — but I do stand beside my product as this is how I do it. And that’s probably why there’s no such thing as ‘black Italian,’ because we do things our own way!”
The less than enthusiastic response to Antonia’s Elimination win: “I just think we were expecting a dish to be a little more authentic Italian. The mussels seemed to go down a French-moules frites way. We didn’t know if it was something she’d get tagged on.”
His All-Stars experience: “It was really awesome because it was a lot of different perspectives on food and a lot of different techniques. My season, originally season 3, maybe I was little reserved, quiet, and didn’t fully know what was going on. I didn’t really want to let go and have a good time and take it all in. But this time around, it’s 17 of the best chefs who’ve been on Top Chef and all of them are bad-ass cooks. I’m the guy who came in humble enough to take something from everyone and was able to listen to the judges when I was on top and when I was on the bottom, and take that in as something that sends me to Dallas as a better chef. Top Chef was a great training exercise for me the second time around. I think that in season 3, I really didn’t let people know who I was. I think I did a tremendous turn around on opening up. For that I can say, ‘Hey, come to Dallas, have my risotto and you be the judge.’”
Where you can find him now: “I threw in the towel on Loft 610, but Marquee Grill opens in Highland Park Village, Texas, on March 14. I’m going to do new American with Italian and French influences. I’ll put my risotto out there, and it won’t be watery. That risotto won’t spread!”
And the winner will be…: “Richard Blais is the man. I’m not rooting for him in the sense of a fan. I was there. I was there six weeks, four weeks of those was competing with him. He’s got so much technical training, it’s ridiculous. I think that’s what makes any chef as great as they can be. Ingredients are what we all need to be great chefs, but if you don’t the techniques needed to make those ingredients shine, then you can’t be as great of a chef. This kid has it all. He’s got any kind of technical training you can think of. He’s pretty brilliant.”
Were you guys upset to see Tre go? Do you agree that Blais will take it home? Pack your knives and sound off below!
More Top Chef: All-Stars from EW:
Top Chef: All-Stars recap: The Italian Job
Photo: David Giesbrecht/Bravo
I can’t believe my Chocolate Love went home because of RISOTTO!!!
Sorry to see him go – I knew it would be close because they kept showing him before the judging AND they seem to send the people home who “didn’t get why they were on the bottom”. The judges are expecting you to know more when you get to All-Stars. And the interviewer didn’t ask him if he is still sleeping naked? Good Luck Tre to you and your family.
I’m sad to see Tre go. I think it should have been Mike. Glad the three ladies were in the top. Go Carla!!!
too true! the ladies haven’t been faring well, thus far. i hope Carla’s positivity takes her to the finals!
Too bad that…
agreed with mike. italian-american, boasting about his specialty falls flat on his face during an italian food challenge. total grounds for elimination.
he’s got it right. Blais better win this time out. he’s a monster in the kitchen. his restaurants are great.
I would’ve said Dale before this episode, but now I’m not so sure. Blais without question deserves to win the whole sha-bang, but he still hasn’t conquered his fatally bad habit of second-guessing himself.
Of course they seems the black man home and the “Italian” guy needed up the most “wow” doesn’t surprise me at all ,guess I’m done watching the show.
then be done; you’re crazy. there were *also* two beautiful black women in the winners’ circle.
I think you were trying to say that the Judges are racist, but your comment made no sense at all… Lamicia please pack your knives and go.
LOL
I ain’t watching no show with no black folk!
I’m black and I love the show I look at it for there talent not the color of skin. If I only watched black shows I’d be left with Tyler Perry shows and The Game. Portraying Blacks as : angry, cheating, blaming white people, kids raised in single parent homes… You can keep it!!
Uh what about Carla and Tiffany D. Last time I saw them they were black.
Fabio should have won and Mike should have gone home. An Italian that messes up homemade pasta is a disgrace to Italians!! LOL!!
You do understand that anyone can pretend to be the OP Lamicia right? It seems like someone’s trying to pretend to be her.
Prejudice whack trick.
Shame on you for bringing the “race card” into this, but I’m glad you’re saying goodby. Get over it!
If you aren’t going to use the race card correctly, it ought to be revoked. I don’t have the authority, but someone should take it.
There’s a “correct” way to use a race card?
Well, I don’t know. But complaining that they sent the black person home while overlooking the two remaining black cheftestants doesn’t exactly drive home Lamicia’s assertion that there is some sort of racist agenda at play.
Lamicia, thank you for the most incomprehensible comment in “EW” history.
Yeah. Never mind the fact that there are still two black chefs left on the show.
Cant wait for mr annoying to go home, final 3 of richard,angelo and one of the girls would be fine by me
“One of the girls” Umm, generalize much? Mikes an idiot and you sound sexist.
If this is the way you make risotto and you’re told it’s incorrect by people who would know, accept it, you’re making it wrong, Tre. If your customers have never had proper risotto and they like it the way you’ve made it, that opinion’s informed by your improperly prepared dish.
Pretty sure a table full of NY Italians know from risotto.
They know risotto that you can get in NYC, which isn’t necessarily “authentic”. I lived in NYC for a couple years from 2007 – 2009, and I lived in Rome for several years (and go back every year). Even in the apple there are a lot of different ways to prepare it.
as long as Mike Isabella doesn’t win, I really don’t care who wins. He’s the only contestant I really don’t like that’s left.
To be fair, Mike and Dale have grown up more since their first runs. Mike can still be obnoxious and Dale still has a short fuse, but these days I’ll take either one of them over, say, Marcel.
Personally, I wish that Mike had been booted as I can’t stand him, but his sauce apparently was good. So, it really came down to Tre and Dale, and it seemed to me that Dale’s was a complete flop from concept to execution, while Tre’s failed in execution of both the rice and the veggies. But Dale has won several challenges, while Tre was in the bottom more than once. Perhaps that was their deciding factor, even if they claim that each elimination stands alone.
Ugh, Mike was saved by his sauce. Dang it, I like Tre. Carla and Richard in the finals. Fabio can be shipped to my house and he can bring his turtle.
Totally agree – and we can split custody of Fabio
I’ll send him over after I’m done with him…
Well said sister!
Since when is Tom Collichio “truly italian”? He wasn’t born in Italy or raised in Italy. Does he speak Italian? How many generations back did his family come from Italy? Please. Being “Italian” is not one-size-fits-all, just like being American isn’t. Risotto is made in different ways all around Italy. I have never heard of the need for it to “spread” and I am “truly Italian.”
Odd that everyone at that table, “true Italians” and food professionals, agreed that it should spread
Odd indeed. But a handful of New Yorkers on a reality cooking show are not necessarily the final arbiters on what is and isn’t risotto. Just consider how chili or barbeque recipes vary across America. One version is not necessarily the “true” standard for that dish.
I wasn’t born in Italy or speak Italian but both my parents grew up in Italy and I consider myself Italian. Just because he isn’t born there or doesn’t speak the language doesn’t mean he isn’t Italian.
Anyone who would name their son Luka with a ‘k” is NOT Italian. Sorry, but it’s true. He may be an Italian-American, but that doesn’t mean he understands Italian customs or local food traditions. The way NY Italians prepare Italian food is as close to authenticity as Olive Garden.
I agree with you, Idana. Many ways to cook risotto, and variety is the spice of life. I can’t believe any of the people at the table are ‘true’ italians….
(I meant, judge’s table.)
I was so hoping that Mike was going to pack his knives and finally leave. Frankly, if he couldn’t cook the pasta in the pasta course, he should have been sent home.
My husband’s family is Italian and I’ve never even seen them make risotto. But the sauce, meatballs and sausage? To die for!
Wehn I saw who the bottom threewerre, I was hoping for a triple elimination. I would have been happy with any of them going so now I hope the next two to go are Dale and Mike in any order.
I completely with you, Buffy Freak. I like Tre the most out of those three, but if push came to shove I would’ve picked that whole group to go.
Sad to see Tre go and yes though I love Carla Richard will win, he’s talented and brillant:-)