‘Top Chef’ Recap, Season 22 Episode 12: ‘Foraged in Fire’
Top Chef
Foraged in Fire
Season 22
Episode 12
Editor’s Rating
If there were a week to pull an elimination fake-out, it would have been this one.
Photo: David Moir/Bravo
One Top Chef the scene that looms large in my memory is when Richard Blais thought he was going home. Toward the end of season eight’s All Starsa particularly personal Ellis Island challenge inspired everyone to cook their heart out, thus leaving the judges with an impossible choice. All five chefs deserved to move on to the finale in the Bahamas — and so, in a wonderful twist, they did.
Still, before Padma let them know that no one would be eliminated, she had a little fun with the notoriously uptight Richard first. “Please pack your knives,” she said, “because you’re going … to the Bahamas!”
That line isn’t fully in the version of the episode now on Peacock for whatever reason. (Did Padma actually give him a heart attack or what…?) But I’ve never forgotten it, not just because of Richard’s adorably flabbergasted shock, but because of how thrilled I was at the lack of an elimination. It’s maybe not as surprising these days when a reality show saves everyone from sashaying away. But when everyone so richly deserves the reprieve, there’s rarely anything as satisfying.
So, I want to say I’m thrilled to be back recapping Top Chef for you all (many thanks to the great Roxana for filling in last week!), but let’s be real: I am sad. I was so convinced that the level of gushing these final five dishes inspired would force another elimination fake-out à la All Stars. Instead, Kristen pushed through her breaking voice to tell Massimo to pack his knives and go.
I gasped! I couldn’t help it! From everything we’ve seen, I just like the guy. As he admits in “Foraged in Fire,” Massimo came into this competition hot (so to speak) with confidence and was quickly humbled by the caliber of talent around him. He put his head down, did what he does best, and was never anything less than himself throughout. And if there was any doubt as to whether the judges liked him or not, it should now be banished by Kristen’s genuine devastation and Tom urging him over for a hug on the way out.
That lol said, let’s get into the actual challenge.
There’s only one in this episode, with a lengthy lesson in foraging taking the Quickfire’s typical place. The chefs have to forage plants indigenous to Calgary and cook a dish outdoors, over open flames. Although they’ll get to shop for supplemental ingredients at Whole Foods, the focus must still be squarely on whatever they find out in the wild.
Brenda Holder, Cree knowledge keeper and owner of the trails around them, leads the way alongside local chef and forager Tracy Little. Holder is especially (and understandably) emotional throughout this episode, telling the chefs that “the forest around you is a pharmacy, a food store, a clothing store.” After they make an offering to the land, they set about getting to know it. This genuinely lovely, thoughtful scene underlines how well this season has done at integrating Indigenous cultures beyond a single episode or challenge. It also highlights how much this season might have benefited from getting outside its Toronto bubble more, but we’ll take what we can get.
Although everyone is appreciative of their stunning surroundings, their levels of enthusiasm for the activity vary. On one side of the spectrum, you have Shuai and César, who embrace the challenge so hard they end up bagging ants. “The adrenaline just hits you,” César says of foraging for a 15-pound hen of the woods mushroom, lighting up like he’s Tom Cruise describing the feeling of jumping out of a plane.
Bailey, overwhelmed by the land’s beauty and abundance of unknowns, lands somewhere in the middle. Then there’s Tristen and Massimo, who may not overlap much, but both firmly agree that camping isn’t for them. “I worked so hard to get a roof over my head that I like to stay under that roof,” Tristen reasonably explains. Massimo then briefly scandalizes Kristen by saying he likes “hiking with a pack of cigarettes,” before clarifying with a cheeky grin that he’s never been hiking in his life.
To no one’s surprise, César and Shuai seem to know what they’re doing right away. César locks in on mushrooms, dreaming up a trompo and pibil broth that will also evoke al pastor with roasted pineapple. He then tops the dish with toasted ants for a crunchy pop of zest. Shuai follows his recent instinct of cooking “out of memory and love,” this time paying homage to the Chinese medicinal broths of his childhood with black spruce and poplar, alongside a charred cabbage and rose-hip-glazed pork. Also ants.
Massimo knows he wants to use mustard seed and wildflowers, but he only finalizes his dish after waking up from his car nap. He’s gonna grill trout. He also decides to use the extra 30 minutes he won after last week’s victory to also make a bannock cracker over a very hot rock. Although he couldn’t look less suited to the Canadian wilderness in what my roommate correctly clocked as his Walk the Line look, he still seems fairly relaxed about the whole thing — and, honestly, I was too!
Even with a flashback photo of Massimo and his mother — a telltale sign of eventual trouble — the season’s overall edit had me sure the finale would be a Massimo-versus-Tristen showdown. In this episode alone, we had Massimo salivating at the prospect of “finally getting to cook Italian” in Italy, while Tristen joked (“joked”) that he couldn’t wait to go to Italy and “only cook Ethiopian,” no doubt to thumb his nose at the country’s dark history of colonialism. I wouldn’t call it a rivalrywhy. Massimo never seemed bothered, and Tristen seems to be keeping his more pointed opinions to the confessionals. But Tristen is right that fine-dining culture has traditionally prized Massimo’s French and Italian techniques over all else, let alone the Afro-Caribbean flavors Tristen so doggedly pursues whenever he can.
Case in point is his “OG jerk” pork with plantain-miso syrup, parsnip “milk,” and coal-roasted roots — an idea inspired by the Indigenous Taino people of Jamaica and one he only landed on after it woke him up at 3 am (Another simpatico moment with Massimo! Sometimes you just gotta sleep on it.) It seems at first like Tristen’s insistence on having not just a connection to his dishes but a full story to accompany it will be his undoing. Instead, as Tom points out with palpable admiration, he did “what he does best” and has been doing all season: taking ingredients that are unfamiliar to him, contextualizing them in a way he can personally understand, and making them sing.
The judges — including Brenda, Tracy, Indigenous herbalist Matricia Bauer, chef Scott Iserhoff, and returning guests Nicole Gomes and Paul Rogalski — are floored by everyone’s offerings. Nicole points out that it felt like “a collab dinner,” such was the cohesion and high level of quality on display. Brenda says through tears that she was “really touched” by the chefs’ commitment to honoring her land through their own cultures. Just like the Ellis Island challenge, this very personal dinner seems very special indeed.
César’s embrace of nature and whimsical plating charms them all; Tom even says that “on any other day, he wins.” Bailey managed to turn her largely improvisational dish into something layered and unique. Even if her “cowtown” cowspeas are a so undercooked, her lamb spiedino skewers with grilled dandelion salad and thistle-root purée — featuring more poplar syrup than she ever thought possible — took huge risks that paid off. Massimo’s was a bit safer, but the contrast of elegant dishes and boisterous personality proves irresistible. (If anyone else would introduce their food with “A BUDDHIST MONK in saffron robes once told a 19-year-old DAVID BOWIE —,” I’d like to meet them immediately.)
On a day full of culinary peaks, Tristen’s dish is a clear highlight. When he first had it, Tom says at the final judges’ table, he was sure nothing else would top it — until Shuai’s came out and blew his mind. “It made me want to get in the kitchen and cook,” Tom says of Shuai’s dish, practically cheesin’ he’s smiling so hard. (Between offering hugs and talking about how much he loves his job, Tom is so happy in this episode it’s almost jarring.) Kristen agrees, calling the cabbage in particular “bizarrely wonderful.” And so Shuai, who admitted earlier this episode that he came into the competition thinking he’d already maybe “peaked” as a chef, earns the win.
While Tristen’s titanic track record implies he’s the one to beat, Shuai is surging at exactly the right time. This thing ‘ain’t over yet — except, of course, for Massimo. Although he didn’t do anything wrongit seems his building a dish around the relatively safer ingredient of mustard ultimately fell short of Bailey’s riskier ambitions. Massimo takes the news well, although it’s a hard pill to swallow. In fact, the emotional way the judges react to their own decision makes me think they might have even asked the producers about keeping them all, but it just wasn’t possible. It sucks!
I know everyone has to go sometime. I know there can only be one winner at the end. But when Kristen admits that every dish they got was “worthy of winning,” it sure feels terrible to see one of them lose, anyway.
• Loved all the chef bonding this week, between Tristen reminiscing about the days of being “another animal I used to know, when we were cooks and we were hungry,” Shuai admitting his professional insecurities, and Massimo assuring Bailey he can do “girl talk” as well as a “girl dad.” (Tristen: “I like spas!”)
• Kristen Kish Suit Envy Watch: Maybe I’m still bitter about the decision, but since this week’s features not a suit but a suede shearling jacket that I’d immediately stain, I’m going with a 6.5/10.
• César had some great lines this week, but shout-out to the unexpectedly profound statement that the reason he has so much fun with plating is because “it’s creation, but also destruction.”
• I’m sorry, there’s no way the chefs like BMWs that much. Learn from the show, friends! Don’t give out those compliments for free!
• Bailey, on Calgary ants tasting kinda like lemon: “You know what’s also kinda like lemon? Lemon.”
• Shuai: “This is now a team challenge! Four of us against Massimo.” Cut to the man himself, open-mouth snoring all My Neighbor Massimo. We’ll miss you, king!