Austin Chefs Make It Through the ‘Top Chef: Wisconsin’ Premiere

This season features two Austin chefs — Amanda Turner of Southern restaurant Olamaie and Kévin D’Andrea of French bakery Foliepops. And then there’s the new host, Kristen Kish, who is also the chef/partner of downtown restaurant Arlo Grey and had won the show before.

In the premiere, Kish fills Padma Lakshmi’s elegant shoes like a pro, and the contestants are tasked with challenges specially designed by the judges.

Our hometown heroes get a cheesy welcome

Things get off to the races as Kish and judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons welcome the chefs into the kitchen,. The contestants give Kish a huge round of congratulatory applause. Our host promises that she and Colicchio will inevitably butt heads at the judges’ table. “I’m excited to shake things up,” Kish says.

The chefs introduce themselves. Turner tells viewers she’s a James Beard semifinalist. D’Andrea reveals he competed on Top Chef France in 2015.

Right away, the judges embrace chaos. There won’t be a Quickfire challenge this week, and for the first time, there will be no immunity granted for winning them later on. However, the winner of each week’s Elimination challenge will get immunity the following week, and more than $100,000 in prize money will be up for grabs during the Quickfires.

The chefs draw knives for the first Elimination challenge. Each blade bears the name of a judges, who give their groups a specific challenge. Kish’s competitors need to make soup and show how they can develop flavor — a nod to her first challenge as a contestant. Simmons charges her chefs with making a stuffed pasta. As she points out, fresh pasta has often led to chefs’ downfalls. Likewise, Colicchio picks on a problem child — undercooked protein. He asks his chefs to roast a whole chicken and compose a dish with white and dark meat.

Turner draws Kish aka team soup, while D’Andrea is drafted for Simmons into the stuffed pasta army. During the grocery run, we see a cute montage of D’Andrea leisurely strolling through the aisles of Whole Foods. “We don’t shop on Top Chef France,” he compares.

San Francisco chef David Murphy tells the others that Turner is “a killer.” Later, Turner shares in a talking head that she’s very into astrology. “I’m a witch,” she says. (And a Capricorn, we learn.)

D’Andrea’s pasta goes dark

D’Andrea cracks into lobster and runs black dough through a pasta press. It looks metal as hell, or “pretty dope,” in his own words. He crafts a squid ink raviolo stuffed with lobster, shrimp bisque, and fennel puree. Though the chef is French, his father is Italian, so he feels good about meeting this challenge.

Also, sweetie alert: D’Andrea repeatedly asks Houston pitmaster Michelle Wallace if she needs help. She’s been freaking out since she hasn’t made pasta in a while. Perhaps if the Top Chef crown doesn’t happen for him, he can be Mr. Congeniality.

D’Andrea is the first to serve his gloriously goth crustacean dish. Kish thinks it’s tasty, Colicchio compliments the flavor, and Simmons says the pasta itself was a tad thick.

Wallace takes the top marks for her lobster pasta, despite her nerves. Murphy lands in the bottom for his skimpy little gnocchi dish. D’Andrea lives to cook another day.

Soup’s on — and so is the salt

Meanwhile, in the land of tureens (a fancy soup vessel if you didn’t know), Turner decides to show off. She’s creating soup, sure, but also roasting a chicken and making a dough, thus combining elements of all three challenges. “It’s complicated,” she says.

Turner serves chicken and dumplings with citrus gremolata, with the dumplings serving as a nod to her Texas roots. But the judges dump on her dish. Colicchio says the gremolata is too salty and urges Turner to taste it again herself.

So Turner lands at the bottom of her group. Sodium sadness. Denver culinary director Manny Barella’s green pozole is the judges’ favorite.

And for the third chicken group, Brooklyn chef Danny Garcia is on top, and Athens, Georgia, chef Kenny Nguyen lands up for elimination.

We have ourselves a cook-off

After deliberations, Barella’s soup earns him the first win — and the first immunity of the season. The three bottom chefs, Turner included, look nervous.

But hold on one salted second. Kish says, “We’re not eliminating anyone just yet.”

The bottom-three chefs will have a cook-off to determine who goes home. As Kish explains, she got eliminated in her original season but was able to return to the competition after cooking Colicchio a simple “good plate of food” in Top Chef companion after-show Last Chance Kitchen. The nods to Kish’s tenure keep coming.

The trio have 20 minutes to make a new dish using leftover ingredients. Turner grabs some fish and tells her castmates, who are watching, that she’s going to make salsa. They all cheer exuberantly, which is a lot of emotion for salsa.

Turner serves snapper crudo with hominy puree and crispy tortilla strips. And yes, she tasted it multiple times to check the seasoning. It seems to be the panel’s favorite of the three by far, but Colicchio thinks she underseasoned this time. Our Olamaie star can’t catch a break.

The cook-off yields a pretty tepid response overall, yet Turner’s crudo saves her. Murphy’s quick-shrimp dish sends him packing.

The Austin threesome sure didn’t shrink into the scenery in the season premiere. Let’s see what Turner and D’Andrea cook up next week in Milwaukee.