"Top Chef", season 14, episode 11: "There's no bidoche, he's phew!"

They sniff and taste, feel and dip their fingers into it... Deprived of sight in the black box, mythical test of "Top Chef", the candidates analyze as they can the plate prepared by Pascal Barbot. And what a plate! Playful, the starred chef has concocted a perfect "trompe papilles", imitating a skewer of meat... without meat, but with mushrooms and beets. Prepared in a certain way, they adopt texture and elasticity of meat. The perfect trap.

Entering the box one after the other, they must list the ingredients they think they identify. There are twenty. Mathieu managed to detect the fungus. Hugo too. Jeremy, smelled beetroot. But all of them think they have eaten meat... The one who finds the most will choose his brigade, the one who finds the least will not participate in the test. The rule is hard, but it is the rule, Carla, who identifies only three, will not cook. "The fear of not being tasted is my obsession," she said just before. Three times it happened to him. And rebels. "I'm tired of it," she whispers.

Jérémie finds seven and takes Mathieu, Glenn Viel and Paul Pairet in his team. Opposite, Philippe Etchebest reconstitutes his dissolved league by bringing together Hugo and Sarika, winner of "Objectif Top Chef" now at Paul Pairet. "You make me win it," slips Pairet who attracts the wrath of others. Everyone can now cook and try to reproduce the plate. But where do you start? "What can I do for you?" asks Etchebest to his flock, all lost. In the studio from where he follows the operations, Pascal Barbot laughs like crazy...

"We're not very far, but we're far away... »

Pairet and Viel enter the surprise box and shell the skewers. Two starry palates that immediately rectify errors of appreciation. "There's no bidoche, it's phew!" notes Viel. Pairet agrees. "How did they get this far, the Oranges?" he asks. "Luck," tries Viel. Between the two, the complicity is obvious, they have fun and do not miss an opportunity to mess around. In the dark, their hands crumbling in the plate and the sauce and Viel to say: "What's going on between us, it's Dirty Dancing in gore mode". He was probably thinking of "Ghost" with the same Patrick Swayze. And the production to put the music of both for the shot...

Etchebest enters in turn, alone, and methodically scans the plate, ticking the boxes of most of the missing ingredients... "They are not chefs for nothing, they are really good!" says Barbot. On leaving, he enlightens his team a little more, still well in the fog. We have to wait until the light comes on for thirty seconds and one person from each team, Sarika and Mathieu, to see more clearly. Not really listening to Mathieu who says on his way out: "We are not very far, but we are far away". Not even when he tries to draw what he saw. "You draw like a foot," the tackle Paul Pairet who seizes the pencil. "The guy, he puts a load on him, you look at his drawing, he's worse!" laughs Viel.

The event revolves around food photography

So for the color of the plate, we will also go back. He forgot about it. "Last year, we sent the colorblind, and this year the goldfish," says Paul Pairet phlegm. Opposite, Sarika did not see a beetroot, Etchebest is sure of himself. They trust him. Hugo had smelled citron in the mash. He insists. He is right, maybe this is what will give the advantage to his team that wins the event. And Etchebest to drag Hugo and Sarika in a plane around the studio in front of Mathieu and Jérémie disconfits, condemned to join Carla in the second round, eliminatory, whose filming we had followed.

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It is for them to sublimate the onion. Whether it's good, but also beautiful since the test revolves around the culinary photo. They are asked to call out. Carla and Jérémie leave like bombs, Mathieu dries. And when Christian Le Squer and Éric Fréchon come to see him, he has nothing. And improvises. It shows. "Your onion must come from another planet," advises Le Squer. That speaks to Mathieu! Back up, here he is who will burn his onion and stuff it with sweetness. A contrast both visual and gustatory that will delight the chefs. "For me, it's a three-star dish," says Le Squer.

Blind, the four brigade leaders taste the other two plates. Carla's is more convincing. She exults, falls into Etchebest's arms. Jeremiah is eliminated. "It's a sledgehammer in the back of the neck," he says. In "Hidden Brigade", Hélène Darroze imposes as a theme the surprise to cut in salt. His vegetable mille-feuille raviole goes a little in all directions in terms of tastes when Danny manages to pull out of the game once again with his version of fondue. And inscribed a tenth name on his hunting board.