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The chefs (from left, Brittanny Anderson, Sasha Grumman, Kiki Louya and Roscoe Hall) address the crowd during the "Spring Celebration Dinner" at Brenner Pass May 2.
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Spring fatoush with whipped feta and sumac by Kiki Louya
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Snacks from Hall and Grumman
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Duck adobo with nasturtium from Hall
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Fluke ceviche from Louya and fried duck tenderloin with yassa sauce from Anderson
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Chocolate stout cake with coffee ice cream by Anderson and Grumman
There are five words no competitor on “Top Chef” wants to hear: “Pack your knives and go.” Richmond chef and restaurateur Brittanny Anderson was the third Bravo “Top Chef” season 18 contestant to hear judge Padma Lakshmi’s familiar refrain, but rather than sorrow, Anderson says, she felt relief.
“I just really struggled mentally while competing,” says Anderson, chef and co-owner of Richmond’s Metzger Bar & Butchery, Brenner Pass, and Black Lodge. “I really connect with people, and it’s hard to fully immerse yourself in your relationships as well as what you’re doing, and I think I had trouble balancing that.”
Newly eliminated from the show, Anderson joined chefs Roscoe Hall, culinary director of Rodney Scott's BBQ in Charleston, South Carolina, and Sasha Grumman, a furloughed Houston chef who launched Sasha’s Focaccia, at “Last Chance Kitchen,” where contestants knocked out of the competition have a chance at redemption. After they and Detroit chef and activist Kiki Louya were all knocked out of LCK, the four got to work on building their relationships with each other in a group they’ve dubbed The Eliminators.
“This wasn’t the first time any of us had been knocked around in the industry,” Louya says. “This is really about resiliency. It’s about picking yourself back up and continuing along the way, and doing it together, where you support each other in the process.” For The Eliminators, “Top Chef” provided a platform to reach a wider audience and share issues that matter to them personally.
Anderson says the relationships forged among the cast of “Top Chef” formed quickly but are destined to endure well beyond the run of the show, and the foursome knew it was only a matter of time before they’d cook together again. The Eliminators reunited for their first collaborative dinner at Brenner Pass on Sunday, May 2. The “Spring Celebration Dinner” allowed each chef to “refire” dishes that went awry on air and cook the kind of food that might have kept them on the show had they been able to share it with the judges.
At the dinner, the first of several the group has planned, the four chefs spoke to guests about each dish as it was presented, making light of their failed attempts to please Lakshmi, along with fellow judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons. Sent home for a duck dish that the judges referred to as “bland,” Anderson brought the heat to a fried duck tenderloin with yassa sauce — a fiery combination of onions, citrus, Dijon mustard and peppers — inspired by the Pan-African challenge on Anderson’s last episode. “Because I’m not afraid of spice, despite what you might think,” she joked.
Redemption was the theme of the night, and it carried through each course. Grumman, who was eliminated for a dish that included the Catalan tomato sauce known as romesco, prepared a seared scallop with hazelnut romesco, joking, “since romesco is what got me sent home.” Rather than reviving the fried chicken that sent her packing, Louya revisited her winning dish from Last Chance Kitchen, a ceviche with a spicy tamarind-pepper relish. This time, Louya used local fluke and baked a crisp lavash cracker for the snack.
Eliminated for a dish that he makes weekly at home, chef Hall served duck adobo for the main course of the meal, pairing a confit leg and seared breast of duck with a sweet potato dumpling and a savory soy and bay broth with a touch of white vinegar. And in an homage to the team challenge that united and then separated Anderson and Grumman, the final course was a mashup of coffee and beer in the form of a chocolate stout cake with coffee ice cream and bruleed meringue — a crave-worthy dessert that could not possibly have landed any chef on the bottom, but then hindsight is 20/20 after all.
The idea of refiring mistakes is central to The Eliminators, and to explore the concept further, the four will launch a podcast called “Refire” later this summer.
“On the podcast, we’re talking about the worst things that happened to us in the industry and how we can refire them and make them better,” Anderson says, adding, “Failure is truly an opportunity to learn and grow. If you’re scared of failure, then you’re not taking risks, and if you’re not taking risks, then you’re sitting. You’ve got to fail to grow.”
