Crash Course: Recapping the first episode of Top Chef Chicago

Time Out Chicago - Chicago, IL, USA - As Top Chef airs its Windy City episodes, Features Editor Laura Baginski, Eat Out Senior Writer David Tamarkin and Comedy/Time In Editor Steve Heisler will be tracking its progress. Check back weekly for recaps and plenty of well-deserved snark (on the show’s behalf), and hit up the comments.

Chicago! The culinary capital of the world! Thanks for the kind words about our city, Jennifer Biesty (my vote for the contestant with the most appropriate last name), but if that’s true, wouldn’t Top Chef Chicago pick a less stereotypical, pedestrian dish for its first quick-fire challenge than deep-dish pizza?

But while the challenge subject was disappointingly predictable, what many of the 16 contestants created with this tired old dish was pretty impressive.

Richard’s daring use of peaches in his pizza proved he’s a creative thinker and Spike’s Mediterranean-influenced pie sounded positively delicious (but, Spike, seriously, that straw baseball cap looked like it was pilfered from a Chinatown store’s 5-cent bin). Hometown girls Stephanie and Valerie bit it with some not-so-great pizzas, Nikki’s bread block looked drier than saw dust, and Andrew…well, it hardly matters what that dude makes, because he’s crazy with a capital K. The guy’s on his way to becoming the Puck of Top Chef Chicago by hating on his competition, claiming his cooking is "like molten fucking lava pouring out of me" (uh, gross), and, when the reliably wooden host Padma announced the contestants were standing in their new digs, proclaiming, "Casa muthafucka!"