‘Top Chef’ Portland: A dramatic, roller-coaster week for one local chef (Episode 6 recap)
Updated May 07, 11:03 AM;
Posted May 07, 10:19 AM
The remaining chefs on Top Chef Portland traveled to Cascade Locks for episode 6. From left, Gabe Erales, Dawn Burrell, Sara Hauman, Shota Nakajima, Avishar Barua, Chris Viaud, Gabriel Pascuzzi, Nelson German, Byron Gomez and Maria Mazon. (Photo: David Moir/Bravo)David Moir/Bravo
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This week’s “Top Chef” Portland episode brought the remaining 10 chefs back from the temporary drive-in to again focus on foods and culture native to the Northwest. The title of Season 18′s Episode 6, “Stumptown U.S.A.,” refers to a nickname for Portland. And the elimination challenge was both inspiring and illuminating, as the chefs traveled to a beautiful location in Cascade Locks to learn about foods sacred to members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Tyler Scott
On a recent evening in Detroit’s Mexicantown neighborhood, notes from a guitar played by a busker on the sidewalk reverberated off the walls of the mural-covered buildings. The smells of Mexican street food filled the air, and Valeria Lopez was bent over a clipboard at a booth inside Taqueria Lupita’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant. Regulars just call it Lupita’s.
Lopez runs the place now. She took over the business from her parents, who decided to retire when the pandemic hit. Her plan was to get a forgivable loan for small businesses from the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to help pay her staff.
Stateside’s conversation with Chef Kiki Louya
Chef Kiki Louya’s had a hand in some of the brightest spots on Detroit’s food map. She co-founded Folk Cafe and Market and The Farmer s Hand, both in Corktown. In addition, she’s a writer, food activist, and restaurant consultant who’s been active in movements to eliminate tips in favor of living wages for servers and kitchen staff. She also just finished a stint on season 18 of the competitive reality cooking show, Top Chef.
Chef Louya’s early food memories are transcontinental
“Early on in life, my dad used to make a lot of food from, you know, his native country. The really interesting part of that is, when he first moved here, he couldn t find the same ingredients. So he had to kind of use his imagination. So a lot of things were kind of like his interpretation of Congolese cuisine, just using things like, you know, cream of wheat instead of, you know, fufu, and that kind of thing. So, you know, he adapted. And my
David Moir/Bravo
Jamie Tran, the chef and co-owner of The Black Sheep, the Eater 38 restaurant in the southwest where Tran melds her Vietnamese upbringing with French techniques, competes on
Top Chef: Portland with a goal of winning $250,000. Tran already made her mark in Las Vegas with The Black Sheep, which won an Eater Award for Restaurant of the Year.
In Episode Five, “Meet You at the Drive-In,” Tran continues to compete on the show where so far, four chefs were eliminated.
Episode Five starts with a Quickfire Challenge giving the contestants the task of creating a dish paying tribute to the mother figure in their life using roses or rose-flavored ingredients. Tran made mama’s imperial rolls with pork, shrimp, and mushroom topped with rose salt and vinaigrette, a dish similar to one served at The Black Sheep, sans the rose.
The Bravo s
Top Chef Season 18 contestants stepped out of the kitchen and into the great outdoors in the April 22 episode. The cheftestants headed about an hour east of Portland to Oregon s famed Hood River Fruit Loop where they hand-picked fruit to feature in their dish for the Elimination Challenge.
This seemed to be one of the toughest Elimination Challenges for the Season 18 cheftestants so far. Not only did the dish have to be savory, but they also couldn t incorporate any vegetables in their creation. Cooking outside with weather conditions like wind definitely made it a different experience than being in the kitchen as well.