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‘Top Chef: Wisconsin’ Episode 8 recap: The Restaurant Wars wage on at Discovery World
Warning: Spoilers ahead for “Top Chef” Season 21, Episode 8, which aired May 8, 2024.
The remaining nine “Top Chef” contestants were flying high after a fun-filled Elimination Challenge at American Family Field last week, when judge Tom Colicchio said they’d collectively cooked the best they had to this point in the competition.
But they’d need to channel that energy for one of the most arduous challenges of the season: Restaurant Wars. With just 24 hours to plan and execute two separate restaurants setting up shop at Milwaukee’s Discovery World, the chefs would need all the stamina they could muster to serve 75 hungry diners with two multi-course menus.
Learn how they managed to pull off that frantic feat below, but first, here are some of the Milwaukee shops, sites and celebs spotted in the episode.
Milwaukee’s spotlight moments from “Top Chef,” Season 21, Episode 8
What in MKE did we see?: The Hoan Bridge, Discovery World, All Star Rentals, Mo’s Food Market, St. Paul Fish Company, Milwaukee Public Market, El Rey, Whole Foods Market, Milwaukee City Hall bell tower, the giant glowing ladybugs crawling down the Milwaukee Building downtown, the Milwaukee Breakwater Light
Celebrity sightings: “Top Chef” winner and Chicago chef Stephanie Izard, “Top Chef” contestant and New York City chef Kwame Onwuachi, chef/owners of Madison’s Fairchild restaurant Andrew Kroeger and Itaru Nagano, Chicago chef and restaurateur Erick Williams
Where was the challenge set? Discovery World, 500 N. Harbor Drive
How did Dan do? In the words of judge Tom Colicchio, he “brought it home for Wisconsin!” Dan was the overall winner of this week’s elimination challenge, serving a 100% Wisco smoked walleye that wowed the judges. He’s now a two-time Elimination Challenge winner.
“We’re going to the lake,” Dan said, with very little fanfare leading up to the reveal of this week’s Elimination Challenge.
What was waiting there for them? It wasn’t a fishing excursion with noted fishing fanatic Tom Colicchio (who told me he sadly didn’t have a chance to fish Lake Michigan during his time taping the show last summer), but rather Colicchio and host Kristen Kish standing at the back of Discovery World, the interactive science museum on Milwaukee’s lakefront.
There would be no Quickfire Challenge this week, either. Instead, Kish and Colicchio were there to announce that this week, the chefs would compete in one of the most anticipated and anxiety-riddled Elimination Challenges in the “Top Chef” canon.
It was time for Restaurant Wars!
The Elimination Challenge reveal: Restaurant Wars at Discovery World
If you’re not familiar, the typical Restaurant Wars setup pits two teams to create a makeshift, full-service restaurant overnight, with a cohesive menu, multiple courses and custom decor selected by the chefs themselves.
It’s a high-pressure situation where even the smallest slip-up can send a seasoned chef home, which Kish knows all too well: She was eliminated on the Restaurant Wars episode of “Top Chef: Seattle,” before eventually making it through Last Chance Kitchen and winning the season overall.
For this season’s Restaurant Wars, the chefs would create a three-course menu with at least two dish choices per course. Each team would designate an executive chef, a floor manager and line cooks, and they would have serving help from the Bartolotta Restaurants.
The cheftestants could select their own teams, but because there was an odd number of them, Michelle — last week’s challenge winner — would pick which team she’d join after seeing how they shook out.
Kaleena, Laura, Soo and Manny formed one team, and Dan, Danny, Amanda and Savannah made up the other. Michelle eventually chose the latter team.
“We all lead kitchens,” Michelle said. “I think that’s going to be our benefit here.”
Each team would have one hour to brainstorm their full restaurant concept before picking out color schemes and table linens at All Star Rentals in Muskego. They’d have $3,000 to spend at Whole Foods and $1,500 to use at specialty shops around Milwaukee.
The next day, each team would have five hours to prep, cook and set up their restaurants, and four hours to serve 75 diners and two VIP tables of four judges.
“If there’s one piece of advice I’d give you, it’s work together,” Colicchio said. “You’re gonna need each other to get through this.”
It’s kind of like he’s been through this before…
Restaurant planning and prepping across Milwaukee
The restaurant concept came easily to Kaleena, Laura, Soo and Manny. Two have a Mexican background and two are Asian, so their fusion concept, Dos by Deul (dos means “two” in Spanish and deul is a marker used to pluralize nouns in Korean) was chosen to reflect the team’s cultures.
Laura would manage the front of house, Kaleena would serve as executive chef, and Soo and Manny would cook.
The concept wasn’t as clear for Dan, Danny, Amanda, Savannah and Michelle. They were inspired by nearby Lake Michigan, so their restaurant, Channel, would have a seafood theme, with the word “channel” creating the link between each chef’s culinary style. But, aside from seafood, that link felt a little broken as the chefs described their dish ideas.
Dan would serve as a line cook at Channel, along with Savannah and Amanda. Danny would be Channel’s executive chef and Michelle, who has the most front-of-house experience, would be floor manager.
After finalizing their concepts, the teams split up to shop, with a handful returning to Mo’s Food Market (where they shopped on Episode 6), some going to El Rey, and some to St. Paul Fish Company in the Milwaukee Public Market, which didn’t carry the trout Dan planned to cook for his first course.
“There’s perch … there’s walleye …” Amanda said over the phone to Dan.
“Walleye would be great!” Dan answered, pivoting his dish idea on a dime.
They took their ingredients back to Discovery World, where they prepped for three hours for the following day’s service as the nerves set in.
“It feels totally insane that we will be cooking in a restaurant that we created in 24 hours. Nobody does this,” Dan said. “You wanna know why? ‘Cause it sucks.”
The Elimination Challenge: Channel vs. Dos by Deul
The next day, the teams worked together to prep and cook their respective restaurant’s dishes. I felt for Laura and Michelle, who had time to help prep but would have to put faith in their teammates to cook their dishes while running the front-of-house operations that night.
The two of them trained the evening’s staff, walking through the restaurants’ concepts, menu and floor plan to ensure smooth service all night. They also helped set up each restaurant’s space, both painted in hilariously similar shades of seafoam and sage green — another nod to the restaurants’ waterfront location, for sure, but the doppelganger decor made it difficult to keep track of which restaurant we were looking at as we bounced between them throughout the night.
As the first diners arrived (including me! I dined at Dos by Deul that evening and was one of the first parties to be seated), service was calm and coordinated on both sides. But Michelle at Channel waited an awfully long time to greet her VIP table of judges, which included Colicchio, Kish, Kroeger and Onwuachi.
The judges starting at Dos by Deul were Gail Simmons, Izard, Williams and Nagano.
The judges would dine at one restaurant first, then swap to the other after their meal. Things went pretty smoothly at that first seating — but that shining service didn’t last long.
Overall, it seemed as though the judges immediately understood Dos by Duel’s concept, but when the dishes came out, they didn’t quite hit the middle-ground balance between Asian and Mexican flavors. Some, like Manny’s beautifully cooked beef tenderloin with mole negro and shimeji mushrooms, missed notes from the Asian side of the spectrum, while others, like Kaleena’s melon and Dungeness crab aguachile, lacked flavor altogether. The judges did love the textures and flavor of Soo’s rice cakes with salsa verde and Chinese sausage, and the gochujang sauce on Laura’s beef tartare, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the extremely slow service that dragged as the night went on.
Chaos slowly built in the Dos by Deul kitchen, too, where ticket mix-ups and backed-up dishes plagued Kaleena, who couldn’t keep the order as the restaurant’s executive chef.
By the time the second seating of judges arrived at Dos by Deul, there was a 30-minute wait for the first dishes to arrive at the table. The judges were miffed.
It wasn’t much smoother at Channel, where Michelle was scarcely seen at the judges’ table and the downtime between courses stretched as the night went on. The judges found it difficult to nail down the channel that tied the menu’s disparate dishes together.
“This is the restaurant that feels like there are too many egos,” Williams said. “Everybody’s trying to shine and they’re not leaving enough room to be collaborative.”
But they loved Dan’s first-course dish: a smoked walleye with labneh, hash brown potato cake and harissa. Kish said it gave her sour cream and onion potato chip vibes, while Onwuachi said he would “go somewhere to order this again.” (You’re in luck, chef! There’s a menu item at Dan’s EsterEv restaurant right now that features a tasty little hash brown that seems awfully similar to the one Dan served tonight.)
They fawned over Danny’s carrot-heavy take on New England clam chowder, too, and loved his tag-team effort with Amanda to create a honey custard with jasmine tea and citrus gelee.
Who won “Top Chef: Wisconsin” Episode 8’s Restaurant Wars?
Shaky concept aside, when the restaurants closed and the chefs met the judges at the Top Chef Kitchen for deliberation, Channel’s dishes were strong enough to secure the team’s win and the $40,000 cash prize.
But just one Channel chef could win the Restaurant Wars challenge, and that honor went to Milwaukee’s own Dan Jacobs. (Or “Dan the man,” as Onwuachi put it when he announced the winner.) Walleye for the win!
“Your smoked walleye felt like you’d been doing it a long time, but it also was a dish that really represented the concept,” Onwuachi said, with Colicchio adding that the dish “clearly had a sense of place” at a regional seafood restaurant concept.
“Thank you very much, but it’s a team effort,” Dan said. “I just played my role the best I could.”
This is Dan’s second Elimination Challenge win, and a huge redemption from his low performance cooking a Brewers’ Famous Racing Sausages-inspired bratwurst dish last week.
“Dan, if anybody gives you a hard time about the brats, you can say you brought it home for Wisconsin,” Colicchio said.
Who was sent home on ‘Top Chef: Wisconsin’ Episode 8?
With Channel winning, all four members of the Dos by Deul restaurant team would be up for elimination.
“It’s about the entire restaurant. When you put together a Latin-Asian concept and one side of that equation was shortchanged, unfortunately, the concept was lost in translation,” Colicchio said.
While deliberating, it was clear that Kaleena’s “boring” aguachile with a greasy tortilla chip and Manny’s “forgettable” shrimp with miso-butter sauce were the weakest of the night, along with the team’s flavorless pork tenderloin, a poor execution that Izard said fell on executive chef Kaleena.
“It seemed like Kaleena didn’t take charge whatsoever,” she said.
It’s the executive chef’s job to ensure the food that’s served is sent out tasty and on time, so when the chefs returned to the judges’ table, Kish asked that Kaleena pack her knives and go.
“Obviously, I’m bummed, but I’m OK,” the Chicago chef said in her exit interview. “The last elimination, three challenges ago, I was devastated because I knew that I had made a mistake. I felt like I did not do my best, and this is the complete opposite of that. I’ve had so many redemption battles.”
She’ll have another go at Last Chance Kitchen, where she came out a winner in the first half-season’s finale, along with Soo. This time, she’ll be up against Kévin, who was eliminated last week.
Next week, the remaining eight chefs will dive into Wisconsin’s cranberry crop in the Quickfire Challenge, and it looks as though the Elimination Culture will focus on Indigenous cuisine, with a visit from James Beard Award-winning Indigenous chef Sean Sherman.
How to watch ‘Top Chef: Wisconsin’: TV channel, streaming
Viewers can watch live on Bravo on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. or stream the next day on Peacock, BravoTV.com or the Bravo app.
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