The 13th episode in the current season of “Next Level Chef” was nearly an unlucky one for Elgin Community College-trained chef Zach Laidlaw.
Laidlaw’s dish for the night’s “picture perfect” challenge Thursday landed him in the elimination cookoff, which he needed to win to stay in the reality TV competition that airs Thursday nights on Fox and streams on Hulu. It was the first time he found himself in such straits.
The night’s challenge involved the six remaining chefs each choosing a dish to prepare from photos they were able to view on the show’s moving platform, which were accompanied by baskets of ingredients.
Each chef had 30 minutes to make the meals look as close as they could from memory. They were given a second look at the photo about halfway through the meal preparation.
Laidlaw, an executive chef in Maui and the only professional chef left in the running, worked from the mid-level kitchen. The meal he was trying to recreate was a five-ravioli plate garnished with pistachios and chives.
Celebrity chef judges Gordon Ramsay, Nyesha Arrington and Richard Blais found Laidlaw’s presentation to be lovely. However, he was cited for having three ravioli burst during boiling, which made them soggy and destroyed their texture, Ramsay said.
That sent Laidlaw into the elimination round, where he and two other chefs had 25 minutes to make a risotto dish. Vying against Laidlaw were Mada Abdelhamid, a home cook from Los Angeles, and Izahya Thomas, a social media chef from Miami.
In the cook-off battle, Laidlaw worked on a risotto with poached lobster skewers and squid ink. He mistakenly chose sherry vinegar instead of sherry to deglaze the pan for his rice. That led to Laidlaw scrambling to make a fresh batch of Italian rice, which Ramsay found to be about 90 seconds undercooked.
“I know I can do much better than this. I let myself down,” Laidlaw said in an interview that was part of the show.
Fortunately for him, the judges deemed Abdelhamid’s shrimp risotto with sun-dried tomatoes the least impressive of three dishes. They said it needed more stock and lacked consistency.
For the next episode, Thomas and Laidlaw will work in the basement kitchen. As a hint to the upcoming competition, Ramsay told the five remaining contestants to clear their auras and come with positive energy.
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
