8 takeaways from the highly anticipated Restaurant Wars episode of ‘Top Chef: Wisconsin’

“Restaurant Wars,” the eighth of 14 episodes of “Top Chef: Wisconsin,” aired Wednesday night on Bravo. It can also be found on the Peacock streaming service.

There was no quick challenge this week. For the Restaurant Wars elimination challenge, the remaining nine contestants split into two teams and prepared a pop-up restaurant in less than 24 hours.

The “chefs” were taken to the Discovery World event venue in Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. They were greeted by host Kristen Kish, who said they had “arrived” at the highly anticipated Season 21 episode of Restaurant Wars.

“Excited? Scared?” – Kish asked. “We’re going away from old school this year,” she said, adding that teams will have to prepare a three-course, progressive menu with at least two options for each course.

She said they would have to appoint a chef, floor manager and line cooks and handle everything else, from decorations to the reservation book. “This challenge will push you in ways you have never been pushed before.”

Kish said she should have known about it because, as a former contestant, she was eliminated during an episode of Restaurant Wars. A clip from episode 10 of “Top Chef: Seattle” shows a adolescent Kish hanging her head and doing a little bow as former host Padma Lakshmi told her to pack her knives and leave.

With nine chefs left to compete and Michelle Wallace from St. Louis won the final elimination challenge, Kish had the remaining eight choose their teams first. Wallace then had to choose which four-person team she joined. She chose the team of Milwaukee chef Dan Jacobs.

Wallace said she is “very confident” in her team because they all run home-based kitchens.

Kish told them they had an hour to create a concept, and each team was given a budget of $3,000 to shop at Whole Foods Market and $1,500 to shop at various specialty stores. The next day they had five hours to arrive at Discovery World to prepare, cook and set up the restaurants.

They would then have four hours to serve 75 guests and two VIP tables that would include “Top Chef” winner Stephanie Izard, owner of Girl & the Goat restaurants in Chicago and Los Angeles; and “Top Chef” alum Kwame Onwuachi, a James Beard Award winner from New York.

Consulting judges were chef/owner Erick Williams Virtue Restaurant & Bar in Chicago and Itaru Nagano and Andrew Kroeger, chef/owners of Madison Fairchild restaurant on Monroe Street.

Half of the judges ate at one of the momentary restaurants, the other half ate at the other, and then there was a changeover.

Celebrity judge Tom Colicchio told the kitchen testers: “If I can give you one piece of advice, it’s: work together. You will need each other to get through this.

Jacobs called opening the restaurant extremely difficult. “After opening nine of them, none of them are easy,” he said, adding: “to open something in 24 hours is crazy.”

His team named their restaurant Channel and focused on seafood. Jacobs later explained that canals could connect waterways and as chefs, they were brought together to meet this challenge.

Jacobs was in charge of his team’s first course and prepared a salad or smoked walleye dip. He called it classic Wisconsin and referenced his Jewish heritage. He said the apply of Middle Eastern ingredients found in Israeli food “really speaks to who I am as a person.”

His dish consisted of labneh, strained yogurt cheese, potato pancake and harissa. After tasting it, Kish found it added the flavor of potato chips with sour cream and onions.

The second team was called Dos by Deul, which, according to participant Laura Ozyilmaz, was a Mexican-Asian concept and meant “two on two.”

Contestant Kaleena Bliss stated that she played to her strengths because she had two chefs of Mexican descent and two chefs of Asian descent.

After tasting many of the dishes, Kish said Dos by Deul had a theme, “but now I walk away feeling more confused by the whole situation.”

Colicchio criticized Wallace, who was outside the Channel house, for not being present enough. Kish knocked down Ozyilmaz, in the same role for Dos by Deul, which made the judges wait 30 minutes before they were given their first course.

Bliss said some waiters mixed up their table numbers, but they were able to fix it and get back on track.

Kish said that overall, the judges tasted some fantastic and memorable food and named Channel the winner of the title and a total prize of $40,000.

Jacobs was the overall winner. He also made dessert, which Kish said confused her, but she said, “I was very sure and clear about your smoked zander. I thought it was really well put together. The taste was fantastic. The potato pancakes were crispy and hot.”

Colicchio stood by her opinion. “What I loved about this dish was that it was a regional seafood restaurant that clearly had a sense of place and really reflected the mission.”

Jacobs later said he “brought it home Sconnie style.”

The judges felt that the least successful dish was the shared pork tenderloin from Dos by Deul, which, according to one judge, was not well seasoned. It was difficult to pin anyone down, but Bliss, as the team’s expeditioner, tried it and let it go, they said. She had to pack her knives and leave.

Bliss has already returned to the show on “Last Chance Kitchen,” which airs after “Top Chef.” Colicchio said she might do it again.

Next week’s preview showed the challenges of cranberries and native foods.