Like the Lakers, Feniger goes 2-0

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On Wednesday night, Susur Lee stated that cooking was a sport, and that ‘Top Chef Masters’ was the Olympics. If that’s true, then Susan Feniger was the episode’s Michael Phelps. No, I don’t mean that the spritely chef consumes a whopping 12,000 calories per day; it’s that our Feniger went 2-0 in both the quick-fire and elimination challenges, without so much as breaking sweat.

For the quick fire, the chefs prepared various animals’ legs for Jason Lezak, anchor on the 400-meter freestyle relay in Beijing. But Marcus Samuelsson, Jonathan Waxman, Rick Moonen and Tony Mantuano all suffered from fatigue, resulting in sub-par dishes and abnormally low scores. The only one who gave Feniger a run for her money was Lee and his Indochine-style leg of lamb. But Feniger’s cumin-cilantro chicken on quinoa pilaf edged him out, winning her some red and gold Trojan gear for the elimination round, where the contestants did some tailgating for the USC-Stanford football game.

No one opted to duplicate Michael Voltaggio’s winning molecular chicken wing recipe for the challenge. Rather, the dishes prepared at the Coliseum were fairly mundane, giving Feniger’s carne asada tacos an arena in which to shine.

When put up against Waxman’s thickly sliced skirt steak tacos on stale tortillas and Mantuano’s chewy grilled pizza, a simple street-style taco was enough for a win, bringing Feniger’s total charity earnings to $32,000.

But does her dominance in the last episode have legs? Do you think she’ll follow up Voltaggio’s Season 6 victory, making Angeleno chefs 2-0? One thing is for sure: The pairing of our local lady’s victory and another Lakers win sure made for a sweet night of TV.

-- Krista Simmons