Top Chef and I: Lisa Parks, Season 1
- Jordan
- Aug 7, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
It’s time to steer toward another exposé on a Top Chef contestant. Let's look at Lisa Parks’ journey on season 1, shall we? Adjust your seatbelts, read the guidelines, and let’s enjoy this retrospective together!
Profile
Name: Lisa Parks
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Position: Cooking Teacher
Synopsis
Episode 1 (Who Deserves to Be Here)
Lisa Parks comes into Top Chef as a mostly self-taught cook who teaches cooking and is also a stay-at-home mom, so when she's the first one to do the quickfire challenge of surviving Hubert Keller’s Fleur de Lys kitchen for 30 minutes, she doesn't have the best advantage. Maneuvering through in a slightly disoriented manner, she ends up not completing the task when her directorial adjustments for a fallen dish halt the kitchen’s atmosphere. Coming in at 23 minutes, she's a few minutes shy from the requirement.
During the elimination challenge, Lisa is among the first to cook a signature dish alongside fellow competitors Ken Lee, Andrea Beaman, Candice Kumai, Miguel Morales and Dave Martin. She whips up a mushroom and shrimp risotto that fellow competitor Brian Hill thought, as he put it, was well “given her experience.” Later, when she gets a turn to critique, she gives some credit to fellow contestant Cynthia Sestito’s dish when others didn't find it to be the most satisfying. Lisa’s dish ultimately lands her in the middle, and she avoids elimination for the night.
Episode 2 (Food of Love)
In the next episode, Lisa partakes in the quickfire requiring the chefs to display fruit nicely. Mentioning that her mother used to do them all the time, she uses her spiritual presence to guide her own creation. Whatever that guide was, it didn’t do shit.
During the sexy dessert elimination challenge afterward, Lisa makes mini tarts that were supposed to have sweet cream on top of them, but it melted to the point that it couldn't be recovered or remade in time. The origins of it melting are unknown, but the effects of a freezer door opening and closing like crazy are a potential cause as that phenom caused other competitors to have similar experiences with their treats. Regardless, she ends up in the bottom for not selling the dish enough but does not get the axe that day.
Episode 3 (Nasty Delights)
Lisa’s braised octopus dish during the octopus quickfire in the following episode does not rank at the top or the bottom. What she does rank at the top of, theoretically, is the elimination challenge where the chefs get to cook for kids. Regardless of the kid-polarizing monkfish requirement assigned to them, as a mother herself, Lisa knew that anyone who got to be on the same team as her would be headed toward the right direction for victory. In the end, she is with Candice, Cynthia, Miguel, and Stephen Asprinio for the challenge (though Cynthia is replaced by recently eliminated Andrea when the former leaves the competition to take care of her father).
Lisa has a lot on the line for this challenge. So much so that she “speed shops” (which isn’t much different to how contestants shop in later seasons) and gives absolutely zero fucks about Candice’s feelings after she’s berated by Stephen over her qualifications. (Ok. It was clearly an edit, but that's not gonna stop from me laughing at how she went all "you not messing my neighborhood street cred" with it.)
In the end, Lisa secures the bag when her team’s meal wins over the other’s. She gets closure in her mom card not being revoked and gains confidence in potentially going far in the competition.
Episode 4 (Food on the Fly)
Lisa decides to make a breakfast-based dish during the gas station quickfire and tries to sell it as being inquisitive, but guest judge Jefferson Hill calls it out as pork and beans with eggs. Lisa, like most of the contestants in this challenge, ends up in the middle.
With her Jo-Anne membership on the line this time, Lisa is focused in executing her microwaveable chicken and gratin dish toward a junior league right. Unfortunately, she didn't complete all her prep in time and stumbles to deliver a stellar performance, both in the product itself and the tell-all to the prospects, when showtime arrives. The way she explains the blunders to the audience almost sounds like she straight up didn't cook the chicken at all, but rest assured when the final product is shown on-screen, it's not raw…I think.
Good thing she’s in the bottom. Well, not good that she’s in the bottom, but her poor performance allows her to explain to the judges that she only had time to broil the chicken before grilling it. Even still, the bland look and uber-herbaceousness of the poultry were pointed out as potential constructs to send her home among her fellow bottoms Stephen and Candice, and if judge Tom Colicchio had the courage to send everyone out (and revoke that membership), he would've. In the end, however, Lisa emerges.
Episode 5 (Blind Confusion)
Taking her flop in the last challenge as a learning experience, Lisa comes into the next quickfire of identifying ingredients through taste alone with stride.
Ok. Maybe not. After being up-and-down in guessing things correctly, Lisa ends up getting 3 out of 20 right. Tying with fellow contestants Harold Dieterle and Lee Anne Wong as well as Stephen, it placed her at an average level.
Afterward, Lisa continues to follow her stride of determination when the elimination challenge comes: selling fusion street food to the public.
Ok. Maybe not. On the upside, she is grateful that Harold is her partner for the elimination challenge because of his highly proficient and drama-free aura.
Skipping the shindig of Dave and Miguel going at it with identifying junk food blindfolded once all the chefs correlated a plan and returned to the house to wind down, Lisa wakes up the next day zoning in on her confidence. With Harold as her partner, their previous efforts have allowed them to be fully prepared for the day upon arrival at the spot.
Ok. Maybe not. She wants to avoid talking about the jicama-less flop whenever the judges arrive, but Harold insists on revealing the discrepancy. Using whatever ingredients they have left over, they're able to make a dish without the jicama (seared tuna avocado salad) as if it was obsolete from their plans to begin with, but it’s not enough to declare safety. In fact, when they arrive at judging, a multitude of things are brought up. For one, Lisa's lack of attentiveness in bringing the jicama to the site. Another, the dish not translating well as street food (and even being considered forgettable by guest judge Mike Yakura).
When asked who should go home between the two of them by Tom if they were deemed the worst pair, Lisa graciously nominates herself given her report card. Evaluating her recent performance as idle by the judges, Lisa gets eliminated from the show, but not before a comment from Tom is expressed to her in regard to stopping by her house for a meal.
She makes it known otherwise in her exit interview that despite being eliminated, she already proved herself. Faring as far as she did among chefs within the professional landscape, she states that precious experience as a prize that money can't afford.
Episode 10 (Reunion)
Returning for the reunion show, Lisa becomes the self-appointed cheerleader over the course of the cast's arrival. (Much to no one's request, but I personally didn't mind and thought her yaps were quite entertaining in a kitschy kind of way.)
Over the course of the rest of the episode, she gets into different discussions about the season such as the protocol for tasting food based on the whole incident with Ken and how Stephen's persona rubbed people the wrong way. Her responses came off like she had personal vendettas on people when she never had conflict with anyone on the show, and while I found them rather odd, to each their own in expressing themselves.
When asked about the top 3 near the end of the episode, Lisa originally wanted Harold to win but leaned toward Dave in the end. As for Tiffani Faison, she felt that her behavior wasn't conducive enough for the kitchen despite having executed food nicely throughout the season.
Analyzation
Why Lisa was not a judge on the spin-off Top Chef Amateurs is pretty wild. In the more direct sense, I can obviously see why she wasn't with her appearing in season 1 only and then not appearing in the lexicon of elite establishments after. However, for someone that got their degree from a rather minor culinary program, Lisa really did that. She arguably had a more successful run than contestants who went further in the competition in later seasons.
She won an elimination challenge (even if it was a team challenge; she clearly played a large role in guiding the team to the win).
She lasted a lot longer in the first quickfire despite failing to meet the time requirement. She had the 3rd longest duration out of the bunch and literally lasted over 7x longer than professional chef Harold. I don’t care if she was first and business might not have been as busy. You gotta give her props.
The girl straight up made risotto and didn’t get sent home!!! (Risotto would be noted as a difficult thing to pull off as the series progressed.)
Even if there was a claim that she didn’t have a competitive drive when she was a contestant, her run’s still pretty impressive nonetheless. I certainly wouldn’t call it a fluke. (Lower standards from an inaugural season maybe, but damn can we give the girl some sort of recognition?)
Much like many, if not all, contestants though, Lisa had flops during her run as a competitor. Her performance with the microwave challenge was one of the more stranger ones to me given the dish she did was fairly simple and something she’d done multiple times. I’m sure she’s been able to execute that dish in less time before given her being a mom and all, so how this fell flat on her face is pretty perplexing.
The best realization with Lisa is how much she really had an impact on the show. You have to remember that the challenge she was eliminated from was one where she had to work with one other chef. Her partner, Harold, also had major trouble during the challenge, and while future seasons would have the chance of pairs being eliminated at once, this one didn't. The elimination could’ve gone one way or the other.
Harold ended up becoming the winner of season 1, and he would later have a fair amount of success that validated the show’s credibility (doing so in a fairy humble manner, might I add). Had Harold been eliminated, the show would’ve lost a real chance at being something that would be beneficial to the industry. With no Last Chance Kitchen to bounce back from (which, for those unaware, is a side competition introduced in season 9 to get back into the main game), it would have been lights out for him. (Unless some other loved one was getting terminally ill, but what are the chances of that happening twice within a select group of castmates?)
For Lisa to selflessly suggest that she should go was nothing less than admirable. Having proven what she set out to do, there was not a need for Lisa to win, but more importantly, she had convinced the judges that her faults were more volatile than Harold’s (who was just as open to being sent home).
Sure, Harold was the one that chose to serve an expensive fish to a low-income district. He was the one that took reigns in the final product being what it was in the aftermath of the forgotten jicama. Heck, he even tried to put the blame on himself over the jicama on multiple occasions. So many things added up for Harold to be sent home, but Lisa's firm willingness to take her seemingly decisive one fault and let it override anything Harold did was such an unknowingly wise revelation that it really speaks volume in the long run. Harold even echoes her selflessness during season 6’s "Top Chef All-Stars Dinner" and even admits that he wouldn’t have been able to do what she did that day (even though he kind of attempted to back then, but maybe that’s just the brain fuzz coming through).
So, Lisa did not become Top Chef, but she sure placed the show on the right footing. That footing might have veered in-and-out over time, but hey. Every bit counts.
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