By the time Top Chef serves up its celebrity judge episode, viewers are so bloated by Tom Colicchio's salty criticisms that they are itching for a Shun knife fight or a nap. Instead of the usual disappointment realized when Zooey Deschanel pokes around her corn tamales while clearly intimidated by Gail Simmons' sultry-yet-spot-on analysis, last night's guest judge Natalie Portman proved that her easy charm translates to cable cooking shows. By folding a ribald double entendre, a drug-related come-on and generous peels of angelic laughter into her rudimentary cuisine speak, the hard-to-please Top Chef judges fell fork-first into Portman's ardent vegetarian spell.
In an episode cheekily titled "Meat Natalie," the remaining cheftestants were led into one of Vegas's top steakhouses after whipping through a TV-dinner inspired Quickfire. After exploring the freezer full of beautiful cuts of meat, Tom giddily introduced the meat-eschewing ingenue. To Bravo's credit, instead of reviewing the star's extensive, award-padded resume, producers let one chef deride the huge get by explaining via cutaway that Portman's only project worth noting was Star Wars.
As the cheftestants frantically rushed around the kitchen to find vegetarian ingredients for the star, Natalie and her pack of mostly female friends put the judging table at ease by pity-laughing at guest judge Paul Bartilota's forced jokes ("I feel like I'm in Provence sucking on a bar of soap.") When cheftestant Jen shook nervously while serving her plates, Portman teased that she was adding "a little danger to the presentation."
The night took an R-rated turn when Padma observed that Michael V.'s garlic clove felt "like a little prick on the tip of [her] tongue." Natalie chuckled, saying, "No, don't say that! That's awesome!" Tom, in full-flirtation mode, felt that the entendre needed to be completed and offered seductively, "It went from a little prick to big in THE mouth" as one of Natalie's friends added, "That's what usually happens!" [Watch the sexually charged moment unfold in the video below.]
During the final judging segment, Natalie gushed over heartthrob Michael V.'s banana polenta. Tom piggybacked her praise by creepily noting that he watched earlier as Natalie "giggled like a schoolgirl" because of it. With Michael V. safely sequestered in the Glad product prison, Natalie offered up her killer closer. Hinting at her affection for the Movieline Calendar model, Portman purred "Who is his dealer, and does he want new clients?" as the judging panel let loose an unprecedented howl.