Recapping the worst episode of Top Chef I’ve ever seen…

* First order of business is to discuss the guest judge this week, Pee Wee Herman. I was too old for his original kids’ show, and never quite got the hipster-chic of it. I really don’t care about the public-indecency arrest, nor do I think it’s germane to a discussion of his appearance on this show. The real problem with Pee Wee Herman is that the character isn’t funny – and an unfunny guest judge who spurs the other judges to try (and fail) to be funny creates a very awkward show that, for me, was unpleasant to watch even before we got to the elimination-challenge foolishness.

* Quickfire: Twenty minutes to make pancakes. I love this challenge, because pancakes are such a classic dish, very American, often badly done, like lead in the stomach, tasting just of buttermilk or of the artificially-flavored syrup in which they are drowned. A pancake is one of the quickest of quickbreads, and while I prefer waffles – better surface/interior ratio, so you get more browning and more crunch – I like the way this gave chefs a blank canvas.

* Was it just the editing, or were most of the chefs just eyeballing their batter? I’m obsessed about measuring ingredients for doughs or batters of any sort, usually with a scale.

* The ricotta pancake thing, for me, is a little played out, and two chefs employed it – lemon-ricotta from Lindsay, ricotta-buttermilk from Grayson (who used chiffonade of basil in her fruit topping, which I love, as it has a surprisingly sweet flavor). Ricotta does produce a really light, fluffy end product though, including the zeppole at Via Napoli in Epcot, so maybe I’m criticizing a trend that is more of a new technique. But we didn’t get a lot of unusual flours, which surprised me because it seems like an easy way to change flavors and textures.

* Probably worth pointing out how incredibly forced the laughter from the chefs was during this entire episode. Grayson at least seemed to have some nostalgia for Pee Wee’s Playhouse, but that was it. Herman’s “the best pancakes I’ve ever had” gag was lame – anyone who didn’t see that coming shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

* Ed wins by going Jackson Pollock with the batter so he serves mostly the crispy edges of pancakes without the doughy interiors. This reminded me of a customer-from-hell incident my wife and I witnessed in a Cracker Barrel in Elkhart, Indiana, in 1998 (a story I may have told before, so bear with me). The burly guy in the next booth, dining alone, orders the pancakes “extra crispy,” and right before the waitress leaves to put in the order, shouts, “did I emphasize crispy?” So, in a development as obvious as a Pee-Wee Herman gag, the guys sends back multiple plates of pancakes because they’re “not crispy enough.” To this day I really have no idea what a crispy pancake would look like or whether that clown ever got what he wanted, or what he deserved for treating the server the way he did.

* Elimination challenge: This was a new low for Top Chef, surpassing the previous low, set when Pee Wee Herman walked into the kitchen at the start of the episode. The chefs had to head out on bicycles to find their ingredients at the farmers’ market in the Alamo district, and then had to find restaurants that would allow them to cook their meals in their kitchens. This is ridiculous for more reasons than I can list, but I’ll start with these.

1. The show is called “Top Chef,” right? So what part of this challenge is remotely relevant to being a chef? It had little or nothing to do with cooking, or even running a kitchen, which I could argue is a relevant consideration for evaluating someone’s cheffing skills.

2. Requiring the chefs to ride all over town on bikes is a pretty big handicap for anyone who’s not in shape, or has bad knees, or is otherwise physically limited. And given how hot it was during the filming of this season, weren’t they asking for someone to get hurt or pass out?

3. It had to be more structured than the editing made it appear. The show’s producers arranged this with restaurant owners beforehand, right? I mean, clearly these restaurant chefs/owners aren’t that surprised to have a TV crew and a random cook show up and ask to use their kitchens, and the chefs keep showing up at the same places, which can’t be a coincidence. So did the contestants get a list of restaurants to hit? And were the restaurants separately compensated? (Or was it just for the free publicity?) They had to know beforehand so they knew they would be asked to write up bills for the chefs. And if I’m right, why not make that clear to the audience?

4. None of that part of the show was even a little entertaining, let alone instructive about food or cooking.

* Moving along rapidly, Ed decides he wants to get proteins at the restaurant, which seems kind of foolhardy; don’t you build your dish around your proteins? He ends up using chicken breast instead of what he hoped for, shrimp, and is nearly eliminated because of it.

* Grayson says, “game night at the Schmitz house, usually one of us breaks down and cries.” I hear ya, girl – Ticket to Ride matches can get pretty fierce.

* Lindsay falls way behind the other chefs in getting ingredients – again, what are we judging here? Then she loses the kitchen she arranged to use because they don’t hold her spot and Sarah shows up. We sure learned a lot about Lindsay’s culinary vision by watching her get screwed over like that. The judges criticize her dish for having a little too much goat cheese, and Pee Wee Herman keeps talking about how amazing it is to have food served in “little boats,” so apparently he’s never seen an endive in his life.

* Sarah makes a “chicken skin vinagrette,” but it wasn’t just from the fat rendered from the skin, since she crisped it on the grill. I haven’t seen a recipe yet but am very interested now. The judges loved her okra, crush her for not seasoning her perfectly-cooked soft-boiled eggs. Outside of that – and chefs do get the axe all the time here for improper seasoning – this could have been a winner as a reconceptualization of a classic dish, a formula that always plays well on Top Chef.

* Ed got a little weird about sharing the kitchen with the guy who actually owned the place, although he was better humored about it at judges’ table than he was in the confessional. I get the criticism of the chicken’s texture if he pulled it too early and didn’t allow it to carry over, but Gail’s comment that poaching in beef fat isn’t flavorful made zero sense to me. Everyone knows the last time McDonald’s fries were good was when they still fried them in beef tallow.

* Grayson makes stuffed chicken breasts, which I’m not crazy about since they tend to dry out fairly easily, especially cooked without skin, because you’re trying to get the stuffing to at least get hot if not actually cooked through, by which time the breast meet is dry. Tom loves the combo of ingredients and loves her butternut squash but not in concert with tomatoes. Weird that Grayson would get large chicken breasts at a farmer’s market – you’d expect smaller ones if they’re really free-range or pasture-raised.

* Paul remains wildly ambitious even when working in someone else’s kitchen. It also seemed like he got along the best with his hosts, which says the easygoing manner we’re seeing post-editing is probably legitimate. He worried, as usual, about the sweet/sour balance, which the judges liked as long as you got all of the elements at once. Only David Tyree could stop him now.

* Can I just emphasize again how terribly unfunny this whole episode was? If Pee Wee Herman isn’t able to provide humor, what the hell is he doing here? Charlize had better insight into the food, and she’s hot. Just bring her back next time instead of letting some has-been comedian be a guest judge.

* Winner: Lindsay. Sounds like she just had the least flawed dish. Paul gets the thumbs-up as well, so I assume it’s fair to call him the runner-up this week.

* Loser: Given what we saw, which of course is a limited look, I expected Sarah or Ed to go home over Grayson. Grayson had a hell of a run though; she seemed early on like she lacked the range, but proved that she could succeed within her limits, and (not that it matters for judging) came off on TV better than anyone other than Paul.

* Last Chance Kitchen: Editing made Grayson look like the winner, but Ed betting the pack of cigarettes that it’s Beverly makes me think that’s who really won the LCK finale. Tom has the line of the week, funnier than anything PWH said, to Grayson: “I would not wake up this early in the morning just to fuck with you.” One preposition makes all the difference.

* Other LCK observations: Interesting to hear eliminated chefs, mostly men, now praising Beverly … Please stop saying “Asian” like it’s one fucking cuisine. Bev is Korean and her dish was more Thai than anything else; they’re no more similar than two European cuisines from different countries. It’s beyond annoying to hear Asian cuisine dismissed like it’s a gimmick, or some narrow style that could be summarized in a Dummies book.

* Final three: I’m sticking with Paul, Ed, and Lindsay.

Recap of last night’s Top Chef: Frozen Food Infomercial…

* Charlize in the stew room! I’m impressed – if nothing else, it looks like she didn’t big league anyone, and really is just a fan of the show. So she and I have … one thing in common. We can build a relationship on this, right?

* Quickfire: Prep three ingredients, then make a dish incorporating all of them. Guest judge this week is Cat Cora, who might be the least impressive TV chef I’ve ever seen. I did watch Iron Chef America for the first year or two that she was on it, and found her stuff less imaginative and a lot less appealing than any of the other Iron Chefs at the time; Boston chef Ken Oringer (of Toro, Clio, Coppa, and La Verdad – he’s legit) just destroyed her in one of the last episodes I watched before I gave up on the show. Cora may be a wonderful person, but given what I’ve seen from her on TV I’m not sure why she’s here.

* And then she criticizes the deep-fried bacon for not having “flavor.” Really? Deep-fried bacon lacks flavor? If you want to criticize them for not rendering the bacon at all, I guess that’s valid, although bacon fat is loaded with flavor, so really, what the hell was she talking about?

* Back to the quickfire … Padma looks like she’s wearing her boyfriend’s clothes, assuming she’s dating a lumberjack, or perhaps is just wearing his tablecloth. Then she refers to the prize money as “ten thousand smackeroos,” so someone forgot that she’s not at home talking to her baby.

* Chris J. and Grayson are one team, and their styles don’t meld that well, with Grayson – who nearly botches the fresh pasta beyond repair; I’d love to know what she did to rescue a dough so dry it was tearing in the roller – telling Chris to get a move on, and Chris saying, “Fast is slow, and slow is smooth,” reciting something he apparently once read in a fortune cookie. “Good fortune happy lucky big time for you and family.”

* Paul and Ed, the dream team combo, end up DQ’d because Paul forgot to cook the shrimp. He didn’t just forget to add them, as Bev did with her curried rice krispies – he didn’t even cook them. He might have been the last of the six chefs I’d expect to brain-cramp like that, even if he was once a dope dealer.

* Despite all their issues, including finishing in the final seconds, Grayson and Chris win, leaving Lindsay and Sara as bitter as raw radicchio. (Foreshadowing!) Sara says in the confessional that her dish was better, which would be entirely plausible if we’d ever seen her touch Grayson and Chris’ dish. No immunity, though, which makes sense since we’re almost to the finale.

* Elimination challenge: feed 200 people at a block party with your take on a traditional block-party dish, which is then twisted into a commercial for Healthy Choice, which pushes low-calorie, low-fat, low-salt, dishes made with cheaply-sourced factory-farmed ingredients and pretends they’re good for you. Anyway, how come I never get invited to these parties? I need to get my agent on this.

* Anyway, the chefs pick their dishes, and are then told to lighten them up because the sponsor says so. Healthier versions? Come on, it’s Top Chef, not The Biggest Loser. I want fat served on a bed of fat, topped with hollandaise.

* We keep hearing about how the chefs reduced the salt in their dishes. Is it unfair of me to expect a show that’s all about food, with chefs and judges who talk about fresh ingredients, to understand that for a person with normal blood pressure, salt is not a problem? If you’re not eating processed foods, and your blood pressure is fine, you’re not eating too much salt. I could understand saying that part of the challenge for the chefs is to force them to amplify flavors without salt, but please, stop repeating the myth that salt is unhealthful.

* The chefs only get two and a half hours, including prep time. They did know ahead of time, so they could plan accordingly, but on the flip side, the mise en place must have taken up half of that time.

* Lindsay and Sara are making meatballs. Sara switches to turkey, but other than seeing them come off the grilltop a little flat we don’t get much more info on them. Lindsay goes with veal and lamb. Why lamb in meatballs? That has to be the fattiest meat option available. I don’t really like lamb – just lost my taste for it all of a sudden – but when I’ve had ground lamb dishes, I always find them a little greasy. For a low-fat challenge, it seems like an odd choice. Lindsay binds her meatballs with Greek yogurt, which sounds weird, but she gets props for using chickpea flour, which I think is an underutilized kitchen weapon – I’ve used it for a slew of things, including savory crepes and fresh pasta. I’m also eager to try her quinoa and black pea salad with a garlic-parsley vinaigrette. (But did she really use garlic powder in the dish?)

* Grayson and Chris end up with chicken salad sandwiches, Grayson’s choice because Chris was too busy pondering the true meaning of “block.” Chris kills the mayo and uses a tofu emulsion, reminiscent of Alton Brown’s egg-less Caesar salad dressing, so not only is it lower in fat but it’s now friendly to people with egg allergies. Grayson is crunched for time, as always, but her choice to make the sandwiches to order turns out to be her trump card over Chris. I did think Chris’ watermelon salad side dish, with a frozen pineapple slush poured on top, looked far better than Grayson’s trendy watermelon salad with feta and whatever you lost me after you put goat cheese with watermelon.

* Paul and Ed push the envelope, of course, with their takes on a Korean dish called galbi, grilled beef ribs first marinated in a salty-sweet mixture and often cooked table-side in restaurants or at cookouts. I’ve never had it, but you pretty much had me at “beef ribs.” Ed refuses to tone down any of the fat other than trimming the short ribs, which is kind of a fool’s errand because there’s so much fat laced in the meat itself, and then pairs it with a white-flour steamed bun. Paul switches to ground turkey, mixes in eggplant, and serves it in a lettuce wrap with a white-peach kimchi and a nonfat yogurt-miso sauce. Paul says at judges’ table that he added eggplant for the fat, which I assume is just nerves talking because, um, it has almost no fat. Ed, meanwhile, has to deal with kids stealing his bread, which is also probably a sign it’s not health food.

* Winners: Paul, Lindsay, and Grayson. Tom loves Paul’s kimchi. Grayson stands up to Tom at judges’ table and I think rendered him speechless. Paul wins again, no shock, but he did have the most out-of-the-box dish, including the things he did to maintain flavor while losing fat, and apparently executed it.

* Losers: Ed, Sarah, Chris, although the judges say nobody really flopped. Sarah kind of gets a pass for a good dish that wasn’t as good as her competitor’s; the biggest complaint was uneven mixing of the salad, which sounds like a terrible nitpick. Ed loses to Deep Blue, but also gets points off for punting on the healthful part of the challenge and bullshitting the judges. Chris J. is the pretty obvious choice for elimination here, and I think he was the worst remaining contestant, at least in odds of winning the whole thing. Grayson blames herself for picking chicken salad, which didn’t play to Chris’ strengths, but he was there for the decision on what to cook and didn’t come up with a valid alternative.

* Last Chance Kitchen: Mystery Box challenge. Bev and Chris make almost identical dishes. Tom doesn’t say so, but I think the deciding factor may have been the white anchovy, which Bev integrated in her dish, but Chris didn’t after suffering chef’s block.

* Final three: I’m sticking with Paul, Ed, and Lindsay. I still think Sarah is too limited – both of her dishes in this episode were Italian-plus, at best – and Grayson is probably the weakest chef remaining. Looks like we’ll get a re-entry from LCK after next week’s episode.

A recap of this week’s edition of Top Chef: Beverly…

* We lead in with residual bitterness from last week, when Beverly won on her dish, leading Lindsay and Sara to cry wee wee wee all the way back to San Antonio. Paul clearly thinks it’s funny that Beverly won. I think Paul is awesome for thinking that.

* Speaking of Paul and awesome, he’s waffling things for breakfast at the house. The Waffleizer would be proud.

* Quickfire: Grab ingredients off a fairly quick-moving conveyor belt and craft a dish using at least three of them. The belt has a weird mix of processed foods (I saw some Oreos on there; I’m offended that no one took them and sincerely hope they did not go to waste) and the occasional high-end item, like lobster, which provided perhaps the best comic relief of the season when Chris J. made like a cat chasing a laser pointer (except that eventually he caught one). But wasn’t there a general lack of proteins on the belt?

* I actually had no idea what whole bitter melon looked like, but I have eaten it … and it’s bitter. I have made that face that Eric Ripert made after tasting Paul’s deesh.

* Ed’s sauerkraut soup just sounded awful, as did Sara’s cottage cheese sauce (which Eric called “surprising,” but never said it was good). I like cottage cheese anyway, but it’s kind of grainy and lumpy, and I don’t know how you would get that smooth enough for a sauce.

* Ed’s comment that Bev should have cheated was funny, prescient, and wildly ignorant of the Defcon 5-level bitching that would have ensued had she done it. Although watching Sara’s head explode may have been worth it.

* Is it just me, or do they love to say that a chef DQ’d in a Quickfire would have won had s/he finished the dish? Bev just forgets one element, gets disqualified, and her Moriarty wins. But even Lindsay acknowledges in confessional that she came in second. Can she and Sarah finally shut it after Bev won an elimination challenge and had the best dish in the subsequent Quickfire?

* Did Padma get dressed in the dark for the Quickfire? My wife wondered if Padma was going to drive the train back to San Antonio after the show.

* I enjoyed the in-show commercial for this upcoming Snow White movie. Note: I may not actually have enjoyed this at all.

* Charlize Theron is lovely. But Seth Rogen and I still prefer Kate Beckinsale.

* I really don’t need to see the chefs’ phone calls home, although now that we know Chris J. is married, I have to say I can’t believe his wife hasn’t cut off his unicorn-ponytail in the middle of the night.

* Elimination challenge: Make a wickedly beautiful dish. How seven chefs took those instructions to Whole Foods without a single one of them even suggesting squid ink is beyond me.

* Beverly picked halibut as an FU to Lindsay. I don’t care what anyone says. And I fully respect this. Speaking of which, Bev using a ten-inch chef’s knife that looked longer than her forearm made me laugh.

* I had never heard of black chicken, but credit to Grayson for cooking something she apparently hadn’t tried before. The New York Times ran an article on these birds, properly called Silkie chickens, referring to their “deep, gamy flavor,” which says to me that they are probably easy to dry out if cooked incorrectly. Grayson seems more attractive now that I know she has a macabre sense of humor.

* Her table-side explanation was over the top, but Ed … come on already, the food’s getting cold.

* Charlize loves to eat, but weighs 90 pounds. Either she’s lying about how much she eats or she used her mirror-on-the-wall to steal the metabolism of a 15-year-old boy.

* Other elimination thoughts: Paul’s handprint was a brilliant touch, as was the off-to-one-side presentation, too gimmicky for a restaurant dish but perfect for this particular challenge … Chris’ apple-pie twist looked like it was rotting, which was a good thing for once; Tom was visibly giddy which he hasn’t been for anything all season … Sara’s risotto with amarone (a dry, Italian red wine – yes, I had to look it up) didn’t translate to TV; it looked mealy and clumpy like a thick sauce, but the judges loved the lamb heart and the presentation of the risotto, so it was probably just the difference between reality and TV … Beverly’s dish was the only one that didn’t seem “wicked” enough, with the dark element, forbidden rice, hidden under the halibut … Lindsay putting the spices from the stew on the dragon beans didn’t seem so revolutionary, but Tom thought it was, and his opinion matters more than mine does … After three dishes Parma looked worried because all three were too good. I don’t remember ever seeing that before.

* Very fun to see an episode where every chef nailed it. The judging snark is usually pretty entertaining, but to then see judges who can, at times, be quite vicious (especially Tom at several points this year) falling all over themselves to praise even the bottom three chefs made for one of the best episodes I’ve seen.

* Winner: Paul, proving once again he’s the guy to beat, since he can lose two elements and still win. This seems to me like Chris’s last stand; if he can’t win this challenge, perfectly suited to his mad-scientist-with-bad-hair approach, I don’t see him winning anything else.

* Judges’ table: I think the editing really did us a disservice here; the judges must have asked the three chefs to defend themselves, but we didn’t see that, only the defenses grafted awkwardly on to the end of the back-and-forth between the judges and chefs about the dishes. Beverly’s dish may have thickened as it cooled, a challenge of the competition but also not the greatest reason to go home. Is this really a coincidence that she barely missed immunity, and was then sent home? I suppose it is – Colicchio has always been adamant in defending the integrity of the show’s judging, which separates Top Chef from most reality competition shows – but that was the kind of drama a show like this wants to get word of mouth up. Also interesting to note that the male chefs clearly respected Beverly more than the female chefs did (including Grayson, who sideswiped Beverly at judging).

* Last Chance Kitchen: Just watch it. A photo finish. That’s real (TV) drama.

* Final three: Paul, Edward, (big gap), Lindsay. I still say Sara’s lack of range is her downfall.

* I don’t see a Hugh Acheson blog post this week, but reader Toby S. passes along this eatocracy piece by Hugh in which he puts down Paula Deen in a devastatingly polite manner.

Restaurant Wars! This show makes me more nervous than the finale, because I have yet to see a Restaurant Wars episode where neither team ended up in the soup and at each others’ throats. Edward even gets the ball rolling by trashing Sarah, which becomes doubly ridiculous when we see that he shows more respect to servers who forget to put table numbers on tickets than he does to a competitor who suffered from heat exhaustion in triple-digit temperatures.

As much as I like Restaurant Wars, however, there are fundamental flaws in the execution. This year, the producers split the challenge over two days rather than having the teams operate their restaurants simultaneously, which seemed like a big advantage to the team that went second. We always get two chefs handling front of the house duties, thus forcing them to hand off their dish to a competitor who will inevitably not make the dish up to the first chef’s standards (even ignoring, for a moment, the second chef’s incentive to focus on his/her own dishes, let alone the possibility of sabotage). The chefs are also forced to waste time on décor, which would be great if this was Top Design; are the chefs really judged on this crap or is it just product placement for the sponsors?

To the bullets…

* The men (the chefs were split into two teams by gender) name their restaurant “Canteen” and not one person drops a “You’ll need a tray” reference? I am disappoint. Anyway, as is typical of Restaurant Wars, the teams worry more about restaurant names than they do about execution, as in the case of the men, who forget about the need for an expediter because they’ve never watched “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.”

* Canteen’s menu seemed to take a page – or a whole book – from Thomas Keller with dishes called ham and eggs, Almond Joy, and Cracker Jack, and if you’re coming at the king of clever nomenclature, you’d best not miss. They missed, although the peanut butter “noodles” seemed like a cool concept that just didn’t work out.

* The diner who said she’s “not a big pork belly fan” but loved Paul’s dish has probably never had pork belly done correctly. Seeing him judged by the standards of his previous output is a bit unfair, since it seems like Below Average Paul is still above everyone else here. He’s also the one chef who, both in live action and in the confessionals, shows some actual grace under pressure, focusing on getting the job done while trying not to offend Ty or Chris J., both of whom failed in some of their responsibilities.

* Ty gets hammered on the Thai lettuce cups, but I was more weirded out by the caramel sauce – I know caramel is a big thing now in savory dishes, but I find caramel (which I love in dessert) so overbearing that I can’t imagine putting it in a dish where it might overshadow the main protein.

* Chris J. makes one dessert, and it looked kind of like a kid gorged on Halloween candy and then threw it all up before he could digest any of it. Even before considering whether peanut butter and cherries are a good combo (I’ll vote no), I would flunk that dish on presentation.

* Edward makes a chocolate almond dessert and calls it Almond Joy because once, back in the kitchen, it sat next to a coconut. Good luck with that.

* To the women, who named their place Half bushel (snicker) … It’s Sarah’s turn to be the villain, bossing everyone around like she’s been possessed by the spirit of Heather, even after she’s told everyone that they have to remain calm in the kitchen, thus flambéing her credibility with her colleagues.

* Did Lindsay just happen to have an outfit that coordinated with the décor of their restaurant? Did she just pick up a few separates at the interior design store?

* Every year on Restaurant Wars, we see the judges arrive at one restaurant when the host(ess) is in the back or otherwise absent. Is that staged? Although in this case, Lindsay was clearly spending too much time in the kitchen – I don’t think they ever showed Edward in the back – so it wouldn’t have been hard to have the judges show up when she wasn’t out front.

* Speaking of which, this was the ideal judges’ panel: Padma and three legit chefs, one of whom is Hugh, who had less opportunity for snark this week. Although one week they need to have Paddington at Judges’ Table, because he can do that cold, dark stare they do better than anyone.

* Grayson’s salad looked like a work of art, but was it too simple? Anyone could make that if you could get the produce, although Hugh pointed out that the cheese was at the right temperature, which I imagine is tricky in a hot kitchen. And good for Grayson for standing up to Lindsay multiple times.

* Why is Sarah firing three courses? Three chefs in the back, six dishes, so … check my math for me here … but isn’t that two per chef? I think Paul did the same, but of course, he’s a better chef.

* Did Lindsay actually explain Schaum torte to the judges, or was that just for our benefit?

* So, at judges’ table: Lindsay throws the team under the bus before learning they won. She seemed to have the worst individual performance. Her dish wasn’t well made (of course, not entirely her fault), but she was also in the wrong place much of the time she was on camera.

* The verdict: The women beat the men, and Beverly beats the women. Grayson smiles, Lindsay and Sarah are steaming like a couple of xiao long baozi. Hey ladies, maybe if you hadn’t tried to put Beverly in timeout earlier, this would have gone better for you. Meanwhile, Ty’s dull Thai wrap was … I’m not saying it. He’s been on the bottom enough times that I never thought he had a chance to win this thing, and while he may not have been the worst of the eight chefs remaining, he wasn’t top three material anyway.

* LCK: Make a dessert in 30 minutes, using one of the eliminated chefs as your sous. Nyesha makes a baked custard with coconut and lime. Ty’s “dark chocolate mousse” (melted dark chocolate combined with mascarpone) looked like pâté, an unappetizing color combo that I think gave him a distinct disadvantage against Nyesha, who wins yet again. (I did predict a long winning streak for her, and I believe this gives her four.) Very impressive to see Heather and Malibu Chris work as if their own fates were on the line.

* Final three: Paul and Edward, probably still Lindsay despite the bad week, but Grayson coming on strong (I feel like I thought she lacked range as a chef, but other than the modernist quickfire, has that ever really been accurate), and Nyesha a legit threat if she does end up the winner of LCK. But this is still Paul’s competition to lose.

* One final thought. Hugh Acheson’s blog post on this episode has Lindsay calling Beverly “fucking retarded,” and if that is true (I didn’t catch it), she should be ashamed of herself, to the point where producers should have considered whether to keep her on the show. Using the r-word in a pejorative sense is always reprehensible, but using it as a direct insult to another person’s face is worse than inappropriate, worse than unprofessional. We’re in hostile work environment territory with this one. So the prediction that Lindsay makes the final three is not a rooting interest.

Notes from one of the better episodes, hitting both ends of the culinary spectrum:

* Before we even get started, Edward’s trash-talking Heather for using his cake recipe, which he gave her, so, um, don’t give out your recipes any more, genius.

* Then, the night before the Quickfire, the chefs get a copy of Modernist Cuisine at the house. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a controversial, groundbreaking, backbreaking (weighing over 50 pounds), five-volume set, spearheaded by polymath/Microsoft billionaire Nathan Myhrvold, that rethinks cooking from the ground up, using a scientific approach. It’s not all molecular gastronomy, but that’s a major focus, which freaks out a few of the chefs.

* Quickfire: Moto Chris calls Myhrvold “Chef Nathan.” No.

* Then Moto Chris explains miracle berries to Padma and Nathan (who has to one-up the chef by mentioning in a somewhat offhand way that he grows miracle berries in his basement).

* Grayson referring to molecular gastronomy as “magic” was pretty funny, as was Beverly’s foam disaster (although I did feel bad for her when she referred to herself as socially awkward). Meanwhile, Sara ends up in the top three for ravioli with a raw egg yolk inside … which we see chefs do a few times a year on this show. That seems about as modern as harvest gold kitchen appliances, but the judges approved anyway. She didn’t win, which would have annoyed me, but when Ty got the nod (and the books) Moto Chris looked like he wanted to commit hara-kiri. (Or maybe he finally saw his own hair in a mirror. I’d feel the same way.)

* Elimination challenge: The chefs must stay up all night at Salt Lick BBQ – I think this was their original location; I’ve only been to the one in Round Rock – and prepare five dishes: chicken, pork spare ribs, brisket, and two sides of their choice. This is anti-modernist cuisine, and that’s awesome.

* Two of the three teams decide to go boring and literal. They could have sent all six of those chefs home and I wouldn’t have been upset. Grow a pair already.

* At Whole Foods, Malibu Chris (much better than “Chris C.”) reads the grocery list, with “liquid smoke” on it. Um, Chris, I’m pretty sure that’s what the barbecue pits are for.

* Edward gets more ornery as the show goes on, because apparently when Heather left, she took Edward’s self-awareness with her. So now we have a new villain. I get Edward’s point that he and Ty had developed a “system” for serving without Sara while she was on the disabled list, but isn’t there some obligation to re-integrate her when she comes back? At least Ty realized that, you know, there’s a damn camera on us, you idiot.

* Meanwhile, why can’t a team that’s down a member borrow a body from the restaurant just to help them serve? Was it fair for Ty and Edward to suffer in the judging because they had to compensate for another chef’s heat exhaustion (if that was indeed Sara’s malady)? I don’t get it. If the point is to identify the best chef, then let’s get the extraneous variables out of the way and focus on the food.

* I was surprised to see Beverly’s bourbon fire set off the smoke alarm in the RV, since I have, in fact, produced a fire quite a bit like that only to discover it barely gave off any heat and didn’t singe anything it touched (including, I believe, my eyebrows). Her inability to handle the fire was kind of a concern, though.

* Beer can chicken isn’t Q. Period. Automatic DQ in my mind.

* My wife was singing along with Grayson’s bullfrog song. She didn’t make the faces, though. Also, I refuse to believe Grayson only says mildly inappropriate things like “sex in the mouth” when she’s sleep-deprived. Speaking of which, Hugh’s recap might have been his funniest yet.

* Judges’ Table: Paul wins again, by going a little off the board. I know this was a team win, but it seemed clear this was Paul’s menu.

* Did Team Acrimony really put orange mint in their cole slaw? I did think Tom criticized them unfairly for slicing the meat ahead of time, unless he was willing to say explicitly that he thought they could have sliced to order fast enough to serve the guests.

* Nathan Myhrvold was a good judge except when he tried to be funny. But his comments were pretty specific and he’s obviously passionate about food and incredibly knowledgeable about it.

* I was less disturbed by Malibu Chris basing a BBQ sauce off a Texas beverage (albeit one I don’t drink) than by him thinking, again, he would get a mistake (oversalting) by the judges. I get why he went home, especially after two straight times in the losers’ bracket, but I still think he had more potential than Moto Chris.

* Last chance kitchen – did the on-screen description of Nyesha’s dish actually say “twill” instead of “tuile?” Twill is a type of fabric weave. Tuile is food. Don’t even get me started on toile.

* Both dishes seemed really strong, but it sounds like Nyesha won for making more of “a restaurant dish.” She’s cooking angry now, and I like it.

* Final three: Paul, and it’s looking like it matters less and less who else is there with him. Malibu Chris was in my projected final three as of E7, and I see much weaker chefs still here (Beverly, Moto Chris, and Ty). I’ll go with Paul, Edward, and Lindsay for the final three, with the caveat that we don’t know when the Last Chance Kitchen champ might re-enter the mix.