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.

Notes from the episode where we see that Heather is indeed like a detuned radio…

* The conversations in the car were a little odd, but if Heather wants John Besh, she may have to fight Chris C. for him.

* Quickfire: I’m not a big fan of these mid-challenge twists. What are we measuring here? It feels like we’re just trying to create more drama. They could have just taken three tweets up front and said: Do a bacon hash with one ingredient added by a competing chef. Is that any less compelling to watch?

* Why not do something crazy with bacon in this challenge? I can’t get over the chefs here who looked at the bacon traditionally. You know the nine other chefs are likely to think traditionally, and you have to figure there will be some changes as the challenge goes along.

* Is sriracha an ingredient, or just a condiment? I don’t know, but this is hilarious anyway. I didn’t think this was such a dick move on the face of it – I think you could get away with using a small amount, just enough to produce some heat, without letting it overpower the dish. Maple syrup, which Lindsay gave Chris C. in return, seems much more likely to assert its presence in unwanted ways. (And I say that as someone who will, when your back is turned, drink maple syrup out of the bottle.)

* Chris J. used twitter as the verb instead of tweet. He fails the Internet.

* Quickfire results: Loved the idea of Sarah’s burrata stuffed squash blossom (and so did Hugh), but I was surprised to see it was among the worst dishes. Beverly is in the top three, so the editors show Heather’s face, of course. And Paul is so clearly ahead of the rest of the pack it’s not even funny. He’s cooking on another level. This thing has to be his to lose right now.

* So I had a brief, mostly facetious Twitter conversation with Hugh Acheson last night about whether Grayson is pretty, or just “Top Chef pretty.” One thing that I keep noticing is that she looks very different in the confessionals than she does in the cooking clips – like she’s put on weight since the show. I also noticed that Sarah looked much prettier in the older photos where she had longer hair. This stuff really doesn’t matter, but I keep noticing it.

* On Patti Labelle: I don’t care what song you sing, if you sing like that, you have my attention.

* Elimination challenge: Cook a dish inspired by the person who inspired you to cook. Granted, I’m not a professional chef, but I’d have a hard time with this because I wasn’t really inspired by someone’s cooking, but simply by the need for one of us to cook when I was in grad school, and with my wife exhausted every day from teaching preschool, shouldn’t it be me? I don’t cook the kind of food my mom cooked when I was growing up, and while my professional pastry-chef cousin has been a huge help to me when I’ve had cooking questions, I first learned to cook from outside sources like Good Eats and Joy of Cooking.

* Quick thoughts on the dishes: Chris J.’s steak looked blue (as in too rare) on my TV, and really dude, A1 sauce as an ingredient? … Heather’s spaetzle looked awesome, but the fear of the pressure cooker despite the different protein seemed out of nowhere. Loved Patti delivering the snark on her dish … I worried Sarah’s sausage-stuffed cabbage was too simple, but it did sound amazing (and obviously was), plus once you read the recipe you can see how complex it really is with sausage wrapped in kale wrapped in cabbage … Paul didn’t get in the top three but I still feel like he’s way ahead of everyone else with his skills and his vision … Beverly was surprisingly elegant here with her Korean short rib, so regardless of what Heather says, it seems clear the Bevster can make Asian work for her … Chris C. claiming he was “hoping the judges wouldn’t notice” makes me think he’s never watched the show. They always notice. Anyway, he’s starting to remind me of Kenny the “Preppin’ Weapon,” who could clearly cook but came up with these convoluted dishes where he sank a good idea under three more elements … Edward’s bibimbap without the stone bowl was genius in its presentation, in the contrarian move of going vegetarian, and in incorporating a ton of umami-packed elements on top of the crispy rice. Absolutely going to try that at home … Grayson apologized for her dish! Weak. Anyway, you can’t waste meat in front of Tom, and the dish seemed horribly dated … Ty-Lor, who also has apparently never watched Top Chef before, fried chicken tenders in duck fat. He had me at “fried in duck fat.” Anyone else notice a lot of peaches in dishes this season? Was it a bumper peach crop in Texas? … Lindsay’s trout spanakopita seemed clever, although I’m not a big roe fan; looking at the recipe now I can see why the butter sauce would have overwhelmed the dish, which wasn’t clear to me from watching the show.

* I’m sure Tom comparing Heather to Beverly at judges’ table was just a coincidence.

* Anyway, good riddance to bad rubbish with this elimination. I can’t help but think there was a racial component to Heather’s bullying of Beverly, and I think we’ll see some smartassery from Heather when Beverly shows up in Last Chance Kitchen. Speaking of LCK, great to see Nyesha start fulfilling my prediction that she’ll hold that jacket for a while, and to see her articulate her dislike for Heather and carry it out by executing a dessert for the win.

Recapping another episode of Top Chef: Waterworks…

* Quickfire: This episode of Top Chef did not include a Quickfire, replacing it with an infomercial for some brand of tequila.

* I don’t like tequila – you know my spirit of choice (great book, by the way) – although I use agave nectar every morning in my tea, so it’s not the plant; I get a lot of smoke flavor from tequilas but no brightness to balance it out, although I’ve never had a fine sipping tequila like the 1942 used in this episode. Given the choice, I’d go for bourbon (like Ed), which at least has some sweeter notes to balance the char. So I don’t envy the chefs.

* Ty may have won, but Chris C.’s dish – raw oyster with tequila tapioca pearl and sea salt air – screamed “final three” to me. He’s going to push the envelope every time out, and he has the execution skills to pull it off. But what the hell is sea salt air? “Hey, I put some air around the dish for you” (with magical hand movements). Or maybe he bought it from this guy.

* Did Sarah put tequila in the risotto, in place of the wine? I may have missed that, but I would understand the criticism of the pairing in that case. Otherwise, I’m with Hugh on Tim Love’s views on an essential Italian dish.

* Elimination challenge: Working in teams of two, cook an assigned game meat for a table of judges and chefs who specialize in cooking game. I’ve had quail and duck, but don’t think I’ve had any of the others (venison, boar, elk, squab a.k.a. pigeon). Slightly surprised there was no rabbit, but perhaps that’s not game enough?

* Yeah, I’m sure that’s a total coincidence that Heather and Beverly were paired up. I understand that some drama is necessary given the format, but there’s organic drama (just from the pressure of the competition) and then there’s artificial drama (from putting the mildly racist chef with no self-awareness on a team with the emotional Asian chef). Someone pointed out on Twitter that other chefs should have stepped up to confront Heather over her bullying, but other than one attempt by Grayson, no one really did. I understand that confrontation can have its costs, but the long-term costs of doing nothing are higher – especially if you eventually have to work with her.

* That said, the whole format – where the entire losing team goes home, regardless of who contributed what to the dish – sucked. Sending Nyesha home because she didn’t check on Dakota seems awfully weak, especially since we’re watching another team with one chef trying to micromanage the hell out of the other.

* Also, was it just me or was there a huge disconnect between the comments about the venison during the meal and Tom’s comments at judges’ table? Tom called it “a little undercooked,” and one of the guest chef-diners said it was “a little blue.” At judges’ table, Tom said it was severely undercooked. I don’t know which was right, or if this was editing weirdness, but the inconsistency was shocking, and all of their other comments about Dakota and Nyesha’s dish were positive. Hugh wrote it was “UNDERDONE” in his blog, so perhaps the diners’ comments were off.

* Back to Heather – this season’s official Top Chef Villain™ – does she understand that Asia is a continent with maybe a hundred different cuisines? She keeps using “Asian” as if Asia is a small city outside Rome. Even within east Asia there are enormous differences between cuisines, and if she’s had any kind of formal culinary education, she should be aware of that. She reminds me of my grandparents’ generation, where “Asian” cuisine meant Chinese take-out, and sushi or pad thai were simply unheard of. Meanwhile, Beverly tells an even sadder backstory than Whitney’s, one equally deserving of praise for her ability to overcome it.

* Back to Grayson again – nice to see someone finally acknowledge that abasing yourself in front of the judges doesn’t work. Stand behind your dish. Admitting failure before the judges is just inviting them to send you home.

* LCK: First time this really felt necessary, since Nyesha was ousted under dubious (in my view, at least) circumstances. And it seemed like she cleaned up, despite being thrown by the use of cactus in the challenge. I think Nyesha could go on some kind of run here and make a legitimate difference whenever she’s allowed to re-enter the competition.

* Final three: Still Paul and Chris C. and then a big dropoff to everyone else. I had Nyesha in the third spot, but with her out I think it’s Edward over Lindsay to round out the top three. I wouldn’t exclude Heather here just for her personality, but I think her carping over “Asian” cuisine says something about her limitations as a chef, and limited chefs typically don’t win on this show.

I would say this was a weird episode, but this whole season is playing out strangely, isn’t it? The challenges seem stranger, Tom Colicchio seems crankier, the contestant pool feels as weak as the last non-All Stars crop, and whether it’s editing or reality we have some grade-A wackos among the remaining chefs.

* Quickfire: This I liked – emphasis on fundamentals of French cooking, which, like it or not, is the underpinning of most haute cuisine. And sauces are critical. Learning that, say, Whitney didn’t know how to make a sauce tomate or that Chris C. could see the sauce velouté as a foundation for building flavors (like you’d find in Ruhlman’s Ratio) was enlightening – one of the few chances we’ve had to learn a lot about several of these chefs in a short period of time. But again with all the scallops?

* So Paul didn’t use a roux in his sauce espagnole, but the recipe says he used demi-glace, which is a highly reduced sauce espagnole combined with veal stock. So there was some roux in the demi-glace, as well as the concentrated flavors of an earlier sauce espagnole, and the thickening power of the demi-glace boosted the finished product as well. Demi-glace is a major ingredient in high-end kitchens, but using it here feels a little off – like he used someone else’s work to boost his own dish.

* I’ve written about béchamel before – isn’t it kind of simple for a show like this? I think it’s the easiest of the five mother sauces to make, and I don’t think converting it into a sauce mornay (as I do in my baked macaroni and cheese) was permissible.

* Elimination challenge: Four-course meal, at least two including steak. Was I the only one surprised that they decided to cook 200 individual steaks? Not only is that boring, it’s time-consuming, and gives you no room for error; dishes of sliced steak mean you can always toss any pieces that are over- or under-cooked (within reason – they didn’t shop for 250 plates). And a ten-ounce ribeye per person after another steak course, followed by dessert, is an obscene amount of food for an average person.

* So, is Heather a horrible person, or is she just edited that way? There were a few clips of her being bossy – although you know the same behavior from a male chef would just make him a “bad-boy” type – but the rant she gave the camera about Beverly was over the top. And then she won, which felt a lot like a narrative to me. It did sound like the cake was awesome; I can’t see giving Nyesha the win for a sauce and a compound butter (the latter is pretty straightforward), but didn’t Chris J. perfectly cook the steak in a dinner that required two steak courses? That doesn’t win?

* Tom … man, I like Tom because he’s so incisive, but there’s a vicious turn to his comments in the last few elimination challenges. I’d like to think this is because he’s disappointed in the quality of the cooking so far; from my couch, it looks like we’re not getting the transcendent cooking of the Voltaggios’ season, so that might be making Tom grumpier. But he just lit into the three chefs on the bottom to their faces and tore apart the eliminated chef right after it. He’s so much friendlier on Last Chance Kitchen, so I’m thinking Angry Elimination Tom is about the quality of the chefs.

* Not enough Hugh. It does sound like he’s cool with the roux-less mother sauces, though. Also, “Heather can’t remember who shot J.R., but she’s pretty sure it’s Beverly” is gold.

* Ty-Lor wants Jamie Lauren to know she is a capital-w Wuss.

* I don’t think I’ve ever actually had gazpacho, so I couldn’t interpret the Tom/Hugh divide on that dish. I feel like I need to rectify this in my next meal.

* I feel badly for Whitney after she revealed last week that she grew up quite poor, at times living in cheap hotels with her family when she was a kid. But a basic gratin is a pretty easy dish to make; even if she’d executed it well, she wouldn’t have won, and it seems like other chefs didn’t like her decision to cook it all on day two. She wasn’t winning this thing anyhow, so on that level I’m not as disappointed.

* LCK: Love the peanut gallery of eliminated chefs, especially Keith, and they seemed to really enjoy offering the commentary. Whitney’s burger sounded better overall, considering the toppings and the use of the pork sausage, and it sounds like she won because she had better flavor but also may have cooked hers better. Was Chuy at a disadvantage with ostrich, which reminds me of the leanest steak you could imagine? Again, Tom is so much more human in these videoclips that I wonder what has him so curmudgeonly in the elimination challenges.

* Final three: Paul and Chris C. remain the top two in the competition in my eyes. Heather’s blustering and her win this week don’t elevate her in my eyes; I think she’s just as limited as Beverly and Sara but doesn’t realize it. I’m leaning Nyesha, who started to come on strong in this episode, for the third spot, followed by Edward.

Kind of an uneventful episode, especially since, of the five teams in the elimination challenge, four of them made extremely similar variations on chili – similar cuts of beef, similar flavor profiles, the chili even looked the same. One team took a gamble on a non-traditional approach and they failed. I respect the gamble, but making chili that tastes like mole is out there enough that the chefs couldn’t miss on execution, which they did.

The quickfire challenged the chefs to build dishes around the chile pepper of their choice, from poblanos to ghost chiles (although the latter is no longer the world’s hottest pepper, surpassed earlier this year by the Naga Viper cultivar). Still, the ghost chile is damn hot, and carries with it the biggest cash prize if the winning chef uses it in his/her dish … so why does only one of the chefs, Paul, choose it? They’re practically commanding you to pick that pepper, and we get wimpy chefs going for Anaheims and poblanos that toddlers in India use as palate cleansers. On the other end of the spectrum, Beverly – who might be insane, although I’m still refining that judgment – serves her peppers raw, which would be great if this was something other than a cooking show. Anyway, the result here was fairly obvious: If you use the most difficult ingredient effectively – and putting chiles with dairy or a similar rich fat like coconut is a great way to carry the heat while protecting diners’ mouths from gustatory Ragnarok – you win. And so it goes.

(Also: Chuy uses canned tomatoes. I can not imagine that there was any lack of fresh tomatoes in the Top Chef Kitchen, and he went for canned. Never mind the judgment call of that moment when he bypassed the genuine article – what chef ever looks for canned over fresh in any situation?)

Then the chefs head have to prepare giant pots of chili (now we’re talking about the stew) for the Tejas Rodeo. Split into five teams of three, we get the ridiculous battle for equipment and cooking space at the house – really, you built a beautiful kitchen for the chefs to use, but won’t let them use it? I’m not seeing the point here except to stir up a little drama – followed by an all-nighter that has the chefs dragging like an Atlanta reliever at the end of September. We get meat shortages at Whole Foods, which makes no sense, because you know the producers are calling the store ahead of time to say, “Incoming!” and perhaps give a heads-up on what items they might want to have on hand. As much as I love short ribs, though, I’m having a hard time picturing that in a chili – the fibers would get very stringy after they fall apart during all that time in the heat, right?

The shots of the chefs getting slaphappy overnight … whatever. I’m just here for the food. Although they are setting Chuy up to be a villain character down the road by giving him every chance to show off his ego on national television.

Judging: Not enough comments from patrons, in my opinion. The actual judges’ comments were helpful, but if the winners weren’t their call, then let’s hear more from the customers who voted. As for elimination, asking three sleep-deprived chefs to cook again is probably a bit much, but I thought Richie and Beverly were potentially the two weakest chefs there, and as long as Nyesha stuck around, I was fine with either of the other two leaving.

Random thoughts:

* I wonder if Paul’s dish will make the next Top Chef Quickfire Cookbook, perhaps modified for an easier-to-find hot pepper.

* Speaking of which, I think Chuy was the only chef to pronounce “habanero” correctly. There’s no tilde on the n, so it’s ha-bah-NAIR-oh, not ha-bah-NYEH-ro. The latter pronunciation reminds me of New York Italians who dropped the final vowels from words like mozzarella and locatelli. Maybe there’s some dialect of Italian where that’s correct, but in New York, it’s just affect.

* Really, the emphasis on all the waterworks seemed very overblown, given how little sleep the chefs had had by the time the elimination rolled around. I don’t care how stoic you are with seven hours of sleep, you’re going to struggle with your emotions after 30 hours or more without any rest.

* Did you know Texas chili has no beans in it? Man, I’m glad they reminded us of that fact … about fifteen times.

* No Hugh Acheson? Nothing against the ladies of the Border Grill, but this show definitely missed Hugh’s dark humor. His recap was typically hilarious: “Chuy wants to die under the table. This can be arranged but is not good TV.”

* Chris C. is going to end up with multiple restraining orders against him at this rate. Dude, we know Padma’s hot. Dial it down a notch. And really, you compare one of the most beautiful women in the world to Fabio?

* Last Chance Kitchen: I thought Tom’s “looks inventive, isn’t really” critique of Richie’s food spoke volumes about Richie’s style: In effect, he said Richie’s cooking was superficial, and I don’t think that would play on Top Chef anyway. It seems like Richie has the techniques down (aside from salt), but not the deeper understanding to deploy them in ways that can make an old dish feel new. It must really suck to lose, get ready to leave, and then lose again. Glad to see Keith moving forward – it seemed like Tom’s only real criticism was the weird pumpkin pie smear on the plate, as if Keith was trying to seem a little more avant garde than he is. I’m guessing whatever success he has on LCK going forward will come from sticking to his style of smart comfort food, rather than trying to be something he’s not.

* I was going to pick a final three, but I feel like we’re not seeing enough discussion of winning dishes for me to make anything more than a random guess, skewed by how much screen time they’re giving chefs who say weird things. Next week, I’ll take that plunge.

Sorry I skipped last week’s episode, but I’ll do my best to blog each week from here on out.

* Not discussed enough in the debate over purchasing cooked shrimp (which was an obvious reason for an elimination) is the idea of serving shrimp cocktail at all on Top Chef. I fail to see any way in which that could be turned into a potential winning dish, and it absolutely screams 1970s cocktail party – or bad hotel buffet. And it’s not Mexican. The fact that the pink team never thought, “Hey, this is probably a terrible idea for a dish,” is disturbing.

* Store-bought tortillas. You knew that was going to come back to bite someone, right? Have these chefs watched the show before?

* Given how unattractive the tres leches cake was, and the history of early eliminations for chefs who make dessert, Heather just got her ass saved by the rest of her team. Not only was it leaning – she blamed the heat in the kitchen, which is possible, except aren’t chefs on this show always complaining about the heat in the kitchens? – but it was decorated like an Easter bonnet (I think Hugh said that), not for a quinceañera. They didn’t love Dakota’s cake, but at least it looked the part.

* Was it odd that we didn’t get an individual winner? I haven’t seen enough of the early seasons (I jumped in halfway through the Voltaggios’ Shermanesque march through season 6) to know if this is unusual. Potential winners for me included Chris J.’s green chile, mushroom, and oaxaca empanadas, Beverly’s short rib taco with kimchi (recipe is kind of missing the part where you cook the short ribs), Chuy’s braised goat birria, and Paul’s shrimp ceviche in yuzu with corn salsa. I’d love to try that last one with a firm-fleshed white fish. (One note on Chuy’s recipe: The peanut salsa calls for 3 cups of peanuts, 8 guajillo chiles … and 1/8 tsp of cumin. Really? A good three-fingered pinch of cumin is really going to make a difference in two pounds of spicy, crunchy peanut butter? Come on.)

* Slightly surprised Chris C. – who is Anthony Dinozo from NCIS – didn’t get called out for a dish that was a little simple for Top Chef. I guess it was extremely well done.

* Did any chef actually believe they’d face a live rattlesnake in their quickfire boxes? They’re poisonous. Bravo is not going to risk a fatal snake bite on Top Chef.

* The whole “…, bitches” meme needs to die a quick and painful death. Not only is it incredibly derogatory towards women, just about everyone sounds like an idiot saying it. You are not Rick James. Stop it.

* Contrast Chuy’s leadership style – not loud, but clearly in control, leading through advice and example but never by scolding or patronizing anyone – with Sarah’s. Sarah seemed to want to be in control yet totally uncomfortable being assertive without talking down to her teammates (and Lindsay was 1A to Sarah’s 1 here). I didn’t see accountability for the shopping errors anywhere, which should come down to proper menu planning and clearer directions to the other half of the team. You can’t run a team of eight anythings without someone taking the lead. If Sarah had gone home instead of Keith, it would have been fully justified.

* What a huge boost Hugh Acheson is to judges’ table. He’s hilarious and oozes common sense; Tom Colicchio can be funny, but his humor often comes off as dismissive, whereas Hugh can be just as critical but his delivery is far more good-natured. His blog on the show is a must-read – he’s just as funny in print, with his post on this week’s episode poking fun at maybe half the chefs in the competition, and even a fellow judge or two. (“Padma double dips. There a lot of innuendo.”) Gail Simmons might be better-looking, but she doesn’t bring half of Hugh’s humor or insight to judges’ table.

* I skipped the first Last Chance Kitchen, but watched this one to see how my namesake made out. Interesting to see that the chefs didn’t know of LCK’s existence. I thought the concept might be dumb, but this challenge was very straightforward – no gimmicks, heavy emphasis on the food. I won’t spoil who won this face-off, but one comment is that the winner’s dish follows a structure that has, at least over the past three seasons, proven very successful on Top Chef when it’s executed properly.