Time to review another product placement-packed edition of Top Chef!

* Quickfire: Season four winner Stephanie Izard of Chicago’s Girl and the Goat is here as a guest judge. Every ingredient in the pantry is covered in Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil. I hope they recycled all of that metal, because otherwise this whole challenge is just a big environmental disaster. Once you unwrap an item, you must use it. There are also no cooking vessels available – you must cook in the foil itself, and that stuff can’t be recycled. Immunity’s at stake. Ecological concerns aside, is this challenge really that different from giving each chef a sealed box of ingredients and telling them they must use everything in it?

* Kristen decides to make a sponge cake and we see her whisking eggs in a bowl she made of foil. Danyele says making a cake in this challenge is “the ballsiest shit” she’s ever heard of. That’s also a pretty good indication that Kristen will win the challenge, isn’t it? Ballsy tends to win on this show.

* Bart shapes a bowl on his head, which seems a bit unsanitary, and also made a strainer, which makes him MacGyver in this crowd.

* Chefs can’t sear anything because foil doesn’t conduct heat well enough, and we get a shot of one foil “pot” leaking off the edge of the flat-top. This can’t be the advert that Reynolds was hoping it would be. As an aside, I don’t go through that much foil in the kitchen, but I do use a lot of another Reynolds product – parchment paper, especially to keep pizza dough from sticking to my wooden pizza peel.

* Sheldon smokes scallops. I can’t even think of a time I saw smoked scallops on a menu, and I’ve certainly never eaten them. Wouldn’t a protein that lean fare somewhat poorly in a smoker?

* The bottom three: Brooke, whose dish was under seasoned and who got a nasty reaction from Padma during tasting for her use of raw onions; Micah, whose lamb was still wandering around looking for Mary; and Josh, whose dish was “uninspired.” Is it just me, or is Josh looking pretty overmatched the last 3-4 episodes? You can’t talk that tough and not bring the goods.

* We get a top six first, with Sheldon, Kristen, Josie, Stefan, Danyele, and Bart, of which the actual top three are Danyele, Kristen, and Sheldon. Winner is Kristen, of course, since she took the biggest risks, had a number of different elements, and seems to cook with tremendous precision. She needs to stop acting so surprised when she wins – she’s practically the Paul Qui of this group. And I can’t imagine that Bravo would be upset to have a former model win the season.

* Elimination challenge: Stephanie’s sticking around as guest judge, which seems like a great idea the show should use more often. The challenge involves cooking with fresh berries in head-to-head battles, other than Kristen, who cooks alone because she has immunity. The other top chefs from the quickfire pick their opponents. Sheldon picks Micah, Danyele picks Josh, Stefan picks John T, Josie picks Lizzie, and Bart gets Brooke. No one seems to really be picking for competitive reasons except maybe Josie, and even then, neither Lizzie nor Brooks seems like a pushover.

* Of the berries, the one I’d least want would be gooseberries, which Stefan and John draw. Gooseberries are powerfully tart and a real pain in the ass to clean and trim. Kristen gets tayberries, the one berry here I haven’t tried; it’s a sweet cross between a raspberry and a blackberry, but, per Wikipedia, can’t be machine harvested so it’s rarely grown commercially. I bet it makes an unbelievable pie, though. The whole episode reminds me of the time my wife and I went to Alaska and spotted salmonberries growing wild on the side of a road – but we didn’t touch them because I didn’t know what they were or if they were safe to eat. (They are.)

* Stefan buys flash-frozen tuna, saying it’s the “highest-quality fish in the store.” That might be true at some markets, but Whole Foods typically sells high-end sushi-grade tuna at the fish counter. Also, fish really suffers in the defrosting process, losing texture as the ice crystals melt. I almost never use frozen fish at home; if I can’t get it fresh, I don’t get it at all. John razzes Stefan for it, but then tattles to Tom about Stefan using frozen fish, which is just bush-league. There’s no un-hearing that – Tom had to taste that food with the notion that the fish was previously frozen already in his brain. John’s lame excuse is that he was mad that the tuna wasn’t sustainable. Hey, I’m all about sustainable product, but just admit you threw the guy under the bus already.

* The “kitchen” is an outdoor setup on the farm where the party (with 150 guests) will be held, and it’s chaos, with too little room for eleven chefs to set up. Danyele, not the most assertive chef in the group, has to get loud and pushy just to get counter space. Of course, I don’t know if there wasn’t enough space or if one or two chefs were taking up too much room, but I’d rather not see chefs suffer because they couldn’t find flour or get enough room to work. Bart is struggling to find a blender, and ends up cursing out John, who’s hanging on to a blender but might not have used it yet … again, why not have 11 blenders available?

* Up pulls a tractor with freshly picked berries. How do I get one of those to stop by my house?

* Kristen tells her backstory – she was born in Seoul but abandoned by her mom, and at four months moved to Michigan to be adopted by an American family. That means three chefs of these eleven were adopted. I can’t imagine growing up and dealing with that feeling of abandonment, rightly or wrongly. Kristen talks about taking the $10K prize for this challenge, should she win it, and going to Korea for the first time to see where she’s from.

* Micah’s daughters are named Sage and Saffron. I want to mock this but those names really aren’t that odd.

* Tasting time. Danyele: chicken ping nut terrine with blueberry mostarda on a crostada. No bueno. The bread slices are too thick and crunchy, the terrine is rubbery, and it’s all underseasoned. She looks totally lost in her own head at this point. Josh: savory goat cheese mousse with blueberry compote, plus a little Serrano ham and cracker crust. Judges say this one doesn’t have enough crunch, but that’s the only real comment, so it seems like Josh will win this one by default.

* Josie: A “rock’n raspberry roll” that she’s rolling to order while she babbles like a leaky faucet to distract guests from the fact that she’s woefully unprepared. The roll has sockeye salmon, Dungeness crab, and a raspberry aioli. Gail says there’s not enough raspberry. Tom says there’s too much style, not enough substance. If he’d added “too much blather” he would have nailed it. Lizzie: steamed cabbage roll with heritage pig and bacon stuffing, fresh raspberry, and raspberry liqueur. Padma loves it right off the bat. Tom says it’s just a little under seasoned. We’re not getting much of Stephanie’s commentary, unfortunately. I’d value her contributions over Gail’s, certainly.

* Sheldon: ahi poke, strawberries, sweet chili sauce, and strawberry purée, all in a summer roll. There’s also a radish in there that sells Stephanie. Micah: strawberry-marinated fried chicken with a strawberry and pepper bacon buttermilk biscuit. The fried chicken seems fine, but everyone hates the biscuit, which looks dry on camera and apparently was also dense and mealy.

* John: white gazpacho with chorizo and gooseberry jelly. The whole dish is overpowered by the chorizo, and one guest says it reminds him of “cheeseburger soup.” That’s probably not a compliment. Stefan: tuna crudo with Asian vinaigrette with gooseberries and more gooseberries on the dish itself. Gail doesn’t taste the berries enough, but as with Josh, this looks like a win for Stefan by default.

* Brooke: spicy smoked chocolate pudding with blackberry tapioca and salty graham cracker crumble and earl grey marshmallows. At this point in the show it seems like this is the top-rated dish, with everyone loving the concept, the execution, the use of the berries, and the nod to s’mores. Bart: blackberry soup with salmon and rhubarb yogurt. Tom loves soup, hates the salmon. Stephanie says the salmon is superfluous.

* Kristen: Matcha goat milk custard with tayberry jam, cornmeal sable, and olive-oil macerated tayberries. There are a ton of flavors going on in this dish. She just seems to be conceptually way ahead of anyone else in the competition, and she executes more consistently than anyone else.

* Stefan telling John to “suck it hard” in the stew room. All class, that guy.

* Judges table: John, Josie, Bart, Micah, Danyele lost their matchups in the eyes of the guests and the judges. Micah acknowledged that Sheldon’s food “popped.” His biscuit was dense and chewy, and for a guy with evident skills he is failing to execute at an alarming rate here. Josie gets ripped for “doing a demo” and makes more excuses, which seems to be her core competence. Gail says her flavors were muddled. Tom says it was too heavy with aioli. It didn’t look or sound appealing, and she made guests wait way too long for it. Bart’s salmon had terrible texture. Danyele said she heard people eating the crostada. Tom says she gets her halfway through a great concept but can’t finish it. John saw gooseberries, thought grapes, went gazpacho, then makes excuses about crazy kitchen and says he’s not making excuses. I’ve defended John to this point but he came off horribly in this episode. Perhaps he behaves when things are going well, but when adversity strikes he reverts to juvenile responses.

* Tom says the winners all worked better with the product than the losers. The winner is girl-on-fire Kristen, who can now go to Korea and perhaps eliminate “Gangnam Style” at the source. Stefan plants one on her cheek. Subtle.

* The judges joke about Josie’s dish looking like Pepto Bismol, but end up sending Danyele packing. She’s been on the bottom most of the competition, but Josie’s act is way more tired to me as a viewer, and I’ll miss Danyele’s hair.

* Then we get some drama as Josie goes all over Stefan in the stew room with what appears to be no provocation other than him starting a separation conversation that was too loud for her liking (but wasn’t about her). That’s pressure getting to someone, and that someone handling it poorly. Stefan isn’t the reason Josie’s been on the bottom. Own your mistakes.

* LCK: Make a sandwich in twenty minutes. Danyele goes way too simple, CJ goes over the top, and CJ wins. People do not learn: Simple almost never wins on Top Chef, because the judges nearly always favor a great concept done reasonably well over a fair concept done perfectly. And that’s how they should judge the dishes. That said, I’d rather eat Danyele’s sandwich – and she even takes one of the sandwiches she made to go. I agree with her that avocado just makes any sandwich better; I put guacamole on burgers all the time, and I like her method of making it into a simple spread by mashing it with a little acid and salt. But again, that doesn’t win on TC.

* Revised top three: Kristen, then a big gap, then John and Brooke, with Lizzie and Sheldon rounding out the top five. Micah’s falling fast. Josie seems like she’s clearly the worst competitor left, followed by Josh.

I should be back on a regular Top Chef recap and chat schedule next week, and sticking to Thursdays for Top Chef recaps after that.

* Quickfire: The judge is Marilyn Hagerty, author of that awful Olive Garden review in the Grand Forks Herald last year that went viral (with, I think, some early help from me after a reader sent it my way). Now she has a book deal with Tony Bourdain. What on earth is someone who knows little to nothing about food – for God’s sake, people, she praised a restaurant that is the chain equivalent to Chef Boy-ar-dee – doing on Top Chef? Our one male cat knows more about fine food and he eats plastic wrappers off the floor.

* The challenge is to make a sweet and savory holiday dish based on your ethnic heritage, and you have to use Truvia to satisfy the marketing department. The stuff, which uses the natural sweetener stevia, is twice as sweet as sugar and has a bizarre aftertaste, not as bad as artificial sweeteners but not pleasant and definitely not an acceptable substitute for sugar. You want to cut calories? Eat less. Unless you have a blood-sugar issue, or are cooking for someone who has one, I wouldn’t recommend stevia – and even then I believe Truvia contains some sucrose.

* The twist: There’s one knife for everyone. Lizzie draws it, but leaves it on her cutting board while she heads for the pantry, so Josh grabs it – fair play as I see it, and he didn’t hog it for long. Why should the knife sit idle? And if she wanted to use it straight off she should have taken it with her. Meanwhile other chefs are cutting with scissors, graters, and so on. No one has a mandoline slicer? Or a pastry cutter?

* Danyele and John both reveal that they’re adopted; Danyele ends up making her mom’s post-Christmas bread pudding with leftover ham.

* Lizzie is from South Africa, so Christmas there is warm. She’s making bobotie, pronounced “buh-BOO-tee” apparently, which I’ve only had at the Boma restaurant at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. Lizzie’s looks a little different, though.

* Micah is half black and half Mexican and refers to himself as “Mexigro or Blaxican.” I’m just going to stop this point right here before I get myself into trouble.

* Eliza says her mother called her “pleasantly chunky” when she was a kid. In a related story, Eliza’s mother was a fucking moron.

* I don’t know how much range Sheldon has, but even staying within food traditions from Hawai’i he gets to draw on a lot of Asian cultures, and his banana lumpia looked pretty amazing. So did Josie’s tamale with habanero masa and a papaya and mango salsa on the side. Neither made the top three, though.

* Hagerty, meanwhile, is very sweet, but is overmatched by the food here. The bottom two are Bart’s chicken and waffles dish, which she said had “too many things going on,” and Micah’s “taco” (actually a tamale, but that’s okay Marilyn because you’re old), which was dry.

* Top three: Josh’s jonnycakes, Stefan’s latkes with smoked salmon tartare, and Brooke’s apple crostada with cheddar cheese, which Padma called “homey.” Brooke wins, much to her surprise, since she felt she was playing it safe. Personally, I think cheddar cheese is unpleasant to begin with and would never in a million years pair it with apples, but most people think this is a good idea.

* Elimination challenge: Anna Faris and Burt Macklin, who apparently are married. I’d like to see Faris on a Parks and Rec episode where April spends 22 minutes mumbling threats of unspeakable violence against her. Also, Danyele is a Parks and Rec fan, so major props to her. The challenge is to cater their giant homecoming party and the winner gets a Prius. On a slightly related note, I just rented a Kia hybrid when I went to LA this week and was shocked at how smooth the ride was, and how quiet the engine was – quiet enough that I didn’t realize I’d started the car, pressed the button again, and of course turned it off in the process. I expected a much choppier ride but couldn’t tell when the engine was switching energy sources unless I checked the dashboard.

* Faris and Andy … er, Chris want Seattle-oriented food – wild salmon, Dungeness crab, wild game – and food that brings in their German and Norwegian heritage, meaning meat and potatoes dishes. Pratt says “lots of calories” is the way to go.

* I hate Anna’s hair, the color, the cut, all of it. And the dark brown eyebrows with platinum blonde hair just look odd to me.

* We interrupt this episode of Top Chef to bring you a not-totally-obvious Prius commercial.

* Josh says Stefan was “douchey” and “kind of an asshole” on his season. Cough cough, Josh.

* Kristen says she loves making fresh pasta. She’s my pick to win this whole thing. Meanwhile she and der Hundchefkoch are flirting again.

* To the food: Bart does a loin of elk with cherry and beer sauce and mushroom couscous. Padma likes the way he cooked the elk (a meat I’ve never tried). Brooke’s lamb-stuffed squid on black rice with coconut milk gets some odd looks but immediate raves. Chris loves it, Tom loves it, and guest judge Rick Moonen praises her for going for it with immunity. Sheldon does a braised Okinawan pork belly and seared scallop on rice congee, which also gets high marks. Stefan makes a German gulasch with fried marjoram dumplings and sour cream. I couldn’t tell if Chris was joking around about not really knowing what gulasch was – he was kind of making the Andy face but he might have been serious about never having a proper gulasch before.

* Kristen does a delice de bourgogne tortellini, with dried apricots and triple cream cheese. Rick says it’s a perfect single bite, and the dish looks like it’s delicately made with powerful flavors. Micah does briased pork ribs with celery root puree, grilled apples, and a celery leaf salad. He clearly screwed up the puree, adding cream to make it smoother and ending up with a gloppy mess. I like celeriac but it’s pretty fibrous and I would have cut it with potato to improve the finished product’s texture. Lizzie does a crusted wild salmon with roasted radish and beet salad, but the salmon isn’t seared or seasoned enough. Eliza’s elk ribeye with elk sausage polenta and spiced carrots is a dud. The judges say the meat’s not bad, but the rest of dish isn’t good and the carrots are nearly raw. The meat looked way undercooked to me – more blue than rare and not sliced consistently.

* Final group: Danyele’s pan-roasted boar chop and tomato bacon marmalade gave her trouble from the top. Chris, who says he always orders boar when it’s on the menu (how I feel about duck), doesn’t like the meat, although he says the marmalade is awesome. Tom says the meat is sliced too thin and I can already hear the judges’ table conversation coming. Josh does a roasted pork shoulder with grilled corn puree, succotash, and a fennel and apple salad. The pork isn’t seasoned and there’s a huge piece of meat on every plate. Chris says, “it might not be great, but there’s a lot of it,” reminding me of the old (20+ years old) saying about IBM: “It may be slow, but it’s hard to use.” Josie does a creamy polenta with Malbec-braised short ribs, crispy pork belly, sous vide cipollini, and figs. There’s not enough contrast for Rick. I just see a jumbled mess. John does a seafood chowder with cockles, Manila clams, mussels, sockeye salmon, and Dungeness crab, using a chowder base he learned when working for Rick (which he chose before knowing Rick was one of the judges, apparently). This gets enormous praise, including from Rick, who calls it a “hug from the ocean.” The salmon looked almost raw on TV, but he cooked it at 140 degrees (per the lengthy recipe) and that low temp plus the natural color of the sockeye is probably what gave it that appearance.

* The bottom dishes during the judges’ discussion (with Anna and Chris) were pretty clear: Micah, Eliza, Josie, Josh, and Danyele. Josie ends up escaping the actual judges table, though.

* Top dishes: Kristen, John, Brooke, and Sheldon. Brooke says she took a risk because she had immunity. Tom says to keep cooking this way. It is amazing how every season we see chefs play it safe even though safe never wins and often leads to midseason eliminations (if not sooner). Rick says John’s chowder was like soul food. Kristen says she loves to play cheese and dried fruit off each other, something I haven’t tried myself. Sheldon’s dish gets praise for being very autobiographical, and again, he’s showing off his range within his heritage, which could be why I’m underestimating him. The winner is Brooke, who seemed to have the most inventive dish other than perhaps Sheldon’s. John might have won if he hadn’t done something so traditional here.

* On to the bottom dishes: Micah’s celery root puree was too grainy and his ingredients all out of balance. He says the celeriac was fibrous, but isn’t it usually? Josh’s pork shoulder chunks were too and not seasoned enough. Eliza’s elk was unevenly cooked, the carrots weren’t cooked through, and they were dry in parts. Danyele’s hoppin john and relish were fantastic but the boar wasn’t good. She panicked when she saw it overcooking and curling on the flat-top and never recovered – Tom admonishes her not to second-guess herself.

* Eliminated: Eliza is eliminated, which makes sense given what we saw and were told. She also says she was fighting a cold, which might have affected how well she could taste her own food.

* LCK: Eliza vs CJ vs Tyler in a battle of pickles and carrots, the two ingredients that got these chefs eliminated. I thought Eliza would win for her paprika-seared scallops on carrot puree, but CJ wins instead, in part (I think) because he charred and roasted the pickles, which seemed to surprise Tom, along with his smoked trout.

* Top three: Still Kristen and John clearly ahead of the pack, but it’s hard for me to keep arguing in Micah’s favor when he’s ending up on the bottom more than he’s on the top. Sheldon and Brooke were both really impressive this week, and I could see Stefan hanging around until the final five or so. I’d probably put Sheldon third at this point, since his success spans more than just this most recent episode.

The show starts with an obscene 3:45 am wakeup call for the chefs; speaking as one of the least morning-ish people ever, that offended me to the core. It’s Stefan’s 40th birthday, and true to form, he calls it “sentimental bullshit.” He’s just a bald barrel of sunshine, that Stefan.

* Quickfire: The chefs are all in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, which is awesome, especially in late summer when there’s this unbelievable array of fruits like Rainier cherries and various mountain berries available. Chef Daisley Gordon, who is probably another one of Tom’s kids, is the guest judge. The chefs divide into teams of two and oh-hey-what-a-shocker Josh ends up with John. Meanwhile, Josie Congeniality is already anticipating a clash in styles with Eliza before they’ve even said “good morning.” The challenge is to make breakfast to go for the vendors – but it has to be served on a stick. Daisley brought the pantry, Sur la Table is providing the equipment with the chefs given a $500 budget to purchase what they need, and they get one hour to do it all. Immunity for both winners is at stake.

* Eliza followed Widespread Panic around the country one summer and paid her way by selling “vegan sushi” out of the van. Following a band across the country strikes me as a little odd, but mostly because it’s not my thing. I’m having a harder time with believing that vegan sushi is actually a thing.

* John says he’s acceding to Josh’s plans so that their personal differences don’t get in the way. Once again, he’s not living up to his reputation at all, and Josh comes off far worse in their interactions through the whole episode. Maybe the editors aren’t being fair to Rollie Fingers here but I do not believe they’re letting John off the hook.

* Eliza points out Josie doesn’t play well with others because Josie is the queen of logical fallacies, arguing that her way is right because it’s her way. Then we see Eliza trying to convince Josie to do it another way, which means that Eliza is insane.

* Sheldon and Bart’s panini press dies on them, but apparently the warranty expired after 20 minutes. Lizzie and Danyele got to the open pantry a little late and ended up with neither dairy nor eggs, which tells us nothing about how good they are as chefs. I get that the supplies can’t be infinite, but maybe making sure a few of the essentials are properly stocked – or that other chefs aren’t hoarding for competitive reasons – could be a part of the show, so chefs can be judged on their cooking skills.

* The dishes: Josh and John turn out chilaquiles as tacos, which I think would have been my favorite, especially since the Hillside Spot has hooked me on their chilaquiles. Eliza and Josie make ricotta pancakes with raspberry and linguica sausage, like a layer cake on a stick, but are killed because it’s too hard to eat. Micah and Kristen do a bacon and cinnamon waffle with cantaloupe marinated in pecan maple syrup and boysenberry and strawberry jam, probably the best presentation of any dish. CJ and Tyler do salmon in a crepe with arugula and cream cheese. Bart and Sheldon serve a breakfast sandwich with eggs, cheese, pancetta, and spinach purée; although no one mentioned nutritional value, this seemed like the highest protein dish along with the vitamin punch of the spinach, good for someone who’s going to be on his/her feet for hours before lunch. Danyele and Lizzie do summer berries with crispy pancetta, blackberry honey, and black pepper, but are criticized for its simplicity and lack of substance. Stefan and Brooke do a croque-monsieur with toasted fig.

* The top teams are Sheldon and Bart for their breakfast sandwich and Josh and John for their tacos. Sheldon and Bart win and grab immunity, which turns out to matter more than ever this time around.

* Elimination challenge: Remaining in teams, one per pair randomly draws an artisanal ingredient sold at the market. They then have two hours to prep and cook, with $10K on the line. The central ingredient must be highlighted, and the seven artisans will be guests at the dinner table along with Chef Daisley and the judges (including Hugh!).

* CJ and Tyler get spicy dill pickles. CJ wants to do a burger, fearing that Tom would criticize a more complex dish by saying “why not do a simple burger?” Tyler’s afraid it’s too simple but wants to be polite, which is a great life strategy but generally sucks on Top Chef. You have to be a little bit of a bastard to win reality shows. Just don’t be too much of one or the editors will make you look like a serial killer.

* Josh is merely yessing John to death and barely contributing to the concept of their dish, which isn’t any better than what Tyler’s doing. Lizzie and Danyele, given coconut curry chocolate, disagree on their dish – Lizzie wanted to do snapper or other fish, while Danyele insists on dessert. I can’t fathom Lizzie’s concept here; dessert may seem a little obvious, but chocolate and curry are such dominant flavors that I think they’d blow fish completely off the plate.

* Sheldon says he and Bart will go “balls to the wall” since they have immunity; Chef Udo Dirkschneider approves. Their dish is salmon candy, which Sheldon says is like salmon bacon (I’ve never had it) and says he’s never seen anything like it in Hawaii. Bart says it’s so sweet they must go in the opposite direction, so maybe it’s more comparable to bacon coated in the maple syrup that slid off your pancakes?

* Stefan and Brooke get rose petal jelly, which Stefan hates from the start because it smells like perfume from a prior century.

* Josh pan-sears medallions of pork tenderloin but crowds the pan so they won’t brown correctly. Their artisanal item, truffled popcorn, shows up in their very thick grits and in a truffled sauce. They’re not communicating at all – John sees that Josh is cooking the pork badly, but won’t say anything for fear of a blowup. What a prick, that guy.

* To judging … Josh and John’s pork, truffled popcorn grits, and balsamic truffle vinaigrette are not good. Hugh says “those grits suck.” Tell us how you really feel, brother. The sauce is a gloppy mess, the meat is poorly cooked per Tom, and the popcorn is not cleverly integrated. Well then.

* Micah and Kristen used their core ingredient, cheese curds, three ways – in a bechamel, raw, and fried. All the criticism is aimed at the fried curds, which are so small and so overpowered by the romesco sauce that everyone says the curds disappeared.

* Stefan and Brooke used their rose petal jelly to glaze duck and in the braised cabbage, producing an overly sweet dish without balance in the cabbage, while they also seem to have overcooked the duck.

* Sheldon and Bart served their candied salmon (which is made by the market’s fish throwers) with sweet and sour salad and a salmon mousse underneath. This might have been the best-reviewed dish of all, but the complaint was that they didn’t use enough of the salmon candy.

* Danyele and Lizzie’s coconut curry chocolate mousse tart with orange tea syrup falls apart when the diners cut into it. The artisan was mad that they used other chocolates in the dish, but I could understand wanting to mute the curry a little bit. They may have just done it really poorly.

* CJ and Tyler’s pork crumpet burger with fried spicy dill pickles is a hot mess because the crumpet collapses like wet toilet paper. Tom kills them for their lack of originality here. Has a burger ever fared well on Top Chef?

* Josie and Eliza had cardamom bitters, which I imagine is also powerfully fragrant. I like cardamom but it’s definitely one of the bossiest spices in the drawer. They do a white king salmon with cardamom bitters pistou and white clams. Josie complains about the flavor of Eliza’s pistou, which apparently is salty and has a little sand in it. Hugh says it’s not singing for him, which on this episode is like calling it an All-Star.

* Overall, everyone at the table was disappointed, and Padma even apologizes to the guests. Tom heads to the waiting room to go all Lee Elia on the chefs, calling it “actually a pretty poor showing” between lack of imagination and lack of technique. He changes course and says they’re sending an entire team home instead of just one chef (and, it turns out, not appointing a winner). He also tells them that Last Chance Kitchen is on again, although apparently some of the chefs never watched last season’s version of LCK and don’t understand how it works. Tom’s final comment was probably the most important one as he told them to step it up and take some risks. Chef Udo nods.

* Back in the condo, CJ says he would feel like an “absolute failure bitch” if he were eliminated on this challenge. We should really retire that last word. Meanwhile, Josh lights into Tyler for nothing, letting his own frustrations explode on someone who was just trying to make small talk. Josh later says he and Stefan are both on “the arrogant asshole side … but likable.” He’s half right.

* The bottom three teams are John/Josh, CJ/Tyler, and Brooke/Stefan. Tom hammers them all for a lack of creativity, while Gail says the food just wasn’t well made. Padma says the sugar in Stefan’s duck glaze needed more heat. Hugh accuses Stefan of sending out food (the cabbage) he knew was too sweet. Josh and John cut pork into medallions, and Josh immediately blames John for that, as if he were John’s employee in the kitchen. Tom says the food looked like someone who hated cooking made it, which has to be about as bad an insult as you can offer in this environment. Hugh says CJ’s burger was overcooked and the bun was soggy.

* CJ tries to throw the dessert under the bus as they’re walking out to await the final decision, which, while obviously reflecting his own frustrations, is pretty bush league.

* Hugh compares the rose-petal jelly dish to eating someone’s grandmother with its archaic perfume.

* Gail ends up the deciding vote on who goes home. CJ and Tyler go. CJ says he wasn’t judged fairly which is a joke – it was his dish from the start, and if anyone should feel slighted, it should be Tyler, but even he has to take some blame for failing to stand up for himself.

* LCK: Make a dessert in 30 minutes, with Tyler and CJ working together as a team against Kuniko. Kuniko doesn’t like to eat dessert, but says she has an advantage because she’s working alone. CJ wants to make hay-flavored ice cream, but don’t you need to age egg-based ice creams to improve their flavors?

* Kuniko makes a frozen banana with lemon curd, fruit compote, crushed cashews, shredded coconut, brown sugar syrup, tea, pink peppercorns, and olive oil! Tyler and CJ make hay ice cream with a cherry fritter, cooked cherries, arugula, and a chocolate sauce. Tom praises Kuniko’s flavors and the way she compressed the fruits, but dings her for using a bowl instead of a plate; she defends it off camera because that way you get every element in every bite. Tom says CJ/Tyler’s dish had too much arugula, but had a good fritter. CJ and Tyler end up winning, which I find really bizarre if the only criticism of Kuniko was the bowl. Her flavors were apparently strong and her technique was clearly better, especially with the trouble CJ had forming quenelles of his ice cream.

* Final three prediction: John, Kristen, and Micah.

We start out back in the stew room and see the Kuniko debate again, where John points out, quite accurately, that Kuniko had five hours to cook a potato dish and never checked to see if it was cooking properly. Josh then lectures John about tact while he’s tying a damsel to a railroad track. John says he’s not being a prick, he’s being truthful, although those things aren’t mutually exclusive. I agree with his comments on Kuniko, and I don’t think he lacked tact, although he was way out of line to snipe at Josh’s home state of Oklahoma, an argument ad hominem that ceding some of his high ground.

The next morning, we see Kristen smoking on the balcony while flirting with Stefan, who is also smoking. I do not understand chefs who smoke. It wrecks your taste buds. Do you want to taste your food? That might be important. And that’s assuming your tongue doesn’t go all Achatz on you. By the way, flirting with Stefan? He looks like he should be fronting a Rammstein cover band.

* Quickfire: Naomi Pomeroy from Beast is the guest judge. Two beef primals are hanging in the kitchen. Chefs get one hour to butcher and cook a cut of beef, with no more than two chefs butchering any one piece at one time. There’s actually some coordination there rather than the literal backstabbing I expected.

* Sheldon talks about the importance of technique and his apparent lack of it. Josie and Carla can’t get their primal off the hook, which isn’t going to convince Stefan that girls belong in the kitchen any time soon.

* CJ is doing a tartare, which is so cliché – and doesn’t involve cooking, by the way. Tyler is also doing a raw preparation. Granted, I prefer meats cooked, other than fish, so I’m probably not the ideal judge for that.

* Lizzie is struggling with the pressure cooker, which she’ll need to get her cut cooked enough. This shocks me – how does any chef get this far without knowing how to use a pressure cooker? They’re pretty user-friendly, other than your inability to see the food while it cooks.

* Micah and John are also struggling with braising ox tail, which I assumed took hours and hours.

* Kristen, showing some strategy, says she picked first cut she saw to get cooking.

* Bottom three: Lizzie’s didn’t cook enough, as foreshadowed. Eliza’s steak was fine but the combination of asparagus and cherries didn’t work together. Tyler’s crudo was under seasoned, which is fatal. I swear I heard “underseasoned” fifty times in this episode; if you had a Top Chef drinking game based solely around mentions of seasoning, you’d be dead before Judges’ Table.

* Top: CJ’s tartare, John’s oxtail gnocchi (which had a rich sauce from the oxtail’s connective tissue), and Josh’s meatball with polenta. That is, the three chefs who were at each other’s throats in the stew room. Winner is John, his second quickfire win. He cooked something harder than the other two chefs did, and CJ didn’t cook his at all. John gets immunity. They can snark at him all they want, but he’s clearly got some ability.

* Elimination challenge: Cook dishes from the original menu at Seattle’s Canlis restaurant, which first opened in 1950. Only one dish is still on the current menu, the Canliss salad. Two chefs will be eliminated.

* Somehow, Stefan ends up assigning the dishes, for reasons I must have missed. Kristen is unhappy that she ended up with two sides, fried onions and sauteed mushrooms. Chrissy gets the dreaded salad. Carla is stuck doing squab, which either she has either never cooked, or she’s comparing it to her ex-husband. I really have no idea.

* John offers to expedite because he has immunity. CJ mocks John in the confessional for having experience opening restaurants. I don’t get the invective here. Either John is behaving way worse off camera than he is on, or CJ and Josh need to worry about their own shit.

* Josh, listening in on a conversation in the condo, is twirling the ends of his mustache.

* Kristen’s a real perfectionist, drying mushrooms in the oven at 450 before searing them so that they’re completely dry when they hit the pan and she’ll get the maximum possible caramelization.

* Carla can’t get into the grill for the squab and has to delegate the cooking of her protein to Sheldon and Bart. This is known in the business as “foreshadowing.”

* Other chefs are ignoring John as he tries to set up for expediting. Then we see a bunch of chefs without their noses, faces fully spited.

* Service – forgive me for the detail here, but I don’t see a better way to get through it. Starters: Lizzie did marinated herrings, which Naomi loved, saying they’re balanced, well marinated with plenty of acid. Josh does a French onion soup that isn’t “guest friendly,” with a too-hard crouton, nowhere near enough cheese, and far too much salt. John’s steamed clams bordelaise seem to be good-not-great. Chrissy’s special salad is visibly wilting on the plate from all the dressing. Brooke’s seafood salad a la Louis gets raves for the preparation of the seafood. Tyler’s crab leg cocktail was also great, mostly because he let the Dungeness crab shine, although he earns props for the chopped lettuce on bottom as well. My takeaway at this point was how dated some of these dishes are.

* Switch back to the kitchen where we see Carla talking over John so other chefs can’t hear orders, after which we see her dishes coming back because they’re too rare and have to be refired.

* Mains: Sheldon’s mahi-mahi with beurre blanc (something you might actually see on a modern menu) wasn’t quite trimmed right but was perfectly cooked with a properly emulsified sauce. Carla’s squab with red wine reduction isn’t boned properly, is now overcooked in reaction to the earlier undercooked ones, but does have a nice sauce. Micah’s vegetable medley is a mess of over and undercooked items. Stefan’s liver with French fried onions gets big raves both for the liver and Kristen’s onions on top. Bart’s New York strip steak was cut with the grain instead of against it, which kind of wastes the tenderness of the meat. CJ’s lamb kebab was underseasoned (drink) and the lamb was mealy, as if he used sous vide to cook it (he did). His pilaf underneath was soggy as well. Kristen’s mushrooms get huge raves and the color on them is spectacular – I love well-browned mushrooms with just a little salt, black pepper, and maybe a little fresh thyme, and her dish looked like it had that flavor. Josie’s enormous baked potatoes aren’t hot enough and get more comments on their size than their flavor.

* Desserts: Danyele and Eliza each made two, with Danyele doing vanilla ice cream and a royal Hawaiian supreme, and Eliza doing mint sherbet and a frozen Hawaiian pineapple parfait. Danyele seemed to get more positive comments, especially for the salty peanut brittle with the ice cream that balanced out all the sweetness in the four dishes.

* We get another discussion of losing dishes at the dinner table, which I think is a great change to the format. Chrissy’s salad gets trashed. Carla’s squab had the breast plate left in and was overcooked. CJ’s lamb had no flavor, was both tough and mushy, and wasn’t seasoned well. This sounds absolutely disgusting, like something you’d get at a school cafeteria. Josh’s soup had so much salt and no bubbly cheese on top. I’m inclined to say that his failings are the worst because French onion soup is still a popular dish, and because proper cooking of onions is a cooking 101 thing – the onion even gets its own chapter in Ruhlman’s Twenty.

* Judges table: The top four are Lizzie, Kristen, Tyler, Stefan. Stefan plants one on Kristen’s cheek, because he’s a pig. She’s the winner for making two side dishes, getting $10k and I think a pretty big boost to her confidence.

* The bottom four are, as expected: Carla, Chrissy, CJ, and Josh. How freaking tall is CJ? He’s like Lurch in a sea of Cousin Its.

* At the inquisition, Josh immediately throws John under the bus, calls him a monkey as expediter, and refuses to take any responsibility for Tom getting cold soup. CJ says he tasted the mealiness after sous vide-ing the lamb, but can’t explain why he used a technique that didn’t exist in the 1950s. Carla wilts under questioning over whether she tasted the dish during service, and I honestly don’t think the judges ever got a clear answer – but they seemed to believe she hadn’t.

* Chrissy and Carla are eliminated, but as badly as Carla fared, Josh’s flop with a very ordinary dish and CJ’s choice of sous vide seemed like bigger transgressions to me. That said, no one will be sorry to hear the relative silence in the kitchen with Carla gone.

* My new top three: Kristen, John, and Micah, with Brooke making a strong showing. Stefan might be on the fringes of that group. Right now, I don’t see who else belongs in this discussion.

* Last Chance Kitchen: The four chefs eliminated so far are each charged with making a dish using the 2-3 key ingredients in the dishes that got them eliminated; they can make the same dish if they so choose but don’t have to. Carla cooks the squab incorrectly again, in large part because she uses 40% of the allotted time just getting the meat off the bone. (I have never cooked squab or tried to de-bone a bird this small, so I can only imagine that it’s not straightforward.) Chrissy’s salad isn’t falling under the weight of the dressing, Jeff’s halibut isn’t overcooked, but Kuniko reimagines her whole dish, skipping the potato pave in favor of a lemongrass potato chowder that seems to really show off both her technical skills and command of flavors. It’s a huge challenge for her to run the table now through Last Chance Kitchen but, before her elimination, I thought she was comfortably among the top five chefs in the main competition, so I do like her chances more than I’d like any of the others to do it.

I’m back from vacation and am on the clock again for ESPN and for Top Chef. I’ll be chatting on Thursday, just at a later time than usual, and will be in Nashville for the winter meetings next week. I’ll also do a Hawai’i eats post as well as posts on the books I read on the trip. In the meantime, here’s an abbreviated recap of last week’s episode of Top Chef to get you ready for tonight’s show.

* Quickfire. Each chef gets one of 17 different dumpling styles from around the world and must cook an authentic version including sauce. The chefs get five minutes to research their assigned dumpling types on Kindle Fires (just $199!) in what I can only assume is a bit of product placement.

* Stefan gets the German dumplings called klopse, which he grew up eating. Sheldon also gets one he knows, the Chinese dumplings called jiaozi. It seems like there’s a big imbalance here across the assignments.

* Brooke ends up with no flour to make dough to wrap her dumplings. How is there a flour shortage? And why does this count against her – shouldn’t this be on whoever’s stocking the kitchen? Why are we judging chefs on their ability to source ingredients from the central kitchen? This really annoyed me given how clearly it seems to work against the purpose of the show.

* Kuniko didn’t get to plate. Time management remains an issue. This is known in the business as “foreshadowing.”

* Bart tops his dumplings with fried spaghetti, and Dana Cowin calls it “crazy fried hair.” This is the most insightful thing she has ever said on Top Chef.

* Brooke is in the bottom three, which is bullshit, in case you were wondering how I felt about her. Carla’s South African fufu was inauthentic. Kuniko fails with the empty plate.

* Top three: Josie’s Korean mandu, Stefan’s klopse, and Micah’s manti from Kazakhstan. Josie wins. I might have given edge to Micah for cooking something unfamiliar, although that’s without me tasting the food. I also find Josie kind of annoying in way “college freshman coming home for Christmas break and acting all superior to kids still in high school” way.

* Elimination challenge: Cook thanksgiving dinner for the staff of Farestart, a nonprofit that provides culinary training for homeless and disadvantaged individuals. The chefs are split into two teams, with Tom and Emeril each leading one. Each team must prepare the turkey, sides, and desserts.

* Tom talks up basting the turkey, which is odd to me, since I was reared on the words of Alton Brown, who always opposed basting, saying it has little positive effect but causes you to lose heat every time you open the oven. If you put some form of fat on the skin at the start, it should brown without any help from you, and basting doesn’t make the interior any juicier.

* Emeril thinks bread because Tom will do pasta. I always made bread when we hosted Thanksgiving, so I approve.

* Josie volunteers to do turkey because she has immunity. This is known in the business as “foreshadowing.”

* The whole episode seemed much faster to watch because each team had a leader making a set menu up front. We didn’t have mid-cooking shifts and we avoided a lot of petty squabbling. Maybe that’s not more compelling for TV but it meant far more focus on the food.

* Three of the best-looking dishes: Brooke’s sweet potato biscuits with orange zest, Carla’s carrot soup with turkey meatballs, and Chrissy’s pecan pie bread pudding with whiskey sauce, all of which eventually earn raves.

* Stefan needs more room to work in the kitchen, a spat that seems to go nowhere when it’s not broached again on the show.

* Josh is making fresh pasta but it looks like he’s putting way too much filling in the middle.

* Kuniko is making a form of potato gratin called a pavé and talks about emphasizing clock management. Then we see Kristen asking if she has time, to which Kuniko says “I think so,” while ignoring her dish to help others on the team finish theirs. This is known in the business as “obvious.”

* Stuffing has foie gras pancetta and belly. John doing stuffing and pumpkin torte with Kuniko helping. Too much filling in Josh’s ravioli?

* Tyler says he’s been sober for seven months after 25 years of problems with alcohol. Having lost two family members to alcohol abuse, I have no snark to offer here.

* Carla is losing her shit again, saying she doesn’t want to be called “sweetie” or “honey” when her male counterparts are just called “chef.” She’s not wrong. The kitchen can be a pretty testosterone-soaked, misogynistic place. Stefan says, “that’s why I left Europe – European women,” because European men are apparently such a prize.

* Serving time, starting with Team Emeril: Josie’s triple spice turkey with cayenne and hot sauce is a little pink in the center … or a lot pink. You can’t serve that, ever, and a quick thermometer check would have verified that it was still gobbling. Emeril’s mom’s stuffing with chorizo and a cornbread stuffing with ground turkey and diced bacon score well. Kristen’s assiette of root vegetables, parsnip truffle puree, and crème fraiche is under-seasoned. Tyler’s gumbo lacks depth, has a bitter finish, and lacks heat; Emeril thinks he didn’t add Tabasco (blech) or Worcestershire sauces. Kuniko’s pavé is uncooked, and Tom correctly points out that she should have noticed it was resisting the knife when she cut it. Sheldon’s collard greens aren’t falling apart yet, which turns out to be a lack of understanding of the dish on his part. Brooke’s biscuits and Chrissy’s bread pudding both score really well, while John’s spiced pumpkin torte with goat cheese and ricotta is good but a little grainy by his own admission. There are four items here that really flopped – the turkey, the gumbo, the pavé, and the collard greens.

* Team Tom looks like they’re struggling to plate. Out at the table, Dana’s comments are useless; I don’t know if she’s suffering in editing, or if she can’t come up with insights on the fly, but she’s not adding anywhere near enough to this show for me. The turkey was “braised” (pretty sure that’s what they said) with tons of butter underneath the skin, although again, I don’t see how that would work in practice. The stuffing has foie gras, kale, pancetta, and pork belly. Carla’s carrot soup is an enormous hit, overshadowing the bird. Bart’s fennel, gorgonzola, orange, and pumpkin seed salad isn’t “refined” enough for Padma. Josh’s ravioli were tough because he didn’t even out the edges; I’m wondering if he rolled the dough extra thick to support all that filling, which would have produced edges that wouldn’t cook before the dumplings exploded. Micah’s roasted Brussels sprouts with cranberries, bacon, and shallots look great and elicit little comment – Thierry loves them, others say they were under-seasoned, and we move on. Lizzie’s potato purée with a ton of butter is great … of course it is, there’s a ton of butter in it. Stefan’s panna cotta with jam may have too much cardamom, although Tom likes that. Eliza’s chocolate tart with white chocolate and mint syrup has too much chocolate overall. That’s three flops here – the ravioli and both desserts, with only the ravioli a real mess.

* Team Tom wins unanimously. I like that the editing showed the discussion at the table of which team won, skipping the false-drama of revealing the winning team at judges’ table when it seemed pretty lopsided during service.

* The ever-quotable Carla says “I need a subtitle” when Tom reveals he thought she was making cabbage soup, not carrot soup. Her dish is the winner, and she says she made it “basically with one hand” after slicing her right hand in the previous episode. Her dish also seemed the most inventive of any on Tom’s team.

* Loser’s bracket: Josie is such a bullshitter, which is part of why I’m having such a negative reaction to her. Just own up to the mistakes – you undercooked it, don’t try to finesse it by claiming it was on the raw side of medium or something. She had immunity but was sent to Judges’ Table to send her a lesson. Tyler realizes now that he should have added Tabasco and Worcestershire, which is how you take responsibility for an error. Kuniko says she was pushed on time, to which Tom responds that she had five hours. Josie pipes up that Kuniko spent a lot of time helping the team, which was an honorable move and perhaps something the judges should have considered (although Padma indicated they wouldn’t). Sheldon says he didn’t want the collard greens to be mush, but done correctly, they are kind of mush.

* Kuniko is eliminated. She says she has no regrets, and that if she didn’t help anyone and just took care of herself that would have been worse than going home. John points out correctly that she blew an easy dish, but no one wants to speak ill of the recently eliminated, so he gets hammered for what is a pretty dead-on assessment of the situation. On the bright side, she’ll be heading for Last Chance Kitchen, so perhaps she can bring her not-insignificant skills back to the main show.

My MVP preview piece is up – won’t you be glad when this is over in a few hours? – and I had my weekly chat today.

On to the food … The qualifying stuff is gone, and the fifteen surviving chefs head off to Seattle for the real fun.

* Quickfire: The chefs break down into five teams of three. The judges include three past contestants who didn’t win their respective seasons – Josie, Stefan, and CJ. They must make a dish using local seafood in twenty minutes. John profiles Kuniko as a knife-skills expert because she’s Japanese … but he’s not wrong, in this case. Meanwhile, he’s game-planning while Padma’s talking about the challenge and she goes all Catholic-school on him and smacks his hand with a ruler. Don’t mess with Padma.

* Several chefs focus on digging in one muddy bin for geoduck (pronounced “gooey duck”). Kristen says it “looks like a penis … a really big one.” Maybe a dinosaur’s penis? Even John Holmes feels inadequate next to one of those.

* Carla, who looks like Señor Wences’ puppet Johnny, says she wants to win a James Beard award and have a nice ass. Later, she yells at her teammates that she “can’t keep running around like a stupid.” She’d be hilarious if her voice didn’t sound like a jackhammer scraping down a chalkboard.

* John referring to himself as most hated chef in Dallas has already gotten old halfway through episode two. I also don’t think he’s quite as much of an asshole as he’s making himself out to be – he’s blunt, but there’s zero evidence so far that he’s the least bit malicious.

* For all the talk about the time limit, every camera shot of prep work has the chefs working deliberately. Only plating ended up rushed.

* Judging. John, Kuniko, and Sheldon won for their thinly-sliced gooey duck sashimi, which was sliced more thinly than that of the other team that used the dinosaur penis. Bottom dish was Josh, Danyele, and Eliza, whose razor clam and corn chowder was underseasoned; they wanted to use gooey duck but there was none left for them to utilize. John wins immunity on a random draw.

* And the twist … the three former contestants are reentering the show! Why are the new competitors all complaining? You still have to beat a ton of other chefs. And it’s not like these are past winners.

* Elimination: now we have six teams of three, with the former contestants forming the sixth team together. The challenge is to make a dish using regional ingredients for local chef Tom Douglas. They get 47 minutes to prep and cook in the Space Needle, the time required for it to make one full revolution. I lived there for a summer and never went up. When we wanted a great view, we went to Kerry Park on a clear day, where you get the skyline and Mount Rainier in one shot.

* Now John calls Kuniko a risk taker and praises her for it. He might not play well with all of the others, but if they’re trying to make him this season’s villain, he’s not complying.

* Danyele, Josh, and Eliza are using a fish they can’t identify. That won’t go well. If that fish showed up in Arizona they’d deport it.

* Josie says people call her the “Global Soul Chef.” It’s probably a bad idea to ever use your own nickname on a reality show, unless you want your new nickname to be the Insufferable Douchenozzle Chef.

* Two teams cook at a time in a fairly small kitchen, although that ends up a non-issue.

* Kuniko wants to poach cod fish in chili oil and there’s instant agreement that that’s the team’s dish. Sheldon makes dashi while John does the veg. I don’t know if this is just good chemistry, or if we’ve got three chefs who are all mature and/or laid-back enough to jump immediately to the same page.

* Team Carla is doing poached salmon on seasonal veg. She insists on using a chinois for beurre blanc, saying that’s the only way to make one … I may have missed something in her plan but I have no idea why that would be the case. She’s even annoying chefs who aren’t on her team.

* Chef Douglas is at the table, wearing Meatloaf’s hair. This is not a good look for anyone.

* Kuniko’s chili oil reaches the smoke point and she has to start over. I’m completely confused about how she could “lose focus” (something she says she does a lot because she’s always thinking … that sounds familiar) in a kitchen that small. Was she working on something else? She couldn’t have gone far.

* Judges’ table. Team Kuniko’s cod is poached perfectly, with just the right amount of heat, and a spot prawn shabu shabu that also gets high marks.

* Team Carla’s poached salmon looks like spam. I have never understood the appeal of poached salmon; I don’t know of any other fish that develops so much flavor when seared or otherwise browned, yet poaching just produces a flavorless, gummy pink slab. It’s over fava beans, baby carrots, and baby fennel, as well as that beurre blanc. Sure enough, the judges say the salmon has very little taste, but it’s saved by the sauce. Meanwhile, Carla only enhances her image as Chef Train Wreck by reaching into her knife bag and slicing her hand open.

* Next two groups include Jeff, Brooke, and Bart, where there’s already discord when Brooke thinks Jeff has overcooked the halibut by searing both sides (skin off) but doesn’t seem to speak up in the kitchen. Team Retreads changes its dish at the last minute to try to do something different from the other five teams, which are all making fish; their new dish is quail with a cherry emulsion-broth that no one likes. Meanwhile, Stefan keeps making breast jokes, because those aren’t tired and unfunny at all.

* Josh, no one thinks you’re just this little guy from Oklahoma. They think you need to shave and maybe stop being so paranoid.

* Back to the table: Team Retread’s quail breast with confit spot prawn, porcini, mashed potatoes, and cherries goes over poorly. The quail and spot prawns are all overcooked, the broth is slightly bitter at the finish, and the cherry mixture isn’t sweet. I guess experience is as overrated on Top Chef as it is in October baseball.

* Jeff, Brooke, and Bart serve pan roasted halibut with mushrooms, English peas, and wheat beer with herb sabayon. Padma’s fish is hockey-puck overcooked.

* Final two groups start with Daniele, Josh, Eliza, and the mystery fish, which turns out to be cod. They pan-roast it and serve it with sautéed mushrooms, fava beans, and pickled apples. The apples get raves but there’s too much raw garlic in the sauce.

* Micah, Kristen, and Tyler serve seared pacific salmon with seasonal veg and another spot prawn butter sauce. It doesn’t seem very creative, but they “crrispy-seared” it, which is how you treat salmon, dammit. Kristen can really sell a dish – her descriptions are always detailed and highlight what makes each dish distinctive. She knows what to say that will get judges’ attention. It’s like subliminal advertising. Anyway, their salmon is far better than the other salmon dish.

* John, Kuniko, and Sheldon win again. John is very quick to credit Kuniko in front of the judges, again defying the villain tag. She’s cooked ling cod (native to the U.S. and Canadian Pacific coast), but has never poached in chili oil before. The dashi was flavorful, John’s spot prawns were perfect, yata yata. Kuniko wins, making me wish the racist from the first episode was around to see that. John has a kiss for her on the head as they walk out.

* Bottom two: Team Retreads and Team Brooke/Jeff/Bart. Josie can’t even identify why they’re there, which has Tom wearing his Smuggie. Stefan doesn’t realize the quail was overcooked, then makes excuses when confronted about it.

* Brooke is fairly polite in disagreeing before the judges. Jeff overcooked the fish with hard sear on both sides. Bart’s sabayon was flavorless. The judges were far harsher here than at the table; from this discussion you’d think this wasn’t fit for your dog.

* The killer here seems to be Jeffrey starting the fish too soon (14½ minutes to go) and hard-searing both sides, so by the moment of service it was already dry in the center. He goes home, with a pretty clear explanation of why. Padma’s already crying; episode 2 waterworks has to be a new record for her.

* Still way too early top three: John, Kristen, Micah, with Kuniko just on the outside because she might be her own worst enemy if she can’t maintain focus. None of the three retreads was remotely impressive this time around.

My buyer’s guide to the relief market is up for Insiders, and I’ll be chatting today at 1 pm EST.

This year’s opening-episode twist had the chefs broken into four groups, each visiting one of the four chef-judges at one of his restaurants, and competing in a challenge of that judge’s design. The producers also broke the show up by using Tom’s group as the main story arc of the episode, returning to them three times while presenting each of the other three groups in single chunks from start to finish. I thought it was a clever twist and didn’t involve sending home as many chefs as last year’s opener did.

* Group Tom features John Tesar, the “most hated chef in Dallas,” who gets off to a roaring start of arrogance; South African Lizzie Binder, who has a mad crush on Tom; and Jorel Pierce, wearing Rollie Fingers’ mustache.

* Tom’s challenge puts the contestants in his Craft LA kitchen for part of a shift, with each chef getting one specific task to tackle, like stuffing and shaping fresh tortellini (Lizzie, who seems to nail it), breaking down whole birds (Anthony and Jorel), or fileting fish (John and Micah).

* Micah makes a statement against self-interest by telling Tom he went from line cook to executive chef but never worked as a sous. Tom contemplates eliminating Micah on the spot by using a boning knife but thinks better of it.

* Rollie Fingers’ restaurant is “butchery focused,” then he screws up butchering the chickens. We can see where that’s going. By the way, friend of the dish Dave Cameron (also of Fangraphs) says that Rollie’s Denver restaurant, Euclid Hall, is excellent.

* Moving along to group two, we have another insane mustache, which must be some more Movember nonsense. (Seriously, you’re going to ask people to sponsor you for doing nothing? Growing a mustache is not effort. If you’re not dead, your facial hair will grow. This isn’t like asking people to sponsor you for running a 5K. It’s like asking people to sponsor you for going to the bathroom.)

* Anyway, group two’s judge is Emeril, who asks the contestants to make soup in one hour. What isn’t clear is whether they get any stock as an input, although from the results I assume they didn’t. I find it really hard to imagine a soup with the proper body if there’s no stock involved.

* Two of the chefs, Stephanie and Kristen, work together, live in the same building, and got the same tattoo. Then Stephanie clarifies that they’re not actually a couple, which the editing leading up to that point implied pretty strongly, right? Kristen has the look of a breakout candidate/fan favorite – she was born in Korea, modeled as recently as five years ago, is chef de cuisine at a Barbara Lynch restaurant (Stir) in Boston, and, judging by her performance in this challenge, is ready to kick ass. (Aren’t models usually pretty tall? I always assumed that would be a handicap in the kitchen because you’re constantly leaning over a low table.)

* Word of advice to all the male chefs in the audience: Do not go on Top Chef and risk missing the birth of your daughter. Not only does that disqualify you from all future Father of the Year awards, your wife will bust that out in every argument you ever have with her, forever. And no, I didn’t miss my daughter’s birth, before anyone asks. I just know these things.

* Jeffrey trying to quick-chill a gazpacho was one of the few moments of cooking drama in the show, but they sort of dropped the subject until service – the same with Josh plating his soup a good five minutes too early.

* Judging: Jeffrey’s gazpacho is cold and he gets the Top Chef jacket immediately. Kristen makes an English pea broth with scallops, crème fraiche, and lemon peel she poached three times to remove the bitterness, something that makes a pretty clear impression on Emeril (and was, perhaps, done to make just such an impression, a pretty slick move). She advances, as does Josh, whose soup was still warm enough and who gets points for sutble use of chili pepper to balance the sweetness of his coconut broth. Kristen’s colleague/tattoo-mate Stephanie goes home, as does one other contestant.

* Group Tom resumes, with John saying that because he’s in Tom’s kitchen, he needs to do stuff Tom’s way. That’s maturity speaking, and doesn’t quite fit with the arrogant front he showed in the comments at the top of the episode. He nails the halibut he’s preparing and advances on the spot, although the other four chefs in the group don’t know if he passed or was sent home. Incidentally, John reveals that he came up through the ranks with several chefs who’ve gone on to greater heights but saw his career derailed by “casual drug use that became self-medication.” So he’s an ass, but one we might root for anyway. I think.

* Group Wolfgang is the motley crew, featuring the foul-mouthed (even by Top Chef standards) ex-wife of the owner of Rao’s in New York, a Japanese woman whose parents don’t respect her career choice, and a guy bragging about being ranked #1 on Yelp. That’s like a baseball prospect bragging about being on the most fantasy rosters.

* The challenge: Make an omelette in 45 minutes with presentation counting very heavily. Puck says, “I’m such an easy guy as long as they do it exactly the way I want it.” Having seen him on several other shows, I’m actually concerned he’s too soft for judging on this show, and he ends up being (I think) the easiest judge to please in this episode, passing several chefs who screwed up royally.

* Chef Yelp uses bacon fat and produces a messy, greasy omelette. Carla ex-Rao shreds her omelette when it sticks to the pan, Tyler’s omelette is overcooked and brown all over. Eliza burns her first omelette and has to salvage her other ingredients from that dish to make a fresh one. They probably all should have gone home.

* Kuniko infused chamomile in the milk in her omelette, the one bit of innovation I saw in all six dishes. It’s like everyone panicked and forgot that you don’t win Top Chef if you’re not pushing the envelope somewhere.

* All but Chef Yelp advance, after which Puck shows how to make a proper omelette, the French way … in a technique I learned from a $10 Julia Child cookbook. How is it possible that none of the six chefs in this group knew how to do that?

(EDIT: I forgot to mention how Chef Yelp referred to Kuniko as “Origami,” which was both incredibly racist and unwarranted since she actually made the dish correctly. He could have been a great punching bag for me for a few more weeks if he didn’t suck.)

* Let’s face it – we’re watching primarily for Group Hugh, and the editors show it to us last because they know we’re not changing the channel until we see the Unibrow. His challenge to the chefs: Make a beautiful salad in 45 minutes. I like that it’s possible to pass this challenge without actually cooking any ingredients, although if you take that route you had better be precise with your flavors.

* Chef Bart is a knight in Belgium, and really, Hugh is going to mock him endlessly for this, as am I.

* Gina says she’s a ferocious tiger. She is also annoying. But she founded a community food program, so she’s noble, but still annoying. She also says that Danyele is dumb for flaming her tomatoes and that is cooking school 101 and it’s pretty clear that this point that the editors are telling us Gina will not be with us for much longer.

* Sheldon has spent nearly his whole life in Hawaii and worked his way up from dishwasher to executive chef, making him another early leader for fan favorite. Hugh asks for Spam in his salad, of course.

* Put the lid on the fucking blender, Bart.

* Judging highlights. Brooke does a kale salad with Brussels sprouts leaves, lemon vinaigrette, and fried kale on top, trendy across the board, so she advances on the spot. Sheldon does fried Brussels sprouts and gets dinged slightly for using an out-of-season ingredient and for using too little acid in his dressing. Bart’s salad is overcomplicated. Danyele’s charred tomato vinaigrette is a little overpowering. Gina is blatantly trying to manipulate Hugh in judging, and she ends up the only chef in this group to get the axe.

* Group Tom, finale. Rollie Fingers’ beurre monté is too salty. Anthony did too much damage to the duck and was too timid in the kitchen. Both chefs go home, with Micah (who recovered from revealing too much of his resume) and Lizzie advancing.
* Way too early top three prediction: Micah, Kristen, and John. I also considered Brooke, Jeffrey, Josh (who can cook with more focus when his pregnant wife dumps him), and even Kuniko for that one burst of creativity. I don’t think we got a great look at Tyler or Eliza – if they were players I’d need to scout them again before even forming a preliminary opinion.

Today’s chat transcript is up. I apologize to anyone looking for Wednesday’s Sportscenter segment, but I don’t think it’s going to appear online. I’ll tweet the link if that changes.

* So for the finale, each chef had to make a four-course dinner, with an odd theme – each dish had to be the equivalent of a letter, starting with a love letter, then an apology, then a thank-you, then a letter to himself. I never really get these whole “translate an emotion into food” things. Make four awesome dishes, then cook up a story afterwards to fit. The chefs do each get an assistant, a surprise appearance by someone from Chris’ restaurant and a longtime cooking buddy of Kerry’s.

* The judges will be joined by ten diners. Obvious conclusion, made by Chris, Kerry, and me, is that it’s the ten eliminated TCM contestants.

* Chris says the only way to beat Kerry, a classically trained chef, is to put his heart on the plates, which was his hint that one of his dishes would in fact contain heart.

* Kerry does all his shopping at Whole Foods; Chris goes to three places, losing some cooking time but getting more adventurous ingredients. Letting him loose in a butcher shop with a fistful of dollars might make for an hourlong reality show of its own.

* Chris says he hated the smell of tripe as a kid and would run screaming from his grandmother’s house when she cooked it. Now he’s known for offal. Maybe it served as some sort of exposure therapy. Then he makes blood sausage and it looks like a horror movie. I’ve had black pudding, but have never cooked with blood, which apparently is a pretty labor-intensive and, um, messy process.

* Curtis does a side commentary where he talks a lot and says nothing, mostly just saying how either chef could win and whoever doesn’t execute will lose. He’s the Tim McCarver of Top Chef.

* But then Curtis cooks dinner for the final two, which is a great idea, since Curtis was originally a chef but is better known in the U.S. as a TV personality. I’d love to know if this was the producers’ idea or Curtis’; people who love to cook love to cook for others, and I could see Curtis wanting to do something for the two finalists but also to show off his own skills. He made two dishes but the foie gras with figs and Sauternes jelly seemed really clever and interesting. I also enjoyed the snippets of the three chefs’ discussion on critics who don’t have kitchen experience or a culinary education, pointing out that knowledge can be acquired in multiple ways, and (from Kerry) a thought on the challenge of deconstructing a dish in your mind when all you see is the finished product. Obviously, I side with the critics in a sense, since I evaluate baseball players, teams, and even front-office personnel, but never played the game (and couldn’t, in fact). It probably took me longer to learn how to evaluate than it might have taken someone with field experience, but I think I’ve at least figured it out enough to do my job.

* The ten extra diners are all food critics, not chefs, so it’s the toughest set of judges the chefs have faced all season, or perhaps just the biggest bunch of complainers they’ve faced all season.

* This could be entirely editing, but while both chefs look extremely intense in the kitchen, Chris seems like he’s enjoying the chaos, while Kerry just seems stressed. Maybe it’s just their processes. I’m a lot more like Chris personality-wise, at least in the kitchen. If things are going too smoothly, I’m more likely to get distracted by something else.

* Serving time. First course, the love letter: Kerry serves a jjigae (not to be confused with a jugga jigga wugga) with scallops, spot prawns, and gnocchi, earning praise for “smoothness and finesse,” which sounds boring. Chris serves beef heart tartare with foie gras and puffed beef tendon, which is not boring. One critic calls it a “steampunk version of steak tartare.” I don’t even know how to visualize that.

* Second course, the “apology:” Kerry serves a flan of sugar snap peas, prosciutto, morels, and chervil, earning raves all around. The color of the flan was amazing, although I have to admit my first thought was “Shamrock shake.” Chris serves scallops, pancetta piana (pancetta that is cured flat rather than rolled), and sea urchin. Lesley Kama Sutra or whatever her name is calls it the makeup sex. Ruth says it’s sexy. Jane Goldman hates it because she’s celibate.

* Third course, the thank-you: Kerry serves branzino with clam ragout and mustard greens and a little bacon, an homage to his family’s New England roots. The theme so far with Kerry is technical excellence but not a ton of wow factor. Chris serves tripa napolitana with a dark brown streak on the dish to represent him running out of grandmothers house. This earns some of the biggest raves so far around the table.

* Fourth course, the narcissist’s plate: Kerry serves dry aged côte de boeuf (a thick bone-in rib steak), short ribs, swiss chard, and a fennel and potato gratin. Lesley says the frying to crisp the short rib dried it out, which would be criminal, but otherwise gets high marks. Chris makes his “last supper,” a blood sausage with pork-jus poached oysters, and a sunnyside up egg. Francis makes a horribly awkward analogy about swimming in the ocean and getting a back rub from a pig. I believe it’s illegal to even fantasize about that in 13 states. John Curtas calls this embarrassingly awful. No one agrees with him, apparently.

* Critics table: Kerry says the letter to himself was about enjoying something special and rich. Chris says he won’t cook for the critics, but cooks for himself. “When you cook to receive accolades you lose direction and focus.” Isn’t that true when you’re at the top of just about any profession? If you’re cooking for the masses, you need to listen to the customer. When you’re so good that people will pay twice as much for your food, it’s because they’re paying for your vision, or to experience your passion.

* Ruth says she’d never had beef heart tartare before and loved it. Krista loved the poached oysters. Francis liked the reduced jus’ unctuous texture. After the larger group seemed to favor Kerry, the five judges seem to favor Chris. Ruth asks if you want to be comforted or thrilled, while Jimmy Sunshine comments about not wanting to be TOO thrilled, then heads off for his Wednesday-night bingo game.

* The new Top Chef Master is … Chris. I’m a little surprised given the editing of the dinner comments, and Chris seemed to genuinely think Kerry would win. He ends up raising $141,000 for the Michael J. Fox Foundation on the show, and mentions (I think for the first time) that he lost his uncle to Parkinson’s last year after a 34-year battle. The Foundation posted a brief story on Chris’ win, which says that Fox himself called Chris to congratulate him.

I’m skipping Life After Top Chef because October is always so crazy between scouting the Arizona Fall League and watching playoff games, but I’ll resume blogging for Top Chef: Seattle when it starts up on November 7th.