Tom lays down the rules: four course tasting menu: fish, poultry, red meat and dessert. Stephanie and Lisa both shocked/dismayed about dessert. Really guys? Really? Still? Learn some desserts and learn ‘em good, next Top Chef contestants. It’s a no-brainer.

The beginning was crazy because we were like, “What! They get famous sous chefs?” So that they fact that they were limited in their proteins, seemed totally overshadowed with good news.

Stephanie gets Ripert. Richard gets Dan Barber. Lisa gets April Bloomfield and says “girl power” about it.

Stephanie micromanages Eric Ripert. That’s funny. Did we already say we think he's really handsome?

Richard shows the more experienced chefs his liquid nitrogen tricks and they are pretty into it.

Lisa and April are getting along and chit-chatting which surprises everyone.

The next day they get in and are told that they won’t have sous chefs for the rest of the cooking time. That blows. Why should there be twists thrown in the finale?

Anyhow, they get to work and we’ll get to their dishes in a minute, but Tom stops by to check on them. Richard seems a little frantic and weeded. Stephanie’s worried about her poundcake. Lisa seems much too calm.

Then we get some clips of them in their personal interviews that we really just felt highlighted their attitudes perfectly:
Richard – “I’m the best chef here.”
Lisa – “I’m definitely going to be the first female Top Chef.”
Stephanie – “This is the meal of a lifetime.”

So down to the food:

Course One (Fish):
Lisa – Grilled Prawn with chili basil sauce and potato chips – sounds good but maybe too spicy
Richard – Scallop with mango and pineapple vinegar – underseasoned
Steph – Seared red snapper over truffled clam broth – elegant (Tom says, “it’s good, it’s almost really good.” What a hardasss.)

Course Two (Poultry):
Lisa – Tom Kha Soup Dumplings – They loved it
Richard – Guinea, Foie gras and egg – ingredients melded together too much
Steph – Quail with lobster ravioli and egg – undercooked leeks

Course Three (Red Meat):
Lisa – Wagyu beef with sauce – sauce is sweet (Tom calls it pedestrian later at judge’s table)
Richard – Pork belly – not crunchy on outside
Steph – Lamb Medallions with pistachios – creatively awesome

Course Four (Dessert):
Lisa – Thai Rice Pudding – delicious
Richard – Banana Scallop w/ bacon ice cream – totally worked
Steph – Ricotta Poundcake with banana cream – nothing special

And speaking of the fourth course, they totally start the scary, suspenseful didgeridoo music at the beginning of it, instead of when they usually do later at judges table.

After looking at the above, it’s pretty clear that Richard isn’t going to take it. So it’s between Steph and Lisa. It seems like Steph has a slight edge, but the cake thing makes it pretty negligible. And we’d just like to say for the record that making banana scallops for the third time this competition is sort of lame. At least for us, at home, who want to be wowed.

The judging takes its usual harsh toll on the contestants who look grim. Except Lisa. Who totally looks pleased with herself. Especially after Gail mentions all the slurping going on over her soup dumplings.

They ask them for final words and Richard says he choked a little bit. Steph recognized that second guessing her cake made it worse.

Sitting around on those folding chairs, there’s an awkward moment where Lisa says that she took course two and four and Steph took one and three. Richard just looks stricken. Poor guy.

Back at judge’s table, Stephanie totally takes the grand prize. Yeah Stephanie!!! We knew you could do it, girl. Also, you get to hug Padma when you win. Awesome.

There’s more hugging and champagne and some of the kicked-off chefs appear. And we never thought we’d say this but Dale look really cute in that outfit. Richard is pretty disappointed and devastated. Don’t worry Richard, you’ll get something good out of this, even though you didn’t win. Like maybe a crocs ad campaign.

But it’s also a true pleasure to see Richard and Steph. Except that Steph is wearing a T-shirt that says “I (heart) Tahoe Boys.” That’s random. And very hetero. Sigh.

The quickfire is to make some snacky fritter things using plantains. Lisa and Stephanie get props for using tostones and Richard and Antonia get mildly criticized.

The next-on previews are freaking us out. What if their challenge is to butcher a cook a person? That would be such extreme reality TV.

But no, it’s just a pig. “It’s not a party without a pig,” Tom says. And that brings to mind one of our old Tennessee friends favorite sayings, “If you throw a pig a party, it’s gonna want a balloon.” Okay, we’re not exactly sure what that means, but it seems applicable here.

They each get a whole pig and have to make at least two dishes with different parts. Although they all make three or four. Overachievers.

The recently kicked off chefs return and get paired up to be their sous chefs. Since Steph won the quickfire (her first) she gets to pair up the chefs. She picks Dale (smart girl) and pairs Spike with Richard, Nikki with Antonia and Andrew with Lisa.

Stephanie makes a Wilbur reference. Not cool. Traumatizing.

The sous chefs go shopping and pigeon chasing, while the finalists butcher their pigs. Yuck. Lisa’s Jewish? We thought her Kosher t-shirt was some type of gay joke. Guess not.

Richard has waited till the finals to talk shit about any of his competition. But he doesn’t really go too far. He just calls Lisa a gray cloud.

Oh no! The camera pans to a pan of pork left behind. That reminds us of Season 2, when one of Marcel’s teammates leaves his fish behind. Is that Stephanie’s? Yep, oh crap it is. Dale left it out. But at least he feels really bad about it. Wow, really bad.

But as usual, when forced to make something on the fly to fix a problem, Steph and Dale prevail. Chicharones salad. Yum.

Antonia’s daughter said, “Don’t even bother coming home unless you win.” Harsh. What is she like 6?

All their food sounds pretty good, except for our part, Antonia’s seems a bit boring, comparatively.

Richard and Stephanie do the best and Richard takes it. And wins a Corolla? We thought maybe he might win a pet pig.

Lisa and Antonia are on the bottom. Antonia undercooks her pigeon peas (“There’s no such thing as al dente beans!” says Gail) and plates everything all together so that they become indistinguishable. Lisa’s sauce was too sweet and her tostone wasn’t balanced enough. These seem somewhat minor. It would be nice, if for once, the judges would just tell them they did well, but just not as amazing as their competition. But there’s not a heck of a lot of validation on Top Chef.

Lisa stays and Antonia goes. We hope her daughter lets her in the door. On the way out, she whispers, “Kick their ass,” to Steph.

There’s a super-awkward moment when Richard and Steph are sitting there looking stunned that Lisa’s the one who stayed and she calls them out on not congratulating her. Sure it’s awkward, but that just makes it more so sweetie. Ugh. Next week the last episode! We are so on tender hooks.

They get taken to Allen Brothers Meat where they are given gigantic slabs of ribeye to butcher into chops, which seems totally daunting to everyone but Spike.

Stephanie and Richard didn’t do so great a job butchering and undercooked their steaks.

Lisa and Spike both did well on the butchering and cooking. But Spike won out. Ironic considering the end results. But we’ll get to that.

The elimination challenge is a pretty awesome one. They get to take over Rick Tramonto’s restaurant for the night and each make an entrée and an appetizer. And Tom is going to be their expediter.

Spike gets the first pick of proteins for his dishes, due to his quickfire win. He chooses the tomahawks and scallops (frozen!) All the other chefs are like “wtf – frozen?”

Lisa decides to make peanut butter mashed potatoes, which sound totally sketchy. Also grilled and chilled shrimp and a NY strip.

Antonia’s making her warm artichoke and mushroom salad with a poached egg (again) and a ribeye for her entrée.

Stephanie’s working on sweetbreads with golden raisins and pinenuts and a beef tenderloin with mushrooms.

Richard is doing Hamachi with sweetbreads and avocado and a beef tenderloin.

This is all so exciting and scary and suspenseful but not dramatic in that usual reality TV way!

Lisa gets a little snappish but with Dale gone, there’s no one to fuel the fire. Speaking of which, can we talk a bit about the last lesbian standing, since we are writing from the “gay perspective?” Why does everyone hate her so much? Sure she’s a kind of annoying and has made some major stinkers, but she’s also made some great dishes. We can see her not being the fan favorite, but why the hate? We’ll totally agree that Dale was maybe an overall superior cook and it sucks when someone who’s really good gets sent home. But we were actually excited to see the judges make a decision based solely on the challenge at hand and not on overall performance. Because that’s supposed to be the concept. And Dale not only made the worst dish of the evening, he also did a bad job being the team leader, the “executive chef”. But anyhow… Lisa’s not our fave, even though she’s one of the family.

The three guest judges for the challenge are Harold, Ilan and Hung – the respective former Top Chef winners. Oh Harold.

Based on the judges initial tasting comments, it’s definitely down to Spike and Lisa and it seems like Spike committed the worse sin.

At judges table they all hold hands. That’s so sweet.

Stephanie totally wins another challenge and a whole ton of GE kitchen appliances. You go girl!

Richard and Antonia also make it to the finals. Antonia tackles Richard in a hug. His pink crocs almost fly off.

So it’s down to Lisa and Spike and the judges agree that he screwed up more. Also, for our part, his ego is more irritating, along with his attempts to get by not just by his cooking but other nefarious tricks. And his total inability to admit he ever screws up. See his goodbye video for an excellent example of this:

There are only six contestants left (well five now, but you know at the beginning of this episode). Anyhow, the reason Tom is acting all strange is that he’s come to wake them all up to go cook the egg station at short order breakfast places. A few of us around these parts have actually done this and can attest to its hellishness. And that Helene looks like one tough cookie. She stands there and shakes her head at them. That seems worse than the heat and the orders piling up.

They are sent to a strange address and informed that Tom won’t be around for the Elimination Challenge. Ooh the mystery. Except we already knew this was going to be restaurant wars. Duh. The remaining six are stoked about it. Although we’re not sure why, because as Antonia points out, all the past seasons have generally sucked at this part of the competition.

Antonia, having won the Quickfire, gets to choose her team. She picks Stephanie and Richard and we will dub them Team Nice Guys. That leaves Dale, Lisa and Spike as Team Asian Meltdown. We’re seriously worried about them. Here’s a good illustration of the team attitude differences: Steph is excited because it’s “sorta like a rematch” of wedding wars and their team did well; Dale is slightly less pessimistic because he has “one less to deal with.” Umm…

Then who shows up, but everyone’s favorite, the imminently frightening Anthony Bourdain! Yeah! He’ll tell them what’s what using his “warm, sunnier disposition.”

Surprise number four for the day: the kicked off contestants are back to lend a hand! Hi Jen! ‘Sup Mark!

Anyhow, Team Nice Guys decides on a Gastropub with simple fine dining food and a relaxed atmosphere.

Team Asian Meltdown decides on, predictably, Asian Fusion with a lot of statues of Buddha laying around.

Team Asian Meltdown picks Jen for her “great attitude towards everything.” Hmmm. That’s the polar opposite of all of them. Will it save them?

Team Nice Guys pick Nikki so she can roll out the pasta. She also helps them by finding grit on the clams. They rewash.

Okay, we’re totally not surprised when immediately Dale and Lisa are at each others throats like a couple of pit bulls. Okay that’s unfair. Pit bulls are not all like that. But something we really only realized tonight is – they are a lot alike. They kvetch and moan about the same qualities in each other and are equally testy and defensive and egotistical. Twins!

Spike is, as usual, evading responsibility, “The bottom line is they can’t hold me accountable for the food.” Not on Top Chef buddy boy. Plus you look pretty creepy in a suit.

Team Asian Meltdown is having flavor and food problems already. It’s not looking so good for them.

Team Nice Guy’s food is well received by the judges, with Bourdain even saying he “loved” the lamb dish. And Padma loved the gorgonzola cheesecake. Team Nice Guy basically kicks ass! Oh, except one small thing. Ted Allen wasn’t so impressed with the brown smear on the banana scallops. Not into skidmarks, Ted?

Team Asian Meltdown melts down immediately with the Laksa being too smoky, the scallops too Willy Wonka, and the mango sticky rice like “baby food garnished with potpourri.” Yuck.

At judges table, we learn that every once in a while Nice Guys Finish First. And our little Stephanie wins a trip to Barcelona!

Team Asian Meltdown gets ripped a new one by Bourdain. We’re so irritated with Spike for squirming his way out of this one. But we are not expecting at all what happens next… they kick Dale off! We did not see it coming, but we think it’s totally just. He was the executive chef and his dish was the worst of the meal. But we definitely thought it would be Lisa. Phew, what a shocker.

And then Dale gets a little teary, which for the first time this season, inspires a little sympathy in us for him. Let’s watch his emotional exit interview.

The guest judge is Sam Talbot of Season 2. Antonia’s visibly blushing and giggling like an adolescent girl and is like, “Sign me up.” They brought sexy Sam back to bring sexy salad back. Spike says he’s going to make a salad that makes you say, “Let’s have sex after we eat this salad.” Well, it’s literal, at least.

Spike, Antonia and Dale top the list with Spike winning a quickfire for once.

Their elimination challenge is to create healthy gourmet box lunches for cops. Spike is given and advantage for his quickfire win and quickly uses it not to make the best dish possible, but to screw over his competitors. He’s so darn pleased with himself. Just wait, Spike.

Lisa cries sabotage! Steph and Dale think she probably turned her burner up herself. Well, sleep deprivation can do that (see last weeks entry).

In one of the interview segments, Richard is wearing a totally geeky, girly headband. Gosh, he’s so cute. And yes we do like burritos.

Steph’s soup goes over well, Spike and Andrew’s dishes not so much. Dale’s and Richard’s sound good. Lisa’s sounds like a train wreck. Antonia seems in the clear. That's all as far as the judges go. The cops seem to like everything.

Dale and Stephanie are picked as the top two, with Dale taking the prize (some crappy large bottle of wine?) and the win.

Spike, Andrew and Lisa are on the bottom. Padma accosts Andrew, “Did you think your dish was substantial enough for a hearty lunch?” That is scary. We would have peed our pants if we were him. Also – we don’t understand why a sushi lunch box is unacceptable. Okay, if it tasted bad, say that. But nowhere in the challenge did they mention hearty, until now. And it’s pretty stereotypical to assume that no cops have ever eaten sushi.

We are however glad Spike’s in the bottom, what with his devilish tactics and his bad attitude. Tom gives him some shit about using olives and grapes and Spike says, “What don’t you understand about salty and sweet?” Oooh. Bad move, talking to Tom like that. Eeek.

Then Lisa goes and calls Andrew out for not using a whole grain. Which we’re pretty sure the judges knew anyhow. So it really just makes her look bad. Plus her shrimp were apparently nasty. Andrew and Lisa go from tensiony tension to full blown fighting. And ultimately our little tornado of energy, Andrew goes home in a unanimous decision.

Next week: the hell that is restaurant wars.

Andrew and Spike miss Mark and so spend some time hugging to make themselves feel better. We really like to watch straight guys cuddling. We also miss Mark.

Antonia comments that this is the first time four women have made it this far and that it’s a very even gender playing field. True, true. It’s also that point in the competition where immunity gets taken away. No more freebies, folks.

Padma and Tom come out to greet the chefs and Padma is looking extra hot in that military jacket. They announce the return of the relay race. Everyone is excited and pumped about this. They split into two teams, the forks and the spoons and divide up who gets what part of the relay.

These types of things make us nervous. Right away we’re worried that Lisa is going to cut her finger off while slicing oranges. She manages not to and also to smoke Antonia in the process. But the lead is lost when Andrew out-artichokes Spike. Dale and Richard start on the giant, prehistoric-looking monkfish and it’s neck and neck! Steph and Nikki step up to make the mayonnaise and are whisking like the dickens. It’s all so very exciting! And the spoons take it! Everyone’s jumps around and congratulates each other…except Dale who throws a hissy fit and punches a locker. Lame.

So this season, instead of restaurant wars, they’re doing wedding wars. You can sense the air of disappointment, “We are catering a wedding – which is not that cool,” says Andrew. That combined with the fact that it’s more like a wedding death march, where they wont be allowed to sleep for like 36 hours.

The Bride’s team is going for a meat and potatoes, comfort food thing and despite Andrew’s slight bristling at Richard’s dominance, seem to have a solid team dynamic and some good ideas. Yum, pulled pork.

The Groom’s team should have an easy go with Italian food, but immediately Dale’s clashing with everyone and Nikki becomes the defacto team leader, but sort of refuses to step to it.

Did Richard’s faux hawk look different to you guys this episode? It seemed more upright or pointy or something. Also he watches Martha Stewart. We like him more and more all the time. Mainly because he doesn’t really seem to lose his cool. And although he may be occasionally overconfident, he’s good about sharing the compliments and not shoving off the blame. Unlike Dale, who will not shut up about how he’s the official kitchen martyr.

Anyhow as it gets to be, oh around 4 am, things start to feel really tense and weird. But then everyone’s too tired to really fight. Amazingly they pull it off and don’t ruin the happy couples’ wedding. We are quite proud of them. But immediately you can tell that the Bride’s team has an edge on food quality. Steph and Lisa both pull off their cakes and having watched previous seasons of Top Chef, we call this both an amazing and singular feat.

At judges table, the Bride’s take the cake. And Richard, benevolently shares his win with Steph. Which is both appropriate and sweet as hell. What a gentleman. Maybe it’s his Southern hospitality.

Dale continues with his martyred rampage and Spike responds in an equally immature manner. We happened to be eating Chinese food while watching and right around this moment we opened our fortune cookie which said, “Confucius say: show off always shown up in showdown.” How apt.

Is Lisa asleep? He haven’t seen her eyeballs in a while. Nikki continues to refuse to take responsibility and we realize right away that this means she’s going home. The judges hate that. People always get kicked off for refusing to step up and try to lead. Let that be a lesson to you, remaining contestants.

This episode was low on drama and heavy on children. And some of those kids were so darn cute that we wanted to pinch their cheeks. But we’ll get to that. Antonia starts out very determined, like a fierce tigress out to protect her young. And apparently that pays off.

Art Smith (Oprah’s personal chef) is the guest judge and his whole thing is simple, fast and healthy. So the quickfire is to make a fabulous entrée in 15 minutes. We’re not sure we could cut up an onion in 15 minutes. But they do get to use Uncle Ben’s 90 second rice. Seriously, we’re waiting for the challenge where they have to use macaroni and cheese. Everyone’s yelling “Behind you!” and “Under you!” and running around like maniacs.

Stephanie seems like she’s getting more confident, which is good, even though she kind of screws the pooch on this challenge. But we’re behind you Steph!

In the elimination challenge, the hardest part for the chef’s to wrap their heads around is the ten dollar spending limit. They run around buys chicken and noodles and… fennel bulb.

Antonia calls her daughter and makes her say “Smell my poo.” Gross.

The children show up and we’re nervous for their fingers, but they’re all pretty adorable. We especially like Spike’s kid and Dale’s kid. Richard gives his kid a lesson on fashion that might screw that kid up for life. He tells her pink and green and blue go together. Don’t listen to him, kid. Dale’s kid is small like Dale and says his favorite part of cooking is eating. Hey, us too! Lisa, however, calls her kid “big guy” which we just think is really not so cool. We’ve been called “big guy” before and we didn’t like it.

Nikki does really awesome in the challenge with her one pot dish. Richard says that this has made him want to go home and make some babies. “Little Blaises.” Do you think they’ll all pop out with tiny blond faux hawks? Probs.

Mark lands in the bottom yet again and claims, “I think Tom doesn’t like me.” This really makes everyone crack up. Duh, clearly Tom doesn’t like anyone.

Lisa’s beans were shockingly underseasoned. Gasp! Steph gets dissed on for combining peanut butter and tomato, but we gotta say we’ve had some African Peanut soup that did just that and it was delicious. But then we guess she didn’t pull it off.

Mark gets the boot and Tom tells him they’ll go out for a beer. Which we sort of doubt. But the sentiment was nice. We’ll miss Mark (his funny deadpan humor), but we suppose it was inevitable.

And we never ever want to see Andrew saying the word boner again, ever. (Shiver.) Oh and next week, the Top Chef contestants ruin a wedding. Yeah!

Jennifer’s still doing it for Zoi, but now with some additional blood, sweat and tears.

Nikki’s stoked when she see pastries, because she orders multiple desserts when she goes out to eat? Who does that?

The quickfire is to create a delicious dessert for Johnny Iuzzini, author of (wait for it) Dessert Foreplay. That seems like a book worth buying. Everyone’s generally freaking out, but we can’t help but think that, by Season 4, Top Chef contestants would memorize one or two dessert recipes before going on the show. Because this comes up every season.

The baddies in the quickfire are Antonio’s lemon cake, Spike’s soufflé (though he gets an A for effort) and Mark’s tasting.

Top of the heap are Dale’s shaved ice thing, Lisa’s wontons, and Richards banana scallops. And Richard takes it for taste and inventiveness. It does look pretty cool, but the name banana scallops makes us gag.

The chefs get all gussied up to go out to Second City for comedy. Mark comments on their outfits, “Blaise wants to wear pink, goes well with his skin tone, doesn’t it?” Yes, he is rather pink.

The chefs start freaking out as they realize what might be going on with this improv business.

It’s interesting to see how the chefs naturally pair off. It all pretty much makes sense.
We will dub them with our own team names:
Spike and Andrew – Double Trouble
Dale and Richard – The Master and Margarita
Jen and Steph – Team Gloria Steinem
Lisa and Antonia – Team Sourpuss
Nikki and Mark – Team Uh Oh

Naturally, they’re thrown a couple of twists: machine’s disappear, they have to move to another location. Despite this, all the teams’ food seems really solid.

Double Trouble’s soup goes over well in both taste and concept.
Padma says she would lick her bowl if she weren’t on TV. Eh, who cares, just do it Padma. We’d eat that up.

Team Gloria Steinem puts on a nice little act during their serving that is both funny and creepy.
But it’s not enough to tie together their somewhat disorganized dish.

The Master and Margarita hit a homerun with their description and unique dish.
Judges love it of course and it did sound good.

Team Sourpuss takes a shot of tequila in front of the judges, but doesn’t offer them any, which seems a bit rude.
“It went out cold and it looked like turds,” Spike comments. (This is the second poop-looking dish so far this competition.)
The judges aren’t impressed with their take on the concept.
One guy is like, “No offense, Ted Allen, but I really like Polish sausage.” To which Ted Allen replies, “It’s okay, I’m not Polish.”

Team Uh Oh does better than we expected. We admit, given recent events, we were worried about them. But their food seems solid and tasty.

The Master and Margarita and Double Trouble come out on top.
Of course Dale and Richard win and they deserve it.

We’re depressed at all our girls being in the bottom though.
There’s a nice moment where Jen tries to explain the intended phallic nature of the asparagus on the bread. “The asparagus was meant to be erect?” Yes. But their bread was flaccid.

Lisa’s starting to grate on the nerves a bit as she goes on about how she would never serve something like Polish sausage. Can you say high horse?

And Jen gets the boot, which given the options, we guess makes sense, but we’re still totally pissed about it. And not just because she’s “one of the family” and we like her hair, but because we really feel like she’s one of the better chefs left. Nikki’s still on for heaven’s sake and she’s made some real bad dishes. Oh well, goodbye lesbian number two. We wish you the best. See you in San Fran.

Guest judge Koren Grieveson is hot and intimidating and cooking to go with beer sounds awesome. Nikki, Spike and Dale do the worst which is not that surprising since Spike basically says he can’t taste the difference between the beers and Nikki is pretty consistently shabby. Richard, Stephanie and Jennifer (winning one for her girl Zoi) do the best. Spike makes a douchey comment about lesbian team power. Whatever, Spike, where’s your hat?

And we can’t help but wonder for maybe the third or fourth time whether this season of Top Chef is going to come down to the battle of the fauxhawks. We like both of them, moderately. Richard annoys us a bit with his Pate melt pun and we’re already kind of sick of Jen’s “doin’ it for Zoi” thing. But they’re both good chefs.

Ryan and Mark are cute together at the grocery store.

Okay, totally hilarious moment where they’re prepping and Lisa’s all like, “I’m just beating my meat.” Tee hee.

They finally get to chill and drink some wine and Stephanie’s totally double-fisting. That’s the way to relax, girl.

Spike and Mark get in the tub drinking cheap Champagne. This is exactly the kind of action we’ve been waiting for Antonia says they’re acting like they’re in a cheap porno. Spike professes his mancrush on Mark who makes an intensely coquettish face. It also seems like Ryan is obsessed with Mark. Yes. This is awesome. Here's some extended bathtub footage:

Later, at the tailgate, Mark gets in another zinger about his “testicular fortitude” in reference to his choosing a charcoal grill.

The judges show up wearing those jerseys and we are freaked out. This is not okay. This is a fashion emergency.

Andrew’s wearing a football helmet that gets stuck on his ears.

Everyone’s food sounds pretty good until Mark, who’s slopsville and Nikki, who in a bonehead move, didn’t save food for the judges.

Stephanie, Antonia and Dale take the top 3 and Dale wins it with his interesting ribs.

Mark, Nikki and Ryan hit the bottom and Ryan get’s booted. And because he’s actually humbled by the whole thing and cries a little, we’re sad to see him go. But we’re just actually thanking our lucky stars, it wasn’t Mark. Who else would take bubble baths with dudes for all the world to see?

Anyhow, the quickfire challenge is the old standard blindfold palate test. Which makes Antonia happy, because she is quite confident in her palate. And she does, as it turns out, have the most rockin’ palate of the remaining chefs. Ryan and Jennifer tie for runners up and Stephanie does the worst, which we find totally surprising, considering some of her flavor combinations so far.

Immediately you can sense trouble brewing in this episode, in way we haven’t seen so far this season. Dale and Lisa are clashing. Antonia and Spike aren’t agreeing about what to make.

Richard’s starting to seem way too overconfident. Mark’s really not looking so good. (We thought this last episode too – we’re going to send him some vitamins.)

Lisa’s making some amazing sounding bacon but she’s kind of freaking out. Dale calls it “observational negativity” and is not so happy about it.

Richard tries to connect with Tom using some witty (or not so witty) banter. Tom is totally stone-faced and not impressed at all.

Team Water left scales on the fish. That is not good. Team Fire, despite their initial dilemmas seems to have pulled it together. Team Air’s dish doesn’t impress. And Team Earth’s dish gets labeled as bland. So basically 3/4ths of the food this challenge is not so good. But watching still makes us hungry.

So obviously, Fire wins and beyond that Lisa (go Team Lesbian!) wins a trip for two to Italy, for her outstanding bacon. Dales is self-admittedly bitter about this.

Air lucks out and doesn’t even have to stand at judge’s table. That’s got to be a relief.

Earth and Water are picked as the worst. And ultimately Zoi gets kicked off. Well that blows. One lesbian down. And we’re just not sure that shoddily seasoned mushrooms are worse than scaly, mushy fish. Well now, Jennifer is just going to have to avenge her fallen lover.

Back in the locker room, things get super intense and scary. Spike starts yelling at Antonia about her unwillingness to compromise that put them on the bottom and she starts yelling back at him, “Stand behind your dish!” Jennifer is pissed that Zoi got kicked off. Dale yells something. Lisa says he’s not helping. Which totally sets him off and he starts doing this crazy ghetto, crotch-grabbing ranting in her face. Not that we were a huge Dale fan, but this is totally uncalled for and really immature and obviously caused mainly by jealousy.

Two weeks ago we were so impressed by everyone being somewhat mature and helpful and respectful of each other. How quickly things change. Will they hug and make up or will these tensions get worse next week?

The quickfire challenge is Mexican as fine dining. The taco. Oh crap. This is our challenge. Some of us around here are from Austin where tacos are like the life blood. So we feel really expert in this category.

Everyone’s having a hard time with street food versus fine dining. Richard and his jicama tortillas. Oh no Lisa’s was unbitable. Spike’s was totally street.

Eric’s totally going home soon. We’ve been thinking that since the beginning. He just seems like a little lost in the world of fine dining. But again totally likable. In a giant tattooed teddy bear sort of way.

Everyone divides up into Red and Blue teams. And even though Red’s got Zoi and Jennifer, we would have a hard time choosing if we were there… And we could cook. Seriously everyone this season seems rockin.

A Block party is the elimination challenge. Seriously they’re making shit more ridiculous all the time. It’s like trick or treating for Top Chef ingredients. What will they think of to degrade them next? Swimsuit cooking. Underwater. Or picking up poop cooking.

Oh wait then they start playing Spoon – “I turn my camera on”. Sweet. This Top Chef kitchen is like our collective gay, foodie wet dream.

Zoi’s concerned about not winning with pasta salad. Dale’s concerned about the downscale aspect of the menus. Uh oh, waldorf salad without mayonnaise.

Nikki screwed up mac and cheese. Um, even though we can’t cook, we wouldn’t do that.

The text question is “What will happen first: female president or female Top Chef?” That’s funny. For reals. 85% for female top chef! Crazytown. Poor Hillary.

Uh oh the judges are uber harsh right away on the blue team. But then they win. Stephanie wins again! Maybe being anxious and paranoid really does pay off. She’s an inspiration for us to stop with the Xanax and the meditation and just go with the angsty, nerve-wracking flow.

Oh crap Zoi’s pasta salad gets dissed.

Tom isn’t pleased by ADHD guy’s comment about getting dragged out by security guards.

Ooohhh. We knew it would be Eric who got sent home. Crap. Everyone hugs him and it’s super nice. We’re stoked that Zoi’s in. But when will the lesbian stress start to show?

Right away in this episode, the gayest thing ever happens. Zoi and Jennifer (you know, the lesbian couple from San Francisco) switch shoes… and they’re crocs. Okay, we know they’re chefs and they need comfortable shoes, but do they also have the same foot size?

So for their quickfire challenge they go to the farmer’s market. We love it when they make them all run; they are like freaking out and knocking over small children. Except Spike, with his dapper hat, who just chills and listens to music for a while. You gotta admire that. It’s the polar opposite of Mark who was a little bit of mess and even made us feel stressed out. When he said he decided to use butter instead of lettuce, we were like, “uh oh, that’s Ronald Reagan logic.” But then he totally won, just like Ronald Reagan.

Okay on to the animals. Vultures, Gorillas, Penguins and Bears. Do vultures really live in zoos? But we like how when Mark reads their diet, he’s says, “That’s very similar to my diet.” It’s kinda sweet how much he likes those scary scavengers.

We started getting a bad feeling right away when Valerie decided to go along with her teammates non-vegetarian menu and then Antonio started dissing her. Generally their menu didn’t even sound good to us from the beginning. But we like Valerie. Even though apparently her bellini tasted like dirt. And we like Stephanie even though we bet any of you a million dollars that every episode she will say what she said this time, “I’m fucked, I’m going home.” It’s her paranoid catch phrase. Even when she rocks.

And then Lisa beefs it at the grocery store. Nasty tomatillos, always in the way.

And then Dale uses the word, “gussy”. Which reminds us of a one our Southern grandmas. The Bear’s really should have kicked ass this challenge. We would totally eat at a restaurant that served bear food. But then we agreed that Nikki’s mushrooms did look like turds… specifically bear turds; which maybe they should have just gone with as a thematic element. Oh and then Dale gets in another strange comment, “At that point I was trying to put perfume on a pig.” Where is he from?

The second gayest thing this episode (and it doesn’t matter that it pretty much gets said every episode) is when Padma said, “Well we pretty much know who’s on top and who’s on bottom.” Yep, we pretty much know too. Also isn’t Padma that hottest, most awesome Bravo host ever?

Congratulations, Andrew (aka ADHD). You did good. If we bopped and bounced as much as you, we would have burned our arm off or something.