With Stephanie back on top—or nearly so—all is right and well in the world again. So let’s cut right to the chase with a look at this week’s winner and losers.
First, the big winner: Dale. Great, just what his ego needed! But his dish did look tasty. And who knows, maybe this week’s win will placate him enough to keep him from yelling, swearing, grabbing himself and hitting things for a couple of weeks.
And the big loser: Andrew. Dear, crazy, Andrew … why did you have to go all home economics teacher on us? To paraphrase, well, just about everyone who’s ever been on the show: It’s “Top Chef,” not “Top Nutritionist.” Let it suffice to say that Andrew has lost his culinary boner.
And then there were six. Here they are, in the order in which we think they’ll go:
Lisa: Stop whining. Nobody “sabotaged” your rice. But if they had, it would’ve been because you say things like this: “There’s people here who don’t deserve to be here, and some of their personalities suck ass.” Hello, pot. Meet kettle. Also: Was Lisa wearing pajamas throughout the entire episode? We can only imagine what Padma was thinking.
Spike: His boy Andrew is gone, and that means now no one else even speaks the same language as him. We worry about his sanity. (More than we did before, we mean.) We doubt he packed enough hats for a full 16 episodes anyway.
Dale: Dale is to Asian food what season 3’s Brian was to fish. If that’s all he can do, he’ll eventually meet a challenge where he can’t shine. Next week’s Restaurant Wars challenge could be a problem for him too, given that he doesn’t play well with others.
Top three—in alphabetical order:
Antonia: Girl just keeps working it out. We like her style and we love her attitude. Wonder if she got any off-camera time with Sam Talbot?
Richard: This was a quiet episode for our favorite faux-hawked Southern gentleman, but that doesn’t mean he’s not busy dreaming up new ways to combine his secret stash of ras-al-hanout with smoking and sous-vide techniques, thus blowing us all away in the weeks to come.
Stephanie: Meatball soup = brilliant. And, apparently, well seasoned. (How many times did the judges say that? Six? Seven?) Good to see her back near the top.
And now, we drink. There was a lot of finger-pointing this episode (ahem, Lisa) and we can’t just let it slide by.
This week’s rule: Chug for five seconds every time someone says “threw me under the bus” or some variation of the phrase. And because this is only likely to happen at the judges’ table or in the stew room, we’ll add another product-placement rule as a bonus: Drink every time there’s a tight shot of the GE Monogram logo. (This was inspired, of course, by this week’s Elimination Challenge requirement that the cops heat their dishes in a microwave … but not just any microwave!)
To recap:
Rule No. 1: Drink every time Lisa curses.
Rule No. 2: Drink every time a Glad product appears on screen. Chug for the first five seconds of any Glad commercial.
Rule No. 3: Drink every time Dale lashes out, directly or indirectly.
Rule No. 4: Chug for five seconds any time someone says “threw me under the bus” or similar.
Rule No. 5: Drink for every tight shot/zoom of a GE Monogram logo.
Next week: Restaurant Wars returns! Until then, get your “Top Chef” fix with more on this week's episode from The Stew.