We tuned in for a second week tonight to keep tabs on hometown chef Dale Levitski as he battles it out for culinary glory on season 3 of Bravo's "Top Chef." Here's how it played out.
SPOILER ALERT!!
The show opens back at the Fountainebleau. Everyone brags or gripes about various things that went down on last week's episode. Then it's off to the GE Monogram Kitchen to learn about the week's quickfire challenge: "to create a delicious dish incorporating gorgeous Florida citrus." We also meet guest judge Norman Van Aiken, godfather of South Florida cuisine. And we notice for the first time that C.J. is really, really tall.
The chefs chop and squeeze and sautee. We wonder how Dale-a chef accustomed to working in the sensible Midwest, where everyone knows that blood oranges don't just grow on trees-will fare in this fruity, Florida-inspired quickfire.
Dale comes through, whipping up a citrus salad of watercress, Belgian endive and shaved fennel soaked in pastis, accompanied by a lemon-poppyseed and goat cheese blob of some sort. It sounds kind of tasty, but Norman thinks it might have needed a bit of olive oil to balance all of the sunny citrus flavors. Norman's being a tad harsh all around, so it's hard to tell if this is a make-or-break criticism.
Dale pulls through. Micah and Sandee surprise us by landing in the bottom three. Tall C.J., Tre and Hung are the top three. Hung wins for his slow-roasted sea bass with a salad of watercress and radish in a citrus sauce. Of course, as he tells us, he didn't expect anything less.
On to the elimination challenge. Oops-we mean the Kingsford Charcoal Elimination Challenge. The chefs are to prepare food for a gourmet barbecue thrown by Miami foodie Lee Schrager. They'll have 30 minutes and $200 to shop, two hours to prep and two hours to cook.
We see Micah on the verge of a breakdown in the produce section. We see Brian making seafood sausage. We see Sandee practicing tai-chi in her pajamas on the balcony at the Fountainebleau. We see lots of Glad products. But we don't see much of Dale.
Cut to elimination challenge. Lee Schrager welcomes everyone to his Moet & Chandon Barbecue. (Wait, isn't it a Kingsford barbecue? Forgive us, the Miami heat must be getting to us ... or maybe it's just this dizzying array of product placement.)
The chefs cook; Tom does his walk-throughs. Still, we hear nothing from Dale. But we do hear this gem from Joey: "From what I hear, Howie's dish tastes like sawdust. You know, you do something like that in New York, you're going home." And this one: "He's a kiss-ass. That's why he moved to Vegas-cuz he can't hang in New York." Note to Joey: You're in Miami now. And we're tired of hearing about how you're from New York.
The chefs pack up their things. There's a lot of trash lying about. Good thing there are Glad ForceFlex trash bags handy.
Back at the judge's table, everyone agrees that today's food was pretty good. Still, someone has to go. At this point, we're pretty sure it's not Dale. Except for a brief shot of him standing in the kitchen at the Fountainebleau and looking sleepy, we haven't heard a thing from him since the first commercial break.
The judges talk among themselves. One thing leads to another and ... gasp! ... Hung and Tre both fall from grace. Tre's salmon is called "salty" and "bland," and Norman ventures that he didn't use enough acid. Hung's dish was too simple. Brain's seafood sausage, on the other hand, was very interesting.
Sara N., Brian and Micah are in the top three. Brian wins.
That's nice, but seriously: Where the heck is Dale?? We're starting to worry about him.
Howie, Joey, Sandee and Tre are called before the judge's table. Sandee's vanilla-poached lobster is accused of not being a barbecue dish. "There's three little words that go with barbecue: low and slow," Norman tells us. Huh? Isn't that two words? Since when do conjunctions count? Whatever. It's clear that Sandee's dish was neither low nor and nor slow
Padma asks Sandee to pack her knives and go, and she does.
The chefs are shocked. Sandee, according to Hung, "is a really cool girl." We're kind of surprised too. But mostly, we're worried about Dale. Is he OK? What could possibly have happened to him after the quickfire challenge?
We're thinking this sort of editing-his total absence from the storyline, we mean-can't bode well for a contestant. Are there any other theories out there?
Finally, could Sandee's departure mean anything for Dale? He is the last of the mohawk-ianed now, after all.