'Top Chef' Episode 6: Meatballs to the wall!

Last night's episode marked the point on a season of "Top Chef" at which no one can fly under the radar anymore, and, in a heartening twist for fans of local fave Dale Levitski, it also marked the night where Dale came into his own.

The guest judge for Episode 6 is one of the more recognizable names we've seen this season, Rocco DiSpirito. Except it's not the Rocco DiSpirito we know from our ... let's see ... maybe eighth or ninth favorite food-based reality show, "The Restaurant." It's kind of a futuristic, Ken doll-esque Rocco DiSpirito. Or maybe ... did you ever go to Disneyland as a kid? Remember Futureland? Remember those plastic (There! We said it! Plastic!) futuremen standing around their futurekitchens? Yeah. That's all we're going to say about that.

This week's Quickfire Challenge seems simple enough: The chefs will be put on the spot in a "culinary bee," an elimination contest in which they have to identify various ingredients by sight or taste alone. Get one wrong, and it's over. Get one right, and you survive to see another round. Fun! We could get into this.

Sadly, Dale stumbles quickly, mistaking taro root for water chestnuts, while some of the other chefs (ahem, Brian and Casey) skate through with no-brainers like kidney beans and bowtie pasta. (For the record, we think this is total B.S.-are kidney beans and things like taro root and daikon radish sprouts even remotely on the same level in terms of difficulty?) Others (ahem, Hung) get lucky-oatmeal, really? Oatmeal? Then they throw it all way when they get cocky and make careless errors, such as mistaking anise seed for celery seed before tasting it. In the end, it's Casey versus Brian, and Casey hangs on with chayote and roasted red bell peppers while Brian falters on Asian eggplant.

It looks like Rocco DiSpirito is sticking around for the Elimination Challenge so he can creep us out some more. He does have some interesting info to share, however. Like, did you know the frozen meal market is worth about $8.6 billion a year? This bit of shocking news, of course, is the set-up for the night's challenge: to create a quickly re-heatable frozen dinner based on frozen Bertolli products.

The chefs draw knives to pair up; with their partners, they'll have 30 minutes and $100 to shop, two hours to cook and two hours to package their meals. At stake: two tickets to Italy for each member of the winning team-courtesy of Bertolli, natch.

Dale is paired with Casey, who we're thinking might be a bit of a sleeper so far this season. There's only one problem: She just won immunity, and immune chefs have been known to slack or try wacky dishes just because they can.

Dale admits he and Casey haven't hung out much, but they "instantly, instantly clicked." And it does look as if they're genuinely having a good time working together. (Shh ... don't tell Lia, looks like Casey has a new BFF!) We can't say the same for Howie and Sara M., whose passive-aggressive exchanges are interspersed with confessional-style shots of Howie saying things to the camera like, "I wouldn't hire her to wash dishes in my kitchen."

Joey and Hung are running a close second in the Team Most Likely to Spontaneously Combust category. There's not as much open animosity, but it's clear that Joey's hard-headed, plodding mentality clashes badly with Hung's hyper-driven tendency to dash about in small spaces brandishing sharp knives.

As the chefs get down to business, the love fest continues over at Casey and Dale's counter, where Casey proudly declares that they've wisely chosen two ingredients that freeze well: pesto and meatballs. Yep, they sure do freeze well ... but, pesto with ... meatballs? We're not convinced.

It turns out the meatballs are going to be made with ground turkey and pork, and the pesto is not a traditional basil pesto, but rather a spinach-based sauce. They're tossing them with orecchiette, a small pasta that means "little ear" in Italian-the petite, pinched lobes will catch the sauce nicely. Artichokes-canned artichokes, the sight of which make Tom bristle-also fit into the dish somehow.

Dale and Casey are smart enough to figure out that they need to create a separate sauce pack before freezing their dish, but Tre and Tall C.J. seem to be the only pair who have caught on to the fact that they should be quick-freezing everything individually. (Well, actually, Hung figured it out too and was typically proud of himself for doing so; but in the end, he let Joey bulldoze him into dumping everything into the same container.)

The next day at the Fresh Market, the chefs have 10 minutes to heat their frozen meals; then shoppers begin to arrive. Dale is looking mighty dapper with a French-cuffed lime-green shirt under his chef's jacket. We think the attire is a subtle clue to his savvy. Around the Fontainebleau, he's as sloppy and unkempt as they come. But when he knows he's going to be selling to an impressionable public, the boy steps it up. Big time.

Aside from being the cutest team, Casey and Dale are undoubtedly the most energized. Dale, who the producers appear to have tapped as de facto narrator for this episode, recounts the palpable excitement for the camera: "Casey and I look at each other, and we're like, 'We're going to sell these b**ches!'"

Dale and Casey are indeed the first team to sell out, and they're pretty sure they have a good shot at the top. So do we. It's looking like a showdown with Tre and Tall C.J., who devised a tasty-looking black truffle and parmesan linguini-with every element individually quick-frozen.

Before the judges table, however, the truth comes out. Rocco got a meatball that was still a bit frozen, and Tom really didn't like those canned artichokes. Still, Dale and Casey make it into the top four alongside Tall C.J. and Tre.

Rocco calls Casey and Dale's pesto, a spinach-almond creation, one of the most "beautiful and balanced" he's ever seen. But it's apparently not quite as beautiful as black truffles (then again, what is?) because Tre and C.J. edge them out and win the trip to Italy.

Joey and Hung and Howie and Sara M. are called before the judges table to defend their mushy pastas. Howie and Sara M. argue in front of the judges, then go back to the kitchen and fight some more. Back at the table, Hung and Joey bicker for a bit, then Hung throws Joey under the bus.

In the end, Padma asks Joey to please pack his knives and go, and he does-but not until after he's delivered one of the most blubbering, teary parting soliloquies ever seen on "Top Chef."

So other than the fact that Rocco DiSpirito may have been cryogenically frozen during a trip to Anaheim a few years back, what did we learn in Episode 6? Well, the other chefs seem to like working with Dale. And we're starting to think the producers like him too-he wasn't even an option on the "which chef annoys you most" text poll. (Hung swept that one-shocker.) As we enter the team-challenge portion of the competition, this bodes well for Dale. Finally, and perhaps best of all, we also learned that he's playing the game-and he's in it to win it. Though his laid-back demeanor doesn't always show it, that neatly pressed lime-green shirt was a dead giveaway.