'Top Chef' Episode 5: 'I'm going on a summer picnic, and I'm bringing ... a free-form tart!'

Before we jump into our weekly recap of local "Top Chef" contestant Dale Levitski's performance on this week's episode, let's revisit a couple of our favorite quotes from the evening:

"There's nothing better than a telenovela to get your appetite rolling." - Gail

"It's all about finesse, style, grace and elegance." - Hung, who later almost accidentally slices Casey's head off with a knife

Save for a few memorable quotes like these, last night's episode of "Top Chef" was, not unlike Dale's free-form tart from Episode 4, fairly underwhelming.

Shortly after the episode opens, we meet guest judge Maria Frumkin, pastry chef and owner of Duo restaurant and the French Bakery Cafe in Miami.

Then it's on to a surprisingly uninspired Quickfire Challenge: The chefs must use their talent and their creativity to make an "ambitious, creative" dish using frozen pie crusts; they'll have 90 minutes.

Frozen pie crusts? This is all the same producers who have given us gin, live shellfish and a half-eaten buffet table already this season can come up with? Zzzzz. Wake us up at the next Gladware commercial, please.

Dale, however, says he's "absolutely jacked out of [his] mind" at the opportunity to redeem himself from last week's pastry meltdown (or "dessert debacle," as Padma calls it). He seems wildly confident ... but when we hear the words "free-form tart" escape his lips, we start having scary Episode 4 flashbacks. No, Dale, no! Save yourself while you still can!

But he's sure he's going to nail this one; 90 minutes later, he reveals a "summer picnic en croute," a medley of spinach with pastis, fennel, onion, pistachio and seared salmon layered with pear and rolled in a pie crust and baked. For dessert (why, Dale ... why?) he presents a strawberry, pear and saffron tart with whipped vanilla goat cheese. Maria Frumkin finds it kind of overwhelming, and we don't blame her. Heck, we got confused just now trying to recount everything that went into the summer picnic.

Much to Dale's surprise, he ends up in the bottom three with Lia and Hung. Joey wins with a trio of tarts.

Next up, Elimination Challenge. The chefs have 30 minutes to shop and three hours to cook before they pack everything up in Gladware and head over to the set of "Dame Chocolate," a popular Telemundo telenovela, to serve the cast.

Time for a little character development from the producers, in the form of cast bonding. Joey mentions that he and Howie have become pretty tight since "the incident." Later, back at the Fountainbleau, Lia declares she and Casey are BFF (actually, she says "lifelong friends").

Alliances declared, the chefs shop and head back to the GE Monogram Kitchen to start cooking. Everyone's just getting started when Tom walks into the kitchen and announces that mealtime has been pushed up-the chefs now have 90 minutes hours to cook instead of three hours.

Hung runs around willy-nilly, as usual-except this time he has a knife in his hand. Howie curses up a storm. And sweats. Tre is in the zone. Dale walks through the shot a few times, looking pretty calm. Howie sweats some more.

Before we know it, the chefs are dishing up on the set of "Dame Chocolate." And, hey, Joey got a haircut! We just noticed.

Service goes swimmingly until Gail makes a passive-aggressive comment about Lia's polenta. After that, it's open season on the chefs. Dale's dish doesn't go over too well, but it doesn't bomb, either. He serves grilled poblano and braised chicken; on the side, there's a corn tortilla with fire-roasted corn with what he calls "fierce" jalapeno. Tom says it looks "ferocious." We're not sure what this means, and it will be the last we hear about Dale's dish (or Dale) this episode.

Sara M.'s chile rellenos win raves. (Damn! Girl made her own queso blanco!) So does Howie's braised pork shoulder and orange sour mojo with yucca. Casey's goopy rice does not fare so well.

New best buddies Joey and Howie come out on top. Howie wins, and Maria Frumkin presents him with a bottle of Argentinean wine. Howie, in turn, presents Joey with the bottle. They hug.

But this is no time for sentimentality. Lia, Sara N., Casey and Hung are on the chopping block. The judges aren't sure which is worse: Hung's arrogance or his Latin cooking. But they are sure that Sara N.'s "ceviche" tasted like guacamole. Gail thinks Lia's trout on polenta had textural issues; Padma implies it was inedible. Casey's mushy rice, dry chicken and weird coffee-molasses sauce gets slammed too.

In the end, Padma asks Lia to pack her knives, and go. She does, and Casey cries.

Hmm ... after last week's brief and harrowing brush with the cameras, we see another episode in which Dale is more or less absent during the Elimination Challenge. We're not sure what that means. Some of early our favorites, such as Tre, Tall C.J. and Brian, hardly got any face time either. But since Dale didn't fare well in the Quickfire Challenge, it could be a bad omen. Nonetheless, we think he has at least a couple of episodes left in him. He's had a few proud moments, but we get the sense that he hasn't yet really had his chance to shine.

How much longer do you think Dale is going to last? Not sure? Find out what our friends at The Stew are thinking.