Last night’s Top Chef challenged the cheftestants to create appetizing dishes for judge Gail Simmons’ Bridal Shower. The show started out focusing on Stefan’s growing infatuation with Jamie, who’s clearly not interested. Jamie — “Hello, does the word lesbian mean anything to you?”
The Quick Fire Challenge paired the chef up and against each other in a tasting contest. Whoever could guess the most ingredients in the sauce they were tasting went on to the next round. Hosea won easily identifying the most ingredients in a traditional mole` sauce.
For the Bridal Shower Elimination Challenge teams were chosen for the following categories — Old, New, Borrowed and Blue, with Blue being the most difficult because, as fan-fave Fabio so eloquently put it, “There is no freakin’ blue food!”
So they chose to focus on the blue ocean as their theme with Chilean seabass, a fish the judges would later call “very forgiving.”
Rhadika was on the Borrowed team, so they chose to “borrow” something from her Indian heritage. The New team consisted of Eugene, Karla and Danny and they chose to do a sushi roll, wonton salad and sorbet. Eugene’s rice didn’t turn out right, so they went with a “build your own” sushi platter. Only Eugene failed to explain this to the dining guests.
The Old team featured Hosea (who had immunity from winning the Quick Fire), Jeff and Stefan. They chose to go with the old, heirloom tomatoes, making a trio of appetizers that included an old-style turine, sorbet and gazpacho.
Gail and her friends showed up to be served along with guest judge and Gail’s boss, the editor of Food & Wine Magazine (sorry, didn’t catch her name). Prior to service, head judge Chef Tom Colicchio called the Blue team’s food “boring,” and the New team’s dishes “out there,” stating it’ll either be spectacular or horrible.
Something Old was the first to service, the sorbet went over very well. Something New was next up. Unfortunately, Danny snuck some mushrooms into the bottom of Karla’s salad and she was upset – so were the guests. They were confused by the dish and didn’t like it.
In the meantime, things were falling apart for the Borrowed team in the kitchen. They didn’t allow enough time for the lamb to be properly cooked and were afraid to serve it too rare. Luckily for them, the rest of the chefs ponied up and helped out giving them more time to cook the lamb. And good thing, because the lamb and the rest of the Borrowed dishes went over extremely well with the guests. They loved it!
The Blue team elected to have Fabio give the presentation of their food, because “They think I’ll be more charming!” (Yes, you were, Fabio!) The women at the table loved him, but the Chilean seabass fell a little flat.
At Judges’ Table, the Old & Borrowed teams were chosen as the best, with Jeff’s sorbet, Jamie’s carrot puree and Ariane’s lamb cited as the favorite dishes. Jamie was expecting a win finally and everyone was expecting that as well. But the win went to Ariane for the second week in a row. Jamie was visibly upset.
That left the New & Blue teams in the bottom, with the entire New team almost getting the axe. “Right now I wish I could send all of you home,” Colicchio said, clearly disgusted. Colicchio seemed most flabberghasted by Danny’s oblivious reaction to their dishes being considered awful. He even copped to putting the mushrooms in Karla’s salad, when the judges made it clear they didn’t like it. So it was by his own undoing that Danny was sent to pack his knives and go …

Next week Martha Stewart arrives to spice things up in the Top Chef kitchen!
Top Chef repeats tonight at 8 p.m. on Bravo or visit


Don’t forget, tonight at 8 on CBS, it’s the final episode of Survivor: Gabon leading up to Sunday night’s finale and reunion show! Check back here tomorrow for a recap.