Top Chef: Tom Colicchio Is The King Of The One-Liner

So, we wake up once again at the Top Chef manse, and Kevin is still grumbling about Alex and the pea puree...about Alex and the non-dish he made for restaurant wars...about Alex and his wonky lips.
Okay. That last one was just me.
But then Alex says Kevin's merely angry because Kenny got knifed last week, and Angelo gloats that his toughest competition has gone home. Yes, but it won't be smooth sailing, Angelo; it's never smooth sailing on Top Chef.

QUICKFIRE
The cheftestants are greeted by that Master Of Molecular Gastronomy, Wylie Dufresne--he of the sideburns and the limp 60s hair--and by the news that the kitchen was broken into the....The Riddler.
There are Mystery Boxes on every table, each with the same ingredients, and Padma tells the chefs that they must use all of the ingredients to create a dish. Then she tells them that, as they're cooking, new Mystery Boxes will arrive, and they must also incorporate those ingredients into their finished dish.

And it's a High Stakes Quickfire--they still have poker chips left over from Top Chef: Las Vegas--and the winner gets 10k.
The first Mystery Box contained Striped Bass, Fava Beans, and an unlabeled can soon discovered to be...Hominy.
The cheftestants begin cooking and running and sweating and whining.
The second Mystery Box arrives and it contains Squid and Black Garlic.
More panic. More tears. More sweat,
The Third Mystery Box arrives and it contains Ramps and Passion Fruit.

Passion effing Fruit? And what the hell are Ramps, because even Tiffany isn't sure.

The Fourth Mystery Box arrives and it contains Jicama.
Let's see, bass, fava beans, hominy, squid, black garlic, ramps, passion fruit, and jicama.
I'd make Reservations.
Luckily I'm not on the show.

Hands up! Utensils down!

Wylie and Padma taste the Mystery Box Meals.

One of our losers is Alex, and his Rockfish with Fava Puree--oh, he's tempting the Judgement Gods now--Ramp Fondue, and Sauteed Squid. Alex had announced that his mathematical equation for the day is Alex + Quickfire = Bottom. And he's right. No one likes him. I mean, his dish.

The other loser is Amanda's Crispy Skinned Bass with Squid Fricassee and Leek & Mushroom Fondue. It gets called out for being oily. Plus, Wylie says, if you're gonna call it Crispy Skinned Bass, it really should be crispy.

My girl Tiffany--who really never has a bad word for anyone, except Alex, but then, why not--gets props for her Fish Stew, with Hominy, Fava Beans, Saffron and Black Garlic.

Kevin gets the nod for his Pan Seared Rockfish, Hominy Puree--take that Alex--Jicama and Passion Fruit Salad. Wylie liked all his flavors, but...

...Drum Roll...

Tiffany gets the win and Ten Thousand Dollars.

Alex gets the Wah Waaah edit.

ELIMINATION

The chefs will be serving a meal at CIA headquarters. And, No, that doesn't mean the Culinary Institute Of America, which would be scary. This is more horrifying.

The Central Intelligence Agency. And their food will be served to a bunch of CIA staffers, the judges, and...CIA head, Leon Panetta, who vows to send the loser to Siberia. The winner, however, gets a trip to Paris, because, well, that's where winning spies go?

The challenge is to take a classic dish, and disguise it with a new identity, without losing the taste of the original dish.

I get it. Disguise. Spies.

Clever. Not so clever is the old Knife Draw to determine your dish.

KEVIN
He draws the always popular Cobb Salad.

And, well, he'll make a salad, but he'll change the texture of the ingredients.

I worry.

Salad to salad?

And it gets guessed right away, though to be fair it was the bleu cheese that gave it away.

The bleu cheese always gives it away.

And Tom is unhappy that Kevin took a salad and made a salad.

I think Kevin was so busy talking smack about Alex, and giggling at Angelo's sudden dive in confidence, that he didn't know what he was doing.

But what he was doing wasn't good.

KELLY
She is lucky enough to get Kung Pao Shrimp--one of my favorites.
But she's a wee bit terrified because she's never cooked Chinese food before, and scours the Whole Foods Market looking for Kung Pao sauce.

No, not to use. This is Top Chef. She wants to see what's in the sauce and then she'll make her own.

And she decides to disguise her dish as soup. i think if Amanda had Kung Pao Shrimp she'd disguise it as Kung Pao Shrimp.

But, in the CIA kitchens, Kelly makes Top Chef Error # 77: overcooked rice. Still she does havean excuse. She lives in the Rockies, at 8,000 feet elevation, and always cooks rice for an hour. She don't know nothin' 'bout cookin' no rice near Sea Level.

Luckily, Tiffany tells her she has time to Cook it old school, girl. On the stove,

Who knew that I know how to cook rice Old School!

At service, most people think she did a Pad Thai, but one lucky diner, I think it was Tom, reveals it as Kung Pao.

But Tom likes it done up as a soup. And they all like the rice--the second batch.

ED
He's all about the Chicken Cordon Bleu.

One of the main things we learn about Ed, and I think that this is rather telling, is that his spy name would be Muffin Winthrop.

Ed says he has a girlfriend at home, but I'm wondering if he meant grrrlfriend.

See, if he had a grrrlfriend back home, she'd probably tell Ed it wouldn't be wise to disguise Chicken Cordon Bleu, which is basically chicken stuffed with ham and bleu cheese, as a slice of ham stuffed with chicken and bleu cheese.

Uh huh. Inside out. Yeah. Grrrlfriend would'a had your back.
But Ed is all puffed out chest, because of Aneglo's puff pastry mistake, and, while plating his dish, Ed brags about how he's having no problems with his food.

Oh, Ed. Bravado usually spells doom. We'll see.

But the guests like it, though they guess it's true identity almost instantly. Ham-wrapped-chicken isn't far off from chicken-wrapped-ham.

TIFFANY
Gyro. But is it He-ro, or Gy-ro?

She's going to Deconstruct the He-ro-Gy-ro, and make Leon Panetta build it up again. She has dubbed herself as Nikita for the Spy Challenge.

Tiffany--and for the record, I want Tiffany to win--is fun and laughing and, well, even helpful.

To Kelly. She talked Kelly down from the Overcooked Rice Ledge, but, let's remember, back in the Quickfire, when Alex needed a can opener, Tiffany didn't exactly share.

And I love her more for that.

And I love Leon Panetta for pronouncing her not-too-brilliantly-disguised dish as a GY-ro.

Or, as Eric Ripert called it, a very elegant GY-ro; one that was not like a sandwich any longer, though still a GY-ro.

You GY-ro grrrrrrl!

ANEGLO
Beef Wellington.

He's all nerves and lack of confidence this week, Perhaps because his biggest threat, Kenny, is gone, and now he only has to compete with himself, a far more deadly opponent.

Or perhaps it's because he lost the Quickfire, didn't win the 10k, and won't be able to have his Russian fiancee mailed over early as quickly as he'd like.

He opts to do Beef Wellington as a pizza, and sets about making his own puff pastry. Except he doesn't. He does store bought, perhaps forgetting that the first chef to get knifed was John, who used store bought puff pastry. But he swears that since the puff pastry is not a main component of his dish, the judges will let it slide.

But Beef Wellington is essentially beef and puff pastry, so, while it isn't the main component, it is one of the main components.

And so his disguise doesn't go over very well because it's announced as Beef Wellington before anyone even takes a bite. And the store-bought pastry is tough and dry as ther Gobi desert, which is where Panetta wants to send Angelo for this major infraction.

Then Tom add that the dish is too salty, and I think, Perhaps Angelo sweat into that dish as well.

AMANDA

French Onion Soup.

We learn during the show that Amanda is The One That Likes Alex because he is like the wise old Jewish Uncle she never had.

Perhaps she needed a wise old uncle because her disguise of French Onion Soup was to make a soup.

I know! You know! She knows!

She even said Helen Keller would be able to tell it was French Onion Soup, I say even astronauts on the space station could tell what it was just by looking at it.

But Amanda swears she knows what she's doing, and, well, I'll just giggle at that.

She calls herself Natasha, and is all agog at the security they go through to get into the CIA. The cars are searched, their bags are searched; their IDs checked. But, and I'm just guessing here, Amanda is the only one who volunteers for the body cavity search.

Her soup is guessed as soup before it eve leaves the kitchen.

I think Panetta said, "What smells like French Onion Soup?"

But it's more than French Onion Soup, it's a Honey-and-Lemon-Cough-Syrup-French-Onion-Soup. And that can't be good.

ALEX

Veal Parmesan.
We learn, from Alex, that he has only been a chef for the last six years, which he says gives him the edge because he isn't so set in his ways, and he isn't above stealing a Glad Storage Container of Pea Puree or not participating at all in a challenge.

He's going to disguise his Veal Parmesan as Veal and Tortellini, using techniques he's never used before because he's only been a chef for six years and doesn't know what he's doing, and has on one to steal from, and no one to help him.

Which he needs.

Alex is so original, that he decides his spy name will be Dr. Zhivago. I know. He even steals spy names. And I bet Zhivago makes a mean pea puree.
But then O M G Alex serves up his dish and the Veal is tough. Eric Ripert actually picks one of the hard shelled tortellini up and sniffs it. Another guest calls it Lasagna, and then someone else guesses veal parmesan.

Tom Colicchio says the "veal was as tough as pulling a post in Yemen," and all the CIA folks laugh....nervously. Because he's right.

But hey, Tom will be there all week! Headlining in The Waterboarding Lounge! And don't forget it's a two-drink minimum and please tip your waitresses.

JUDGES TABLE

Tiffany and Ed and Kelly are called before the Tribunal de Cuisine.

Wylie liked Tiffany's dish, and Eric Ripert liked Kelly's broth, while they all agreed that Ed's dish was near perfect...except for that whole not being really disguised well.

So, the winner is......

My.Girl.

Tiffany gets the win and the honeymoon to Paris. Plus, she gets to tell Alex, Amanda, and Angelo, that they are Bottom Three.

It's a Triple Win!!!

BOTTOM THREE

Alex gets beat up for tough veal; he gets knocked for poorly disguising his dish; he gets slapped by Padma for trying a cooking technique he's never used before...cooking his own food!

Tom "The Laugh Riot" Colicchio says he's had better fried mozzarella at a street fair and better tortellini from a box!

Doh!

Amanda, throws herself under the bus because she's just that idiotic. She admits that disguising a soup as a soup wasn't such a good thing. And it was either too sweet, as Tom said, while the dentist filled the cavities created by Amanda's soup, or it was dishwater, as Eric Ripert said as he showed the videotape of Amanda actually using dishwater in her soup.

Angelo gets knocked for his lack of disguise, and Tom Colicchio calls him out for the laziness of the frozen puff pastry. Wylie said the dish was poorly executed and even the plating was bad; the food was awful and it looked awful. Double whammy. But Eric Ripert got the last word and called his Beef Wellington sad.

STEW ROOM

Angelo announces that he should be the one to go home and no one disagrees.

Amanda plays with the buttons on her shirt and thinks back on that full body search.

Alex tries to remember what each of the other chefs made in case he gets saved, and is able to use their dishes as one of his own.

THE DECISION

Tom "Egghead The Comic" Colicchio tells the losers that the challenege was to diguise a dish, but they only managed to disguise themselves as poor cooks.

Seriously, someone get this man a sitcom.

The drums roll....the camera pans from Tom to the chefs to Eric Ripert to Angelo to Wylie to Alex to Amanda to Padma, who says.

Alex, please [or did she say "peas"?] pack you knives and go. And don't forget to clean the pea puree from your locker.

YES!!!