A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

I LOVE MY BIG GAY CHEF: More so when he outcooks everybody's ass, but love him nonetheless this week. Always quotable, usually edible, Dale is the new Top Chef favorite for the Throckmortons here in the Land Beyond CJ. Casey is a close second despite the Dallas thing, which has faded into the background over the course of the season behind an entirely professional and personable competitor who has delivered consistently down the stretch. Hung is an oddball, in a good way, and fun even when he's being a bit snotty or shifty. Again and again he proves that he certainly can cook. Sara has gotten a little bland. Malarkey likewise, only he bugs me.

For the Quickfire this week, we thought the Le Cirque challenge was brilliant. Testing the contestants' ability to taste, appreciate, deconstruct and replicate a masterwork entree is a much better challenge than asking them to improvise something palatable from a single randomly selected aisle of the supermarket. And yet, still good television! Contrast guest judge Sirio Maccioni's appraisal of Hung's effort ("Bravo.") with Hung's own assessment ("I f*cking killed it!"). That's just good lightly-censored fun right there. Accord, A. Bourdain:

Top Chef fans? Just as no one can say boo about the judging this week, no one -- NO ONE -- can complain about the challenges. No quirky, kooky, product-placing roach-coach stunts this time, my friends. No one had to make quesadillas over an open can of sterno in the back of a moving Rav 4. Or prepare a festive snack out of Froot Loops while wearing a Glad Family of Bags over their head. Tonight, the challenges were not only perfectly suited to the task of deciding who might someday be a "Top Chef", but were also perfectly matched to the judging panel.

For the who's-going-to-Aspen elimination challenge, they brought in the big guns. How big? Old pals of Julia Child big. Gods in the pantheon worshiped by Bourdain himself big. (No really, if you're still reading this instead of clicking over to Bourdain, you're missing a truly touching reminiscence about dining at Soltner's Lutece way back in the day.) And the challenge itself struck close to home for me and mine: here's a chicken; here's an onion; here's a potato; get cooking. I will dutifully click past all the can-a-tan orange people on bravotv.com to procure the recipes behind this week's efforts for the simple reason that we eat something very much like those ingredients about once a week around here. Bravo, Bravo Network, you f*cking killed it this week.

Not sure what to add about the elimination round, except that (i) Malarkey's peasant pie looked like it was fresh out the back end of a cow, (ii) I wish Dale wasn't such a spaz, and (iii) I thought for a second there that Hung was going to argue about his potatoes even when judgment was being passed by God-among-chefs Soltner. How funny would that have been?

And the results? We're fine with the results.