Top Chef - Teepee edition

Tonight's edition of Top Chef had the contestants cooking over fire pits for some real life Las Vegas cowboys. Before they could cook, however, they had to camp out overnight in teepees. Why? No clue - especially since there was no prep going on overnight, and they were serving lunch. Basically the people at Bravo all got together and decided this sounded funny. For this, I thank Bravo, because it brought us our first documented Into The Woods reference to appear on the show.

While sitting around the camp fire, folks start to wonder if they should be worried about any wild animals. Ash (who has been managed to remain pretty under the radar so far) revealed that he had been an animal psychologist. This was in between being an actor and before becoming a chef. Someone then mentioned bears, to which he responded:

"Bears? Bears are sweet!"

His cadence matched Bernadette Peter's delivery of this precisely:

Witch: A bear? Bears are sweet. Besides, you ever see a bear with forty-foot feet?
Wife: Dragon?
Witch: No scorch marks--usually they're linked.
Baker: Manticore?
Witch: Imaginary.
Wife, Baker: Griffin?
Witch: Extinct.
Baker: Giant?
Witch: Possible. Very, very possible...

This made us very happy.

Ok, so on about the actual episode. The Quickfire had the contestants cooking with Cactus, which most of them didn't have a clue about. Stupid Mike I. was the most successful, and won the Quickfire and $15,000. The guest judge for this episode was Tim Love, who we always find delightful. So that was a nice bonus.

As I mentioned, the elimination round had the contestants working over a fire pit with limited equipment. Helpful hint to future Top Chef contestants: don't try to make a ceviche in the desert. No one will like you.

Coming out on top this week were Laurine, Ashley, and Bryan. Bryan of course won, but it sure was nice to see the girls coming out with some good dishes.

On the bottom were Robin (whose shrimp romaine salad tasted like chlorine), Mattin (whose ceviche was so undercooked that Tom actually left the table to spit it out - Tim Love was not so lucky, and might genuinely have gotten food poisoning), and Ron (whose food wasn't too bad, but his mojito was awful). Mattin was told to pack his neckerchief knives and go.

Coming up next week - Pen and Teller stop by to make some suggestive remarks about Padma having her fair share of bull testicles, and Toby Young returns to make the contestants want to kill themselves. Whee!