Top Chef Season 5, Episode 4: Today's Challenge

Judging by that tea kettle's whistle it is time for another Top Chef Season 5 recap. This week the judges are joined by celeb chef Rocco DiSpirito who is lending a helping palate to decide who will stay and who will go.

The episode starts off with Alex reading a letter from Richard, eliminated last week, left for him. Richard tells Alex that he has made a friend at Top Chef, and that Alex should only look our for himself. It is a competition after all.

Speaking of competitions it is time for the QuickFire challege. Read on for spoilers about episode 4.

The QuickFire this time around is all about breakfast. Padma wants the chefs to prepare an amuse-bouche, or a single bite serving, of breakfast. The chefs have 30 minutes to create their perfect bite, and win immunity for the upcoming elimination challenge.

Jamie whips up a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich, since Rocco said very clearly that he loves bacon. The interesting thing to note is that Jamie isn't a fan of breakfast, so she feels that she is at a disadvantage.

Leah, last week's QuickFire winner, creates a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich that is the perfect size. She also points out that many of the other chefs, like Jeff who made two different dishes, seem to have disregarded asume-bouche portion of the challenge.

After tasting all the offerings Rocco crowns Leah the winner for the second week in a row.

This brings us to the elimination challenge. The chefs have to showcase their talents by creating a dish for a live 2 and a half minute television demo in front of an audience.

They have $100 and 30 minutes to shop at Whole Foods. While at Whole Foods Fabio, Eugene, and Hosea all want to buy some fish, which isn't too out of the ordinary. What is a little odd is that all three of them feel compelled to jump behind the fish counter and cut the tuna themselves. Something tells me that if I made a similar request at our Whole Foods in Philadelphia they wouldn't be as open to the idea.

Once all the supplies are purchased the chefs have an hour to prep for their demo. Alex, showing a lack of Top Chef history, thinks that his hour is best used trying to create a rose infused Crème brûlée. I've been watching Top Chef since the first season and creating a dessert for a challenge that doesn't specifically ask for one never turns out well.

Ariane is the first to film her demo, and she finds Rocco, Gail, Tom, and Padma all gathered around a table which she has to perform her demo on in front of a big old camera. She seems a little nervous, but the judges enjoy her tomato, watermelon, and feta salad.

The rest of the chefs go through their paces, and everyone likes what Fabio (a simple tuna, asparagus, and carrots dish), Jeff (a middle eastern dish that looked like sushi to me, but was very complicated), and Ariane did. On the other side of things Alex (with his Crème brûlée), Melissa (with super spicy shrimp that Tom spits out), and Jamie (frisee salad with a duck egg, though the egg didn't set properly) had the least liked dishes.

Since the challenge ended late in the evening Judges' Table will be held the next morning, but for the winners a different set of judges will decide their fate.

Tom creeps into the Top Chef apartment and wakes up Jeff, Fabio, and Ariane at 2am. This is how they find out that they need to get dressed and cook their dishes for the hosts of the Today show. The hosts will taste all three dishes, on live television, and proclaim the winner.

As the top three are off cooking the remaining chefs wake up to find a large tv in their livingroom. They tune into the Today Show just as the judging begins (tv magic!). All four Today show hosts enjoy Ariane's dish, even though Meredith Vieira doesn't eat watermelon (which is a big component of the dish). Fabio's dish goes over pretty well, but Jeff's is another story. Kathy Lee Gifford takes a bite and then spits it out. That's never a good sign.

The ladies of the Today show crown Ariane's dish as the best, which means that she is the winner of this week's challenge. Rocco gives her a selection of her favorite tools, and she finds out that she will appear on the Today Show the day after the episode airs (which means at some point this very morning!).

Now that the winner has been decided it is time to find out who has to pack their knives and go. Since it is fairly obvious that Alex made a huge mistake by trying to cook a dessert that takes longer than an hour to prepare, he is eliminated.

I think these episodes are getting better and better. What say you?