Chef Anita Lo. Photo: Bravo TV.

Now things get ugly. We've been waiting all season for something to break the respectful, civilized, almost comically cordial spell cast by the "Top Chef Masters" assortment of celebrity chefs, each gingerly battling the other for a claim to Bravo-endorsed superiority (not to mention a philanthropic sack full of Lexus-supplied charity cash). In Wednesday night's first round of finals, the cloud of cheery camaraderie seemed to have finally lifted.

It wasn't the chefs who removed their gloves -- or mitts, to be more appropriate -- but rather, the folks behind the scenes. From the quickfire challenge to the judges' table, the six chefs who've made it this far were subjected to a grueling, baffling psychological experiment the likes of which we haven't seen since the Skinner box.

Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. But right from the start, something was off-kilter. Even host Kelly Choi's usual preschool-teacher diction took on a tinge of deviousness as she announced that each chef would be asked to prepare his or her "sig-na-ture dish," making sure to linger on every syllable.
What our sextet of toques didn't know was that they'd soon be asked to reinterpret what they'd just tasted: Recreate a competitor's staple while putting their own unique spins on it.

Some were baffled, others brash. Like a pop star covering a classic tune, each went in one of two directions: Stay faithful to the original or throw out the sheet music and do it her own way. For Rick Bayless, the former worked splendidly: Dropping his trademark Mexican flair, he transported himself to Southern Italy to one-up Michael Chiarello's balsamic quail, adding parsnips and prosciutto. As for the subtly spunky Anita Lo, she wowed the judges with her radical reinterpretation of Hubert Keller's lobster and truffle cappuccino. She replaced his foamy French broth with a Japanese chawanmushi custard topped with lobster; for Keller's corn madeleine she supplanted a buttery, fluffy lobster-knuckle biscuit.

Next to those teacher's pets, someone like Chiarello seemed downright insincere: Asked to redo Bayless' spicy rack of lamb with black pasilla chiles, he mustered up little more than a handsome Italian lamb dish. His imagination may have been lacking in the kitchen, but it wasn't in his spin to the judges, as he claimed he was more interested in impressing Bayless than anyone else. (Chiarello's dish did supply the evening's most inscrutable bit of commentary, however, as former contestant Ludo Lefebvre claimed it was "missing a little bomb flavor there to surprise you.")

Let's face it, any competition that can turn gregarious "honey bear" Art Smith into a quivering, watery-eyed pile of nerves must qualify as an internationally outlawed form of torture, right? Smith didn't quite suffer the ignominy of being sent home, but Gael Greene's withering critique of his "grotesque, undercooked, huge ball of lamb with an egg in middle of it" was easily the harshest thing said this season. Wait, make that second-harshest: She also added, "it was just terrifying." In the end, it was the (evidently less-terrifying) Lo who walked away with the win.