There's No Crying in the Kitchen: 'Top Chef D.C.'

The above statement -- as spoken by our favorite frizz-haired sass-factory, Andrea -- may indeed be true. But there sure as hell is a lot of whining at the stoves lately.

If it's not Angelo breathlessly "stressing" over how he can't rest on his laurels -- another Quickfire Challenge won, another $20 grand to go with it -- it's Kelly complaining about Amanda's skills. It's Amanda bitching about Kelly not loaning her some salt (spoiler alert: her dish ends up under-seasoned!). It's the once-and-still-potentially-formidable Kenny feeling like a bit of a martyr for having been placed on the bottom rung, a couple of challenges now.

And of course, it's Droopy Dog Ed, freaking the hell out over a suspiciously missing side. The Case of the Disappearing English Pea Puree has been plugged all week by our friends at Bravo, and damn it if we weren't waiting with baited breath to see if one of our most hated villains this season (there are so many, it's hard to choose) was truly to blame.

More after the jump...
Of course, first we had to sit through the usual Top Chef foreshadowing, which in D.C. has meant countless visits from bland, button-down Young Republican types (yes, we mean you, "hot rep" Aaron Schock) talking about how you can only accept a meal from a lobbyist if it's on a toothpick (tell that to Jack Abramoff) and blathering on about the history of D.C.'s most venerable eating establishments (namely the The Palm, which, admittedly, looks pretty darn cool, what with all the politician caricatures on the wall).

Foreshadowing be damned, the Top Chef editors teased us with a voiceover from Andrea, dreaming of how $20,000 would help her family restaurant as she whipped up a toothpick to die for: a savory cheddar waffle cube topped with a big hunk of boneless fried chicken. The judges didn't even comment on it.

But if they were silent and impossible to read early in the episode, they were anything but later. As the chefs each were assigned a different protein to whip up for a "power lunch," the judges couldn't have been clearer in their criticism -- and the chefs couldn't have been more pissed at it.

Kelly commented that her nemesis Amanda trimmed a porterhouse to death, essentially turning it into a different cut of meat entirely (to Amanda's credit, she was the first to point this out when she served it). Surprise: Kelly's overzealous use of her precious salt on her porterhouse nearly sent her home. Kevin -- whose eyes shot daggers when Angelo won the quickfire -- spiced the hell out of his lamb, and got called out for it. But it was one of our faves, Andrea, who got sent home for having to cook dreaded swordfish. Of course, she didn't have to serve it up in a mustard-vanilla bean sauce, but we're sure it sounded good at the time.

Meanwhile, as Ed obsessed over the Coincidentally Missing Puree, he watched the "grimy" (to quote Kevin), uncouth Alex plate up a Suspiciously Similar Side, leaving Ed to scramble for some asparagus to complement his butter-poached lobster. In a moment of ultimate irony, both ended up in the top 3 -- but it was Alex's "harmony" of applewood smoked salmon and pea puree that won the judges' gushing praise.

Was Ed's missing ingredient the secret to Alex's first win? Or was it just the editor's sleight of hand that made it seem that way? (Or, perhaps most likely, did the Top Chef producers steal it to create drama?) Certainly, the flashback shots to "I don't know what I'm going to make tomorrow" Alex, intently listening as Kenny described Ed's peas, made Alex seem guilty until proven innocent. Not to mention the other chefs' assessment that you couldn't just whip something that delicious up in that short of an amount of time.

Whether Ed takes the classy route next week or decides to punch Alex in the jaw, we'll support his decision. But Alex's parting quote, "It's got to be your own food on the plate," is just too cruelly ironic to go unnoticed.