Spoilers! Spoilers!Last night's episode of Top Chef finally addressed the question that show has been toying with all season: Is it better to sidestep the rules and create an amazing dish, or to follow the rules and produce something mediocre? Until this episode, it seemed to me that the judges went with whichever answer matched up with the contestant who they wanted to send home (my mom accurately likened it to a card trick where you know the card before the trick starts, then "find" it through whatever means). But now they have finally established that a better dish is more important than one that follows the rules closely, and I hope for the sake of consistency that they stick by this for the rest of the season. Oh yeah, and the Elimination Challenge was nuts.









