Top Chef

View Date: 9/16/09

Quickfire Challenge: With Tim Love as the guest judge for this round, the fans chose the ingredient from several odd southwestern ingredients. Cactus was chosen by the fans, which most of the chefs did not have much experience with. Additionally, this was a high stakes quickfire, so the winner received $15000 but no immunity. From the expressions on Chef Love's face, he didn't seem to love anybody's dish, and most of the time seemed to be ready to spit out the food. Mike I. won, which makes sense because he was one of the few chefs who had worked with the ingredient before. Amazingly, Mattin was also in the top group with his cactus pickled in tequila.

Elimination Challenge: The chefs had to prepare a high-end dish outdoors for a group of ranchers. They could prepare any dish of their choosing, and they would spend the night prior to to cooking at the ranch in tents. The chefs then learned that they would be cooking with 4 fire pits, cast iron cookware, and a chuckwagon pantry. To top everything off, we got a good shot of the outhouse. We really got to learn more about the background of the chefs, which we haven't really gotten into as much in previous seasons.

Side note: The poll tonight was a complete no-brainer for me. I would definitely choose the Voltaggio brothers as tent mates. One, Ashley and Mattin are both a little too excited about being there for me. But mostly, I definitely wouldn't mind sleeping between the brothers for a night. Based on the results, it looks like I'm not alone there.

The day of the challenge was described as being as hot as the surface of Venus. Some of the chefs had some serious issues dealing with cooking over an open fire, while others had major issues with the heat. Many of the dishes were below the standards of previous dishes because the chefs seemed nervous about the cooking conditions. We learned that Mattin's dish was the one spit out by Tom in the previews, and the other dishes seemed to be either really bad or pretty darn good.

At Judge's Table, Laurine, Ashley, Michael, and Bryan were named the chefs making the top dishes. Those brothers are going to be damn hard to beat this season. The winner tonight was Bryan's pork loin dish, which leads to his third win in elimination challenges. The bottom dishes were from Robin, Ron, and Mattin. Mattin was the one to be eliminated, and it was the right choice for this challenge.

10 words or less: Don't make the judges physically ill or you will go.