Our Photo with Top Chef 6 contestant Michael Voltaggio (and the runner up to Top Chef Season 2)

photo courtesy of kevinEats

A few months ago, a group of us decided to make a return trip to The Bazaar by José Andrés for the private room of Saam for their 20-course meal. (well, it's the return trip for everyone of us except for one person). One of these days, I'll have to finish the review for the spectacular dinner on that night.

However, our highlight of the night was that our dinner group get to meet the chefs in the kitchen. Brian and Will of FoodDigger, Kevin of kevinEats, Tangbro1 of Only Eats What Feeds Your Soul, The Teenage Glutster, and myself was treated to the grand tour of the kitchen and have gotten a few photo ops as well.

As you take a good look at the photo on the top, you will noticed that Marcel from Season 2 of Top Chef was on the far right between Will and Bryan. The man in the dead center is attracting a lot of attention this week and for a very good reason. He was the chef de Cuisine of the restaurant, Michael Voltaggio.

Considering this week with the announcement of Top Chef Season 6 contestants revealing that chef Michael was among the contestants for the show that was taped in Las Vegas. I'm a little geeked about this only the fact that he is probably the odds on favorite to win it all (just like the few favorites who stumbled in the finale like Richard Blais and Stefan Richter).

The funniest thing about the photo was that Marcel is the sous chef while Michael is his supervising boss. If you think that Marcel finishing runner-up in Season 2 with strong contestants, gives an impression that Marcel's boss must finish better than runner-up. Does it give Chef Voltaggio the inspiration and push for winning it all for season 6?

With a resume that included working in an "AAA Five Diamonds" restaurant and working in a James Beard Finalist award (for this restaurant, the Bazaar), it would boldly stated like wise, but you'll never know until a biased decision handled out to an undeserving winners year after year. Will I tuned in for this season of Top Chef?

Oh yeah!

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ps. Another caveat, Chef Voltaggio will also be competing against his brother Bryan on the show as well. Sibling rivalry on the show? I hope it's better than the contrived Euro vs USA stupidity that was on last year's show.

Top Chef NYC: Week 8-12

Why am I hating Top Chef so much lately? Is this the end of their glorious run and are they hanging on life support that is supposed to be cut off? Are they facing the inevitability that the show had run its course? Remembered how some of the shows like "NYPD Blue" or "News Radio" were once a great show in the beginning, only to suck @ss in the end and hanging by the threads when they ran out of good stories? Top Chef Season 5 fully reminded me the awful last few seasons of those once promising show.

In all fairness, it's not just this season sucked. Better part of season 4 was on its own demise with awful planning of challenges, contrived rivalries, bad confessional interviews that looked force fed by the interviewer, and awful elimination decisions made by the producers...ooops, I mean by the judges.

Let's recap a bit by going back since my update of Top Chef series:

Week 8: The puppeteer behind the scene decided to eliminate Arianne (winner of two of the previous Elimination challenges) because of her handling of the lamb provided by Blue Hill Farm. Considering the lovebirds of Leah and Hosea was more intriguing and their development of impending romance was giving the show that dirty mutt factor. It's also noted that Bravo TV aired video clips of Arianne being disappointed that Leah pretty much sold her out and that she felt the other contestants all knew about the flirting going on between the two. Is it no wonder that the show decided to keep the most intriguing elements of the show in tact?

Pretty much the show would rather get rid one of its most competent chef with winning track records than a few contestants who have not stepped up in recent challenges and was also the contributing factors for making this offending lamb dish. Funny thing was that Hosea was the brain behind the plans to take the bones out of the lamb, which offended the judges because they all felt the lamb with bones would provided more flavors. Arianne in the video clips recorded after her elimination called him a coward, which she had every right to call him out.

Stefan, Carla, and Jamie won with their chicken dish.

Week 9: This was the most offending firing of the season I thought. They decided to install restaurant War at this juncture of the season, which pit two teams of contestants against each other to create a restaurant in just over a day. The winning team of Euros (Stefan & Fabio) and Lovebirds (Hosea and Leah) created a blase fusion fare called Sunset Lounge. Based on the dishes, it's mostly a touch of European with a few of seafood dishes. In other words, all four of them have some hands in this creation.

On the other hand, the other team consist of Radhika, Jamie, Carla, and Jeff came up with an Asian themed restaurant called Sahana where it included Garlic Naan, Curry carrot soup, and Cinnamon and Saffron lamp chop where only one of them (Radhika) had experienced in making these dishes. Guess who's in charge of the kitchen for that team? Not Radhika. For unseen reasons of why not one of them wanted to be in front of the room, Radhika took it upon herself to be the hostess and in charge of decor for the made up restaurant. Even though her team is not that familiar with the Indian/Middle Eastern theme cuisines, she risked it and trusted her team to make those dishes.

It paid off somewhat. The reason the team lost was the awful desserts made by pastry expert (Carla) and the awful attentions to details in the front room by Radhika. The controversial decision to let go Radhika for her management skills is somewhat shocking to me considering this is not Top Restaurateur. Just like the task for who can make the best TV personality at an earlier challenge, I cannot really see how the front of the room relates to this. I can understand if the chef have experiences working as waiters/host/managing restaurants failed miserably in the front of the house position in this task, but clearly none of them in this team have done this before considering none of the four owned a restaurant (Carla owns a catering business).

Speaking of Carla, for a woman that failed to make veggie dish by adding a scallop and now failing a dessert dish considering that is what she do best. It's quite clear to me that Top Chef pretty much lost its way at explaining these awful elimination decisions. It was one of the reasons why I don't kept these updates regularly as I should as their decisions were confusing at best.

Week 10: This is a humiliating battle if you asked me. The remaining contestants are going head to head with the former contestants of Top Chefs from past Seasons. Some of whom I couldn't recognized or easily forgotten. The supposed All-Stars included Spike, Andrew, & Nikki from Season 4 (recognizable because it's only last season), Andrea (the only one to get eliminated twice in the same season) & Miguel from Season 1 (Choc-la-funk), Josie from season 2 (ok I remembered her), and Camille from Season 3 (who?? Couldn't they get CJ or Howie?).

The humiliation is this, if you can't beat any of the losers from the past seasons in a head to head cooking battle of the regional cuisine you are assigned to, then you might as well be disqualified for winning this season's Top Chef.

None of the supposed All-Stars have made it to the Final and were eliminated very early like Camille and Josie. Most of this season's chef have no problem taking down the no-namers like Camille, Nikki, Miguel, and Andrew. It's the popular ones like Spike, Andrea, and Josie that beat up the three favorites in this contest (this season's Stefan, Fabio, and Jeff).

You knew right then and there in that this season is going to suck when your top three chef couldn't beat the retreads from the past season. Just imagine for a moment, this season's TOP CHEF winner can't beat the retread from the past seasons. If Stefan wins, people will point out that Andrea can beat him, so can any chef that outlasted Andrea in Season 1. Hence that is the problem, the honor of winning the title will be blemished for this season if Stefan is the winner. Jeff was sent home when his ceviche couldn't outdo Josie's version of ceviche. Don't worry Jeff, you will get a redemption soon.

They decided to give Carla the win to build up her confidence and re-energized the viewing audience as the "Underdog" to pull for.

Week 11: This insulting humor of this season's elimination challenge continues! Since they ran out of ideas, they came up with an elimination challenge of having contestants copying Chef Eric Ripert's famous dishes served in his restaurant Le Bernardin. The one that get to the closest to Ripert's signature dishes win. Here's the underlying question: what happened if the contestant decided not to follow the rules and think outside of the box by creating the dish better than Ripert? Even if it was better, he/she will be disqualified because it didn't come close to Ripert's version. Pretty much, the show was using Ripert's dishes as the benchmark and I can tell you that not every gourmet critic was a fan of Le Bernardin's dish.

Fear not, because the contestants all decided to do the copy cat work instead of taking the risk of thinking outside of the box. Either they have no confidence in trying to outdo his dish or they are just scared of being eliminated. Personally I think both.

Poor old Jamie who didn't like Ripert's dish of Sautéed Black Bass & Braised Celery with Serrano Ham Peppercorn Sauce has to recreate a dish she thought that was not good. See! That is a problem and she has to stick by the rules of creating a dish that Ripert introduced. I'm willing to bet Jamie who had worked with legendary chefs like Anita Lo and Jean-Michel Bouvier could come up with something more innovative than Ripert's dish if she was given a chance to do it. Alas, she guessed wrong on how the bass should be cooked and incorrectly braise the celery as it was too salty.

Funny that Leah had apalled the judges by quitting in the quickfire and just didn't have it in her to continue. She looked mentally drained as fatigue in this duration of contest is affecting her. Leah was doing great early on and just didn't have it lately. In the end, they decide to keep the backstabber and the quitter over a dish that shouldn't be replicated in the first place. Again, poor ol' Jamie.

Stefan won the challenge as many pointed out his dish was the easiest to do (Baked Lobster with Asparagus & Hollandaise Sauce).

Week 12: At this point, I can care less on who is going to the finale. Being pared down to a final five with one more elimination to go before the finale, I'm begining to be disillusioned as the tasks were getting mudane and the editing process also were tipping on the upcoming eliminations. Somehow with the feeling of watching Leah and her lackluster confessional interview, it becomes clear she won't make it. Watching Carla getting all excited was enough for me to puke when I get the realization that she is in.

The task was to create the last supper request for five experts in the culinary world. Sort of like the last meal of a condemned prisoner before he get executed. Let's just hope none of them get choke by something they will be served.

The final requests made were:
1st Course, Leah (for Wylie Dufresne): Eggs Benedict
2nd Course, Stefan (for Marcus Samuelsson): Roasted Salmon with Potatoes and Spinach
3rd Course, Hosea (for Susan Ungaro): Shrimp Scampi with Tomatoes Provençal
4th Course, Fabio (for Lidia Bastianich): Roasted Chicken with Roasted Potatoes and Leafy Salad
5th Course, Carla (for Jacques Pépin): Roasted Squab with Fresh Peas

You can guessed that Wylie Dufresne will be the hardest to please consider his dish was the easiest to make. You pretty much have to make something spectular out of something that is so ordinary. While the other four dishes are a bit more complicated, but have higher ceciling for the wow factor, the eggs benedict would need to be the most fanciest egg benedict in the world. You can give me any molecular gastronomy or any wild creative egg benedict, but in the end....it is still egg benedict.

It's pretty obvious that Leah got the short end of the stick. However, she had long overstayed her welcome. As in for the winner, Carla won this challenge as the reclamation project of making her look good to be slaughter by Stefan in the final continue on.

Top Chef NYC: Week 6 & 7

Someone need to put me out of my own misery.

If Top Chef continues the path they are about to go, then it should not matter if I switched over to Food Network's new reality show "Chopped".

Let me tell you I'm not even bothering with week 6 of the show considering they didn't axed anyone from the show. It's a holiday show with a theme of forgiveness and unity. Yay for everyone being saved.

The only reason that episode sucked hard was that everyone did poorly in their elimination task of "catering" to a charity ball hosted by Natasha Richardson. You know it's bad when a Hollywood actress critique your cooking by saying she was disappointed with the quality of the food and thought it was awful. To save face, judge Tom Coliccio decided to give everyone a time off and didn't excused anyone from their terrible performance (even the Hollywood actress said themselves).

That's right! Why give the Hollywood actress a say in this process? Let's ruin her charity banquet with terrible food from a boring episode that uses Martha Stewart for a brief moment in the elimination challenge. Seriously, this whole episode was a bust. Why even aired it if no one gets eliminated with no serious drama. If we canned this episode and move on to next week, nobody would missed it. The time line of the story would continued as though nothing have changed.

Moving on to the week 7, there is a new development regarding the judging on the show. No, they didn't get rid off Padma. Unfortunately Gail Simmons have to take some time off due to her wedding plans and honeymoon while the tapping of the show was going on simultaneously. She have to take time off for the rest of the season.

Her replacement on the judging panel is a former British cooking show contestant winner named Toby Young. Somehow they gave him the title of "food critic", but other than a resume filled with columnist for the magazine "Vanity Fair", guest judge on UK version of "Hell's Kitchen" and on the reality show "Come Dine with Me", his stint as a weekly food critic for Evening Standard was often forgotten.

The quickfire challenge is to feature a Michelin Star chef Jean-Christophe Novelli, who was about to get his own show on Bravo called "Chef Academy" who will taste test desserts that are made without sugar. Good thing that their standby product placement, Dr. Pepper was not excluded and was used on another ultra lamed and uninspired challenge. If you do care, Radhika won the challenge by cooking up bread pudding with roasted cashews and sauteed peach. Lucky she won because her main dish at the elimination challenge was lam-o.

This elimination challenge was simple. Cook the best dish you will ever cook and you would get to see another day. Because of not wanting to be called out by Natasha Richardson on the previous episode (I'm sure of it!), they saved up the elimination to this episode and will axe two contestants for the price of one.

The whole caveat of this challenge wasn't so much of cooking and tasting, but the fact that the contestants did not know who are going to be the judges and the dishes will be presented anonymously so that the mysterious judges don't know which contestant's dish belong to which chef. Something tells me that red boiled cabbage will belong to an European like Stefan.

Another surprised being hatched up by the production staff was to let the wannabe chefs see the critique on a flat screen TV while the judges are being unaware a hidden camera captured the audio and video feed of the live reading of rites for their dishes.

Toby Young was leading charge for his soundbites of "bland leading the bland" (for Eugene) and "It tasted like catfood" (for Melissa). Of course it didn't helped that Tom Colicchio pretty much ignored and treat Toby Young's suggestion and critiques with a major brush off. Young pretty much wanted to keep Eugene and let go Carla who came up with a vegetarian risotto dish that topped with a scallop. Watching her explanation was very painful and I honestly thought her lack of confidence in her dish was going to do her in.

In the end, I did think that the producers are hopping for a meltdown episode (like in Mia in season 2 begging to be let go) from Carla. She has the potential to freak out at any given moment. Plus with the recent season's of African Americans being eliminated earlier than expected, I had a feeling they were going to keep her around.

The people who got the axe was the maestro who was the "bland leading the bland" and the catlady who made "the catfood". Either way, the ending was dissatisfying as the wrong contestants got eliminated. I would have certainly let a person who don't how to make a vegetarian dish than the bland dish go.

By the way, let's see how the sequestered cast offs have to say about their remaining competitors at this video:

Top Chef NYC: Week 5

It took me awhile this week to write the recap for this episode only because of some emergency at work. After reviewing it, I was glad to get some time off to reflect on this week's episode. After the last few episodes preceding this one, I was really annoyed by the way on how the show is being edited and presented on television. They really needed a kick in the pants.

Quickfire challenge:

I was thrilled that they decided to make a skill challenge this week on testing the contestant's palate. I was getting sick and tired of these lackadaisical creativity that is being thrown out there for a rapid cooking and plating. Breakfast in a bite size? Really? That was just lame execution on the part of the staff who is in charge of drawing up challenges.

The quickfire challenge dealt with a truth and dare game. Each contestants get to taste test soup or a sauce for a short amount of time on a face off in a one on one duo. They each take turn on giving out a number which they can identify the ingredients in the soup/sauce. The dare would be issue by one contestant where the other contestant must name the numbers of ingredient which was agree upon. The winner is the last man/woman standing from either winning the dare or was able to name the ingredients being issue by the dare.

One quick advantage about this game was that if you can identify the soup or the sauce, you pretty much can guess the basic ingredients. One of the contestant, Stefan could pretty much guess the taste test and started naming the basic ingredients. He got cocky at the end and stumble in naming an obscure ingredient for the sauce where Hosea won the contest. I'm lost for words in that a low numbers of ingredients can win that final round for the Mexican Mole sauce.

It was the best quickfire challenge of the entire season so far because everyone is on the even playing level.

The Elimination Challenge:

Come out with dishes for the bridal shower. Simple and easily done. Except when you come out with a dish that you would neglect to tell the guest that you will need to assemble a dish yourself. In this case, a plate of sushi ingredients was presented, and a seaweed wrap left all the guests puzzled on what that was for on the plate.

You can see the trainwreck coming for the team that comes up with the concept of self-assemble sushi. The ingredients was not that pleasing in the first place and the idea was just awful. Any one of the members on that team (Eugene, Daniel, or Carla) can make a case for the elimination. The judges decided on Daniel because he actually stand behind that awful dish the team concocted. Easy call on that.

This past week's episode did rekindled my interest in the show and I hope they do keep it going. Otherwise, the boring contestants will make me want to turn it off.

ps. Is there a budding romance going between two couples? For the sake of the show, I hope not.

Top Chef NYC: Week 4

This week's installment of Top Chef tells me some of these contestants need to stick to cooking. They definitely will not survive being a personality on live television. Oh wow, God saved them because they looked like a nervous wreck in a faux interview.

It pains me to find out that in order for you to be known as a chef, you have to promote yourself and your restaurant. So being on TV for a few minutes of exposure will help your career. I guess food doesn't matter and once again take a backseat in the world of Celebrity Chef.

The Quickfire challenge to win an immunity this week requires each wannabe "Top" Chef to cook an Amuse Bouche breakfast dish. Now granted the task was retarded, but I'm just surprised that some of them did not realized what is the meaning of Amuse Bouche was. The task was to create a breakfast dish that you can impale in one bite. I remembered in the past season where one poor schmuck made a fruit salad and admittedly didn't know what was the term of "Amuse Bouche" when asked to perform that task. This time around, people do (and should) know, but somehow still made some of those dishes in two bites, rather than one bite.

When it was time for guest judge Rocco Dispirito to pick a winner, he has to decide between two good dishes, but chose the one that follow the rules (which was to make a one-bite dish.) Guess what? He didn't choose the two-biter. No kidding on that.

The most glorified and self serving task of the year for an elimination challenge got to be this episode. Where else can they sync their synergy by hooking up with their Big Brother channel by promoting their show on the "Today Show"? Sure, I guess I learned something new today by realizing that all chefs need to be training for that 2 and half minute drill that football players learned so much about for time management and they can also learned to be a self promoter as well. Which all of these contestants are really are in real life anyways.

Gee, all of them are put in the microscope already by being on this show. Is it necessary for them to be the most photogenic in this rehearsal challenge? Oh, here's a laugh: none of them get to be on live television anyway to perform the task. Instead, the winner(s) or the ones with best dishes get to sit in the green room and watch on TV if their dish was any good. The food stylist (I didn't know there was such an occupation existed for television) would just bring out the three supposed winning dishes and let the on-air personalities be the judges to choose the winner.

So what was the point of this whole elimination challenge? Seriously, someone in Bravo need to hire a creative person that can think of great tasks for these elimination and quickfire challenges. This is big time BS.

And the person that suffered the BS? The guy who got eliminated this week.

Why was he the poor sapp? Because he couldn't think of the appropriate dish he should create for a two and a half minutes segment. Alex, the former owner/executive Chef at Restaurant 15 (creatively set a prefix weeknight menu for only $15) got canned because he thought...(again, he thought)... that it would be awesome if he can make creme bulee in that short span of time. FYI, it takes more than a hour to make that.

Yes, he was inept, but the person performed the worst among the contestants this week was the final member of Team Rainbow (Jaime) who did have experiences in front of the camera. She came up with a dish that she had done before in front of live television audience, which was a Duck Egg salad with bacon and caviar. Poor Jaime undercooked it and recoiled when the judges had told her the dish was awful.

Honestly, between the two, I would have let go the experienced on-air guest chef who undercooked the dish than the inept person who have never done a TV guest spot before. Who knew you have to be a self promoter on TV in order to become a great chef?

The episode disappointed me so much and the outcome was just wrong. I need a few cans of beer to get over this. Hope it get better next week with Gayle Simmon's bridal shower. It looked like it's going to be the "Wedding Wars" format.

Top Chef NYC: Week 3

Have you ever wondered if anyone gave the Hindenburg any warning before the tragic accident hit? The undeniable mess that Top Chef have experienced for this season's episodes have given some clear warnings throughout the show.

For instance, it seemed like they are tipping off on who is about to get eliminated in the show. It gotten annoying to the point where they are dedicating majority of the interview segments to the likely eliminated contestants. Last week was the boring Jill, the week before was the young culinary student and the wife of a military soldier overseas. I just hope they don't tip off anymore of the likely eliminated contestants because it have gotten predictable.

Oh, what's with this "Euro vs. Americans" segment? Are they trying badly to tell us that it's Stefan/Fabio vs. Two American blokes in the final four? They been selling that hard and looked like they have been feeding Fabio to say that line in the interview segments. Dude, I know they came from Europe, but these two gents have been employed in the U.S. for many years now. Please get over it.

Other than the hard sell & predictability the past week, how did this week's episode fared as in the overall segment wise?

The Quickfire challenge dealt with recreating a recipe from Top Chef cookbook. It seemed easy because some of the contestants was remarking that they could finish it way ahead of time. *ahem*, Psyche! Padma decided to throw a wrench by changing the quickfire challenge to having the contestants using the current ingredients the chef were making and using it to make soup. It seemed like it gotten easier because majority of them did OK. For the first time ever, I don't remembered seeing a "bottom three" for the quickfire.

As in for Elimination challenge, they were divided into two teams with the winner of the quickfire challenge, besides getting an immunity from elimination for this episode, get to choose her team. Wow! Let's just say it was a great prize because of the other team were pretty bad and definitely was the bottom half of the remaining contestants. It gotten bad to the point where the Smores guy was single out for making a bad dessert. However, they spared the guy who did too much and making crappy meal? I don't know, crap is crap.

In the end, not a surprise on who was going to get eliminated. The 2nd member of "Team Rainbow", Richard got eliminated for false advertising on the "Smores" where guest judge Grant Achatz felt cheated because it does not have too much of the chocolate and the marshmallow looked like spits. Hey, don't messed with the guy who got James Beard Award and Michelin Stars for his restaurant. You get called out by him, it's pretty much game over.

For the first time, I just don't have any favorites because it seemed like no one stood out at this point. Hopefully the editing will get better. One thing for sure, this season won't get nominated for Emmy on Best Reality Show.

So sad at this moment.

Top Chef NYC: Week 2

Something tells me this season of Top Chef is going to suck. I really cannot pin point it, but the last episode just drives me up the wall.

Because of the fact that there are 17 characters participating on this ritual of showing off their restaurant and their non-stopping boasting about how good they really are in cooking at their restaurant, it just dawned on me that these guys are just pompous.

It is also would have been great if the people in editing would just stopped showcasing the people who are about to get eliminated. It sort of tipping off to the audience who might get eliminated shortly by keep broadcasting their interviews and moments on the show. I wish they kept some suspense on the show by showcasing everyone equally and not just the ones who are about to go.

The last two episodes are predictable because you knew which ones are about to get the axe.

How did my last week's top four mentioned did on this show?

Leah - Non existent

Stefan - The pompous villain who was on the bottom of three in quickfire challenge

Radhika - Won the quickfire challenge to get immunity (she needed because her main dish sucked).

Ariane - Continued to be mentioned on the bottom three in the elimination Challenge.

Boy, do I sucked at picking the favorites. My new two favorites for this week are Fabio (*gasp! I wasn't on his bandwagon ever) and Eugene. My bottom two is still Ariane and Radhika. Let's face it, these two gals will not win Top Chef. I hope I'm better next week's episode than this week.

Oh yeah, yay for Foo Fighters and their roadies for being the "test tasters" for next week's episode.

Top Chef NYC: Week 1

I was ecstatic when Top Chef was backed on this week. After looking through the 17 contestants, I was trying to pick out a favorite or maybe figuring which guy/gal which be the villain and last his/her way to the final (ie Season 3's Hung or Season 4's Lisa). There were some contestants that looked mousy and boring to care about. Then there were just some that was cast because what...they would looked incompetent and make a mess of themselves.

This season featured three local guys, but two European imports. Damnit all to hell, all three looked to be jerks on the show. The first guy is the winner of the quickfire and Elimination challenge by the name of Stefan. He supposedly used to work at Drago before going off on his own being a consultant. He looks like the favorite to win it with the show stressing that winner of the first Elimination challenge had won 3 out of last 4 seasons (big whoope!).

The other guy is Alex, who is a partner and executive chef at Restaurant 15, who last year was famous in LA for offering a $15 tasting menu (now increased to $19). Don't know how that guy was going to last, but I can sense that they are hiding his LA's status by stressing his NY's roots instead. He is going to be the token New Yawker on the show.

The final guy is Fabio, who has too thick of an accent just like the guest judge Jean-Georges Vongerichten where you can't quite make out the words coming out of their mouth. Thank you very much for the closed caption subtitles! He is trying to play the hot head villain. Let's hope he last a good 5 episodes before he gets the boot.

Overall, the show is very predictable in the first episode. The only quirk was that they added an elimination on the quick fire challenge. Other than that, you will usually have no doubts that the least experienced chef will always be the first to be eliminated in the contest. Every season except the first season (where Candace should have been eliminated, but wannabe jerk who pissed off the guest judge got canned instead) have always picked on the newbie who haven't quite worked the ladder of culinary world are the one to go.

No except for this season as the kid who didn't know how to cook Chinese food with exception of he took a class that deals with "Asian cooking" as his reference guide to Chinese cuisine. Damnit all to hell, I wish it was that easy to cook Chinese food. The kid's dish was to put a bokchoy on a black noodle and he called it a day. It was funny how Tom Colicchio (master judge) called it a "santized version of Chinese food". hehe!

Easy call, but the chef with 20 years of experience that failed miserably at cooking Middle Eastern dish should go too. No harm done on the show as the two who got eliminated are classmates at the same culinary school. That blew hard for them. Funny that the show didn't mentioned which school both have attended. Save the embarrassment for that poor institution.

My fav so far are Leah (in the top 3 this episode) and Stefan (winner of both challenges). My guess on next to go have to be the incompetant chef of 20 years in culinary world, Ariane. If she doesn't get the heave ho, then I'm picking Radhika (she looked terrify).