Last night's episode of Top Chef: Las Vegas featured a lively stew of anger, drama and patriotism topped off with a snarky lesbian catfight to keep things nice and spicy. While one gay competitor manages to pull a fast one in the kitchen and come out on top, another faces the chopping block for having the audacity to think she has better taste than the judges.
Episode three of Top Chef: Las Vegas opens with the female competitors still bitching over the battle of the sexes challenge from the last episode. After a brief bit of whining all around, the chefs head off for the Quickfire Challenge. Chef Mark Peel steps in as the guest judge and waxes poetic over his time spent slaving away as a "vegetable boy" for Wolfgang Puck back in the day. The challenge for the competitors is to take, as lesbian chef Ashley calls it, a "mountain of potatoes" and transform them into an "out of this world" dish.
Come on, it's potatoes - how badly can a so-called professional chef muck this up? Apparently, from the dishes served up by some of the chefs, pretty terribly it seems. The best bit of drama in the Quickfire Challenge erupts between fellow lesbian contestants Ashley and Preeti. Ashley is desperately trying to get her gnocchi in a pot to cook. When Ashley briefly steps away from her pot, fellow lesbian chef Preeti - all unawares - accidently steals her spot to blanch Asparagus. Ashley totally freaks out and goes ballistic all over Preeti. Catfight! No worries though, Ashley will shortly have her revenge...
Should-be-a-lesbian chef Jesse manages to dump so much cayenne into her sweet potato soup that guest judge Peel can't seem to stop stuttering repeatedly over how "spicy" it is. Fail. Eli's sweet potato marshmallow mash was both ugly and apparently way too sweet for human consumption. Fail. But what should have been one of the Quickfire Challenge's most epic fails actually ended up as one of the judges' top favorites.
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Gay contestant Ash decides he's going to make a "wow" dish of sweet potato ice cream. Predictably, right before judging time, Ash discovers that his ice cream is refusing to solidify. That's when he makes an apparently brilliant decision. Instead of telling the judges he tried to make ice cream and failed, he presents his dish as "chilled sweet potato custard" - obviously holding in nervous laughter while lying through his teeth. Amazingly enough, his deception actually works. Ash is so startled when he's picked as one of the top three in the challenge that he actually does a full-on, physical double take and nearly laughs out loud. Nice one Ash!
As tricky as Ash is, however, it's front runner Jennifer who impresses the judges most once again with her potatoes and mussels dish, leaving fellow competitor and blowhard Mike quite angry. He blatantly accuses the judges of favoritism - though not, of course, to their faces.
The chefs find out their Elimination Challenge will be to cook for 300 airmen and their families at Nellis Air Force Base - using only the ingredients and equipment available in the base kitchen. Considering how strongly lesbian competitor Ashley protested having to cook for a bachelor/bachelorette party in the last episode because gays can't marry in most states, it's surprising she didn't launch into another rant about having to cook for the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military establishment.
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Needless to say, cooking in a kitchen with no real pots or pans, industrial mess hall equipment and ingredients limited to canned food and frozen hunks of meat leads to plenty of tension in the kitchen. Through it all, however, top contender Jennifer - designated the kitchen leader since she has immunity - manages to keep things running smoothly.
The competitors serve their dishes to the airmen in an atmosphere of patriotic sentimentalism. Several of them actually break out into tears when they are thanked for their "service" to the fighting men and women of the base. It's both sweet and a little weird. After all, it's not really like the chefs have a choice in the matter whether or not they want to support the military with their Elimination Challenge cooking - they either do it, or they leave.
For a final bit of drama when it comes to judging time, mouthy competitor Mike finds himself in the group of four competitors chosen for the best dishes in the challenge. However, it turns out that Mike actually had very little to do with the dish the judges loved they thought he had collaborated on, a braised bacon delight created by Michael V. So in a nasty switcheroo, they ask Mike to come back again when they ask the winners to send in the losing chefs. Meanwhile, Michael V. takes the top prize of the night for his bacon - which was apparently so good some of the judges looked rather orgasmic while talking about the dish.
Fuming and furious, Mike returns with the losing group, which also includes Laurine and Preeti for their very unimpressive attempt at a vegetarian pasta salad. The judges want to know which one of them had the balls to decide to do such a lame dish, but the girls won't cough up who is most responsible for the lack of judgment. Lauren seems aware the dish was crap, but Preeti continues to insist that not only was it good - it was way better than some of the other competitor's dishes she tasted. Mike, meanwhile, won't stop back talking the judges and annoys Padma so much she actually snaps at him quite rudely. An angry Padma is a hot Padma!
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The judges get so worked up about the three losing chefs and their attitudes, Gail and Tom almost start yelling at each other over which was the worst. In the end, however, the judges agree that Preeti's taste level and inability to recognize her own mistakes is unforgivable and she's sent off to pack her knives and go.
Three female chefs in a row have been thrown out so far and except for Jennifer, it looks like the boys are taking over. Hopefully our girl Ashley can pull herself together, calm the hell down and keep herself from being the next chef to incur the judges' wrath!
Find previous Top Chef: Las Vegas re-caps by Laura, and her other entertainment stories here!
