'Top Chef: New York': Daniel won't be invited to the wedding

Top Chef: New York asks the big questions this week: What's worse, boring food or bad food? Who's more blameworthy, someone who came up with a half-assed idea and sees where he went wrong, or someone who defiantly insists that the dish was good? Is there such a thing as ego-reduction surgery, and can we send a couple of cheftestants in for emergency treatment?

Something old, something new, something spoilered, something blue.

Palate test! The cheftestants combine name-that-ingredient with a bracket-type tournament to discover who has the most refined taste. They graduate from a 30-ingredient shrimp and lobster bouillabaisse to a Thai green curry soup to a Mexican mole.

Stefan enjoys looming and smirking and pushing people's buttons. Stefan bugs. Stefan, Hosea and Carla end up in the final round, and Carla gets booted when she guesses peanut butter in the mole. Stefan and Hosea guess back and forth for a while, and then Stefan throws out tomato paste, which gets the buzzer. Hosea guesses oil -- then is able to correctly identify it as vegetable oil. Isn't the whole point of vegetable oil that it's nearly tasteless?

Hosea is thrilled that he out-palated the ego monster. He's even happier that he gets immunity.

Here comes the bride!
For the elimination challenge, the chefs are divided into four teams and are told they'll cook a course for Gail's bridal shower. The teams have themes based on that old rhyme - something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Team Old (Jeff, Hosea and Stefan) do variations on heirloom tomatoes. There are immediate clashes when Stefan tries to order everyone around. He's particularly dismissive of Jeff's plan to do a tomato sorbet.

Team New (Daniel, Eugene and Carla) goes off the rails fast. First, Daniel says that pickles seem particularly new to him -- which is odd, because pickling is all about preserving food so it lasts a long time, thereby becoming old. They then switch to sushi -- but it will be new sushi, because it will be cooked and involve steak! Carla is dubious, but she doesn't say anything

Team Borrowed (Jamie, Rahdika and Ariane) decide to "borrow" from Rahdika's culture, doing Indian-inflected dishes. They're simultaneously borrowing Jamie's special ingredient -- vadouvan, a spice mix that's like a French interpretation of curry. Rahdika is unhappy -- again, she's worried about being pigeonholed as the Indian chef -- but she doesn't seem to object.

Team Blue (Fabio, Melissa and Leah) realize that no food that occurs in nature is actually blue. Instead, Fabio convinces them to do an ocean theme with Chilean sea bass. Snore.

Things get ugly for Team New: Eugene's rice comes out mushy, and instead of pitching it, he decides to add chili peppers to rehabilitate it into something palatable. The team decides to do deconstructed sushi, so the guests can build their rolls to their taste, and cement that plan when Stefan pooh-poohs it. During plating, Daniel has the bright idea to add mushrooms to Carla's salad -- which he does without telling her, or letting her taste them. Again, Carla doesn't speak up.

Team Borrowed has a moment of panic when it looks like Ariane's lamb is going to be undercooked. They leave it in a few more minutes, and then all the cheftestants pitch in at plating to make sure the dish gets out on time. Wow -- folks must really like Ariane if they're willing to do that for her.

The guests love Team Old's dishes -- particularly Jeff's tomato sorbet. The only dish they're not thrilled with is Stefan's terrine, which is called rather bland. Hah! Guests also adore Team Borrowed's lamb, which they praise as perfectly cooked. Heh.

Team New screws up all over the place. Eugene forgets to tell the guests how they're supposed to construct the sushi, and everyone is confused. The only instruction they do get it that they should eat the Daniel's yuzu sorbet last, which ensures that it will be melted. The mushrooms Daniel added to Carla's salad are pretty dire. Eugene and Carla know things are bad.  Daniel is oblivious.

Team Blue makes a strategic decision to have Fabio address the guests. It's a wise choice -- he charms the pants off the 43 women at the table, who even applaud his lame explanation that the yellow of the corn puree plus the green of the Swiss chard makes blue. (Um, I don't think the spectrum actually works that way...). Once Fabio, his charm and his adorable accent leave the room, the guest admit that while the flavors are good, the food all shares a very mushy texture. One person calls it "old people food." Yipe.

The Judges Table
The judges pick Teams Old and Borrowed as their favorites, and particularly praise Jamie's vadouvan spices carrots, Jeff's tomato sorbet (hah! The sour look on Stefan's face when THAT is announced!) and Ariane's lamb. The winner is... Ariane, which shocks everyone, especially Jamie. "None of us expected anyone but me to win." If you say so, Jamie...

The judges ask Blue why they played it so safe, and Fabio starts to spin a line about how hard it is to perfectly cook 40-odd pieces of sea bass. When he sees the judges aren't buying it, he wisely shuts his mouth. Team Blue is safe.

That leaves Team New. Carla admits she had misgivings, but she declines to place blame. That's classy. However, the judges spank her for not raising her objections during the cooking process. Eugene admits that he forgot to give instructions, and that upon reflection, he should have ditched the rice instead of trying to rehabilitate it. Daniel admits that he spiked Carla's salad with mushrooms... but he sees nothing wrong with that, or any of the dishes they presented. He thinks they were all great! For that failure of taste, he gets booted.

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• I object that they allowed people to pick "salt" in the palate test. Who can cook without it?  If they had to pick the KIND of salt -- and yes, I have been to salt tastings, (where, I admit, I was utterly unable to differentiate between the pink salt and the black salt and the salt that came out of a box) -- then I would be impressed.
• Stefan is apparently crushing on Jamie, despite the fact that he is definitely not her type. He shows his love by ... making pants for her teddy bear? Threatening her with kisses? "Does the word lesbian mean anything to you?" Jamie interviews. Apparently, it means "Hey, look! A challenge!" Sigh.
• Jamie sort of puts up with Stefan, but the rest of the women seem to hate him. Carla is horrified when Stefan tries to negotiate a kiss with Jamie, Leah talks about how disagreeable he is, and Rahdika says "I would rather be on Satan's team than Stefan's team." Heh.
• The men aren't much happier with Stefan. Stefan tries to force Hosea to choose a particular type of tomato for his gazpacho, and he argues vehemently with Jeff about the sorbet. So it was particularly satisfying when Jeff's sorbet took him to the top three.
• Fabio again provides a wealth of entertainment. He admits that his role is to distract the women with his accent and charm. After the yellow-green-blue thing, he crows "Hah! They bought it!" Hee!
• Plus there's this winner of a Fabio quote, when Papa Bear Tom starts stalking the kitchen: "Colicchio is for me, it's like you are the priest and he is the Pope."  That's right -- Tom's the sexy, bear-friendly, intimidating-yet-somehow-cuddly Pope of New American Cuisine.
• Daniel, on he other hand, is not half as charming as he thinks. "I think they're going to love [our dish]. I think they're going to dance with it, I think they're going to start taking their clothes off, and start eating." Um, no. HELL no. Like, "Stefan converting a lesbian" no. Not going to happen.

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