Top Chef: Boxed Lunch

13 moments from this week's
Top Chef Season 4: Chicago

1. Quickfire Challenge - create a salad in 45 minutes. Spike thinks his salad is hot. He says, "Let's have sex after we eat this salad." Um... let's not.
2. Former Top Chef Season 2 finalist (and yummeriffic hottie) Sam Talbot is the guest judge, and he is less-than thrilled with the salads of Richard, Stephanie, and Lisa. He likes the salads of Antonia, Dale, and Spike - who won the challenge with a steak and pineapple salad that looked good, but not enough to make me wanna go horizontal with Spike...
3. For the Elimination Challenge, Padma tells the cheftestants that they are to make boxed lunches for the Chicago Police Academy. The box lunches must be healthy, low-carb, and follow specific ingredient guidelines, including using a lean protein and a whole grain.
4. As winner of the Quickfire Challenge, Spike gets an extra ten minutes to shop for his lunch, and the other contestants are not allowed to use Spike's 4 main ingredients: chicken, bread, lettuce, and tomato. He is so arrogant in the grocery store, clearly picking popular ingredients just so other people can't use them, that I'm thrilled when the judges dislike his chicken salad that he creates with it -- a chicken salad with olives AND grapes in it (blech!) and then he just has the tomato, lettuce, and bread on the side! I wanted to smack him.
   
5. Andrew, who has been relatively calm the past few episodes, must have run out of Ritalin for this episode, and he is in full spazz-mode this week. He keeps talking about how he's studied nutrition, yet his faux sushi (his "rice" is made out of raw parsnip) just sounds disgusting, and his peers are flabbergasted that he's trying to pass off sushi as a hearty meal for cops.
6. At the Police Academy cafeteria, Richard keeps asking "Do you like burritos?" for his faux burritos. The tuna sounds good inside his 'burrito' but the see-through rice wrap looks like wilted wax paper. Chef Tom states that at least it tastes better than it looks.
7. Meanwhile, Spike tries to create a "need" for his dish by only keeping two boxed lunches on the table at a time. If he'd put half as much thought into the dish as he did with the sneakiness and theatrics of his shit, his chicken salad might not have SUCKED. Olives AND grapes together ~ yuk!
8. At the Judges' Table, Stephanie's soup is a hit - very well seasoned, both Tom and Queer Eye Ted Allen say. But it's Dale's lemongrass bison cups that win over the judges, and Dale wins his 5th Elimination Challenge. He also wins a bigass bottle of wine, and two tickets to the winery.
9. The three worst box lunches were Spike's chicken salad, Lisa's raw shrimp un-cooked rice non-stir fry, and Andrew's raw sushi with no rice (shredded parsnips? ick!). Spike, Lisa, and Andrew all back-talk the judges, and all three easily could have been sent home.
10. Lisa tells the judges that her rice was sabotaged, and won't own up to her un-cooked shrimp. But she goes off on how her dish followed the directions, where as the other two people before the judges did not follow the rules.
11. Spike asks Tom if he doesn't understand the concept of salty and sweet together in regards to his olives and grapes, and Tom replies that the taste of olives just don't combine well with grapes together in a chicken salad. Plus, they really hate it that he "wasted" his other ingredients - which he states directly to the judges that he didn't choose those items to screw over his peers, even though he's on tape stating exactly that.
12. Andrew brags about his nutritious raw dish to the judges, but Padma and Tom point out that his meal needed to be hearty -- to which Andrew asks, "Was that in the rules?" Yes, Padma assures the spazz, and when Padma asks him why he didn't use a whole grain, Andrew lamely states, "I lost my rule sheet."
    
13. At the judge's table, the judges are surprised (and I think a bit disappointed) at the arrogance and non-ownership of the worst three. Meanwhile, in the "holding cell" Andrew and Lisa are at each other's throats and raking each other over the coals. When the terrible trio are called back in front of the judges, Mr. Culinary Boner Andrew is sent packing. While we have seen some gracious exits (Ryan) from the Elimination Challenge, Andrew is cocky to the end and is spazzing all over the place. Andrew is sent home for a really lousy boxed lunch.

While the judges get to choose who is Top Chef, you can vote for the Fan Favorite at Bravo TV dot com.
Next week - Restaurant Wars!

~~~ for another take on the Boxed Lunch episode, check out our own favorite chef's blog: Ms Maggie Moo Talks 2U
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