Top Chef Masters - Watch While I Pull This Recap Out Of My Hat ... Ta-DAH!

On last week’s Top Chef Masters … things were just OFFAL. Rick Bayless beat out cute Puerto Rican PapiBear Wilo Benet and advanced to the next round.

On this week’s episode, we get introduced to the next four Master Cheftestants:

Douglas Rodriguez – inventor of “Nuevo Latino” cuisine
Anita Lo – NYC chef/owner of Annisa
John Besh – from New Orleans
Mark Peel – from Los Angeles

Kelly “Not Padma” Choi enters the Top Chef kitchen and welcomes the chefs. It’s time for the Quickfire Challenge.

Quickfire:

This week’s Quickfire challenge resurrects a challenge from Season 3. The chefs will be required to cook an egg dish with only one hand. If any of these fours chefs have kids, it should be a piece of cake…


Mark Peel from L.A. is all like “Dude, cooking eggs is hard!”, but if Stephen (below) - that annoying wine guy from Season 3 – could win this Quickfire, anyone can…


Did anyone else find him less-than-likeable?

Anywhore, the chefs get to their eggery. Doug Rodriguez feels “handicapped” by only using one arm, but I believe the politically correct term is now “differently abled”. Learn it. It turns out Mark Peel’s father was handicapped only had one arm – and Mark watched his Dad do everything one-handed. Anita Man Lo has decided to do fancy scrambled eggs served in eggshells with the tops cut off, but needs someone to “give her a hand” in order to do so. Cheating!

Cajun John Besh decides to do the same egg dish he does every day – but for some reason the oven doesn’t heat them correctly. Besh throws one of his dishes on a burner in an attempt to get rid of the runnies before time is called. If he really does this every day, his family is probably dead from salmonella poisoning by now.

Kelly introduces the Quickfire judges. They are as follows:

Some Dude.
Some Chick with a Cruella Deville white streak in her hair … and …

GAIL SIMMONS AND HER FABULOUS BOOBIES!!! [**INSERT CELEBRATORY MARCHING BAND MUSIC HERE**]

Happy days are here again!! Oh how I’ve missed my Gail and her fabulous culinary chi-chis.

While introducing Gail to the Cheftestants, host Kelly mentions that Gail LOVES eggs, and has been known to cry when a restaurant cooks them wrong. See, this is why Gail Simmons and I are soul mates: I also cry at restaurants when they screw up my order. Especially when they forget to put Horsey Sauce in my bag at the Arby’s Drive-Thru.

Gail, her Boobies, and those two other people judge the egg dishes. Anita’s fancy scrambled eggs served in an empty eggshell gets a perfect 5 Stars. John Besh’s slow-cooked uncooked egg gets a measly 1/2 Star. Gail comments that Besh’s runny eggs taste like “burnt grease”, however she does not cry – and she does not die.

Elimination Challenge:

Kelly announces that this week’s elimination challenge will be to cook a meal for The Gays actor Neil Patrick Harris and some friends at The Magic Castle in Los Angeles. Apparently Doogie Howser, M.D. has a thing for magic wands.

In order to introduce the Elimination Challenge, they bring in “Magician and Mentalist” Max Maven (below) – who looks like what would happen if Mr. Spock and Ming the Merciless had a baby together. Creepy. Furthermore, I think Max’s voice and eyes are hypnotizing me. I’m feeling VERY SLEEEEEPY…


Anywhoo, Max tells them that magic has four main elements: Mystery, Surprise, Illusion, and Spectacle. He then makes the Cheftestants “pick a card”, and each chef gets one of the four elements which will serve as their inspiration. Yeah, there was a “magic trick” used during this process, but it was too lame to mention. Not ANYTHING like the trick we will see later … A TRICK I MUST LEARN!!

Here’s what they ended up with:

Douglas Rodriguez: “Spectacle”. However, I think the politically correct term is now “Visually Extraordinary”. Learn it.

John Besh: “Surprise”. Based on the way he cooked that egg, I’d be surprised if Besh doesn’t accidentally poison the judges.

Mark Peel: “Mystery”. Julia Child meets Agatha Christie.

Anita Lo: “Illusion”. I’m sorry, but every time I hear the word “Illusion”, the only thing I can think of is the magician from my childhood, Doug Henning…

“It’s an ILLUSION!!!”

The Cheftestants shop at Whole Foods and return to the Top Chef kitchen to get busy. In the middle of their preparation, we get another special treat. A visit from Chef Tom Colicchio!!!

As most of you know, Tom visits the Cheftestants during the regular seasons of Top Chef to offer guidance and to roll his eyes at the douchebags. So I was quite surprised to see him on Top Chef Masters. In fact, it seems like Tom just showed up to chat, because he wasn’t a judge and wouldn’t even be able to taste the food. That’s OK, because Chef Besh is trying to poison people, so it’s probably safer this way.

BTW - To those of you who watched the show last night: did you notice how happy Tom looked while chatting with his peers, as opposed to a bunch of lesbians and asstards? Colicchio was positively GIDDY that he didn’t have to tell Spike to rethink the frozen scallops.

Tom leaves and the Chefs head over to the Magic Castle – which is a private club for weirdos. Or something. Once inside, the chefs have one hour to prepare their dishes.

The judges enter the “Dante Room” of Castle Grayskull and sit down. Neil Patrick Harris is there, along with his Hot Piece David Burtka. Creepy Max Maven slithers in, along with Ed Alonso (below) from Saved by the Bell. Wait, WHAT??…


Seriously, when they said it would be dinner for “Neil Patrick Harris and his friends”, I was hoping for a little better than this. Some hunky muslestuds and/or some catty drag queens would have spiced things up nicely. Harris needs better Gays in his life.

Regular judges Gael Greene and James Oseland are also there – as well as Gail Simmons and the Boobs of Life.

Mark Peel (“Mystery”) is first. He wrapped up some snapper in a piece of paper and called it a mystery. If that’s the case, every time I open a McDonald’s cheeseburger, somebody should shout “Ta-DAH!!”.

John Besh is next with his “Surprise” dish. He tries to do a tableside sorbet using liquid nitrogen, and although he didn’t kill anyone I’m pretty sure Neil Patrick Harris ended up with frostbite on his fingertips. Ta-DAH!!

Anita then unveils her “Illusion” – braised Daikon made to look like a scallop served on a “seascape” of crackling Rice Krispies. I know it sounds weird on paper, but it looked pretty fierce. While discussing the dish, Neil Patrick Harris uses the term “accoutrements”, complete with faux French pronunciation – because he’s gay and that’s how we roll. FYI Ladies: if your husband is fond of the words “accoutrements”, “cocktail”, and/or “fierce” you may want to re-evaluate your relationship.

Finally, we had Douglas Rodriguez presenting a “Spectacle”. He had wanted to serve his dish in a flaming coconut (in honor of Neil Patrick Harris?), but all he did was make skittish judge James Oseland want to call 911. Ta-dah…???

After dinner, the judges are treated to a magic show, in which we are shown THE GREATEST MAGIC TRICK IN THE HISTORY OF EVERYTHING. Some dude pulls a bunny OUT OF HIS WEAVE!!!! Seriously, he didn’t pull a rabbit out of his hat, he pulled a hare out of his hairline. Amazing. I want to learn how to pull a Dust Bunny (preferably Maddie) out of MY weave.

The judges speak to the Cheftestants, and then talk amongst themselves. We find out that they likee Anita (Illusion) and Mark (Mystery), and they didn’t much care for Douglas (Flaming Ball of FAIL) and John Besh (Salmonella Surprise).

The winner – by a wide margin – is Anita Lo, who wins $10,000 for her charity, and advances to the Finals. The show ends with a group hug, and a sneak peak at the next episode, where they’ll be cooking a 3 course meal for 100 guests BY THEMSELVES. But I might not watch, because that maniac weirdo Bravolebrity Jeff Lewis (below) will be judging, and I can’t watch him. He’s even creepier than Max Maven.