I was kind of disappointed that you chose indian cuisine to match up against mexican.  Unfortunately, most western style or japanese style chefs are incapable of cooking indian food.  Mexican food is very easy and familiar to most people and a half way decent chef could easily make something mexicanish if not authentic mexican dish.  It wasn't fair to match those two cuisines up .  A better challenge might have been to match mexican with italian or french or mexican and russian or australian.  (Hey - to a couple of billion people - italian and french are the freaky cuisines with the gross ingredients).

To date - I only know one western chef that probably can cook Indian food (Gorden Ramsey) and one chef that knows how to correctly pronounce "cumin" (Bobby Flay).  It's kind of disappointing.

Curtis, why didn't TCM bring back Sue Torres after a chef resigned like last season's episode 2?

I miss Curtis cooking.  I think one of the challenges should have the chefs compete against him!

finally the long wait is over ,, welcome back  Curtis stone is a great host & great chef .. i agree with GardensGrace

I'm looking forward to the rest of this season, i love seeing these seasoned chef's prepare amazing dishes. i hope this week was the exception in introducing that last minute switch to produce mexican/indian buffet after they shopped. That seemed a little silly...fingers crossed for another exceptional season.

Welcome back Top Chef Masters! A solid cast of chef/competitors, and pretty evenly matched. Glad to see a complete hour of food and cooking ...

Bravo, please don't repeat the format of 80 Plates; the scavenger hunt and "survivor" approach were unnecessary distractions. The travel and multiple cultures visited was interesting.