You know what they say: It's all fun and games until someone gets eaten by a bear. Well, luckily there were no casualties in last night's Zoo Dinner Challenge, other than Valerie. While I thought last night's Quickfire Challenge was a little easy on the contestants (cooking from the green market should be second nature to most of these chefs), I thought the Elimination Challenge was not only creative but also added a nice degree of difficulty with the elements of working as a team (most chefs would rather just go it alone without the potential hazard of other people's input), cooking for 200, and basing a menu on the diet of various zoo animals. Now that was a surprise. These producers are probably banging their heads against the wall at this point trying to think of new challenges. What will it be next week? Maybe it should be more topical, like, say "Make dinner for Eliot Spitzer and his team of lawyers. You have $80,000 and only nine ingredients, one of which must be tongue. GO!"

Seriously though, I think last night's show demonstrated one very interesting thing about the challenges on Top Chef and the way they tap each contestant's strengths and weaknesses. In the Quickfire, Andrew was eliminated because he'd broken the rules, while Valerie was in the top four for her peach and tomato marmalade over grilled steak. And yet the very opposite scenario played out in the Elimination Challenge as Andrew took home the top prize for his squid and Valerie found herself down in the bottom because her dish didn't work at all -- her blinis were dry and tasteless and her rutabaga was crunchy and not cooked properly. The difference in skill was cooking for one versus cooking for 200. Quite a big leap. Clearly, Valerie's got talent -- it's just that her skills lie in the intimate not the grand. Andrew, on the other hand, was able to pull it off, and a glacier too!

I was surprised Richard didn't end up higher in the ranks this week, but I was rather shocked at the shot of him pulling his immersion circulator out of his locker which was in total shambles. He needs to get that in order. I also have my eye on Dale, and feel like he's got some juice, and we'll have to see where that goes. He may just talk a good tough game.