I've eaten at a couple of Daniel Boloud's restaurants and he's really a special chef. He's a good operator, and a good guy. He's smart, articulate, and just cool. The thing about the Quickfire is that the term technique is very subjective. To me, I didn't think there was great technique this week. I think there were great knife skills, and sure, that's a form of technique, but I was looking for cooking technique. I was looking for someone to do something a little different, not everybody showing off how great their knife skills are. It should be a given that you have spectacular knife skills, in my opinion.

Zoi poached an egg, and it was the proper technique for poaching an egg. When you see that the meal has to be vegetarian and you're just going all out on knife skills, what difference does it make whether it's vegetarian or not? It's just about knife skills. I'd rather see you put some vegetable flavors together. One of my investors as my restaurant is a vegetarian, so I always have a strictly vegetarian entree on my menu at all times. And it gets ordered a lot. Right now it's organic quinoa and roasted white elf mushrooms, which looks almost like a white abalone.

Dale won the Quickfire, and I was very impressed with his knife skills. I thought it all looked nice, but I don't know if it necessarily made me hungry. I'd much rather sit down and eat Zoi's poached eggs.