First, let's start with Restaurant Wars: Part I. They had Daniel Boulud as guest judge. Daniel is very, very charming. It's a lot of fun watching him. I got to hang out with him when I was in Aspen, and he just totally breaks the stereotypical snooty Frenchman mold. He's totally a gentleman, really, really knowledgeable, really smart. I could just sit there and listen to the guy talk for hours. And then he's also ridiculously talented, one of the greatest restaurateurs in the world -- he's on top of the world! The chefs had to make burgers for him in the Quickfire Challenge. I think it's one of those things where they give you the Red Robin menu for a reason. I think Daniel made a great point: It's called a burger because it's on a burger bun, and a lot of them didn't make burgers. A lot of them used slices of bread -- that's not really a burger.

Overall though, I thought they did a pretty good job. I mean one of them was a crab cake sandwich. That's not that interesting. I thought Howie's burger looked good, but I thought it was kind of a riff on Daniel Boulud's burger at DB Bistro, so It wasn't that interesting. But I thought a lot of them did a nice job.

When Padma told them they would no longer get immunity...I know that feeling. It's like them telling you "You're going to get a sandwich at Witchcraft in San Francisco," and you're thinking "That's great, but I'll trade that for immunity right now." That's nice and that's cool, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for. But CJ got to choose his team, and that's pretty amazing. That's huge. It's a great opportunity when you're under the gun, and you get to choose who you're working with. I thought for certain CJ was going to pick Dale instead of Casey. I just never really saw CJ and Casey mesh, but it was a good point about having a woman's touch. I thought that was interesting, and it was very interesting to see who the other team was with. It just boiled down to the fact that Howie's going to be a tough guy to work with. He's very opinionated -- he says what's on his mind, and he'll do what he needs to do to get what he has to say done.