A salt-free challenge...hmm!

That would be a good one to consider for Top Chef. It would take great skill and flavour manouevering to accomplish a good dish Ital-style (that's what Rastafarians call salt free food...many of them eat that way!)

I was disappointed to see Angelo go too..but guys, remember...it's a game!
If Team X won all their games in a World Cup and lost at quarter-finals, the judges aren't going to grant them pardon on their consistency....it's just Game Over!

Richard is right about Tiffany (I'm from Beaumont!).
Why is she still there? How many times has she been
on the bottom - yet you guys are still keeping her
around! Dale should still be there. Angelo should
still be there!

I LOVED this challenge! Like most people who were born after 1968, I grew up watching Seasme Street. You could see how all the chefs (even the ones without kids) lit up when they saw Elmo, Telly & Cookie Moster. What a pleasure it must have been to bake cookies for them (and I was pleasantly surprised to hear NONE of them complained about "not beening bakers/pastry chefs". Like Carla, I also LOVE Target so that also must have been fun cooking for the employees.

"Muppet wrangler" is a good job to have.

LOVED the Sesame Street Episode! I also have an Elmo obsessed toddler (daughter) who can clearly say "ELMO" whenever she sees him anywhere and was delighted to see him on Top Chef along with "Cookie". It was wonderful to share my love of food and cooking with her love of Elmo and Cookie! Thanks!

Now why are you not checking tapes Tom?
If the one of the show member's blogs she was sick
of Mike Isabella how come you dont seem to be
aware of this happening?

I think Top Chef should once in a while atleast start
modifying the rule "one episode-one plate judgement"
You want a mediocre Top Chef or someone who performs consistently?
Mann...I am from South and if southern belles cant cook you cant expect others.
No doubt Carla or Tiffany should have gone.

Last season, I admit to being annoyed with the "you are only as good as your last dish" way of judging as I thought Kevin deserved to win for his "body of work." However, I realized the judging rules are right when I examined how I react when I have a bad or less than excellent meal at a restaurant - I don't return.

(Re. the comment from the teacher - a profession we share - that is a really false analogy as you are talking about learning, not chefs who have already demonstrated mastery and are competing with their peers.)

SADDEST TWO WEEKS OF TOP CHEF HISTORY. Never expected Angelo and Dale to leave so early. Thought they were going to be in the final three at least! They had a lot of passion, talent, and heart. Could you bring them back to Top Chef All-Stars-Super-Stars?

Sigh. TommmmMMMMmMm!

I'm sorry, but no way should Angelo have gone home last week!! I like Tiffany too, but she was in the bottom for the last 2 or3 challenges as she was for this one and should have been sent home. Angelo has consistently been in the top and actually won a couple while Tiffany has not won one challenge this season. Fair? I think not. And it still p__es me off that Dale only cooked 6 or 8 portions on one of the challenges and never got caught for it. I used to like him but his ego is getting out of control. And why didn't Antonia tell them 2 weeks ago that if it wasn't for Richard her beef tongue would have been horrible? I never once heard her give him credit when she landed( i use that term loosely) in the top three! I'll never get enough of top chef, I LOVE this show but you dropped the ball on this one Tom and the rest of you, I hope you restore my faith this week.

how can i get invited like one of those people who goes and eat in the competitions? theres a lot of people just walking around trying the dishes from the different chefs and i wonder what do i have to do to go ?
xoxo

I don't know if this had been mentioned yet--but my biggest concern during the entire challenge was that the contestants didn't appear to have access to running water! None of the food products, serving ware, or cookware seemed to have even been given a rinse, not to mention the contestants' hands through the whole process. I just hope that things actually were washed and handled in a sanitary manner, and for whatever reason they were just not shown.

Oh, Tom, you would have done the target challenge so much better than they did?

Please don't talk about what you would have done until you've been in their shoes, until you have been cooped up in apartment with a bunch of strangers with egos at least as big as yours, subjected to the challenges that they have had to go through- cooking for screaming kids after two hours of sleep, running around the kitchen looking for utensils, coping with freezers that don't freeze and ovens that don't get hot and seeing great chefs going home while mediocre ones are flying under the radar. Add to all of this not being able to kiss your boys goodnight. Try it.

Tom

Too much salt? Next season why not have a challenge where the chefs can not use any salt at all, cooking for people who must reduce their salt intake,

You could also add “no salt” to other challenges – Palma coming into the kitchen with an "Oh by the way...no salt"

Here is why I, as a teacher, really dislike the evaluation system. Imagine that instead of Top Chef this was Top Student. To make the analogy, it would mean that one of my kids who is usually a great student doesn't do well on a test and thus flunks out of school. Of course it doesn't happen like that because teachers average tests together. So a great student can have a bad day and earn a 72, let's say, but then he or she could rebound and score in the high nineties on the rest of the tests in the marking period and therefore still earn an A, as a top student; I mention this because it actually happens. My point here is that while Angelo bombed out on this one challenge, he has consistently done better than others both in this season and the last, and yet he has been sent home. I like Tiffany, but she is not, nor ever will be, the chef Angelo is, whether you like him (I do) or not. Why is she still on the show?

Chefs constantly work in crazy environments, but focus on food. The challengings are stretching a chefs talent. It is getting a bit boring with all the challengings getting away from food. I mean, grilled cheese on an iron. Idk if it was worldly. LETS talk about viruses and bacteria, Mr. Bourdain. Those irons come straight from factories.

luuuuved this episode. Go Dale!
Psst: But I would love for Carla to have her own show. Sorry, but even on this one when she didn't mean to, she had me in stitches!

Does anyone else besides me get the impression that this season was produced just to hand the Top Chef crown to Blaise?

I was thinking the same thing. I love Blaise but I hope it isn't so for so many reasons.....

Regarding Tiffany's chicken and dumplings from the Jimmy Fallon episode

What she made was the Southern style of chicken & dumplings. They are a thin, flat 'noodle' and the 'gravy' is a thinner, more brothy style.

The Southern version is a very different dish from the what most people think of as chicken & dumplings.

so what she made was exactly what chicken & dumplings are to her - I am surprised she did not explain or elaborate that this is what she is used to and what she learned to cook.

I am surprised that none of the judging chefs had not come across this version of dumplings.

I am so glad Tiffany was not eliminated in this round!

Are you aware that Marcella Hazan contested your opinion on risotto on her Facebook page after a fan asked her about them? Here are her comments. American chefs who go to Italy suffer from a Moses complex, they are always coming down from the mount with a tablet of rules for the unlearned. What he should have said is, "If you go to Venice ...". Yes, our Venetian risotto, while not quite soupy unless it's made with peas, is indeed runny, and of course we love it. But in Bologna and in Piedmont, risotto is firmly clingy and it is not less delicious. As for the chef who adds cream, well, follow my example, pay no attention to chefs.

I think that, barring a few "quirks", it is the
chef who makes the worst dish of the challenge who leaves.
( Quirks include, Dave season 1 getting the boot before Tiffany, even though
in the 3 part challenge he won one and would have won 2 but forgot a dish, and Tiff won none, and there's the "but you didn't cook anything" and the" this is top chef not top sommelier" variations ) Dale didn't leave because his salty dish wasn't as bad as Fabio's, and I guess Angelo's was worse than Tiffany's
and Carla's dishes

What the heck are you doing??????? Asking these chefs to "bake" a cookie isn't fair in the least!! You all know that baking is a science (and an art) and requires a completely different skill set. Next week, why don't you just ask the chefs to weave some cloth, or throw a clay pot, or paint a picture, and judge them on that? Chefs are chefs and bakers are bakers.....did you tell all contestants they would actually have a baking competition on the show??

Anyway, Carla seems to be baking cookies these days....how is that fair to the others that she came to the competition with skills the others weren't required to have?

Dear Tom, I can't believe you sent Angelo home for salty soup!!! Past contestants have had salty food and they didn't go home. Some have won for things like steamed mussels when others went to great pains to actually COOK something. Angelo is clearly an excellent chef. Of course I can only judge based on the comments I hear on the show, but it sure seemed like a couple of other chefs had equally bad food, or at least, mediocre. You blew it on this one!!!!!!!

By the way, since others here have chosen to comment on your looks, I will also. I don't think you are good looking at all! Not in the least. But Fabio?! Now HE was HOT!!!!!!!!

Southern belle is right. When we heard Angelo try to overcompensate with salt n bacon we knew it was bad news. So sad though cuz he is amazing..

"Ambassadors of happy" is a brilliant turn of phrase. Well done, sir.

After all the times Angelo 'helped' someone only to see the person lose, Angelo's fate should come as no surprise. What goes around comes around. Reap what you sow. Do unto others. And all that jazz.

Go, spice-girl Tiffany! Beat everyone, even though it seems like they wanna hand it over to Dale. You can do it! And don't cry, girl. Those snooty judges don't know what in the hell they're talking about.

duh, of course it was a commercial for Target. That's what TV is. A showcase for advertisers. Like, when they're running around Whole Foods. Same thang.

YA GOTTA LOVE DANIELLE!

I do not like the Muppets.
Sorry.

Who cares about the food? Tom is a hottie.

Dear Tom,
Are you married? Wanna be?

Tiffany, we're here for you down in Big D. Represent! Hope you win it all.

At first I thought Antonia's presence on the show was a fluke. She didn't seem like much of a contender, plus she's not smart enough to tone down the "I was a pothead" personal history. But apparently she can cook. So, you go girl.

So Angelo's food was salty - so what! Carla should have gone home instead of Angelo. Her soup lacked key ingredients and it wasn't cooked long enough. I would LOVE to try Tiffany's jambalaya, Tony Chachere's and all. So what if she shook spices out of a container? "Has to be natural!" Please. They shopped in Target this time, not Whole Foods. All the judges oughtta go home.

Carla must have psyched herself out again judging by the amount of time she spent on the aesthetics and not the food. At some point, she should have just grabbed some pretty sheets for tables cloths and gone on.

I am not going on the band wagon and saying that using "pre-assembled" spice mix is an egregious excommunicative error. How you use it is key. By the disdain, show, essentially Colicchio et al are saying to stay away from the premixed spice blends of Flay, LaGasse, etc. How silly and elitist.

The best moment of the show was when Elmo said to Padma, "TMI."

This show more like Lucky Chef instead of Top Chef. If you really want to determine who the Top Chef is, they really need to change their elimination process and rules. I think that if a person is in the bottom 3 times, the third time they are in the bottom, they should be eliminated automatically. If there are 2 three timers in the bottom, then the worse of the 2 should go. This way, if a truly great chef like Angelo has 1 bad day after always being on top, then they won't get eliminated for it if there is someone who is on the bottom that has been there 3 times already.
Otherwise you cannot call it TOP chef! Just Top Competitor.