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The Quickfire Fondue judging starts with Richard Blais’s dish. Earlier, Padma had stated that she wanted meals to be better than the bananas and chocolate fondue from the 1970s. So, Richard has chosen to do…bananas and chocolate. He has done it the way that only Richard Blais can, though. Leaning heavily on his vaunted liquid nitrogen skills, Blais creates a Fondue that causes smoke to filter out of the mouth of the person eating, a cool effect that scares the daylights out of Padma. Richard calmly informs her, “Eating should be somewhat dangerous.” He is not going to win.

Padma regretfully informs Tiffany, Fabio and Mike that their Fondue will not make them the life of the Swingers party. She then humorously points out that Dale had Mike on the bottom (so, it’s THAT kind of a Swingers party) and asks him why. Dale cracks up over his being put on the spot like this, but doesn’t say anything nasty at the time, only indicating that the spice and the cheese did not blend well. Then, a clever edit shows Dale’s monologue of “I love Mike, but it was BAD, man. Blech.” Of course, Mike’s monologue is not more polite. “Dale put me at the bottom. Bleeping monkey.”

The top three dishes are Angelo, Dale and Antonia. Angelo’s presence is a true surprise since he tried too many components and had been criticized for it by the others. We can deduce from this that the winner will be either Dale or Antonia and in the end, the selection is Dale for his Pho Fondue, which he calls Phondue. This is noteworthy in that Dale had been tied with Richard with three individual wins each this season. Dale’s victory gives him his fourth victory of Top Chef All Stars, establishing him as the best overall performer thus far. The bad news for Dale is that immunity is no longer given to the Quickfire winner. He does receive a lovely mini-vacation to Napa Valley instead, but he is no safer than anyone else during the elimination challenge.

Rather than reveal the challenge immediately, Padma directs the contestants to NBC Studios. Once they arrive, they are herded to the set of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. All of them are asked to participate in a segment entitled Cellphone Shootout wherein they use a cellphone (natch) to take a picture from a rapidly changing series of images on a monitor. The item they capture in the photograph will be the main ingredient in their elimination challenge meal, which Fallon will judge as part of his birthday dinner celebration. He also reveals that the winner of this event will earn a cooking segment appearance on his show in the near future.

The first two people to play are Fabio and Antonia. He gets the good old fashioned hamburger, which he constantly pronounces as booger throughout the episode. Don’t you just love it when a chef makes his food sound as unsanitary and disgusting as possible? Speaking of disgusting, Antonia’s camera reveals beef tongue, a dish she has never prepared before. The highlight of the proceedings occurs when the always gleeful Carla states that she is hoping for Chicken Pot Pie, a meal she had been debating with Antonia and Tiffany the previous day. Right on cue, the cellphone shows that Carla will be making Chicken Pot Pie. Good things happen to good people. With regards to the other chefs, Angelo is assigned pulled pork, Richard is given Ramen (yikes!), Dale receives Philly Cheese Steak, Tiffany gets Chicken and Dumplings and Mike winds up with sausages and peppers. This should be a fascinating challenge as creative chefs are forced to cook routine dishes for people with unrefined palates.

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