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The boys are confident that they are the heavy favorites and that their pork dish is a complex, impeccable dish the women cannot hope to match. The women choose to do a seared beef tenderloin salad and it does seem to be going quite well. This is the only reason why I am not surprised when Garcia indicates that the women have pulled off the upset. Richard is upset by this. He describes the women’s preparations as “slice and serve”. This is twice in three episodes that he has disparaged the competition right before that food beats his. Antonia goes on to describe the behavior of the fellas after the results are announced as “sour grapes, salty losers”. She’s not wrong. Their smirks shriek of “can you believe the judges got this so wrong”. They also do not congratulate the women for their victory. Also, Tiffany now has *two* more wins than you, the reader. You’re never going to catch her at this pace.

As the winners bask in the warm glow of triumph and the men sulk over the incompetence of the judges, Padma tells them that the elimination challenge will be a high society endeavor. The chefs will be taken to a deserted island location and asked to use the appliances there to create a meal befitting the 80th anniversary of the prestigious Nassau Yacht Club. The dishes will also feature conch, a signature ingredient in the area according to Mike Isabella. It sounds truly disgusting to me, but so does most fish.

Pardon me for a moment.

PADMA IN A BIKINI!!!

I apologize for that momentary lapse in focus. I had to laugh at how proud she was of her look, though. She has clearly lost all of the baby weight and made sure to pick out the perfect sarong and high heels to accentuate all 5’9” of her. At 40-years-old and less than a year after giving birth, she is putting Megan Fox’s bikini body to shame.

Back to the challenge. The catch is one the chefs do not realize until they arrive at their destination. While several ingredients are contained in various storage crates on the beach, conch is not in any of them. Yes, they have to snorkel and spear for their supper, which makes me feel like I’ve just morphed this into a Survivor recap. This isn’t a fun segment to watch as a couple…okay, most of the chefs are not strong swimmers. Only Tiffany, who has never snorkeled before, feels like a champion fisherman worthy of her own Outdoor Channel program. Richard…well, let’s just say that I’m happy Richard survived. He even acknowledges that he had to let the best conch he saw remain in the ocean because it was a bit too deep for his relative swimming skill. Suffice to say that if there had been an undertow that day, Flip Burger Boutique would be under new management right now.

Kim Hollis, Jason Lee and I all work hard to be fair with our praise/criticism of the various challenges of the show. We all agree that there are times when Top Chef tries too hard to create difficulty for the chefs, preventing them from establishing who the best performer is on a given day. Just last week, Carla was sent home primarily because of a faulty appliance, which led to unevenly cooked meat. Yes, chefs should be able to adapt to a degree, but this is Top Chef All-Stars. We’d like to know who is worthy of the title. In the case of Carla, she had been a top performer all season, yet she went home due to something that was no fault of her own. She knew the issue and saved most of the food, but she was unlucky in that two of the judges were served the undercooked food.

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