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After the Quickfire Challenge, the players are asked to hang out at the bar and wait. Drinks are on Tom Colicchio, which means that another competition is probably in the offing. Anyone stupid enough to get drunk is probably going to wind up voted off tonight. As the chefs hang out and socialize, R&B legend Patti Labelle makes a surprise appearance to serenade them with Lady Marmalade. This leads me to expect a marmalade elimination challenge of some sort. Alas, that’s not the case.

Tonight’s challenge is always one of the best each season. The players are asked to recreate a favorite dish of their youth, thereby paying tribute to their families while demonstrating how they fell in love with cooking. The underlying element is to modernize rather than duplicate their childhood comfort food. Challenges like this are a great way to allow the viewer to understand and more easily identify with the participants. In addition, the greatest triumph in the show’s history, the Top Chef All Stars meal where no food was worthy of elimination, provided a similar theme. There are always high expectations for such challenges but the free form nature of them means that dishes rarely go awry.

Emeril Lagasse, Ms. Labelle and two of her musicians are the judges for the evening. The first two chefs to present dishes are Moto Chris and Heather. The inspiration for Chris is his grandmother, Mommy Two, who made steak and potatoes every Friday night. The dish is a lemon-pepper steak with baked potato and vegetables. Heather’s inspiration is her mom, who was “the queen of one pot meals”. I figured that she would take more inspiration from her father by providing a table full of sacrificed virgins bathed in the blood of the unholy, but instead she creates beef stroganoff with herb spaetzle and roasted wild mushrooms.

By the judges’ reactions, I believe that cannibalistic virgin stroganoff would have been more popular. Patti Labelle wins my eternal love by describing the mystery meat Heather used as “Bigfoot." There is quick consent that Chris’ dish is adequate but not much more. Given the reception to Heather’s dish, however, he may as well have won a James Beard Award. While I cannot stand Heather and have made that abundantly clear in these recaps, even if my favorite chef ever (I love you on The Chew, Carla!) had made this dish, I would accept that she was probably going home. Heather needs for someone else to screw up worse if she is to survive this elimination round.

Paul describes the manner in which his grandmother taught him to cook. This makes me wonder if granny is going to get her taste of the $30,000. Then again, given Paul’s revelation earlier in the season that he used to be a drug dealer, if granny hasn’t gotten a cut by now, she’s out of luck. Paul’s quail adobo and ginger rice with green mango salsa would have worked just as well last week during the game challenge.

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