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Josie, who is still in the competition for reasons passing understanding, prepares Malbec braised short ribs, pork belly and polenta with cippolini onions & figs. There is no polite way to say this. This dish looks un-flushable. After a warm welcome from former mentor Rick Mooney, John Tesar presents seafood chowder with cockles, manila clams, crab, mussels & sockeye salmon. The chowder looks gorgeous.

The judges universally agree that the tomato bacon jam is great but the meat is sliced too thin. This caused it to cook unevenly. Joshua is predictably slammed for the size of his portions. Like Grayson last season, he suffers unfairly from the judges’ prejudice against large amounts of meat. Virtually nothing is said of Josie’s dish, which is fitting for such a blasé competitor. By far the most popular dish of this course if Tesar’s chowder. Moonen’s praise comes across as a bit masturbatory since it’s a plan on his recipe. Still, this is preferable to Tesar failing to produce chowder that his teacher respects.

The top group this week is easy to guess. John, Sheldon, Brooke and Kristen are rewarded with glowing praise for their dishes. The judges seem pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of the meal, presumably due to the lowered expectations due to the prior challenge’s food. In the end, Brooke is rewarded for taking a risk at the perfect time, the moment when she had immunity. She receives a Toyota Prius as a prize. The bad news for Brooke is that the last two times someone did this well on multiple challenges in the same episode, they went home the following episode.

The bottom group consists of Joshua, Eliza, Danyele and Micah. Okay, so they could send four people to Judges Table. Fortunately for Lizzie, she was not one of them. Poor Josh needs to stop cooking pork. In fact, Padma pointedly tells him to stop saying that pork is his specialty. Micah is then criticized for his style while Danyele’s fear becomes a topic of conversation. The judges know she is intimidated by her surroundings and that this insecurity is preventing her from performing well.

In the end, there is an obvious choice, though. Eliza knew that her meat was cooking poorly and she second-guessed how to slice it. She presented a dish that did not look appetizing. While her mistakes were not major, the accumulation of them led to a mediocre plate of food during a challenge when most of her competitors excelled. I suspect Eliza is a fine chef but she clearly deserved to be eliminated tonight.

The news goes from bad to worse for Eliza at Last Chance Kitchen. CJ and Tyler split, leading to a three-way showdown to remain alive in the competition. Yet again, CJ shows that his newfound bravado is at least somewhat based in fact as he defeats his former teammate as well as Eliza to become the reigning Last Chance Kitchen champion. So CJ is down to about seven correct coin flip guesses needed to return for the finale. See, CJ? Tails never fails!

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