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Our chefs over on Abbott Kinney arrive at a restaurant called Seed Garden. As the name implies, these chefs will be cooking vegan food. Phillip is thrilled, as his wife is both an actress and a model, and she often eats vegan. OF COURSE, YOU HIPSTER CHEF. Meanwhile, Grayson is doing her best impression of the annoying character from every horror movie ever who’s inevitably the first one to get killed. “God put animals on this earth to eat,” she complains. “I can make vegan food, but I’m not happy about it.”

As a side note, I am utterly bewildered why Grayson decided to do Top Chef again. If all she wanted to do was to cook her own food, unencumbered by silly rules and restrictions put in place by the show, then she should have stayed in New York City and cooked at her restaurant.

Finally, team Wes-Chad-Kwame-Jeremy arrives at Olvera Street in Los Angeles, which leads my husband immediately to comment, “they’re cooking Mexican.” He’s right. At the restaurant Broken Spanish (which, incidentally, is a GREAT name for a Mexican restaurant), the cheftestants waive off any advice or suggestions that the owner has to offer. They know how to cook Mexican food, thank you very much.

Armed with the knowledge of which cuisine they’ll be cooking, the chefs start shopping. Isaac starts by buying a bunch of spices he sees on sale at the Persian market, reasoning that “if they sell these spices here, they should go with Persian food, right?” Grayson, careens from channeling a woe-is-me Eeyore to Oscar the grouch when she finds out that the wax beans she wanted to use for her dish are nowhere to be found in Whole Foods.

Finally, over at the Korean market, Karen is busily accosting all the marketgoers she can find. “Hi, are you Korean? Do you cook Korean hot wings? How do you make them? Do you fry them or bake them? What spices do you use?” Karen is certainly showing that she’s #topchef material on this episode.

The eating is about to start, and surprise, surprise, in an episode featuring the diverse, ethnic neighborhoods across Los Angeles, our judges are stuck in traffic. Classic. They head over to Team Persia first, in Westwood, and order up five of everything.

Amar offers grilled carrots with cauliflower hummus; Ludo loves the carrot flavor. Angelina has a fennel and coriander-crusted chicken with lemon confit. Tom finds the protein well cooked but lacking salt. Isaac gives them lamb kofta with smoked eggplant, which Tom and Padma love. Finally, Marjorie (who appears to really have been running the show there), serves a yogurt mousse with a pistachio sponge cake. Ludo goes gaga over it. Tom declares that he likes “everything about the dessert.” Gail comments on how well the team did as a whole, and Ludo notes that all the chefs appear very happy. The praise continues back in the car, with Padma noting that their meal was “surprisingly good.”

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