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The two chefs on the bottom of the challenge are Carl and Amar, who’ll have to fight for their culinary lives. Of course, the loser will go on to… fight for his culinary life in Last Chance Kitchen. But enough recursion. Let’s cook! Carl and Amar will have another 30 minutes to cook whatever they want, with no restrictions. The loser packs his knives and goes home. Err, to Last Chance Kitchen.

Carl immediately sets to work making A *#@$ING CRUDO. ANTOHER $#@&ING CRUDO. Jeebus. There was a time where every damn person on Top Chef was cooking scallops, leading to the infamous comment by Fabio that “this is Top Chef, not Top Scallop.” Apparently, this is the year of the crudo.

Amar, on the other hand, is not doing a crudo. He has incorporated Asian flavors in putting together a pan-roasted sea bream with watermelon radish, plum yuzu brown butter, and pickled mushrooms. It’s quite a beautiful plate.

Meanwhile, Carl has his Thai snapper crudo with corn, nectarine, chili, yellow tomato, and rice wine vinegar. “Another crudo, huh?” Padma comments. “I’ve only made one this season!” Carl protests.

The judging panel will feature not only Padma and Traci, but also Tom for this Sudden Death Quickfire. Each judge will get one vote, and the chef with two votes will stay in the competition.

Despite the fact that he cooked a crudo, Padma thinks he cooked a winning one. She loved the heat from the chili and the sheer amount of flavor packed into the dish. Tom, on the other hand, thinks that Amar did a better job making his fish the star of his dish. Carl’s was more about the sauce and vegetables.

It comes down to Traci. She found Amar’s dish well-composed, but wanted more of the watermelon radish, which she found to be the centerpiece of the dish. Carl, she thinks, played it a little safer, though the combination of ingredients was delicious. She goes with Carl.

Oh, thank God! Carl is a welcome, sunny, dorky, and adorkable presence on the show. Not to mention… he’s quite an attractive man. Amar is undeniably talented, but I’m happy Carl will be sticking around.

At least for now, because it’s time for the Elimination Challenge, which will take place in the legendary San Francisco restaurant, Fleur de Lys, from Hubert Keller, which also hosted the very first Top Chef Quickfire Challenge in 2006 (a bit of a trivia: Lee Anne Wong, who just missed out on making the Season 1 finale and who worked as a culinary consultant for Top Chef for many years, won that challenge).

Fleur de Lys closed its doors for good last summer, and our four almost-finalists will deliver one more (hopefully) spectacular dinner for a group of acclaimed restaurateurs and uber-critics.

The chefs settle down and start poring over past Fleur de Lys menus. One dish calls out to Carl: a foie gras torchon. Carl really wants to do his version of the foie gras torchon and starts talking animatedly about it out loud to the other chefs, trying to justify a decision to go that route. The other chefs understand his trepidation. It would require Carl to complete in three hours a dish that typically takes three days to make. And yet Carl is set - it’s foie gras torchon or bust.

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