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Apparently, the producers of Top Chef have attempted to replace Gail – wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, sexy Gail – with the culinary equivalent of Simon Cowell.

Unfortunately, the rest of the dishes are not very good either. Hosea's halibut is good but the veggies are much better than the fish ("Like an accomplished British actor being cast in a supporting role and upstaging the American lead actors," says Toby). Jeff admires the plating of Eugene's fish but the daikon is cold and the fish is overcooked ("The bland leading the bland," says Toby). Melissa's fish tacos are too fishy and Toby concludes that the chef must not be very confident. The only shining light in this group is Jaime's scallops, which are exquisite.

At first, after hearing what the other contestants had to say, I thought that they were being pretty darned mean about the entire thing...but the more I thought about it, neither they nor the judges had any clue as to which chef made which dish, so it's not as if they could sabotage one chef. They had to just be honest about what they ate and tasted.

And of course, Team B didn't even know that Team A was listening in on what they said about the food. What an exciting reveal that will be. To paraphrase Andrew from last season, I have a culinary boner right now.

Team B heads into the kitchen and gets started. Jeff seems to like to make sorbet-type ingredients for his dishes – he made a tomato sorbet two challenges ago, he made a frozen yogurt for this episode's Quickfire challenge and for the Elimination challenge, he's making avocado sorbet. Stefan is making duck with braised cabbage, Ariane is making skate wing fish, Carla with her scallop, Leah is making fried fish but using bread instead of the skin of the fish...lots of interesting stuff going on here, definitely more so than Team A.

As the judges and Team A sit down to begin their meal, Team B heads back to the kitchen where they find out that they can watch the dinner and review the diners' reactions as the meal unfolds. They are shocked by the idea of hearing their criticisms live but also as the idea that their teammates heard everything they had to say. "Did they watch us?" Leah asks in horror. Yes. Yes, they did.

Dinner begins and immediately Radhika dumps on Stefan's dumplings as being too dense. "She knows it's me," he concludes, secure in the knowledge that Radhika would want to see him gone. Despite her feelings about the dumplings, the judges love the dish with Tom amazed by the amount of flavor in the cabbage.

Eugene likes Jeff's tapas trio but thinks that there's too much going on. This from Eugene? The kind of "too much going on"? Wow. Talk about the kettle calling the pot black. The judges are split on Jeff's dish. Tom hates it, saying that it's not even a dish. Toby loves it, comparing the somewhat strange inclusion of the sorbet to Tom Cruise's cameo in Tropic Thunder.

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