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The next pair of interviews represent the opposite ends of the confidence spectrum on this season of Top Chef. Bret Pelaggi’s current professional title is house husband. His place of employment suddenly shut down and he had not found other employment by the time of casting this season. Bret is clearly defensive about his job status, and he seems insecure about his placement among the talented cast members as well.

Conversely, Jason Cichonski loves everything about being Jason Cichonski. He is in the business of Jason Cichonski, and business is good. Somewhere in the middle between their levels of confidence is where the rest of humanity is situated.

After the final 15 minutes of preparation in the kitchen, Leah Chase arrives. She is greeted with a standing ovation from a room full of deeply impressed chefs. The kindly 90-year-old goes out of her way to say something positive about each meal placed before her. Not all of the chefs are shown, though, so there is no way to tell whose dishes are the best/worst. It is the problem of having 18 competitors remaining in an hour long show.

When Leah announces her choices for worst meal, she is equally helpful. Jason Luvs Jason used beets in his meal, and the nonagenarian would have preferred making the beets into borscht. I would wryly note that even at 90, Leah still took a moment to appreciate how attractive Jason is, though. Michael also finishes on the bottom, which is unsurprising given that he was the only who had to restart. The final member of the bottom group is Patty, who seems to be the worst chef in the group, at least so far. I suspect she needs to borrow some of Jason’s confidence if she is to advance far into the game.

The top group includes Aaron, who definitely needed some good news after his performance in the prior challenge. Carrie and Shirley join him. They seem like two of the best chefs this season, at least thus far. From Leah’s reaction, I expect Shirley to win but Carrie’s dish reminds the elderly woman of one of her own recipes. That is enough to earn her the win. Overall, either all of the chefs did very well or Leah is simply too gentle a soul to criticize much. Or maybe it’s both.

After the Quickfire is decided, chef Susan Spicer of Bayona Restaurant in New Orleans arrives. She provides the details of one of the most well intended challenges in the history of Top Chef. As everyone knows, the city was decimated by Hurricane Katrina. Housing projects will be ongoing for decades to come. Many of the people handling construction are volunteers from Habit for Humanity. The elimination challenge requires groups of Top Chef contestants to build menus for food trucks. They will then drive to a series of building projects to provide sustenance for the charitable builders. Everything about this idea is wonderful. Well done, Top Chef producers.

“We were so happy to see a food truck. We were so happy to see any kind of truck with food because we had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Katrina took everything I had, really. You gotta know I was 83-years-old then and people say ‘You should quit.’ I dunno. The Pope quit. But I have to keep going because there’s a lot of work to do in this city.” – Leah Chase, heroine of New Orleans

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