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Over on Katie’s team, Keriann is designated as the front of the house person. The chefs engage in a variety of sexist-sounding justifications- Katsuji describes her as “cute” and praises her “warmth” - but I’m thinking they have a more sound basis for the decision: they don’t want her anywhere near the kitchen. Katie ends up as her team’s executive chef. I’m surprised. Given how Greg took over his team in the It’s War challenge, I would have thought he’d want the position. Greg anticipates our surprise - he says he wants to play it safe this time (presumably after royally messing up the goose in the last challenge) and is happy to take a backseat.

The two teams discuss their strategies before heading off to shop. Doug wants his team to serve food family style. Adam is high-strung, hyper, and skeptical. He’s not sure that he, as the front of the house person tasked with keeping service smooth, will benefit from family-style service.

Meanwhile, on Katie’s team, the cheftestants are quickly realizing that they all are trained in different culinary styles. They decide to embrace this hodgepodge and take an “international” culinary approach. I call it “wimping out.”

Shopping begins with décor for the restaurants and along the way, Melissa spots four cute-but-large piggy banks. Her team decides to adopt the pigs as the emblems for their restaurant. Henceforth, their restaurant shall be known as 4 Pigs.

Half of the cheftestants head off to buy ingredients at Whole Foods, while the other half head to Restaurant Depot for kitchenware and bulk goods. Doug expresses his surprise that Greg didn’t step up like he did and offer to serve as executive chef. He thinks Katie is weak. Obviously, he hasn’t been reading my Top Chef Power Rankings.

The cooking starts with little aplomb. Katsuji notes in passing his surprise that Keriann, who’s making a vanilla crêpe with burnt banana mousse, is preparing her crêpes in advance. In his experience (and mine), crêpes are made to order. Though he knows he’ll have time tomorrow to make Keriann’s crêpes to order for her, he doesn’t offer. He says he’s only thinking of himself and doesn’t want to risk going home.

I can’t say I blame him. Though the judges do have a tendency in group challenges - and in Restaurant Wars in particular - of pressing fellow chefs why they didn’t help out a struggling chef or warn against obvious mistakes, those chefs are rarely the ones eliminated. It may be true that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing; however, those good men don’t usually get sent home. The evil ones do.

The chefs head off to their respective spaces to finish prepping their dishes, decorating the dining areas, and training the wait staff. Adam spent all afternoon shucking and cleaning clam shells for use as the vehicle for his appetizer (stuffed clam shells) but after sending them through the restaurant’s dishwasher and handing them off to one of the workers on duty to send them through two more times, they’ve somehow disappeared. Doug and Adam run around the kitchen in a panic, trying to find the cleaned shells, but to no avail. Adam glumly re-shucks and re-cleans 150 new clams and then speeds off to train his wait staff.

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