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To paraphrase Garret: barf.

The diners arrive and the judges start sampling. I won’t bore you with a recitation of the 17 different dishes that are offered up. Suffice to say that I cheered when Tom and Padma came over to sample Garret’s Vietnamese chicken brodo and responded by criticizing his noodles (“They’re broken or overdone,” said Padma) and garlic (“What happened to them? They’re burnt,” said Tom).

#karma

The critics end up placing Isaac (Shrimp Court-Bouillon), Amar (sherry-glazed pork belly meatballs), Jeremy (crudo of pacific snapper), Carl (spiced carrot soup), and Kwame (spicy romaine with shrimp and pork) in the top five. The judges agree with some (Carl and Jeremy) and disagree on others (Padma wouldn’t put Kwame in the top five “at all”).

On the bottom are Angelina (mushy goat cheese croquette), Renee (marinated pork loin that lacked seasoning), Grayson (boring pork and veal meatballs), Garret (broken noodles/burnt garlic), and Frances (mung bean soup with bitter melon).

Back in the stew room, hipster Phillip is bragging about all the food critics and bloggers he was able to recognize on sight. Massive eye rolling from the other chefs commences. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s already irritated by him.

Padma calls the chefs out to Judges Table, and Tom opens by hailing the fact that apart from minor issues, no single dish stood out as God awful as happens “a lot the first round.” Announced as the judge’s top three (of the critics’ top five) are Amar, Jeremy, and Carl. Gail praises Amar’s meatballs as anything but ordinary, Padma loved the balance of carrot and spices in Carl’s soup, and Tom thought Jeremy made a delicious version of a predictable dish.

Emeril, as a side note, comments on how organized Jeremy’s station was. “There are others who should take note,” Padma muses pointedly. The cameraman immediately shoots a close-up of Wes, who doesn’t look nearly as ashamed as he should.

The winning dish, Emeril says, stood out as one that deftly combined strong, clean flavors. I assume he’s talking about Carl and his carrot soup, but Jeremy with his snapper crudo takes home the prize. I don’t feel like I have a great gauge on his skills, but if history is any indicator, Jeremy now has a great shot to make it very far on the show.

On the opposite side of things, with Rene and Frances immune from elimination, the bottom three are made up of Angelina (the young’un), Grayson (the alum), and Garret (the asshat). Gail chides Angelina for not doing a dish that tried in some way to push the envelope (guess a croquette doesn’t qualify as cutting edge?). Garret, despite his attempts to weasel out of the fact that Emeril/Gail got a tasty version of his dish while Tom/Padma got a soggy noodle/burnt garlic version, gets slammed for inconsistency.

Finally, Padma turns to Grayson and says, “it can’t feel good to be standing up here.” I feel bad for Grayson. She looks at the judges and says, “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy my dish.” The entire table erupts with protestations from the judges. I’m very surprised. Tom says that the critics were the ones who put her in the bottom of the challenge, and Gail explains that Grayson just didn’t do enough to make her dish interesting. “It could have come from any Italian restaurant in the country,” she says. Emeril, saying he’s going to “cut through the bullshit,” admits that he had higher expectations for her.

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