Photos screenshoted from Bravo

The above picture is sort of representative of Top Chef cheftestants Stephanie and Dale — Stephanie always looks like she’s smiling, while Dale is either grimacing, swearing, or yelling at someone. I’m pretty sure he’s playing around up there, but whatever.

Really, I’m just happy Dale won the elimination challenge. Because I’m tired of his whining. Sure, he’s Filipino, and I should be rooting for him…but dang. Get the man some cheese for his whine.

Anyway, here’s my quick recap — Quickfire challenge was to create a new salad, along the lines of well-known salads like the Cobb salad, Spike wins. He doesn’t get immunity, but gets an advantage in the next challenge. What could that be? Creating healthy, low-sugar, low-carb box meals for Chicago cops in training. Spike’s advantage is he gets 10 extra minutes to shop, plus gets first crack at ingredients from four main groups (protein, whole grain, vegetable and fruit) that no one else can use. Instead of planning a good, healthy dish, he selects his ingredients in order to cockblock his competition. Maybe we can call it Spikeblock from now on. Anyway, Dale and Stephanie come out on top, with Dale taking home the prize — a bottle of wine and tickets to wine country. Spike, Andrew and Lisa are on the bottom for an unimaginative chicken salad, an inexplicably small sushi roll and undercooked rice and shrimp, respectively. Lisa calls out Andrew for forgetting to include a whole grain in his dish, Andrew goes home (but not necessarily because of Lisa).

Stuff that cracked me up — Antonia getting all giggity about the guest judge, Sam Talbot (who I really didn’t find to be that cute); Lisa whining that someone sabotaged her rice; an apparent joke by Padma that I completely missed; Lisa’s 7-alarm spicy sauce that made Chef Colicchio nearly combust. I can’t remember what else.

But I do love this Top Chef drinking game from MetroMix Chicago:

Rule No. 1: Drink every time Lisa curses.

Rule No. 2: Drink every time a Glad product appears on screen. Chug for the first five seconds of any Glad commercial.

Rule No. 3: Drink every time Dale lashes out, directly or indirectly.

Rule No. 4: Chug for five seconds any time someone says “threw me under the bus” or similar.

Rule No. 5: Drink for every tight shot/zoom of a GE Monogram logo.

I love it.

The other thing I wanted to make note of is that I really dislike Spike now. Out of the cheftestants in Episode 10, I dislike Spike and Lisa the most. At least Lisa is plain about her rancor, but Spike tries to make like he’s the friendly neighborhood stoner, but then Spikeblocks everyone at the market just because he can. One thing I’ve learned about competition (and not from Reality TV competitions) is that a person’s true colors come out when they are competing. That Blaise, Stephanie and Antonia haven’t stooped to the levels that we’ve seen from Spike, Lisa or Dale is a testament to what they’re really like in person.

I really think it could be Blaise, Dale and Stephanie as the last three, but Antonia is a wildcard. We’ll see!