Top Chef Masters: Anita Lo Goes Home

Anita Lo had to pack her knives and leave on the latest episode of Top Chef Masters. That leaves Michael Chiarello, Rick Bayless and Hubert Keller still cooking.

This was one tough Top Chef Masters episode. The Quickfire Challenge was the classic blindfold tasting challenge. All four had trouble figuring out what they were tasting.

Ironically Mexican food expert, Bayless got mangoes wrong, while Asian food expert, Lo, did not recognize hoisin sauce. In the end, Michael got 7 correct, which got him 5 stars. Rick and Anita were tied at 6, so they got 4 stars. Hubert did the worst and got 3.5 stars, if I'm remembering right.

For the Elimination Challenge they each had $2,000 to buy the food to cook a buffet for 200 people.

To help with the cooking in walked favorite Top Chefs from past seasons, like Dale Tilde, Brian Malarkey and Jamie Lauren, who soon let it be known that "no one wants to work with Chiarello."

The 4 Master Chefs got 2 minutes to interview the past Top Chefs. Chiarello barked orders, testing them on how fast they could chop carrots and if they could pronounce his name correctly. None of the chefs were liking Chiarello. When it was Spike's turn to be interviewed he purposefully refused to chop carrots and instead acted like a jerk so that he would not get picked. That was pretty funny.

Adding all those former Top Chefs to the mix totally altered the show. All the episodes previous have been interpersonal drama free. This week's episode had a lot of drama and shouting. The best was between short, little Dale and, again, Chiarello, who was upset because Dale had put food in what Chiarello thought was his fridge. Dale got quite aggressively shouting in Chiarello's face. Chiarello stayed sort of calm during the diatribe.

The prepping was well underway when in walked Kelly Choi who tells them they must pack up all their food and move to a new location. Classic Top Chef twist. Then they get to the new location to learn that they will be setting up their buffets, outdoors, with no protection from the sun. Oh, and they must each lose one helper.

The sun wreaked havoc with Anita's raw seafood bar. But she could not think of a way to fix it. The critics did like her pork ribs, but not much else.

Rick Bayless got raves for his Mexican buffet, particularly his avocado ice cream made by Richard Blais.

The judges did not like Chiarello's food, particularly complaining about his bad swordfish and bad olive oil cake. His cuisine was something called Rustic Italian. It did not look good to me.

Hubert Keller had 18 items on his buffet. The judges heaped praise. In the end he won the challenge, with Bayless close behind. Then it was between Anita and Michael. I wanted Michael to get sent home. But he ended up with more stars than Anita.

It was interesting watching how the 4 Master Chefs handled their help. Three of them were acting sort of like mentors, and they got good cooperation. The other one, Chiarello, was a total boss, he barked orders and his helpers helped. But not too happily.

Tom Colicchio, Padma, Gail Simmons and the winner of season one, Harold Dieterle judge the finale. I hope that means we lose James Oseland and Jay Rayner. But I wouldn't mind if that old squeeze of Elvis, Gael Greene was there judging next week.