Top Chef Las Vegas: Mattin Packs His Knives And Goes, Ashley Does Well

That is Tim Love. He was this week's guest judge on Top Chef Las Vegas. Tim Love owns the Lonesome Dove Western Bistro in my neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas.

For the Quickfire Challenge tonight, the viewers got to pick the ingredient. They had snake, cactus and I forget what else to choose from. The viewers chose cactus.

The chefs had a lot of cactus to choose from and 40 minutes to make a cactus dish. Most had never worked with cactus before. When they were done Tim Love picked one of the brothers, I think Bryan, as being one of the worst. He picked Michael Isabella as his favorite. He also liked Mattin's, which was funny, because Mattin made a big deal out of the fact that he'd never even touched a cactus before and had no idea how to cook one.

It was a High Stakes Quickfire, so Michael I. won $15,000, but no immunity from elimination.

The Elimination Challenge was not pretty. The chefs were told they'd be cooking outdoors for some ranch hands. That is about all they knew. They went to Whole Foods, spent a couple 100 bucks, then got brought to a ranch out in the Nevada desert where they learned just how primitive the cooking conditions were.

Four open fire pits, a small covered preparation area, a small chuckwagon type pantry. Their housing was in teepees. Their restroom facility an outhouse.

There seemed to be an editing effort to make Ashley Merriman more likable this episode. We saw her call her brother, a twin, to find out how his new baby was doing. She cried at the news. She told us cooking and living in primitive conditions, with an outhouse, was no big deal to her, that she'd grown up poor, raised by a single mom.

Previously, I really did not like Ashley at all. After this episode, I did. Like her, I mean.

I don't know how it was decided who was paired with whom in the teepees. But the brothers shared a teepee. It looked very uncomfortable to me. The teepees were small.

Next morning, after 10, the cooking began. Then the ranch hands and Padma and crew showed up. Then the eating began. As is always the case, some of it was liked, by judges and ranch hands, other stuff not so much.

I don't remember if it was Mattin's raw cod or Robin's rancid shrimp that Tom Colicchio had to get up and spit out.

Tim Love was funny making his comments about the various dishes. I don't recollect, right now, what he said that was funny, but I found him amusing.

In the end, back at Judges' Table, they liked the 2 brothers Voltaggio, Ashley & Laurine, the best. Ashley was very happy to be at the top for a change. Tim Love picked the older brother, Bryan as the best. Later, in a confessional, Bryan bragged about winning each tme he is up against his brother. And then let out the weirdest, sort of chilling, odd little laugh. I had to replay it 3 times.

For the worst, Ashley was told to send in Mattin Noblia, Robin Leventhal and Ron Duprat. From what we'd already heard we knew they did not dislike Ron's coconut mistake as much as the mistakes of Mattin and Robin. In the end, it was Mattin who got sent home. It is the kiss of death when you say you do not think your dish had a problem. Apparently Mattin's fish was raw and he thought it was good to go. Robin knew her shrimp was not a good thing.

All in all, a very fun episode of Top Chef. Though, I'm not happy to see Mattin go. I found the little Frenchie amusing.