Filed under: Television/Film

The annoying thing about starting up a new season of a show like Bravo's Top Chef is that you have to learn all about a whole new cast of characters. It is fun to watch fifteen new contestants - three more than last season - compete in the various challenges, but it is awfully hard to keep track of them all as the show finds its stride and you don't get invested in the characters until the cast has been narrowed down a bit.

That being said, the cast seems like a fairly talented bunch this time around according to their credentials. But that can all change once they move into the Los Angeles loft that they share and get in front of the cameras in the kitchen.

The first challenge this season was the quickfire challenge, where the contestants compete for immunity in a short, timed task. The chefs had to create a flambé dish in 20 minutes, which was a tricky proposition for the few who had never before flambéed. After a brief, frantic rush around the kitchen, all the dishes were finished and presented to the judges. The guest judge from this round was none other than Harold Dieterle, the winner of the first season of the show (Sidebar: Harold is currently in the process of opening his own NY restaurant, Perilla). He chose the best dishes as those belonging to Betty - a coconut curry with steamed mussels - and Sam - shrimp in espresso/sambucca sauce. Sam ended up with immunity.

After a night of drinking up at the loft, the contestants headed down for the elimination challenge. Here, the group was split into two teams: orange and black. The members of each team were to cook individually, but using the same ingredients, and have their dishes evaluated by their competitors and the judges.

The orange team had to work with: processed cheese, snails, artichokes, peanuts and potatoes. Unsurprisingly, the cheese was a stumbling block for many of the chefs. The black team fared a little better with their ingredients: frog legs, chicken liver, eggplant, peanut butter and cornflakes. Their main problem was that few of the chefs had cooked frog legs, so just about everyone fried them for lack of any better ideas.

You can find all the recipes for escargot and frogs' legs here if you're interested in trying them yourself, but we'll just cut to the chase here. The winner was Ilan, from the orange team, with his dish of baked escargot in the shell, in spite of the fact that he had never before cooked snails.

The bottom four contestants were Otto, a cooking school instructor whose food was flavorless and poorly cooked; Carlos, a four-star chef who had the same problems as Otto; Marcel, whose dish was well executed but had a personality that the other contestants found abrasive; and Sujai, whose nerves got the better of her. Since Sujai's dish was so bad that the judges quite literally found it hard to swallow, she was asked to pack her knives and go.

For some more blogging about the episode, check out Tom's blog, Gail's blog, Padma's blog and, from season 1, blogs from Harold and LeeAnne. Otherwise, stay tuned for next week's episode, where we'll see some more drama and get to know the players a little bit better.