• Kale
  Kale, smoked, egg on top, and bacon. Bacon? How can bacon be a trend when it is made from love and deliciousness?

• An Egg On Top
  There’s a raw duck egg (which maybe is undercooked), a scotch egg, a soft boiled egg with chili flakes, and a rice congee with shirred egg.

• Smoked
  Smoked chile over tuna tataki, cold-smoked oysters, roasted pork loin with smoked apples, and smoked trout.

• Bacon
  Bacon! Seared tuna in bacon fat, bacon with scallop (booooring!), bacon and scallops in pho (still booooring!), halibut with crispy bacon vinaigrette, and pasta with candied bacon.

Ugh, Kale. Kale with toasted garlic, kale with anchovies and something else, fried kale with soy, and kale juice and gazpacho with kale salad.

The winner is Shirley with her egg dish (the rice congee with shirred egg). Then Aaron gets booted out of the competition with his overdressed kale. It’s not you, Aaron, it’s the kale.

And there’s another Elimination Challenge. The chefs will cook at Commander’s Palace. The challenge is to recreate some of the restaurant’s dishes:

• Shrimp and Tasso

• Seared Trout

• Emeril’s Veal Chop

• A Strawberry Trio

After tasting the above dishes, the chefs work in groups of three or four to recreate what they’ve only tasted once. They begin their prep with a chef from Commander’s Palace hovering in the background. In other words, it’s a little tense in the kitchen.

Nina accidentally grabbed Michael’s plates and began plating her dish, so instead of using Nina’s plates, Michael dumped Nina’s food on the floor. Very mature. Someone stole Shirley’s yellow beets, and Brian thinks he took them by accident. There’s a lot of chaos, but food somehow gets on the plate.

First up is the shrimp dish, and it’s amazing how close the dishes look, yet each of the four versions are off in different ways. The seared trout is served next. There’s a lot of underseasoned dishes, and some poorly cooked trout. Mmm…veal chops…..some are well cooked, others are overcooked, there’s one with no sear, and the great sin of raw sprouts. Finally, strawberries with strawberries and strawberries. There are some yummy looking biscuits and beignets on those plates, and the judges are beyond pleased.

Justin’s beignets are a huge hit (which is no surprise since he’s a local chef). Michael’s shrimp was overcooked, and Brett missed the grill marks on his veal. Louis’s entire dish was underseasoned, and Carlos’s fish was burned and underseasoned.

Stephanie, Nina, and Justin are called to the Judge’s Table because their dishes came closest to the Commander’s Palace originals. Justin gets the win and he’s “super stoked” which is like regular stoked with an extra scissor kick. The worst dishes are from Louis, Carlos, and Brett. Louis didn’t even taste his food and all of Brett’s veal was overcooked. Brett uses the excuse that he was the last one to use the grill so it was way too hot. Excuses, excuses. Please pack your knives and go, Brett.

Next week, the chefs go shrimping and get a lesson in Vietnamese cuisine.