VegasChatter

Room Service, Please
If you didn't know there are over 7,000 hotel rooms in Las Vegas and most of them offer in-suite dining, including The Venetian which is where Padma and Nigella are calling from. (We're guessing they didn't have to put up with the long wait time on the phone that we usually get when we call room service in Vegas.)

The premise for the Quickfire Challenge is this: Nigella has just flown in from overseas and wants breakfast in bed. The chefs must create a dish and personally serve it to them in 30 minutes using anything they can find in one of the small kitchens in the bowels of the hotel.

Robin and Jennifer deliver the most unappetizing dishes. Robin has a half-blintz and Jennifer admittedly serves Shit on a Shingle aka creamed chipped beef. Bryan, who is a talented chef, musses up his four-minute egg with king crab and asparagus by adding a vanilla scent. As Nigella said, you smell dessert, but you taste breakfast. Very off-putting or so we would imagine if we had Smell-e-vision.

The standout here is Eli and his reueben benedict so he wins the Quickfire Challenge. He doesn't get immunity but he gets his recipe into the Top Chef Quickfire Challenge cookbook.

Cooking Up in Vegas
Right after the room service challenge is over, we get another Vegas-themed challenge--create a dish inspired by a Vegas casino. Hot dog! Now we're finally getting some Vegas love here. The chefs draw knives and it shakes out like this:

Robin: Bellagio
Jennifer: Excalibur
Kevin: The Mirage
Michael: New York, New York
Bryan: Mandalay Bay
Eli: Circus Circus.

The dishes will all be served to 175 people at the World Market Center in downtown on the rooftop. So these inspired "dishes" are actually tiny, tiny plates.

How did they do? Well, Robin delivers a panna cotta dish with sugar pieces inspired by the Dale Chiluly sculptures except the sugar bits were missing because once again, Robin cannot execute her ambitious vision. She also apparently can't make panna cotta because the judges complain it has too much gelatin.

Jennifer delivers a Sword and a Stone dish inspired by Excalibur with New York strip steak that prompts Nigella to say she actually needs Excalibur to cut it. D'oh.

Kevin serves a wild alaskan sockeye salmon which everyone loves (as usual.) Bryan puts together a fancy halibut that "tastes really professional", according to Toby Young. Michael creates a boneless chicken wing with a disc of blue cheese that the judges all love and even though Toby says Michael's food is effeminate, it's meant to be a compliment.

Meanwhile, Eli concocts the truest interpretation of Circus, Circus ever which is pure bewildering crap in a cup. Or according to Eli, a caramel apple peanut soup with popcorn and raspberry froth. Delicate Nigella can't even bear to gulp it down. Tom says the soup is grainy, which makes us want to gag even more. Toby puts it into Vegas terms--"Like most people who come to Vegas, he has gambled and lost."

Who Won Big
: We nearly expected a three-way tie between Kevin, Michael and Bryan but in the end, the girly food of Michael won the elimination challenge. His prize? A giant magnum of Terlato Wine and a two-day, three-night stay at the Terlato Winery in Napa. Holla'.

Who Crapped Out:
Excalibur, Circus, Circus and Bellagio for the all the reasons mentioned above. But the person to pack their knives and go home? Robin. Finally.

Coming Up Next Week: Thomas Keller! Also Michael takes a dig at Kevin's cooking saying it's food that Michael makes on his day off. Also, Bryan admits to the biggest failure of his life. Whatever could it be? We'll tell you next week in this very space. Stay tuned.