We are down to the Final 3 and for the first time in this competition all chefs left are worthy. All the bad apples have been culled. Ramsay invites the chefs to a breakfast he prepares for the chefs plus some very special guests. They turn out to be Christina's parents, Corey's mother and boyfriend, and Petrozza's father and girlfriend. If the chefs are in "game" mode and not lulled to complacency by the guests, they will be noticing what they are eating. Christina appears to be the only one doing that. Her mother assists by pointing out that the dish has cream. Then the guests are dismissed out of the dining room and the challenge is that Petrozza, Christina and Corey have 45 minutes to duplicate the dish without knowing its ingredients or recipe. This was a true test of culinary talent and one that Top Chef should also be using(they have a watered-down version). Ingredients have to be deduced from past memory of sight, touch, taste and smell. The key is the main protein, which they get to choose from a short list including buffalo and venison. Petrozza picks buffalo, but then switches to venison. Christina picks venison. Corey picks buffalo. Corey added a white bean puree and Christina a potato puree and Petrozza did not have a puree. They all did a red wine reduction. The garnishes in the dish were carrots, white onions, parsley, and cabbage. In spite of her mother's advice, Christina did not use cream. Everyone got almost all of the garnishes. The dish was based on venison, so Corey was eliminated from the competition. The next most important was the puree and so Petrozza was eliminated, leaving Christina the winner of the third challenge in a row. That could be important in the final scheme of things.

Petrozza and Corey got bar duty, cleaning and polishing glasses and unloading and chipping ice. This looked the easiest loser group task of the entire season, which was appropriate in the circumstances. Christina got a double decker bus ride with Ramsay and her parents plus lunch at the restaurant Grace and at AOC. When she returned, she did not get the grief of non-acceptance accompanied by jealousy like last week.

Before dinner service started, Ramsay forced the chefs through his roleplay of being a tough leader. Petrozza did well. He used a hypothetical salty risotto example with Christina, who failed, and then used a beef Wellington badly cooked. He then passed her. Corey did OK, but Ramsay felt that it was appropriate to get people's attention by smashing a plate into the floor. This whole exercise is so absurd that I do not understand why Ramsay insists on it. If he wants a tough leader, then he has to select people that have that personality type. Trying to mimic classic Ramsay Hell's Kitchen behavior is not a good predictor of being able to reproduce it (and who would want to). However, Corey was motivated to say on camera "Nice girls don't make great chefs."

Ramsay got together with Scott and Gloria (not Mary Ann) about sabotage tricks they had planned. Scott has done this before and had several good ones lined up. Ramsay started the dinner service and gave Petrozza the first opportunity to run the "hot plate", which is the final assembly of the meal before it goes to the server. He did fine until it was time for the sabotage. Scott had left peas out of the risotto. Petrozza did not notice and he committed the very real and important sin of not tasting the food before it was plated. So he is now "on the bubble" instead of getting a nice clean pass to the next round. I add that the ability to hear what Ramsay said to Petrozza about the peas should have given both Christina and Corey an important advantage of knowing how to act at the "hot place' (as in taste the food). That does not guarantee that they will find the problem and fix it, but it is a leg up. Christina had terrible performance during Petrozza's turn at the hot plate. If appeared that she had turned her brain off. She overcooked a salmon, then undercooked a salmon, then burned some scallops. It looked like she personally was going to sabotage Petrozza. Then when she took over at the "hot plate" she was masterly, doing everything right. When Gloria tried to slip some whipped potatoes with the wrong seasoning (basil rather than mint), she sent it back immediately for correction. Her review was decidedly mixed. Corey was on the meat station and had managed to turn out a beef Wellington pronounced by Ramsay as excellent. She stepped up to the "hot plate" and did a credible job until Scot changed the Wellington sauce on her and she failed to heed the "taste it" advice. She failed that test.

My feeling when the service was over was that Petrozza was solid enough and for reasons cited in earlier recaps is indeed the front runner. I did not expect him to be eliminated. It was a tough call between Christina and Corey. I would have eliminated Christina for her fish miscues. How one should weight the sabotage test and past issues like Christina's challenge victory string is an interesting question.

Ramsay asked the chefs to each nominate someone for elimination. Christina nominated Corey, Corey nominated Christina, and Petrozza nominated Christina. This is all an exercise in futility except that Ramsay uses it to test his ability to trust a chef. Petrozza has clearly won his trust in this type of exercise in prior episodes. However, otherwise it doesn't amount to a hill of beans because Ramsay is going to make the decision based on what he believes, not what others believe. That is appropriate since it is his show and he has to live with the consequences of his decisions. Ramsay then announced that Petrozza was going on and Corey was going home, which made Christina the one to go against Petrozza in the finals.

Next week there is a culinary trip to new York City. Teams may also choose they assistants from the eliminated candidates. What will probably be the week after that is the equivalent of Restaurant Wars on Top Chef, with the dining room divided in half and each chef doing their own menu. That will be their ultimate test, but it is likely that Petrozza enters the final with the major advantages of experience and Ramsay's trust.

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