TOP CHEF: ALL STARS Make Kiddie Food for Joe Jonas. Wait, What?

Now that the first elimination is out of the way, the remaining cheftestants are simultaneously relieved and on-edge. They survived one challenge, and are just glad to not be in last place. But if it wasn’t apparent that this competition is tough, it sure is now that someone has actually been sent packing.

The quickfire challenge has teen heartthrob Joe Jonas serving as judge. Youthful Spike knows who Joe Jonas is. Antonia has a young daughter, so she knows who Joe Jonas is. Dale T. does not know who Joe Jonas is, and thinks he might be a pastry chef. Hah.

The challenge is to create a midnight snack for a children’s sleepover at the American Museum of Natural History. Chefs always hate cooking for kids because of their unsophisticated palettes. But if I didn’t know any better, I could’ve thought they were asked to cook for aliens the way they were complaining and scrambling for ideas.

Dale L. whips up a sugary, marshmallowy mess that he calls “crack for small children.” It packs so much sugar that the kids could have their own “10-year-old rave,” he says. Tiffani is making a snowball/moonpie/rice krispie threesome. Dale T. seems most frustrated by this challenge, and in desperation dreams of slipping Nyquil into his corn cakes to put the kiddies to sleep. Some time later on there is a reference to a Ritz cracker h-job. Nothing like a child-themed challenge to get the sexual and drug-related references running rampant in the kitchen.

Most of the concoctions look downright disgusting to me. Just looking at most of them gave me a sugar high. Bacon chocolate lasagna? Somewhere, Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution are crying.

Joe Jonas picks Spike’s carrot chips with marshmallow dip and Tiffani’s snowball/moonpie/rice krispie treat threesome as the two quickfire winners. But there’s a twist – it’s a tie! To everyone’s horror, the kids will pick the ultimate winner.

Spike and Tiffani pick teams to help them prepare enough of their dish to serve to all the children. Fabio gets picked last, which doesn’t bother him, except clearly it does. Tiffani has picked mostly girls on her team, and Spike picked mostly guys. Dale L. refers to the battle as “Spice Girls and a bodyguard vs. all the cool guys and their babysitter Carla.” I am loving his one-liners.

The kids arrive at the museum and they are loud and rambunctious and it seems like the last thing they need is a sugary treat – but they were gonna get one. In true Spike fashion, Spike campaigns for his treat, high-fiving all the kids and trying to convince them to pick his treat. Jamie has no interest in campaigning. Or having children. Jamie doesn’t seem to have interest in much this season, but more on that later.

Tiffani’s treat wins, which comes as no surprise since I figured kids will most likely pick sweet over savory. Spike feels like the last kid picked at the playground. Except…I thought that was Fabio?

Immediately after announcing the winner of the quickfire, the chefs are told their elimination challenge begins…now! The challenge: cook breakfast for the kids and their parents the next morning. And they get to sleep over at the museum. Most people whine about being tired and wanting to go home, while Tiffani says they should save their crankiness for real life, and I agree. Sleepover at a museum? In the hall of North American mammals? How freakin’ awesome!

They split into two teams: T-Rex, who get to use meat and dairy only, and brontosaurus, who get to use only fruit, vegetables and grains. Having won the quickfire, Tiffani gets to pick, and she picks T-Rex. It seems the obvious choice, since a diet without meat sounds restricting, but they soon realize they would not get access to herbs or acids, which are essential in making things delicious.

Jamie cuts her finger, and goes to get it stitched up, leaving her team one (wo)man short. The general consensus is she should have sucked it up and kept working, except her partner Jen who agrees she should have it taken care of. I am on the fence with this. I personally would be a huge baby and get my gash stitched up, but I guess that’s why I’m not a chef. It seems like everyone else has either broken a finger or cut out a chunk of their finger or endured some injury worse than Jamie’s and continued working, so I don’t really have much sympathy for her. Last episode she didn’t display a team-player attitude, so I think it’s unfair for her to expect her team to carry her through this time.

Spike messes with Fabio’s gnocchi in order to speed things up, and Fabio is not happy about it. His whining is starting to bother me, and is it just me or does he seem perpetually unhappy this season? What happened to playful, smiley, light-up-the-room Fabio?

When they begin serving, lines are a little longer at Team T-Rex. Understandable, since they have familiar breakfast items like bacon and eggs. But Brontosaurus’ food is looking good to me: gnocchi, gazpacho, banana parfait, polenta….maybe not the first things I think of for breakfast, but all delicious. Tre on Team T-Rex knowingly puts out a sauce that is salty. Seems like a bad move.

Team Brontosaurus wins, and Team T-Rex is furious. Tiffani complains that she assumed the T-Rex is an omnivore. Others complain that Team Brontosaurus did not serve food appropriate for the audience they were serving. Jen pipes up that she learned long ago to cook to please the judges and not the patrons.

At Judges’ Table, Jen’s newfound swag is in full swing, and while I was excited about it last episode, it isn’t looking pretty on her today. She talks back to the judges, making it known that she’s pissed off. It wasn’t her defending her dish to the death, but the comment about how the judges should be smart enough to figure something out on their own that made me go “whoa, simmer down now.” Kind of uncomfortable, but back in the waiting room, she explains how she was not like that on her own season, and proclaims “welcome Jen: All-Stars” and I find her awesome again.

Colicchio says that back talk doesn’t bother him, and that he’s going to eliminate someone based on their food, not based on what they say at Judges’ Table. Then, boom – Jen gets eliminated. I refuse to believe the judges did not take a little offense to her demeanor, not that I necessarily blame them. But if based on performance, I think Jamie should have been eliminated for not contributing much at all, under circumstances where she could have put forth more effort than she did. If not Jamie, Tre (as much as I like him) should have been punished for serving something he knew wasn’t good. It’s too bad we won’t be seeing much more of this new Jennifer Carroll. As quickly as we welcome Jen: All-Stars, we also say farewell.

What did you think of this episode? Who would you have sent home?