Spike does latkes the "Grewish" way. Photograph courtesy of Bravo.

Spike Mendelsohn, former Top Chef contestant and chef/owner of Capitol Hill’s Good Stuff Eatery, will teach a latke-making class on the first night of Hanukkah—Sunday, December 21—at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. Although Mendelsohn’s father is Jewish, it was his Greek mother who taught him how to make the traditional potato pancakes and a variety of accompanying applesauces. Spike will reveal his mother’s “Grewish” (a mix of Greek and Jewish) secret ingredient to class participants, and hand out the recipe for the unique Mediterranean-influenced latkes. Here’s a tip for garnishing: “The perfect latke,” says Spike, “is a few tablespoons of applesauce and one tablespoon of sour cream on top.”

Like many chefs, Susan Holt and Susan Watterson dreamed of owning a place. They just didn’t want to spend 18 hours a day in a restaurant. So the former instructors at Gaithersburg’s L’Acadamie de Cuisine, created what they knew best: a cooking school.

The recently opened CulinAerie is targeted at a new generation of foodies who think of chefs as celebrities and farmers markets as social meeting spots. Some of the hands-on classes have ethnic themes—Persian, Far East fusion—and other sessions cover basics  cake making and knife skills. The calendar also features lunchtime lectures with talks on food writing, nutrition, and throwing a dinner party.

Right back at'cha, dude.

We have high hopes for this episode from the first few minutes: First, there is no crying. Then, Jamie tells us that Stefan has a crush on her. “Does the word lesbian mean anything to you?” she quips rhetorically.

When the chefs file into the kitchen, there’s no guest judge, just a scruffy Padma (what’s with the pigtails?) who instructs the contestants to pull knives—yep, this again. Chefs whose knives show matching numbers will go head-to-head in a contest to identify the most ingredients in a dish. Sounds challenging, but not when they win for finding onion, salt, pepper, and oil in a 30-ingredient shrimp-and-lobster bisque. Aren’t those in pretty much every soup?

The winners of each round continue on through NCAA-like brackets, until Carla, Stefan, and Hosea are left to compete for the final round. Carla’s out faster than Ariane can be reduced to tears, and Hosea and Stefan duke it out until Hosea wins by identifying —wait for it — vegetable oil.

Didn’t Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential paint a crude enough portrait of restaurant kitchens to show that the harsh environment is no place for crying? A steamy kitchen with cursing chefs and sharp knives is no place for tears. So what’s with the waterworks this season? As the fourth episode opens, Alex reads a goodbye note from Richard—last episode’s loser (and serial crier)—to Jamie and Carla. You’d think someone had died—they all get blubbery, and Alex can hardly speak. Haven’t these people known each other for, like, three weeks?  

We were bored to tears when we find out that the guest judge is Rocco DiSpirito, the self-promoting chef who’s been on just about every season. At least the Quick Fire Challenge is original: The chefs have 30 minutes to create a breakfast amuse-bouche, a one-bite teaser that often comes before a meal in white-tablecloth restaurants, or as Padma says, “an elegant mouthful.”

Leah bears her mean-girl claws and makes a snippy comment about other people making things that are bigger than one bite. When Rocco comments that her dish, a spiffed-up bacon-egg-and-cheese, is the perfect size, she positions herself as the model student and gives Jamie—who created a three-bite BLT breakfast sandwich—a spiteful sideways glance. Nonetheless, both end up in the top three with Stefan, who creates a mini-helping (but more than one bite) of huevos rancheros served in an eggshell. For following the rules, Leah wins immunity.

Just Fabio-lous. (Italia!)

As our latest episode opens, we get a glimpse of the cheftestants’ Brooklyn digs: sleek wood tables, modern couches—what is this, The Real World? Actually, it’s more like the Fabio show: The cameras stay so focused on him, we almost forget there are other contestants.

Fabio, who incidentally is William Shatner’s private chef, and Stefan immediately start talking about one another when each is alone in front of the camera, but we love the Italian’s quote: “It’s not how many dragons you kill; it’s who takes home the princess—and I go for princess.”

Fabio’s in luck: The guest judge is flouncy-haired New York restaurateur Donatella Arpaia, an Italian who seems to have an affinity for her countrymen. But will Fabio’s background be a handicap in the quick-fire challenge? The cheftestants have 45 minutes to make a hot dog that’ll be judged against one from the beloved Domenick’s Hot Dogs in Queens. The pint-size Angelina D’Angelo wheels in her street cart, waves hello, and is silent for the rest of her ten minutes on the show. We want to know why Arpaia and her blond mane get to judge the wieners when D’Angelo is the real expert.

Padma, sweetie, this is Top Chef, not Top Model. And you better step away from our Tom!

Watching the premiere of Top Chef last night brought us back to the first day of seventh grade—we were full of anxiety, failing to remember anybody’s name, and sizing everyone up. But this isn’t just any school, as host/judge Padma Lakshmi reminds the fresh-faced cast of 17 cheftestants; it’s New York City: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”

The show kicks off with a flurry of introductions, complete with trying-to-be-intimidating sound bites (“I love that no one tells me what to do,” says shiny-lipped San Francisco-based chef Jamie), honest admissions (“My inner queen just wants to know where Padma is and what she’s wearing,” says the tall, bearded Richard), and downright incomprehensible mumblings (the Finnish Stefan and Italian Fabio have an excuse, but Danny, you bulldog, move those jowls—we can’t understand you!).

The group gathers for Padma and fellow judge Tom Colicchio’s first Quickfire Challenge: Peel 15 apples as quickly as possible. The catch? No vegetable peelers allowed. In possibly the lamest start to Top Chef ever, the slowest eight peelers must prove their worth by cutting the apples into a brunoise, a minuscule dice. The last four snails finally have to cook something with the apples to convince the judges they should stay.