The Solution

Maybe the cheftestants are underwhelming because they don't perform well in 100-degree heat. I know, I'm the eternal optimist...

Something isn't right here. You can't even do the prep work for eggplant in 20 minutes, let alone create an entire dish that tastes good enough to beat something else. Soo seems like a nice enough guy - it's not his fault - but there's some behind-the-scenes manipulation going on here. I thought the Vietnamese pizza looked pretty interesting and I was way more into trying that than eggplant parm.

I got caught up on this show today. There's 3 hours of my life that I won't get back.

I know I said I was done with Billions, but I really enjoyed this episode. So sue me. I gotta say, I loved the shoutout to Uncle Junior's doctor's office.

Battlebots is still on?

I liked that both Buddha and Gabri did well tonight and that the judges touched upon the concept that there wasn't a lot of distance amongst the chefs. I would have been happy eating both meals. Sara just doesn't do much for me, neither in terms of her food nor her personality. My mom used to cook a lot of liver. For the dog.

That's how I pronounce it and I actually speak French.

Victoire spoke really clear and beautiful French in this episode of LCK.

Hard to see anyone from this group go at this point, but agree that Nicole was the right choice tonight. I thought the Root concept could have been the better of the two, but the English breakfast concept was better-executed and it was nice to see Buddha win for that. Also liked that they got rid of most of the extraneous bullshit from Restaurant Wars and added the secret hidden judge.

Charbel's dish looked really good to me, but then so did Nicole's. This just wasn't her day. I'm pretty sure Charbel uses the same Maalouf olive oil that I do. It's from Lebanon and it's amazing. I think we've already missed this year's batch but I have plenty from last year still. Charbel is the man!

Don't lie. 🤣

It's going to be hard to see anyone leave from now on. And one of those boys better take Victoire to the Fast and Furious 10 premiere! (I gotta admit, I love the Fast and Furious too.) I was touched by Buddha wanting the win for Victoire, especially since he had immunity.

As a Jersey tomato-eater (who is also part Lebanese and part Italian), I knew that Charbel would be the winner. That dish looked amazing and was tomatoey and used the time he had available to him perfectly. None of the elements were over- or under-cooked, which can be a real issue with tomato cookery. Besides, Charbel just effing ROCKS!

Sorry. Got this confused with Dexter's Laboratory.

You have no idea how hard it was for me to resist this, but: Tucker Carlson is going to have some free time now. At least I'll be able to sleep tonight now that I got that out of my system.