Greetings, foodies. Starting today, I’ll be bringing you exclusive reactions to each new episode of Top Chef on Bravo. Why are we starting this halfway through the season, you may ask? Duh! Because now we have The Feed, our fantastic new food blog and commentary forum, which did not exist at the beginning of the show.

Okay, on to the stuff you really want to hear. Last night’s episode was fairly bland—standard ridiculous product placement (Cold Stone Creamery) and an unsurprising dismissal (Sara N., who was clearly in the bottom half of the chefs all along). So let me get to the awkward issue that no one else will address: The cooking on this season has been totally uninspired.

In all the previews to this third installment, all the talk was about the higher caliber of chefs this year. This was welcome news, since no one wanted to see another Mikey-who-used-to-work-at-Friday’s making the final six again. And what razzle-dazzle fare is this culinary talent putting out? Fucking cheese grits (the winning dish last night)!!

Partially, one can blame this dullness on the "everyman" challenges: comfort food, frozen pasta dinner (!), etc. Even so, the innovation has been lacking. And I’ll go one further: I think that head judge Tom Colicchio has set the tone for play-it-safe dishes by choosing play-it-safe winners (Ilan and Harold) over more ambitious counterparts (Marcel and Tiffany/LeAnn) in seasons past.

It drives me crazy when the Top Chef competitors talk about how "honest" their food is. To me this is code for boring. I am not looking for a monogamous relationship with my food. I’m not asking it to testify under oath. Its truthfulness is of no concern to me. My mother makes a very honest tuna casserole—standard ingredients, no pretensions—and I love it to this day. But I would never pay a professional to cook it for me, nor do I want to see one doing it on TV.

We already know the next few episodes will lack for drama, as the herd gets thinned to the inevitable Tre-Hung-Brian power axis (with C.J. and Casey lurking as dark horses). In the meantime, here’s my plea to the chefs: Cook something dishonest! Isn’t high cuisine about deception—pulling off crazy flavor combinations that ordinary mortals would never consider? Attempting preparations that would puzzle June Cleaver? Making sheep’s ball sac taste like cotton candy?

That’s what I want to see.