The judges get snacky on Top Chef Masters.

Last night’s installment of Top Chef Masters featured the culinary handiwork of Wilo Benet, “Puerto Rico’s first celebrity chef,” according to Tom Colicchio; Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago; Cindy Pawlcyn, chef-owner of Mustards Grill in Napa; and Ludo Lefebvre of Ludo Bites in L.A. Is it just us or does it seem like every week there’s always one “celebrity chef” to three lesser-known toques?
The Quickfire was the second in a row to be poached from season two of Top Chef; this time it was the “cooking with colors” challenge, wherein each chef was tasked with making a dish based a single color. We couldn’t help but notice that Frenchman Lefebvre kept giving an overly exuberant Bayless these doubletake looks, like, “Dude, are you really being this corny?” And yes, he was—upon pulling his color (green), a bubbling Bayless rejoiced, “It’s like, my favorite thing to cook with is green stuff, so I was lucky today!” The result of the Quickfire was Benet besting Bayless 4 1/2 to 4 stars, despite the fact that he left the ring molds on his smoked salmon tartare.

Elimination found the chefs making street food using offal—and then having to serve it to unsuspecting people from “mid-America” at Universal Studios. After pulling knives again, Benet got the beef heart, Pawlcyn was stuck with tripe, Lefebvre selected pig’s ears, and Bayless got tongue. Frankly, once we saw that Bayless had tongue, the show was over. Tongue tacos are classic Mexican, and Bayless’s boner enthusiasm for all things Mexican couldn’t be more turgid.

Sure enough, Bayless’s chorizo, bacon and tongue tacos with guacamole and pickled onions clobbered the competition with an impressive 22 1/2 stars to Benet’s 19 1/2 (for a beef heart tripleta), Lefebvre’s 16 1/2 (for pig’s ear quesadillas) and Pawlcyn’s 15 1/2 (for underseasoned menudo). And so, the Frontera Farmer Foundation received a check for $10K and Bayless earned a spot in the finale.—Zachary Feldman

Next week: Chefs including John Besh and Anita Lo cook for Doogie Howser himself, Neil Patrick Harris, in a magic-themed challenge. Magic and Neil Patrick Harris? Consider us hypnotized.