Vultures and Penguins and Bears, Oh My!

We begin with the usual morning after reactions to the eliminations.  Zoi and Jennifer muse about the fact that it's hard to compete against someone you're in a relationship with. No kidding. Mark, aka "marmite pizza guy", looks forward to the Quickfire Challenge.

And look, here it is! The chefs walk in a large gangly group to Chicago's Green City Market, which is a pretty nice looking Farmer's Market. Padma and Tom reveal that the Quickfire Challenge is to prepare a dish using only 5 ingredients, and 5 ingredients TOTAL (excluding only salt, pepper, sugar, and oil.) Anything else, including the Top Chef pantry, counts towards the 5. Keep that number 5 in mind for later.

The chefs scatter and run around looking for ingredients, except for Spike who watches a guitarist. He explains that he just wants to relax and he doesn't care about the Quickfire. Even though it means immunity from elimination. Not a bright guy.

Mark, in a rush to be done with his shopping in time quickly makes a purchase of some greens then runs away leaving the bag behind. Worse, he counts off ingredients in his head and still manages to come to 5, not realizing the bag is missing. When he finally does, he realizes he'll need to be creative. 

 At the Quickfire, the guest judge is Wylie Dufresne, a famous molecular gastronomist.  As they taste the dishes, we discover that Andrew somehow managed to use 6 ingredients instead of 5 because he thought balsamic vinegar didn't count towards his total. As such, he's automatically disqualified. The winner is Mark, who managed to turn his lack of greens into a pretty tasty dish. Plus, he gets complimented on his sideburns.

For the Elimination challenge, the chefs draw knives and are divided into five teams of three: Vulture, Bear, Lion, Penguin, and Gorilla. They are told that they will be catering an event at the zoo, and the teams must make dishes that use the foods that comprise the diet of the animal they drew.

Team Gorilla decides that even though all the foods in the diet are vegetarian, they can do meat if the vegetarian items are highlighted. Team Penguin chooses to make a yuzu and mint "glacier" to go with their food because...well, it's cool! The other teams are somewhat more normal with their selections, with Lion and Vulture getting a lot of meat and Bear buying honeycomb (of course!).

At the zoo, Gorilla discovers that the blinis made ahead of time didn't work out the way they were supposed to. Bear's blueberry and pecorino cheese mushrooms are cold and gross. They decide initially to pull the mushrooms off the line, but then they serve them to the judges anyway. Mark (on team Vulture) sells his anchovies for all they're worth. Wylie Dufresne is impressed by the glacier, as are the other judges. For the most part, all the food comes across pretty well.

At Judges Table, the winning teams are Vulture and Penguin, with praise for Mark's anchovy dish and Andrew's squid dish and glacier. Wylie announces that the winner of the challenge is Andrew, and Andrew thanks him profusely. Padma asks him to send back teams Gorilla and Bear, and Andrew can't resist saying "Bears" like the SNL sketch.

The judges specifically name three dishes that were problematic: Gorilla's blinis and and a crab salad, and Bear's mushrooms. When asked who made what, Nikki explains that she roasted the mushrooms and Dale added the cheese. Dale admits that he never tasted the mushrooms after he added the cheese, and the judges are stunned. They question why they were even served because by their own admission, they were too low in quality to be put on the serving line.

As for Gorilla, the judges take issue with the blinis, made by Valerie, since they should be made to order and not done in a batch an hour ahead of time. Stephanie's crab salad was watery, and she admits that she made a mistake by mixing it too early. After some more critique, the teams are dismissed.

During deliberations, the judges narrow down the potential eliminations to Dale, Nikki, Valerie, and Stephanie. Ultimately, Valerie is the one eliminated for her lousy blinis.