Top Chef 4, Episode 7: Yellow Vanilla Love

Previously on Top Chef, Ryan got sacked when he just couldn't get his head in the game for a tailgating-food challenge for Chicago Bears fans. Who's bearish and who's bullish this time? Let's find out.

It's your typical beginning-of-the-show scene: Andrew says the house has gotten uglier since "pretty boy" Ryan left; the competition is getting tough; Jen is doing this for her previously-kicked-off lover Zoi. You get the idea.

Entering the kitchen for the Quickfire competition, Nikki spots a table full of sweets and gets excited – she's all about dessert. The guest judge is award-winning pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini. Wow, that would make a cool gangster name. Basically, the challenge this time is to make a knock-out dessert. Of course, the fortunes of Top Chef contestants have frequently been soured by sweets in the past – most of these people focus on meats and veggies, not cakes and custards.

Our delectable Padma unveils Top Chef: The Cookbook, which contains original recipes from previous seasons. The winner of this challenge will be the only one to have an entry in the cookbook. Plus, they get immunity and all that jazz.

As the chefs take off to make their goodies, Antonia admits to us that she just really doesn't have anything up her sleeve. Dale does – he has one dessert recipe that he brought with him to the show, and now is the time to use it, he says. It involves shaved ice – I like it already.

Richard's using his little electric smoker (naturally) and is inspired by the similarity of his bananas in shape to sea scallops, so he wants to utilize his sense of humor here. Spike had memorized the making of a chocolate molten cake, but instead will be trying a pineapple rum raisin soufflé with toasted coconut.

Johnny Iuzzini (I just like the sound of that) gives Spike points for trying something different. Richard has done banana scallops with banana guacamole and chocolate ice cream. I love guac, and sooooo want to try this dish. Padma calls it "strange and delicious." Richard takes both those words as compliments.

Apparently, everyone's gone bananas, as Jen's chocolate cake with banana bites and Andrew's banana and chocolate ravioli are next. Nikki was more traditional – buttermilk cake with berry sauce. Yum yum. Padma thinks the dish is "pretty." Stephanie offers up a chocolate cake with a salted basil ganache (basically, a fancy chocolate icing).

Dale serves his "halo-halo," a drink-like concoction with shaved ice – Dale's incorporating avocado, mango, kiwi, and nuts. Johnny's feelin' it. Lisa has yogurt with fruit and fried wontons, while Mark has prepared pavlovas – which are not made from dog saliva, mind you, but are in fact meringue treats – out of Australian wattleseed. Antonia makes a lemon curd with lemon cake.

Time for the results. Johnny Iuzzini says it's clear that some people came into the challenge excited, while others felt defeated from the get-go. Antonia, Spike, and Mark are his least favorites – though he had kind words for Spike's initiative – while Dale, Lisa, and Richard are on top. Richard wins! Since his banana guacamole will be going in the cookbook, I guess I'll get to try it for myself after all. Richard wants to show he's not a one-trick pony – yes, he likes gadgets and gimmicks, but he can also make a basic dessert.

Padma gives the chefs the good news – they'll be attending a performance at Second City, a famed Chicago improvisational comedy club. If you don't know what that means, think Whose Line is it Anyway? – except sharper and more committed. Second City has a long and accomplished history, and Mark gives us just some of the names of comedy legends to come out of the improv troupe – John Belushi, Bill Murray, Stephen Colbert, and Steve Carell. Trust me, there's many more you'd recognize.

Everyone's getting dressed up for their big chance to get out of the house and socialize a little outside the game (don't count on it, people). Spike helps Mark choose an outfit – Mark has his pants off, and the hot tub scene from last time is coming to mind again. Richard's wearing a pink shirt, which goes well with his skin tone, according to Mark. Um, guys, this is the show with Ted Allen, not Carson Kressley.

We're at Second City now, and it looks like the show must be quite funny, though it's hard to tell since the little bits we see of the comedians acting zany are totally out of context. Antonia's loving that the group gets to just relax and be entertained.

That sense of calm doesn't last long, however – not once the actors start asking the crowd for suggestions of colors, moods, and finally foods. It starts dawning on our chefs that the audience is actually choosing the themes for the upcoming elimination challenge. Slowly but surely, every one of the 10 remaining chefs grows a horrified look on their face once they realize what's actually happening.

Sure enough, the actress welcomes the special reality TV visitors – and then mentions that the chefs will be doing a bit of their own brand of improv. Each of the five courses the chefs will be cooking for the Second City actors combines one color, one mood, and one food. Those are: yellow love vanilla, depressed purple bacon, magenta drunk polish sausage, green perplexed tofu, and orange turned-on asparagus. There should be plenty to work with here, but Lisa's immediate thought is that she's screwed – well, another word for that, anyway.

The chefs will be breaking off into pairs, but instead of drawing knives as per usual, they're just going to talk it over and choose partners for themselves. A lot of it has to do with assessing who they've worked with before and who they might want to try working with anew. Spike wants no part of teaming with Richard and his immunity, so he chooses Andrew instead for "yellow love vanilla." Jennifer and Stephanie pair up for the turned-on asparagus, Richard and Dale are doing the perplexed tofu, and … we don't see the other two tandems before the commercial break.

The chefs take their $150 budget to the grocery store to do some shopping. Mark and Nikki – both wearing similar sunglasses – are searching for purple depressed bacon. They'll be doing pancetta glazed with honey and ginger, and incorporating pork tenderloin. Nothing about that sounds depressed to me, but whatever. Jen says putting asparagus, oranges, and goat cheese together is kind of like a ménage a trois. Heh.

Richard hits a brilliant note by deciding to marinate the tofu steaks in beef fat. He says it's like a Seinfeld bit – "This tofu tastes like beef! What's up with that? It's perplexing!" And on the flip side of things – as in, people are aren't getting into the spirit of the challenge at all – are Antonia and Lisa, who scoff at the idea of doing drunken Polish sausage. The obvious idea here is to do sausage marinated in something beer-based (or beer itself), but the two women just don't want to work with those ingredients. "I'm not going to dumb down my food because of what some drunken schmuck screamed out in the audience," Lisa tells us. Yes, but that's the point of the challenge – if you're worried about losing, you're already on that track. Instead, they select Chilean sea bass (huh?), throw tequila in the sauce, and opt to use chorizo – they're "improv-ing," says Antonia with air quotes. Honey, they said Polish sausage, not Spanish.