Last night's "Top Chef" started with the best Quickfire judge ever for one of the worst Quickfire challenges, as domestic goddess Martha Stewart dissected the cheftestants' one-pot meals. I'm fairly sure the show has done the one-pot meal before, and I'm also pretty sure I saw several of the chefs use more than cooking vessel (wouldn't colanders count as a pot?), but the results were mostly pretty meh. Martha, however, was awesome. That woman defines withering stare. I know a lot of people find her to be a dragon lady, but seriously, I think she rules. She has amazing taste, is smart and tough, and if she doesn't like something, she will let you know why. When I grow up I want to be just like Martha Stewart. Arianne won the challenge with perfectly cooked beef and a cauliflower puree so creamy that it tricked Marty into thinking it had tons of butter (in actuality, it had none), and for her trouble she got immunity and a copy of Marty's new cookbook. (It must be the holidays with all the shameful book-hocking going on.)

Then it was on to the overly complicated Elimination Challenge. The Harlem Gospel Choir came in to over-sing "The 12 Days of Christmas" (seriously, I thought they were kind of awful) and then the chefs had to pick knives that corresponded to one of the verses in the song (nine = "nine ladies dancing"; six = "six geese a-laying"). The chefs then had to create a dish around their individual theme to serve to more than 250 people at a benefit for AMFAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research. The party's host, radiant Natasha Richardson, was guest judge, and "Top Chef" regular Michelle Bernstein filled in for Gail, presumably off getting married or whatever.

The chefs had three hours to prep the night before, and then discovered a shit show when they walked in the next morning: one of the refrigerators that was filled with meat and dairy for the meal malfunctioned, and all of Hosea's seared pork, Radhika's duck breast, and Melissa's cheese were totally ruined and unusable. There were some conflicting reports about exactly what happened here. Some chefs seemed to blame the situation on the fact that a lot of hot, steaming food was put into the refrigerator, which is apparently a no-no, while others said that someone left the door open. It seemed to me that the last person to shut the door was clearly Radhika, and it didn't look as though it shut all the way. So I have to wonder if she unintentionally screwed herself over.

Not that it ultimately mattered. Melissa was able to find a substitute for her cheese (although it ended up being a poor choice), and the rest of the chefs all pitched in to help Hosea and Radhika get their dishes back in order using leftovers from the Top Chef pantry. At the party a few dishes were hits - Hosea's barbecued pork (a play on the pipers piping), Jeff's weird Greek cheese dish (the lords a-leaping), Stefan's chicken pot pie (drummers drumming), and Radhika's duck leg with pear chutney (partridge in a pear tree). Ultimately Hosea got the win, and good on him. He seems like a nice guy, and is unbelievably smooth with the ladies.

Pretty much everybody else sucked, and sucked hard. Jamie got bashed for a slimy sea scallop/vichyssoise combo (she relies too much on scallops and soups; that's practically all she does), Melissa for her overly cheesy steak dish, and Eugene for his decidedly un-fishy Pacific Rim ceviche. Eugene was combative at Judge's Table, and Michelle read him the riot act, which I loved. But ultimately, nobody got eliminated since it's "Christmas" (although this was filmed in, like, July), and because everybody helped Hosea and Radhika out. I thought that was pretty lame. There was clearly some pretty terrible food - even Natasha Richardson said she was disappointed, and she's a NICE LADY - and nobody got the boot. That's some BS.

Thankfully Tom went out to the stew room and unleashed his inner Disappointed Dad on all of the chefs, telling them what we've known for weeks: the food this season blows. I like a bunch of the contestants (I would watch a Stefan and Fabio cooking show in a heartbeat), but the actual food doesn't come close to what we've seen in seasons past. Leah got snippy with Tom, and he awesomely slapped her right down, and took an additional shot at Arianne, who brought deviled eggs as her dish to an AMFAR fundraiser. Deviled eggs. I wouldn't even serve those at my family holiday get-together, much less to a room full of A-Gays.

We'll see if the chefs get the message and bring it next week. Either way they'll have to contend with a new judge taking over Gail's spot, and he looks like a first-class douchebag. Loves it.