'Top Chef' recap: Strategy Shmategy!

Personally, I am sad the Spice Girls’ bodyguard, a.k.a. Dale, is gone. I loved Dale. He was huge and sweet and put veal on French toast. But if Top Chef is all about shaking off the victories, as winning Dale puts it, it’s also about moving on from the losses. Bye sweet Dale! We hardly knew ye. Meanwhile, Spike Mendelsohn gets the cut this week after some dark moves by car salesman Angelo and black hole Jamie, who managed to undercook beans, avoid elimination, and claim all the while that she hates strategizing.

The “Swanson broth quickfire challenge” asks the chefs to (surprise!) create a delicious stuffing without using knives and kitchen tools. I’m not sure what falls under “kitchen tool” and neither apparently is Fabio, who decides he’ll have to crush potatoes with his head. (Instead, he uses a poison grater.) Meanwhile, redheaded Tiffani correctly calls stuffing a “mother-specific” dish, and says her mother’s stuffing is the best. “Jedi f---ing stuffing.” But Tiffani’s over-sweet stuffing ranks toward the bottom, along with Casey’s and Carla’s, both of whom seemed to doom themselves by avoiding the rush to grab ingredients. “Whatever is meant to be will be,” Carla says. “And what is left is quinoa.” (I’ve only had quinoa once, but I think there’s a reason it was the only thing left.). Tre tells us his family didn’t “accept” what he made this Thanksgiving. “Nothing against my family, but I’m cooking for a little bit more refined palette.” Nice call Tre! Guest judge and Italian expert Tony Mantuano deems Tre’s Southwestern stuffing “well-balanced spicy," and the dimpled one snaps up $20,000 to fund the raising of his daughters, plus immunity. “Swanson: call me up,” Tre says, which somehow sounds like a threat the way he says it, but presumably is not.

NEXT: Tennis, anyone?