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" Read more special recaps of this season of Top Chef from Esquire&amp;#039;s food correspondent, John Mariani, right here on Eat Like a Man. Good God, are there still eight episodes to go? It&amp;#039;s beginning to look like few of the \u2014 what, 480? \u2014 cooks left have much talent for anything beyond making grilled-cheese sandwiches. Yet at the end of every episode, the judges solemnly boot someone off \u2014 then say they&amp;#039;ll have a chance to come back! What is going on here? I, having had a wonderful four-course dinner at home \u2014 fortified with a gin-and-tonic and glasses of Chilean Carmenere, Sonoma Valley pinot noir, and Napa Cabernet \u2014 sat down to watch episode six of Top Chef, praying that someone \u2014 anyone \u2014 would be truly banished from the show. The challenge: to cook for 200 people at something called (yeehaw!) the Cattle Baron&amp;#039;s Ball, attended by rich Dallasites in cowboy hats at a banquet room that might as well be a 4-H Club food hall. It&amp;#039;s 104 degrees outside. The 16 contestants come up with a four-course meal that includes a watermelon-and-tomato gazpacho, a seared beef carpaccio with tomato salad, vinaigrette, and &amp;quot;mushroom bacon,&amp;quot; a steak that guest chef Dean Fearing insists must be medium-rare (even though Dallasites prefer their steaks cooked to shoe-leather well-done), and a dessert that apparently had been made on a previous show. Heather is as bossy as usual, dissing all her colleagues. I suspect if she&amp;#039;s ever eliminated, cheers will go up among the contestants. Chris, from Chicago, is now sporting a Samurai hair bun, and something tells me that, despite his not showing any particular talent so far, the judges have already made up their minds that he will be the ultimate winner. Overall, the meal teeters towards disaster \u2014 a so-so appetizer, overcooked steaks, a gratin of raw potatoes. Much is made among the contestants of the fact that cooking for 200 people is, like, really, really tough. Maybe they should spend six months with the banquet cooks at a Hyatt or Sheraton hotel and learn how to make food for a crowd. This episode was the dullest thus far, and the frustrated judges all sound like they&amp;#039;re dying to go home. Padma has lost many traces of her earlier bubbly spirit, and Tom Colicchio has become choleric, at least to me. Hugh Acheson is trying hard to say something, anything, that sounds vaguely authoritative. So, in the end, Whitney, she of the undercooked potato gratin, was sent home with her knives, but in the trailer for the upcoming episodes, there she is, back again in the kitchen, competing against the other losers of previous episodes. Will it never end? PLUS: More John Mariani on Esquire&amp;#039;s Eat Like a Man Blog and John Mariani&amp;#039;s Official Site "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a11981/top-chef-texas-episode-6-6613112/>