We figured that this season of “Top Chef,” being “Top Chef All-Stars” and all, there would be some ego clashes and shocking eliminations. Last night was mostly the latter.

The show began with Joe Jonas of The Jonas Brothers joining host Padma Lakshmi to announce the quick fire challenge. Helping to cater “A night at the museum” for a group of kids visiting the National Natural History Museum, the chef-testants would have to created a midnight snack geared toward kids that were apparently around 10-12 years old. Each snack would have to be served in a brown paper bag.
The least favorite snacks were by Tiffany D (coconut rice pudding), Mike Isabella (chocolate coconut bar with coconut horchata) and Stephen (snickerdoodle cookies). The favorites were Spike (homemade potato and carrot chips with dip) and Tiffani (Rice Krispie treat snowball).

But they were not about to announce a winner. Instead, they were going to the museum to let the kids decide the winner…..and Tiffani and Spike had to choose teams to help them make the snacks in bulk. The kids chose Tiffani’s snack, and she won immunity this week and an advantage at the challenge.

Then Tom Colicchio showed up and announced that the elimination challenge would be taking place at the museum, and the chef-testants would be spending the night there on these cots. Yikes. Anyway, they’d only get 45 minutes of sleep before having to get into the kitchen at 4am and begin cooking breakfast for the kids.
They would break into the same teams as for the snacks, and one team would represent a brontosaurus diet, meaning fruits, veggies and grains; while the T-Rex team had to make an all meat diet (with NO vegetables or herbs!). Tiffani had the advantage of choosing, and she unwisely chose the meat team, not realizing she would only have things such as meat and eggs to work with.

The Brontosaurus team was able to create bright, vibrant dishes using fruits and vegetables, while the T-Rex team made some boring, and what looked like tasteless dishes. But they made “breakfast food,” while the other team made stuff like gazpacho. Jen pointed out that she knew from her season that you don’t cook for the diners, you cook for the judges. And that was made clear by the fact that the Brontosaurus team won, even though their dishes were not kid-friendly at all. The winning dish, however, probably was kid-friendly—Angelo, Richard and Marcel’s banana parfait.

The T-Rex team lost, and all of them faced the chopping block. As they stood there, Jen was fidgeting and bouncing up and down, and cleary pissed that they lost. She snapped at Colicchio twice, and while Tom said he cared more about the food than about chefs at this level snapping at him, Jen was the person they sent home. They said it was about the food, but come on…..they were afraid of Jen’s suddenly volatile nature and just rid themselves of her.

So that’s it….two weeks in the books in what promises to be an awesome (and now volatile) season. Thanks for reading and see you all next week….