Top Chef is one of the best cooking shows out there. While many argue that this show is unrealistic, I argue that it takes a creative person to be able to make something incredible during one of these challenges, and what is a chef without creativity? C'mon, haven't you seen Ratatouille?

After Stephanie's big win on the first episode, we are starting to get a peek at these people's personalities, and it sounds like there are a lot more fire starters than passionate cooks on this season. There's a lot of cockiness coming out of some of these cooks, and we shall have to see if some of them are counting their chickens before they're hatched.

We discovered that Valerie and Stephanie know each other and have worked at a restaurant together. This makes the final result of this episode that much more sad. We also notice that hunky Mark took his bottom appearance in the last episode as a humbling experience and is hoping to make a huge comeback after what he experienced in the previous challenge.

Their Quickfire challenge involved creating an entrée with ingredients from the farmers market in Chicago. The catch: they were only allowed five ingredients, with the exception of salt, pepper, sugar and oil. The contestants scrambled to find their ingredients within the time limit...all except for Spike, whose cockiness became apparent after he began walking around the market rather than contemplating what his dish would be. His lack of concentration would hurt him in the end. Unfortunately for Mark, he seemed to be headed for the bottom rung again after forgetting one of his bags.

The judge for this episode was the incredible Wylie Dufresne, who is particularly known for his method of cooking known as molecular gastronomy. Wylie is more than a chef; he is a scientist. He thinks more about the reason food is acting a particular way when heat or other reactions are applied to it rather than actual cooking. It is because of this method that Richard believed he would be safe in the Quickfire and potentially the Elimination challenge.

Unfortunately for Richard, his "soup" was one that you ate with your fingers...which did not go over well with Wylie and Padma, although Wylie's particular issue was with the amount of oil. Andrew had a mishap in this quickfire after having put more than five ingredients into his dish (thinking that balsamic vinegar was among the excluded list). Karma seems to have a role in this season of "Top Chef," given that Richard thought highly of himself because of Wylie; Spike didn't end up with the right kind of meat for his dish, which serves him right for being so lax; and Mark ended up with the win from the Quickfire even though he didn't have all of his ingredients. Mark now has immunity for the elimination challenge.

After the Quickfire, the group was split into five teams of three, each drawing a knife with an animal written on it (bear, lion, vulture, penguin, and gorilla). It was revealed that these were not the ingredients, but the diet of that particular animal was the ingredient list. Each team was given a list of the animal's diet in order to create a menu for a cocktail party taking place at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Teams consisted of:

Bear: Dale, Spike, Nikki
Gorilla: Valerie, Stephanie (raise your hand if you saw that coming!), Antonia
Vulture: Mark, Manuel, Zoi
Penguin: Jennifer, Andrew, Lisa
Lion: Richard, Ryan, Erik

Off to Whole Foods for the ingredients. The teams seemed to be doing well; no real drama at the beginning. It all went south when Team Bear and Team Gorilla had some trouble with mushrooms and blinis, respectively. Team Bear decided not to serve Nikki's mushrooms because they were cold and not going over well, but they did serve them to the judges (which almost caused one of them to go home), and Team Gorilla was told that Valerie's blinis should have been made to order because by the time people had gotten them they were soggy. There was also an issue with Stephanie's crab salad being watery because she seasoned it beforehand...salt draws out moisture!

Team Vulture and Penguin were the top teams of the event, and the winner was, ironically, Andrew for his just plain delish dish. Bottom teams were Gorillas and Bears. If the Bears had kept the mushrooms off the table, it may have been enough for them to stay out of the bottom rung. Chef Colicchio asked Antonia who she would choose out of Stephanie and Valerie to be a chef in her restaurant, and she named Stephanie. It seemed that Valerie's fate had been decided and she was sent home, even though votes from the BravoTV.com poll showed more than half of the people thought the mushrooms were a bigger disaster.

Next week looks as if there will be a picnic, and apart from some newly formed drama, that is all we are really given. Oh the mystery!! See you next week, food fans!

Story by Kristin M. Koltz
Starpulse contributing writer