Recap Roundup - Top Chef Masters 4.7

Mary Alice from Charm City Cakes for the Baltimore Sun on caring and sharing: "Chris and Takashi have a great time together, ribbing each other for the crowd. Takashi shares his Yuzo with the audience and Chris even borrows an egg from Takashi's fridge. As they are plating, Takashi suddenly realizes he's short one portion.

Chris looks up and sees what's going on and points to his extra piece of cooked bacon. Quote #1 of the episode: 'Takashi-San: Take it. Take it.' I actually get a genuine and huge flutter of happy warm fuzzies watching this."

A Just Recompense on the ring: "Back to the challenge: The critics are James Oseland, Krista Simmons, and Jane Goldman from chow.com. Chris is particularly excited to see Jane, a San Francisco food critic. They vote by secret ballot, allowing further opportunity for producer manipulation. Curtis plays the ring announcer, which further depresses my mood. Don’t quit your day job, Curtis. Does Curtis even have a day job? The secret ingredient (oh wait, wrong game show) is bacon. Maybe I’m wrong, but this entire segment felt very staged. It went beyond editing; to me it looked more like retakes. Then again, I was in a bad mood."

LA Weekly on the Quickfire finale: "Heffernan and Yagihashi then went on to what would become the first of many head-to-head battles, whipping up a dish out of their perfectly portioned ingredients. Heffernan went with a parmesan-encrusted beef filet while Yagihashi topped the beef with a fried egg. Heffernan won out, which not only earned him immunity, but the right to actually sit out this week's elimination challenge and judge instead -- a move we're fairly surprised TCM made this late in the game."

Gossip & Gab on prep work: "Ouch. Not starting out very strong. The quickfire challenge tonight was prep work. The chefs raced to separate 18 eggs, grate two pounds of parmesan cheese, and portion a chunk of meat into five 7.5-8.5 ounce filets… without a scale. After Chris Cosentino was disqualified for butchering his portions (ya know, the bad kind of butchering), Patrica Yeo commented that speed was useless without precision. And then… she was also disqualified due to her petite filets. Oooh, that has to burn."

The Zagat Blog on Kerry who? "Kerry gets it first so it's him vs. Takashi - and Kerry wins with his Parmesan crusted beef over Takashi's beef tenderloin with sunnyside up eggs. Kerry, again! Who even knew he was on this show until now? He's been hustling us! He did casually drop in an earlier episode that he's Tom Colicchio's best friend, so maybe he got some strategy coaching."

Posted on AllTopChef.com