Top Chef Masters Season Four, Episode 9: Chefs in Training

Image via Bravo

By Samantha Zalaznick

The Final Three walk in to everyone's favorite quickfire challenge - cooking with someone behind a wall - the chefs have to create identical dishes with a mystery teammate. Remember when Naomi Pomeroy unknowingly spazzed out on her Dad last season? Kerry does. That's not gonna be him. This year the mystery teammates are… the judges! This is a-mazing.

It's Ruth Reichl, Francis Lam and James Oseland and they're messing with the chefs. Lam sounds like a military bro with his constant yes chef-ing at Lorena, Reichl's pretending to be French to Kerry and Oseland's going in and out of a southern accent that confuses Chris so much he thinks it could be his brother. Curtis judges this one all on his own and says they're all impressively similar in taste, Reichl's chicken might actually be better than Kerry's (!) but Chris and James' prawns actually look the same too, so they get the win. James is so proud. It's nice to see everyone on the same side of the table.

The elimination challenge is to guide high school intro culinary students to master a dish. Each chef gets a team of two students and the students prepare a dish for the chefs to reinterpret and teach them how to make. Meat Guy Chris lucks out because his kids make pork tenderloin with mashed potatoes and apple. Kerry's team makes Chicken Florentine with string cheese and Lorena's kids make lasagna.

The chefs all have different teaching styles. Chris is the best teacher. He really wants the kids to learn and alters their pork and apple dish to include everything a pig eats. He explains that when a pig is properly raised he eats the fallen apples, the fallen hazelnuts and the walnuts, so they're using all those flavors to tie the dish together (thanks Chris, we just learned too!). He also has Emilio, the nicest and most super excited student ever.

Lorena babies the kids and just upgrades their lasagna to a three-meat version served with a raspberry and arugula salad. She wishes her kids weren't so nervous but doesn't realize it's probably because she keeps touching their shoulders.

Kerry is kind of intense and terrifying, ordering the kids around and yelling at them to move faster and push harder like a scary gym teacher, but he whips them into shape and turns a string-cheese chicken Florentine into a Florentine-inspired chicken with orzo and asparagus ragu.

And Kerry wins again! This man is on fire.

The judges really debate if Lorena or Chris should move on. Oseland is on Team Lorena but Reichl argues lasagna isn’t restaurant food and she and Lam are on Team Chris.

Lorena goes home. She had a good run. She was the real underdog of this competition and she still beat Patricia.

On to the finale! Kerry and Chris will face off and we really don't know who will win...bets anyone?