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" This week on Top Chef Masters, the six winning chefs from the first episodes were pitted against each other in the first elimination challenge of the Champions Round. Chefs Hubert Keller, Art Smith, Anita Lo, Suzanne Tracht, Michael Chiarello and Rick Bayless walked into the TCM kitchen to face a classic quickfire challenge. In a throwback to their early days of cooking, chefs had to shuck oysters, chop onions, butcher chickens and whip egg whites in a relay-style team challenge. The best part of the challenge was watching seasoned, experienced, celebrated chefs do their best with a culinary basic. Watching Hubert Keller chop an onion was mesmerizing! At the end of the tight race \u2013 judged by TC head-honcho Tom Collichio \u2013 the team of Hubert, Anita and Rick took the prize. Sidenote: Did you catch the classic French onion-cutting technique Hubert used? I could watch that all day! Host Kelly Choi then invited chefs to &amp;quot;get to know each other a little better&amp;quot; by cooking and serving their signature dishes. Most choices were as expected, though Art threw a bit of a curveball \u2013 instead of cooking &amp;quot;classic&amp;quot; comfort food like fried chicken or mac &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; cheese, he chose a roasted grouper. Why the offbeat choice? He served it to President and Mrs. Obama at his restaurant in Washington, D.C. \u2013 on Valentine&amp;#039;s Day! &amp;quot;If it&amp;#039;s good enough for the President, it&amp;#039;s good enough for my signature dish,&amp;quot; he said. We agree! After the chefs were finished sampling each others&amp;#039; dishes, the challenge was announced: each chef would have to prepare a variation on another&amp;#039;s signature classic. Hubert, as the leader of the winning team, got to choose whose dish he&amp;#039;d recreate. He chose Anita&amp;#039;s scallops with potato puree, sea urchin and bacon &amp;quot;because of their layers of flavor.&amp;quot; (When you read Hubert Keller quotes you have to read them in a thick French accent. It makes it sound much better. Think: &amp;quot;beecouse of zere teek layeers of flavor.&amp;quot;) That left Anita with Hubert&amp;#039;s lobster cappuccino. Art and Suzanne were paired; Art cooking Suzanne&amp;#039;s chopped sirloin with green peppercorn and fried egg, Suzanne, the Presidential grouper. An intimidated Michael Chiarello was matched with Rick Bayless. Rick would be preparing Michael&amp;#039;s Italian dish: quail with fennel and balsamic vinegar and saut\u00E9ed greens, Michael was left with Rick&amp;#039;s lamb with black pasilla chile sauce and mission figs. Though the chef pairings were mostly random (they drew knives), I think it panned out in the best possible way: Hubert and Anita, both classically French-trained but on two ends of the flavor spectrum; Suzanne and Art, both known for their classically American dishes; and Michael and Rick \u2013 intensely Italian flavor vs. intensely Mexican flavor. Watching the Masters cook in the Top Chef kitchen is almost as mesmerizing as watching Hubert chop the onions! Their calm demeanor, fluid-like movements and awareness of others around them is a sharp contrast to some of the clamoring and scrambling that goes on during regular seasons of the show. The worst almost-mishap of the day? A renegade lobster almost took a nosedive off of the table before Anita was able to save it. At Critics&amp;#039; Table \u2013 after being judged by critics and former TCM contestants \u2013 Anita Lo came out on top, scoring a nearly perfect 24 stars for her interpretation of lobster cappuccino. She chose a soup-and-sandwich variation of the dish, making a lobster-knuckle sandwich on biscuit bread. For. The. Win. Sadly, Chef Suzanne Tracht ended up at the bottom of the competition; her otherwise awesome grouper with gnocchi was plated too early and turned cold. Five chefs move on to next week&amp;#039;s challenge and one step closer to $100,000! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.delish.com/restaurants/a37414/champions-round-one/>