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In last night's episode, Paul couldn't keep from feeling lots of feelings.

​There have never been more tears on Top Chef, including in our very own eyes, as there were throughout last night's episode. The crying wasn't from cutting raw onions. It wasn't from sliced fingertips. It wasn't even from the pork belly frying oil that nearly splashed in Ed's eye. The sentiment spurning the tears was warmer, even sentimental. But not roll-your-eyes cheesy. Was it love? Perhaps. It is Valentine's week, after-all.

Padma invited the cheftestants' mentors, all of them extremely accomplished and remarkably genuine, into the Top Chef Kitchen. Paul, who's normally laid-back and even-keeled, lost his shit -- deep breaths, sniffles, free-flowing tears. Bowing his head, too choked up to continue, he couldn't finish his intro to chef Tyson Cole. I don't know a single thing about their relationship, but I'll be damned if my eyes weren't about to spill over.

The other chefs, though not as emotional as Paul, were sniffly too. Ed's the only one who kept his composure. After their collective release of emotions, and some hugs and sagacious advice from their mentors, they were off to the elimination challenge: cook food "that fulfills and even exceeds" the mentors' expectations.

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via Bravo

The clawed black chicken, a horrific murder scene on a plate.

​Crispy skinned black chicken, perfectly moist, claw still attached, over fois gras and tiny cubes of beet, their blood-like juices splattered on the plate as though the unusual dark poultry underwent a brutal execution -- all topped off with a quail egg, symbolic of the chicken's unborn chick. That was Grayson's evil dish, not a winner but surely a stunner.

I'll go ahead and say it: Last night's Top Chef elimination challenge was the best in the show's history -- yes, ever. Charlize Theron, who plays the evil queen who's "pretty much a serial killer" in the new Snow White, inspired the challenge: prepare a gothic feast fit for a queen.

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via Bravo

... a snapshot of a very surprise ending.

​It happens every season. It brings out the worst in most chefs and the best in few. The winner is never predictable. The loser is often a heartbreaking surprise. The Top Chef Restaurant Wars legacy held true last night -- with a "battle of the sexes" twist. The claws were out.

The episode opened with Ed shit-talking in what's become a slightly varied weekly kick-off clip that's settling in as Season 9 standard procedure.

"It's going to be boys and girls fighting it out on the playground," Ed says, "I definitely think that male chefs have more talent." He goes on to point out Sarah's weakness last week, when barbecuing in the sun wiped her out.

This week's Restaurant Wars challenge: make a three-course menu with two choices per course for 100 guests.

The boys practically skipped arm-and-arm into the kitchen, loving on each other's ideas so hard that they forgot to assign someone to expedite the food. A revolving door of team members stood outside the kitchen in their chefs wear trying to make sense of it all. It worked, to a degree. The judges weren't asking where the food was, as they were in the girls' round.

While they didn't outperform the girls overall, they did so in service. The female kitchen endured repeated tear-downs from Lindsay, who tried to keep shit from falling through the cracks when the cracks felt more like gaping potholes.

In the end, it was not only girls versus boys, but service versus food. And food, the girls' strong suit, won.

Now the highlight reel:

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The Food Network

​The folks at Food Network's food-truck reality show Eat St. have reached out to food bloggers across the country, hoping they'll help get out the vote for local trucks competing for a spot on the show. There are four trucks from the Dallas/Fort Worth area competing for a spot among 51 others from around the country.

To follow are the truckers who had the guts/Flip cams/time to submit videos, with links to their videos where you can vote for your favorites. Try not to accidentally vote for non-local Aphrodisiac Ice Cream, which has a half-naked chick in its video. Focus. Stay strong!

Get to clicking:

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via Bravo

Chris Crary, Top Chef Dreamboat, we're sad to see you go.

​Last night's Top Chef delivered the most Texan of any conceivable Texas challenges: make barbecue that doesn't suck and do it at one of the state's best barbecue restaurants, Salt Lick in Austin. Oh, and make enough beef brisket, chicken and pork ribs to feed 300 people. No small task for the three teams of three.

All of that came after cheftestants survived a high-profile Quickfire challenge. A deliveryman entered the Top Chef house, wheeling a cart that carried the Modernist Cuisine collection of cookbooks by Nathan Myhrvold and a note from Padma telling the chefs to "study up." The next day, the author met them in the kitchen of Le Cordon Bleu Austin and challenged them to cook a delicious and imaginative modernist dish -- foam, sparkles, culinary mind-fucks of all sorts -- aimed to "delight" eaters.

"I came here to do my style, and this is my style," Chris Jones said, rhetorically begging "for the love of Pete" that he come out on top for his "miracle berry tasting" of reimagined cheesecake. Myhrvold told him,"It was a hell of a dish," but chose Ty-Lor Boring's far simpler watermelon with melting olive oil powder as the immunity-earning top dish. Ty-Lor did the pumped walk across the kitchen to collect the books as Jones exhaled a big sigh.

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photos via Bravo

Nyesha and Dakota were the victims of this week's double elimination.

​Lounging on the couch, still rumpled and disheveled from last week's steak dinner competition, Edward coined the gang of chefs the "dirty dozen."

"Ooohh, dirty dozen," they laughed in unison in a perfect television moment, as though "dirty dozen" was a product placement as staged as their trusty Toyota Siennas.

Of course, the proverbial cheftestant egg crate wouldn't be full for long. Stakes were high this week: no immunity in the quick fire and a double-elimination challenge. Fort Worth chef Tim Love introduced the quickfire with Padma: choose a Don Julio tequila and create a dish with it, winner gets $5,000. Go.

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via Bravo

The dish that looked most delicious in the entire hour of television was Greyson's Quickfire creation.

​This week's Top Chef didn't overly Dallas-ize Dallas like last week's -- for that, we are thankful. Dean Fearing, the original chef at Mansion on Turtle Creek and the man behind Fearing's at the Ritz-Carlton, met the chefs at Le Cordon Bleu kitchen, the alma-mater of Austin-based cheftestant Paul Qui. There, they were met with a quick-fire challenge that resulted in a Top Chef rarity: the dishes in the quick-fire outshone the dishes in the elimination round.

The challenge was to make a dish that stemmed from one of four "mother sauces" -- hollandaise, bechamel, tomate, veloute, and espagnole -- chosen randomly by drawing knives. That was followed by an elimination challenge that Padma called one of the show's hardest but that the judges later said should have been easy to pull off: 200 four-course dinners starring medium-rare steaks, produced by all 13 chefs.

Here are the moments that lit up our minds and bellies:

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via Bravo

The winning dish: Paul Qui's Fried Brussels Sprouts with Grilled Prosciutto

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Socioeconomically speaking, Dallas has a pretty damn diverse food scene. The Big D is chock-full of $1 taco stands (if you're of the financial status to seek them rather than pass with blinders), $2 slightly fancier tacos found at many bars (LaGrange's are tasty), barbecue shacks out the wazoo (hey, reality TV, if you want to stereotype Dallas, come hither), and of course, a lion's share of overpriced mediocre steakhouses, as well as fare that's exorbitantly priced but well worth the splurge (or the effortless swipe of the corporate card, depending).

Top Chef: Texas, in its first of several Dallas-based episodes, chose to explore the upper crust of our city, the rich and manicured with food choices as picky as their dining tables are elegant. So where did Top Chef take viewers last night? Highland Park -- it's not even technically part of Dallas, yet it's everything reality television would like people to believe about our city -- massive homes, decorated to the hilt; beautiful, thin, manicured women; men who love meat; and food choices largely qualified by phrases like, "It's colorful!"

Really, though, it can't be denied that the monied minority of Dallasites make for very entertaining television.

"Who's the one with the really bi-- ... Dolly Parton, isn't she from Dallas?" Cheftestant Beverly Kim commented at the outset of the episode, when chefs packed their belongings in San Antonio and set off in their Toyota Siennas (lest we forget the repetitious product placement) for Dallas.

Suddenly -- they're pulled over by highway patrol at a closed road. But it's not just any closed road. Padma's waiting with guest judge, chef John Besh, to issue the quickfire challenge.

"We get this reflection off of John Besh's beautiful white teeth, and his hair blowing in the wind, and wow, John Besh is a handsome man. I'm not gonna lie," said Chris Crary, who gushed about Padma the same way in episode 1. Crary was deemed "beautiful Chris" by Chuy Valencia, so as not to confuse him with Chris Jones, whom we'll dub Austin Chris. On the drive from San Antonio to Dallas, we find out that Crary was formerly 70 pounds heavier --- photographic evidence pops on screen. Shocker, he looks like a different person, not that there's anything wrong with either version of Crary -- dude's a heartthrob.

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TLC/Walling McGarity

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Chad Fitzgerald owns Cake Guys, a cakery with locations in both Dallas and Duncanville. He's also a constant on season two of TLC's Next Great Baker, which premiered Monday night. (Fitzgerald was part of the night's winning team). The next day, we got with Chad and talked to him about the show's premier, how he got started baking, how he overcame his battle with low self-esteem and, of course, his alter-ego Stacey Holiday.

How do you feel the premiere of Next Great Baker went?
I loved the show. You never know how reality shows are going to characterize you. It's all real, we don't see or have any info whatsoever, we sign over all those rights. So it's really scary anticipating what it's going to be like.

So, how did you get started baking?
Whenever I was a little kid I would hang out at my grandmother's house after school. ... I got all my baking skills from her. She did other stuff, ceramics and quilting and crocheting, and so I learned all that stuff from grandma. I was from a single-parent home and we had no babysitter, so she babysat me after school for elementary and junior high.

What were some of your earliest culinary creations?
My very first wedding cake was when I was a senior in high school. It was my brother's wedding cake, and it was horrible (laughs).

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TLC/Walling McGarity

​The second season of TLC's Next Great Baker premieres tonight, and two bakers from the metroplex are among the baker's dozen vying for a chance at the grand prize of $100,000, a spread in Brides Magazine and an opportunity to work with the show's host Buddy Valastro in Carlo's Bakery, in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Competitor Chad Fitzgerald from Duncanville is the owner of The Cake Guys, a bakery with locations in both Duncanville and Dallas, while 23-year-old Tony Frys from Forth Worth is the co-owner of the The Sugar Art. Check out the contestant videos after the jump, and make sure to check out City of Ate for exclusive interviews and updates.

The 10-week competition kicks off tonight at 8 p.m. on TLC.

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