The judges loved hearing all of the stories. Tom thinks some of the cheftestants got stuck in grandma's kitchen, and Emeril says that the successful ones modernized the dishes. I don't get why some of them didn't understand that it didn't need to be the same exact dish.

You guys, those Voltaggio brothers commercials are painful. PAINFUL. They are not good at reading copy. They should have done it in voiceover or something. Ugh.

Weird interstitial. The cheftestants talk about how they dedicate their dishes to the people that inspired them, and discuss how those people just want them to be happy.

The cheftestants hang out in the stew room and discuss how Patti Labelle is awesome and beautiful, and Ty noted that her toenails were painted to match Padma's shirt. I'm not sure if that was planned. Padma comes in and asks to see Grayson, Heather, and Chris Hollywood. The cheftestants are confused because they always call the top three first, and they're probably all pretty sure that those three are not the top three. And when they get out there, Padma tells them that they are the bottom three. Tom asks if they're surprised to be there. Grayson says that her flavors were on point, and she purposely gave them huge portions to represent her Wisconsin upbringing. Emeril says that the beef wasn't trimmed, and Grayson says that it was. Padma didn't like the texture. Tom wonders why she didn't modernize the dish. Grayson says that she took the challenge literally and she obviously shouldn't have.

Moving on to Chris, Tom says that the fish was cooked too fast, so the outside was hard and dried out. Padma brings up the albumen (a word she just learned, obviously), and Chris admits that he noticed it and tried to scrape it off. Emeril thought that the dill overpowered the other flavors, because the pieces were too big. Patti liked the potatoes but didn't love the salmon. Tom starts in with Heather, and says that her dish went awry. Padma says that the dumplings were dry and chewy and overcooked. Patti can't say enough bad things about the meat. Tom says if it was braised, it was overcooked and if not, it wasn't cooked enough. Heather explains that she didn't use the pressure cooker because she did last time and the meat was stringy. Tom snarks, "Well, Beverly used the pressure cooker, and... she's not here." Ooooh, Tom! Snap, snap, snap!