Posted by Joe Gray at 8:10 a.m. CDT

(In which we follow Chicago chef Stephanie Izard as she competes on Bravo TV's "Top Chef.")

Stephanie starts the episode worried, falters in the Quickfire, again, but ultimately comes out well. In a night when not that much really happened, the biggest drama came as the three chefs finishing on the bottom fought in front of the judges for title of Most Arrogant. But first …

Quickfire Challenge: With Sam Talbot (pictured with host Padma Lakshmi), a finalist chef from Season Two, as very special guest judge, we wonder what they would do with him. Well, he challenges the chefs to bring sexy back to the salad. Ho-hum. Salads are delicious, salads are beautiful. But sexy? We also didn’t know they'd fallen on hard times, as Lakshmi claims. Who wrote that line? Jeez.

The chefs have 45 minutes, plenty of time to think up something creative and execute. But the clock runs out on Stephanie before she can get her artichoke chip garnish onto the plate with her fall-flavors duet of poached pears, mushrooms and marinated artichokes. She ends up on bottom (Sam also said her vinaigrette was "lacking"), along with Richard (vegetable ceviche? C'mon. What is that?) and Lisa (overpowering banana in her hodgepodge of a dish).

In a surprise, it's Spike, his first win. Hats off (we wish) to his beef, pineapple, radish and cucumber salad.

Elimination challenge: This time, Sam is tied in more significantly to the task. After bringing in huge trays of burgers, Italian beef, onion rings and all kinds of other fast food, Lakshmi and Sam give a little speech about the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in this country. Sam, who is diabetic, says, "It's really hard to find flavorful food that is low in carbohydrates, low in sugar and really packs a punch in flavor."

The orgy of highly caloric, high-in-saturated-fat food is supposedly a typical lunch order for officers and cadets at the Chicago police academy. The challenge is to make healthful box lunches (low carb, low sugar) for our men and women in blue. They chefs must use at least one ingredient from these categories: whole grains, lean protein, fruits and vegetables. "Protect their health and serve them something tasty," Lakshmi explains. Get it? Serve and protect?

Spike gets 10 minutes to shop before the other chefs can begin. Plus, and this is a bigger deal, he can pick one ingredient from each category that the other chefs then cannot use. His strategy, natch, is to pick things that will screw them up: chicken, bread, tomatoes, lettuce. He gets plenty of grief for that later, but that doesn't compute. This is a competition, chefs!

The chefs have two hours to cook before transporting the food to the police academy. Stephanie is making a mushroom and leek soup with meatballs. She and everyone else seem to be humming along well, until Lisa notices the fire has been turned up too high under her rice, ruining it. It's burnt on the outside and undercooked inside. Lisa's livid. She has used brown rice, which takes 40 minutes to steam, so she cannot start over. She hollers sabotage, but the other chefs aren't buying it, positing instead that she's looking for someone to blame for her mistake.

At lunch service, the cops dig in. Along with her soup, Stephanie serves a side of butternut, celery root and apple puree with yogurt garnish. It seems disconnected, but her soup is popular, even though it looks like a huge serving. Dale's Asian-accented lettuce wrap is a hit, too. But Andrew's maki with faux rice of parsnip and pine nuts, about which he was so proud, is not. Similarly, Spike's chicken salad is roundly dismissed by the judges. Lisa's rice fools no one.

The judges seem to take no time at all to decide what they like and don't like. It seems really strange, at first, but quickly it becomes apparent that the producers saved the airtime for the drama that's about to unfold.

Dale and Stephanie are called in to the judges' table first as the top two. Again, explanations are short, but Dale wins with his lemongrass-mango bison, brown rice, cucumbers, radish and herb salad. It’s definitely more creative than Stephanie’s lunch, but we're happy to see our hometown girl at the top.

At the bottom are Lisa, Spike and Andrew, but getting to the loser takes a lot of equivocating, bickering and arrogant defiance of the judges.

Andrew is hit for preparing an insubstantial dish, a puny little maki roll that isn't going to satisfy anyone for lunch. When he basically tells the judges they don't know what they were talking about, head judge Tom Colicchio cuts him to the quick: "How about giving them something that’s good? It didn’t taste good at all."

Spike is criticized for not incorporating his exclusive ingredients into his dish and for making a pretty basic chicken salad. Also, the grapes and olives in it didn't go well together. But the increasingly mouthy Spike spits back: "What don’t you understand about salty and sweet?" Trust us, Spike, they don't go. Yuck. Then, arrogance mounting, he challenges Colicchio on another point, quipping, like a fifth-grader: "That’s what you think." Colicchio isn’t happy: "Unfortunately for you, it’s my opinion that matters."

Lisa blames the failure of her dish on the "sabotaged" rice, but Colicchio counters that the long beans and shrimp weren't cooked either. She then rats Andrew out about not using all the ingredients, but the judges already realized that.

When the chefs go away so the judges can deliberate (and the chefs can bicker more in the Stew Room), we're struck with the realization that these three are our least favorite and most contentious chefs. We'd be happy to see any of them go home.

In the end, the judges make us happy by choosing Andrew (couldn't they kick Lisa out too?).

Next week: After what looks like a Quickfire as short-order cooks, Restaurant Wars, passionately missed by fans last week, are back!

Until then, check out what our buddies are saying on The Extrovert, including a handicapping of each of the six remaining chefs.