Every time I watch Top Chef, it sets my eyes on fire. And everything it's got is all I requires. I can feel it getting down to the wire. Top Chef and JDS, little sleep, lots of coffee.

There is a place where the episode ends
And before the show begins
And there the chefs grow soft and white,
And there Jen's face burns crimson bright,
And there the brothers prep for their fight
To ballotine a thing.

Eli fights for Blaise, the Huck to his Tom Sawyer,
absurd, abstract and color blind, just like Indigo Montoya.
For Kev it's honor; for Jen it's pride
For Mike it's stabbing his brother in the side
But for all the chefs there's no nook to hide
Except in the place where the episode ends.

A chicken inside a duck tucked inside a pheasant
A tranny mess, fucked in a dress, triple stuffed protein ain't pleasant.
Jen triumphed though Eli snorted
Mike harumphed but Jen retorted
Kev and Bry were kind and all transported
To the place where the episode ends.

Lamb or salmon, two garnishes and no room for excuses.
[Technical perfection is, after all, the point of all Bocuses.]
Padma, clad in black and white,
Sent the chefs to stew the night
chew their cud and think what's right
to cook in the the place where the episode ends.

And lo, what an expert panel sat, chaired by Thomas Keller
D. Boulud and T Collicks and lotsa other fellas
And how they ate and dissected
Deconstructed and resurrected
Offered harsh critique and invective
In the place where the episode ends.

So the team served their protein on a mirrored platter
Flaws reflected and fillets thin. Some fillets were fatter.
Kev's was simple but Eli's lamb raw
Jen's salmon fishy, Mike's caught in the caw
Thomas Keller liked not what he saw
In the place where the episode ends.

Would any hack it in real competition, one shudders to think.
In a world gone wrong, the nation on the brink,
would you trust Mike's bouche to amuse?
or Eli's fusion not to confuse
or Jen's nerves not to torpedo her rouxs
In the place where the episode ends.

En fin, it was infant Eli whose head he had to lose
And crying he left blubbering "J'accuse!"
But all's fair in love and war and in the Bocuse
In the place where the episode ends.

[Apologies and deep gratitude to Shel Silverstein and Mike Byhoff.]