Restaurant Wars delivers a major casualty on 'Top Chef'

After nine episodes, the rivalry is over: Kenny has been sent home on "Top Chef: D.C." Granted, Bravo hadn’t been focusing on the Kenny vs. Angelo rivalry for at least two episodes, but it is still a shock to see Kenny pack up his knives (and end the big dramatic story of this season).

It seems unfair, especially since Alex seems to be cheating his way to the top — or is just the world's luckiest person. He seems to be picking up the slack as most obnoxious chef in the kitchen, so the longer he’s on, the more “interesting” the show is to watch. Too bad that doesn’t correlate to better cooking.

During the Elimination Challenge, it was the blind leading the blind. Groups of four had to tag team to cook a dish without seeing what the person before was doing. Each cheftestant had only 10 minutes to put in their two cents, or in Team Red's case (Ed, Tiffany, Angelo and Alex), two shakes of the salt.

Alex screwed over his team by seasoning the fish too early in the game. When the final cheftestant on Red, Angelo, got to the dish, he seasoned the red snapper again, since salting is normally one of the last steps right before cooking. It was too late to rectify their mistake, so Angelo just made the dish pretty. Despite the overpowering salt, the rest of the red snapper with wilted greens and maitake mushrooms was flavorful — or at least Tiffany insisted it was so.

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Alas, it wasn't good enough to defeat the Blue Team (Kevin, Kenny, Amanda and that other girl that they rarely focus on, Kelly). Their al dente angel hair pasta with sautéed shrimp and mustard sauce had Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi voting yea on their plate.

Then the war began. Usually, the Restaurant Wars episode is one of the best of the season, but Team Red's floundering in the kitchen made it more painful to watch than pleasurable. Ed and Tiffany kept calm — Ed didn’t want to lose his cool in front of his lady lover — but Angelo and Alex almost ruined the night.

Alex rudely bossed his wait staff around, saying that all his employees loved him back in Los Angeles. (More like loved to hate him.) Angelo got in the spirit and started frantically throwing things on plates and screaming his head off. Kenny and the rest of the Blue gang stayed cool as cucumbers, arrogantly thinking that their flawless teamwork would easily outshine the Red Team.

Normally, that would be the case, but for some reason everyone’s dish (besides Kevin’s halibut) was off that night on the Blue Team. Kenny’s goat cheese plate was just too horrible to eat. “This is awful,” former New York Times Food critic Frank Bruni and this week’s guest judge remarked. “It’s like a horror show.” Kenny’s warm beet salad had too many components, so sadly with two bad dishes he was sent packing.

But his team didn’t let him go down easily. Once they realized that the Blue Team was going down they put up a united front against Alex, trying to throw him under the bus.

Claiming that there was a Russian conspiracy theory, Kevin and Kenny argued that Alex did nothing for the Red Team (which was against the rules), with Angelo and Ed picking up his slack. The judges decided in favor of the other rule — the winning team members could not be eliminated — but it will be interesting to see the fireworks next week when Alex enters the kitchen to face the angry chefs.