Nicknamed "The Wolf," Chef Lester Walker sets off to prepare a New York City-themed appetizer in honor of his hometown using smoked eel, cream cheese spread, quince paste and haricot verts as mandatory ingredients. Although the judges praise his use of quince and cream cheese atop toast, they question the spice mixture atop his sliced eel, and he's ultimately chopped after the first round.

"My vision was to enhance that smoked flavor [of the eel] by charring the bread and scallions," Chef Elise Kornack said while presenting her appetizer. She serves the panel brown butter-laced smoked eel with an haricot vert salad tossed with charred scallions and cream cheese spread, and Judge Maneet Chauhan says that she "definitely nailed that."

Chef Corwin Kave's appetizer of tom tua, a Thai bean salad, is well received on account of its "proper balance of flavor from the spice and heat," according to Judge Geoffrey Zakarian, but his anti-griddled cream cheese spread is less successful. "It really didn't add to the dish," Judge Maneet says of that element, which is left off of Judge Scott Conant's plate altogether.

With such mandatory entree ingredients as frog legs, yuzu marinde, gin and tofu, Chef Jun Tanaka begins work on caramelized frog legs with fried tofu when the unthinkable happens: He drops all but a few frogs' legs on the floor, forcing him to serve what little he has left. "I know I need to make that one mouthful of frogs' legs so delicious that they all forget everything else," Chef Jun says after the incident.