Each week we'll watch Aragona chef Carrie Mashaney represent in the show's New Orleans season.

Previously, on Top Chef: Vietnamese cuisine party bus! Loud, crustacean-bedecked shirts!

Good, we're back to having quickfires. Padma apparently liked the Reynolds Wrap challenge in Seattle so much that this time the crew wrapped everything—blenders, knives, the works—in foil. And she and Gail invited their adorable moms to come in and do a supermarket sweep-style spree, filling their shopping carts with these mysterious foil-wrapped items that the chefs must then cook. This makes for weird combos (beans and cherries in a soup).

Carrie plans a sabayon out of eggs, powdered sugar, and Grand Marnier (nice work, Gail's mom). Except, whoops—mama Simmons did not get her a whisk. Our plucky heroine attempts to coax that whipped, custardy texture using nothing more than her arm and a spoon. Surely Carrie’s MacGyvering skills have met their match here, yes?

The other team takes the win, though Gail does sing Carrie's praises and expresses some amazement (which I share) that she made that biz with a spoon. Carrie must kill at arm wrestling.

The elimination challenge: Cater a costume party for Glee star and Top Chef superfan Lea Michele. Chefs surround Lea with bright smiles…that fall flat when she tells them she’s mostly vegan, but cheats occasionally with cheese. She mentions cheese roughly 12 times in two minutes, but also says she wants spooky Halloween food.

Carrie is paired with Stephanie, the repeat player from the Seattle season.

The party is held at a venue resembling New Orleans square at Disneyland. Lea is dressed as a sexy cat, duh, and Tom Colicchio is sporting a bow tie and a straw boater. Their first stop is Carrie’s table, for bites of "doomed shrooms": mushrooms with black garlic and radicchio, and a plate of vegetables  drizzled in fontina fonduta and dusted with leek ash, like a graveyard. Lea does everything short of break out in song over the flavors, and even Tom is impressed.

Many of the chefs are in fifth-grade haunted house mode. Three teams make arancini, and everyone uses a black olive to make them resemble eyeballs. What, nobody peeled grapes and stuck them in a bowl with spaghetti?

Two teams made gnocchi. Even more embarrassing—both Tom and Bravo exec/unapologetic media whore Andy Cohen both came as Gatsby. But as Andy Cohen explains, he’s a modern Hawaiian Gatsby. Get off my TV screen, Andy Cohen.

The party wraps up, the chefs return to the stew room, and the TV screen roars to life with Kathleen Sebelius testifying before Congress the judges bagging on Bene and Brian for both their double-dose of lame salads, and for trying to coin the term “spooky spa cuisine.”

The winners: Carlos and Travis, for bringing the spice, and the teamwork, to their goat cheese fondue and fried zucchini. Travis tells the judges that he grew up in Colorado and rattles off some stats about the significant Latino population, so embracing Carlos's Mexican flavors was a snap. Between this and his three trips to Vietnam, Travis is a multicultural phenom.

The loser: Nina St. Lucia, easily one of the season's biggest talents, gets dragged to the bottom by Michael the springy-haired New Orleans chef. He’s ultimately sent knife-packing, but Nina must endure some scolding for not shepherding his dish as carefully as hers.

Line of the night: Padma's mom didn't really have any great lines, but damn she was cute. And way nicer than Padma.

Next, on Top Chef: John Besh...on a rice farm. And for the love of pete, hopefully some more Carrie action.

Minutiae:

• Let us all recall that the Halloween episodes are usually filmed in July.
• I thought I was so clever when I dressed up as a pregnant nun my sophomore year of college. Now I just feel gross that springy-haired Michael and I were on the same costume wavelength.
• Yet again Carrie quietly does a good job and falls in the middle of the pack. I'm wagering that the show is downplaying her in these earlier eps because she will be sticking around for a while.
• Padma is a voodoo priestess. I mean that’s what she wore as a costume. Hugh Acheson was either Prince William or Prince Charming. His unibrow needs no costume.
• Vocab lesson of the day: Like graffiti and graffito, the singular form of arancini is arancino.