Welcome to week 3 of Top Chef Texas.

And we're off!

Korean cook's going all Dale Carnegie on us with her posi-stance exhibited by tacking up a piece of paper on a mirror telling herself that she's a good person.

We're in the cooking dome and there are snakes.

Giant Black Man does not like snakes, exhibiting a fine level of intelligence as snakes are EVIL, delicious, but evil.

They're cooking rattlesnake, we love rattlesnake, we make queso out of the stuff

Paul Qui looks freaked the fuck out

Padma trots out Johnny Hernandez of La Gloria restaurant who cooks a few hundred pounds of snake a year. He's a snake expert. Has anyone eaten at this guy's restaurant?

Padma is cursing like a stevedore

Too bad the snakes have been skinned, we'd love to see Padma take the meat and convert the hide into a fetching pair of boots

Weepy goth W chef is freaking out, looks like she's about to cry

Mexican cook Chuy is a farm boy, no big deal for him to cook snakes

Qui's going street food style

Korea chef's barbecue snake looks real good as she methodically paints each snake strip with a red sauce

Chubby Sandy Duncan cook up first

Korea chef made nigiri

Pretty boy please go home

Nerdy chicago chef is not impressing

Qui has "strong flavors"

Giant Black man's off the chain with his tequila doused snake

More tequila snake from attractive black woman

No No No Qui gets called out for being too assertive. He's stoic now.

Johnny loves Korea chef

Johnny loves chubby Sandy Duncan chef

Weepy W chef wins out of nowhere, she does not look like our kind of cook

Out walks a beautiful slip of a Latina

It's quinceanera time. Man oh man. There is no party on earth like a quinceanera. We have a long and storied quinceanera history.You simply have not lived til you've been to a high class quinceanera in, oh, say Laredo or Brownsville. We once took the dance floor of one at the VFW in South Austin dressed up like Mil Mascaras, if he was a wise guy.

The cooks have their assignments, they will be competing in the heretofore unestablished "when a Mexican girl becomes a woman"category.

They are in the grocery store

Korea cook has lost her goddam mind and is spinning wildly and barking orders. Mexican butcher looks perplexed. Let's hope the San Antonio Mexicans are an enlightened bunch cause it looks like they're getting Kim Chee for their quinceanera party

Giant Black Man is getting called out by Mia Farrow for buying pre-cooked shrimp.

Giant Black man voices feelings of despair. We want to hold him like a baby polar bear and tell him it's ok Giant Black Chef, it's ok

Team meeting. Giant Black Man is sick of the bullshit

Attractive Black woman expresses reservations about being alpha femaled by Mia Farrow chef

Padma walks into the quinceneara looking like an A+. We have no love for skinny women but Padma can work the skeletal thing

Like any good Mexican woman Blanca [fairy princess/quinceneara girl] looks most forward to the food portion of her party.

The judges are eating and they are pissed off.

But, Tom brags on Qui for his potent flavors

Padma is not happy with prefab tortillas. THIS IS SAN ANTONIO NOT AUSTIN WHERE BULLSHIT TORTILLAS ARE CELEBRATED [see Torchy's et al]

and Tom adds that they are a cop out. Yes, Yes yes, we're sick of bullshit prefab tortillas in the great state of Texas

Mexican cook Chuy made birria one of our all time favorite dishes

More horse shit, fake-ass tortillas from this second batch of "chefs"

Let's hope they don't get a burger and fries challenge later in the season. Simplot won't cut it chefs

Curly haired girl chef is called out for her mole; too cinammon-y. Probably not a lot of mole coming out of the Jean George kitchens

Losing chefs are called to the carpet

Hugh doesn't like bullshit tortillas either

Chubby Sandy Duncan chef is not here to boss people around but she's all over Giant Black man for his flour tortilla enchiladas.

Back in the stew room where the grim season of despair has set in like the green room of a Skeletal Earth show in Dothan, Alabama

Back to judges table where every single cook is getting reamed out

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Giant Black Man is finished. He's done. We love you GIANT BLACK MAN. Why couldn't they send somebody, anybody else home?

But wait, Giant Black Man has been offered the opportunity for redemption. He must step into the elimination chamber mano a mano style with Andrew Curren, Austin's hometown hero.

We'll cover the web-only stand off at a later date.

And we'd like to apologize for making this report so brief. Some technical issues arose at the scrumptious house during episode 3 that damn near crippled our ability to go moment by moment this week.

Hope to be less concise and have more purple prose for y'all next week.

Here's last week's recap of episode #2 http://www.scrumptiouschef.com/food/index.cfm/2011/11/1

and week #1 blow by blow as well http://www.scrumptiouschef.com/food/index.cfm/2011/11/3