Fans of Top Chef were probably not surprised that the first to go was young Jeffrey Jew, a personal chef formerly of Washington, D.C. Problem is, he only looks young. Jew was 34 when the episode was taped. He not only has years of experience both stateside and in London, but also graduated at the top of his class at the Culinary Institute of America. (In case you’re wondering, Jeffrey is half Norwegian, half Chinese—Jew is the Chinese part, he explained on the phone, which could also have been spelled Zhou.) So what did him in?

During the elimination challenge—cooking for the judges at Seattle’s Space Needle—Jew’s team stuck to a plan with very specific times to fire up their dishes. They allotted too much time for Jeffrey to cook his halibut, “a very delicate fish,” he points out. Fellow chefs Brooke Williamson and D.C.’s lone holdout, Bart Vandaele, assured Jeffrey it was fine—but once he served it, Jeffrey began to think this could do him in.