Season 18 - Episode Guide

Fifteen of the country's best chefs compete in Portland, Ore.; for their first challenge, chefs combine their favorite ingredients into one cohesive dish; contestants must create a dish featuring one of Portland's iconic local birds.

The chefs enter the kitchen to find Padma and seven hungry all-star chefs -- Amar Santana, Melissa King, Kwame Onwuachi, Dale Talde, Gregory Gourdet, Carrie Baird and Richard Blais -- and find they have 30 minutes to serve eight plates of breakfast.

The pressure is laid on the chefs in the Quickfire Challenge as they are tasked to make a layered dessert; Gregory and Kwame take the chefs on a tour of restaurants that feature food from the African diaspora.

The chefs must create a dish featuring Campbell's soup for Padma and Dale Talde; the cheftestants get thrown for a loop when they find out they won't be shopping for their Elimination Challenge.

The chefs are tasked to create a dish featuring roses or rose products inspired by the mother figure in their lives; the chefs will go head-to-head at the first-ever Top Chef Drive-In, where each team must create dishes based on popular movie genres.

The chefs are transported into a magical kitchen forest for the week's Quickfire Challenge where they make a dish featuring mushrooms; the cheftestants will be paired up to create a surf and turf dish featuring local fish and game.

Chef José Andrés calls in to recruit the chefs to join World Central Kitchen, tasking the chefs with delivering over 500 meals to frontline workers at three local hospitals in Portland.

The eight remaining chefs split into teams and are tasked with creating a Chef's Table restaurant concept, where they must serve a seven-course, high-end tasting menu to the judges and All-Star panel.

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein from the comedy series "Portlandia" task the chefs with creating a dish with hipster ingredients using only old vintage appliances and equipment; the chefs must develop and create a recipe fit for the home cook.

Ed Lee enters the kitchen and tells the chefs they will be competing tournament style; the chefs duke it out at the Portland Japanese Gardens, where they must create dishes featuring various textures of tofu.

In teams of two, the chefs each take a turn entering the box where they blindly taste a dish created by guest judge Gabriel Rucker and then must try to re-create it.

The final four chefs near the end of their journey in Portland, Padma; popular chef and special guest Massimo Bottura has the chefs pull inspiration from his famous parmigiano reggiano dish.

The remaining chefs get an early wake-up call from Padma to go meet Brooke and dig for clams; the chefs honor the area where James Beard spent his summers, creating both a hot dish and a cold dish with one of his favorite ingredients, Dungeness crab.

After 13 grueling weeks of competition, the chefs must create the best four-course meal of their lives; they'll serve it to an esteemed table.