‘Top Chef: Charleston’ episode 4 video: A Christmas Quickfire

One of the more entertaining things to us about “Top Chef” for whatever reason is how the show really likes to pretend that it is operating in real time, so we tend to get at least one episode a year that is geared around a holiday that the cast had to get into the spirit of many months in advance. At times, we’ve seen it be Thanksgiving, but on Thursday night’s new episode, we’re all pretending that Christmastime is here!

In the preview below, the new head of Food and Wine stops by, introduces herself, and helps to introduce the latest Quickfire Challenge: Make a delightful holiday dish using all of the ingredients in your Christmas present. Basically, this is the same sort of thing that we get on “Chopped” all the time, or in some of the Mystery Box Challenges on “MasterChef.”

We do think that these particular ingredients are at the very least as crazy, if not crazier, than anything we’ve seen on those other shows. Basically, you’re having to cook with tequila, chocolate pretzels, some fruit, and a variety of other oddball things that don’t go together at all, and you have to use all of them in some shape or form. Since Katsuji has always been the man of many ingredients, there is a part of us that thinks he’ll have an inherent advantage at this.

Whoever wins the challenge is going to have immunity, which is always great to have at this point in the season since you never want to leave early on and face the world’s biggest uphill battle on “Last Chance Kitchen.” That may be especially intimidating now given that Sam is over there, and you know from watching season 2 that he is a good threat to win a ton of those competitions in a row.

If you missed it, you can watch this past episode of “Last Chance Kitchen” online just by heading over to the link here! We’re going to have even more news on “Top Chef” after Thursday night’s new episode airs, so be on the lookout for that. (Photo: Bravo.)