Hell’s Kitchen Episode Seventeen: Return of the Champion(s)

                So who were the mystery chefs that the remaining “black jackets” had to cook against in their dinner service?  Well if you couldn’t guess by the title, it was revealed that the chefs were all previous Hell’s Kitchen winners.  The task at hand was not only to cook a regular dinner service, but also to come up with both an entrée and an appetizer to add to the menu.  Both the champs and the regular chefs seem supremely confident, even though none of them have worked as a team with one another before.  However, they are all fairly professional (except for blonde girl, she’s the worst) and after a bit of light-hearted trash talk; they retire to the dorms where they determine what they are going to make. 

                Blonde girl is really high on simple food.  While I agree with her in theory, I have to agree with Mr. Mohawk that a slider won’t blow the champs out of the water, and will probably get her laughed out of the kitchen by Ramsay.  The chefs settle on something a bit more complex, steak tartar for an appetizer and duck for an entrée.  The duck requires an addition of duck confit, which takes a long time to cook, so much so that during the initial tasting of the dish they don’t have that element ready to present to Ramsay.  He thinks they’re morons, but then they come back with a revised tasting that includes all of the elements of the dish and he raves about it.  It was a pretty good gamble, especially considering the fact that Ramsay probably already thinks they are morons, and didn’t need a lack of duck confit to tell him that.

                The champs use duck for their appetizer and pork loin (I believe) for their entrée.  The pork loin is on a bed of collard greens because Nona, one of the returning chefs can’t help but say “collards” thirty times in a two minute span to drive the point home when they are devising their menu.  She then talks pretty gangster about it, way more gangster than a southern white woman should ever dream about talking.  Ramsay likes their dish but warns that people in California don’t like their meat to be so bloody even if they do order it rare to medium rare (keep that in mind).

                Dinner service starts off fine.  The champs have a few stumbles out of the gate based more on rust in terms of working in that specific environment at those specific tasks than anything else.  It’s interesting to see how Ramsay treats them compared to the chefs in the current competition.  He offers advice and encouragement, much like MasterChef Ramsay, as opposed to just busting their balls.  It’s fun to watch him lose his shit but there is something about Gordon Ramsay the mentor that is quite admirable and it would be nice to see more of it.  Appetizers for the regular chefs go out relatively smoothly.  Blonde girl in her role as “floater” does a good job on the apps until the very end when she somehow can’t cook a dish in five minutes that should only take two.  That’s the only issue though, aside from squeaky voice freaking Ramsay out by staring at him.  I’ve never seen Ramsay flustered like that and it was funny to see.  Every time he went to call out a ticket, she would stop and stare at him, stone faced.  It took him four tries to call out an order because he was so “freaked out” by the way she stared at him.  It’s kind of weird that we are this far into the competition and this is the first time that a problem like that has come up, but who knows, maybe squeaky voice was trying to be extra attentive and it just came off as extra spooky.

                Entrees went ok as well, with the only problem being that some of the diners had an issue with underdone meat.  The meat was not raw by any means, just underdone for their taste.  It wasn’t that big of a deal, just cook another to the next step up, rare to medium-rare, etc.  Except mixed up Cyndi sent up an exact replica of the undercooked meat the second time (on the last table no less) which made Ramsay yell for one of the only times that night.  The champs were able to correct their mistakes the first time and didn’t repeat any of the missteps in terms of underdone meat.  You can definitely see why they won the competition.

                The dinner services for both sides were very good, so Ramsay decides to let the comment cards determine the winner.  Victory goes to the champs with a score of 95 to 93 in terms of percentage of diners that would return.  The chefs then have to retire to the dorms and decide on two people to nominate for elimination.  Conventional wisdom would say send up the two that got yelled at by Ramsay that night, right?  Regardless of that logic, blonde girl and mixed up Cyndi act surprised to have their names mentioned.  At this point, minute details are what can send a chef home, and yet those two act like they are being accused of pissing in the risotto.  They both go up for elimination and Ramsay sends home…

…no one.

                For the first time this season he uses the “you all did so well that no one gets to go home tonight” card.  Of course that just means that next time he may finally send more than one person home at a time, or, for the first time this season he may boot someone in the middle of dinner service.  Those are always my favorite.  At this point though, you have to mess up pretty bad if you are going to be booted mid-service.  Luckily, someone apparently messes up pretty bad next time, and Ramsay even walks off the line, giving the keys to the kingdom to blonde girl because he can’t take it anymore (surprise, surprise, someone is fed up with blonde girl’s mouth).

                See you next week!