Hell’s Kitchen Episodes 20 & 21: All good things must come to an end, and so too shall Hell’s Kitchen

                Well, here we are, at the end of the road.  It’s been a long, interesting journey that has gone from eager anticipation of each new episode to kind of a hate-watch relationship (this season’s cast was the worst) to a quiet acceptance that cataloguing this season of madness was my solemn duty.  How did it all end?  Let’s find out.

                The first thing we need to do is determine who is joining squeaky voice in the finals.  Mr. Mohawk and skinny black girl were the last two chefs awaiting their fate.  And the chef that will be going up against squeaky voice is…skinny black girl!  Okay, a couple things about this selection.  First of all, Mr. Mohawk got screwed, I know it and he knows it.  Ramsay does let him down easy by telling him to keep his jacket and to keep his ears open as something will come up soon for him, but he should have absolutely been in the final.  Also, it took me all damn season to figure out what I hate the most about skinny black girl, but I did.  She speaks in sound bites.  That’s it.  She obviously knows that she’s on camera and figures that the more blatant she speaks in sound bites, the greater her chance of landing in the recaps.  I can’t stand that because not only does she speak in that way, but the volume is always elevated.  I will say though, that as much as I don’t like the final two, it is fitting that it’s an all female finale as the guys were dogshit this year (even Ramsay made a remark to that effect).

                Anyway, if I was to handicap the competition at this point I would put squeaky voice ahead slightly, but it’s way too close to call right now, especially when I haven’t seen each finalist’s brigade for the final service.  The next stop, as in pretty much every season, is Las Vegas.  The chefs get to their massive hotel room and begin to devise their menu.  Quite a few things happen next, and I honestly do not remember the exact order so I’ll give you a short rundown.  Ramsay’s Sous Chefs come in to help them refine their menus, they meet the president of the hotel in Las Vegas where Ramsay’s new restaurant will be, and they sit down with Christina, the winner of last season’s competition for a little one-on-two question and answer period.

                They then get back to Los Angeles and settle in to work on their menus some more, thinking that they will have some quiet time to do so.  You girls are so silly.  The best part is that every time something like this happens, they both act so surprised, like they’d never seen a Hell’s Kitchen finale before.  Give me a break.  They are told to pack for another trip and they are taken to a train station.  Here they meet their families, which is surprise number one.  Skinny black girl’s mother and sister come out to see her, while squeaky voice gets a visit from her mother and husband.  The second surprise is that they are not there to go on a trip, they are there for their final challenge in Hell’s Kitchen, the menu presentation.  They have to each create a hot appetizer, cold appetizer, beef, chicken and fish dish.  Each dish will be judged head to head and then whoever has the most points at the end of the competition will get the coveted “first pick” of the chefs.

                Does this competition ever not go down to the last dish?  At this point, you rarely see a dish that is poorly executed between the two chefs so I wouldn’t be surprised if Ramsay requires the chefs doing the judging to draw out the process as long as possible.  Either way, the result comes down to the final dish (duh) and skinny black girl wins (to which she replies with some sound bite).  Usually at this point in the competition, the chefs retire to Hell’s Kitchen and choose their teams, well not this time!  They have to pick their teams in front of the audience that gathered to watch the cooking/judging.  Because skinny black girl had first pick, she went with mixed up Cyndi, with squeaky voice picking Mr. Mohawk with her first pick.  The picks went pretty much as you would expect with snooty stringbean one being the last picked.  I didn’t think it was possible for his attitude to get worse, but it has.  Where many chefs on here are raising their profile considerably by showing up and working hard, I can’t see that guy as employable at all based on his attitude.  There is even a secret surprise that Ramsay gives the finalists; the opportunity to trade one person from their team with the other.  Of course squeaky voice tries to use this on snooty stringbean one to no avail.  At this point, I would give the odds to skinny black girl because she has the stronger brigade, but it’s still close.

                They get to cooking and all the little hiccups you assume would be there when you place chefs that couldn’t cut it in the opening rounds of the competition into something much more difficult are there in spades.  The finalists do a decent job of keeping their brigades on track and they don’t get too bogged down.  There was a major issue for each chef though as skinny black girl’s team was getting behind and not responding to her leadership.  Instead of wilting, she started barking out orders like a shorter, slightly less tan Gordon Ramsay.   Her team got back on track and finished their service.  Squeaky voice was getting shit from snooty stringbean one (surprise, surprise) over in her kitchen and instead of taking it, she kicked him out.  I personally think she put up with his shit longer than she should have, but the fact that she would rather go through dinner service a man down than deal with his shit showed me that she has the instinct to lead a kitchen.  Where that good faith came in, it quickly started to evaporate when she started losing her mind on the pass.  She would keep asking for food that was already in front of her face, or that she had just plated.  That lack of organization, even with the ability to send your weakest link packing, will not be looked upon very highly by Ramsay when he makes his decision.  After this, it was incredibly close, and I would give the slight edge to squeaky voice, but that might be because I don’t like skinny black girl and her damn sound bites.

                And the winner is…skinny black girl, because of course it is, they had to get a couple more sound bites in there before the end of the season.

                Well this was an interesting experiment.  If you have any shows on “regular” television that will be starting soon that you want to see a recap of, let me know.  I’ll take them into consideration.  Thanks for reading and joining me on this strange adventure.

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Nineteen: And then there were…two…kind of

                For the past few weeks, my choice for the final two has been Mr. Mohawk and mixed up Cyndi.  They both seem like the most ready, the best fits for Ramsay’s restaurant at this time.  Was I correct in that assumption?  We’ll see, but first we have to get through the individual challenge.  This one started out with a puzzle, an actual puzzle that the contestants had to put together.  The team of Mr. Mohawk and squeaky voice completed the puzzle ahead of the other team of skinny black girl and mixed up Cyndi pretty easily and wins…nothing. Of course.  The real challenge is the now infamous “Taste it Now Make it” challenge in which Ramsay brings out a fairly simple dish with multiple components that each of the contestants need to get right.  The dish this year looked a little busy in terms of plating, but I’m sure it was delicious.  The three components of the dish that the chefs need to correctly guess is the protein, the puree and the vegetable.  Everyone thinks that the puree is butternut squash, which is incorrect as it is carrot puree.  So no one gets eliminated there.  The protein is what usually trips up the chefs in these competitions and this one is no different as Mr. Mohawk and squeaky voice are both eliminated because they didn’t choose venison as their protein.  Mixed up Cyndi chose venison and buffalo but only plated the venison so she lucked out.  It all came down to the vegetable.  Mixed up Cyndi had turnip while skinny black girl had parsnip I believe.  Mixed up Cyndi wins!

                For her reward she gets a $1000.00 shopping spree at a kitchen supply store in which she purchases a stand mixer for her mother, among other things.  She also gets a one on one lunch with Ramsay at his new restaurant “Fat Cow”.  The other contestants have to not only clean the dorms, but actually move stuff out, all the beds and everything and then set up for dinner service that night.  There aren’t too many surprises in the cleanup, except someone left their thong laying in the corner somewhere.  They didn’t say anything about it being able to tie a boat to shore so I’m assuming it wasn’t fat black girl’s but I could be mistaken.

                Mixed up Cyndi returns to the kitchen and dinner service begins.  This is the night that each chef gets to run the pass, expediting and plating food while being the “last line of defense” as Ramsay likes to say.  First up is mixed up Cyndi, who does an ok job of running things.  She does miss the fairly obvious blemish of crab substituted for lobster in the risotto, but she does keep food moving at a steady pace.

Mr. Mohawk on the other hand gets his ass handed to him.  He misses the white fish substituted for the scallops in the appetizer.  That is ridiculous though as I don’t know how anyone could really tell without tasting the dish, or squeezing the “scallops” and having them fall apart in your fingers.  He also was thrown a curveball by Jean Phillipe as a diner requested that the prosciutto not be included in the Beef Wellington.  That’s all well and good, except the Wellingtons are all pre-wrapped, so there’s no way that’s going to happen without them tearing apart a Wellington (which isn’t going to happen).  I think Mr. Mohawk got screwed here, is what I’m trying to say, and if he went home after this service I would be disappointed, but not surprised.   

Skinny black girl is up next and does a decent job of running things.  There’s not much to say because I think she caught the mistake by Chef Andy and ran a pretty tight ship.  The same can be said for squeaky voice as she caught a big screw up where the Chef Andy sent up a Veal Wellington instead of a Beef one.  She also caught many of the smaller mistakes presented by the other contestants, something that Mr. Mohawk was unable to do in his time at the pass.  That voice of hers served her well in this instance as she was able to be heard among the din of the kitchen and her orders were carried out correctly, probably to shut her up but I’m sure that was okay for her. 

Elimination time came next, and the first person to make it into the finals was squeaky voice!  She wasn’t my first choice but she did show that she could run the pass and improved every single service for the most part.  I’m okay with that choice.  Of course this meant that at least one of my frontrunners wouldn’t be going through to the final round.  We are treated to the revelation next as Ramsay sends home mixed up Cyndi.  This was a surprise to everyone as I was sure that not only was she going through to the finals, but that she would win the whole thing.  Ramsay mentioned her lack of assertiveness to be her downfall, which makes sense, it’s just kind of sad to see her go after she has done such a good job up to this point.

That leaves one spot open for two people.  Who’s going to face squeaky voice in the finals?  No one knows, at least not until next week when we get the whole finals experience.  The trip to Vegas, the choosing of new teams, the final reveal (though I wouldn’t be surprised if they expanded the finale to two weeks).  We’ll see!

See you next week!

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Eighteen: The Non-Consensus

                Will someone finally be sent home for the love of all things Ramsay!?  It’s been nearly a month since an elimination (seriously, between last week’s repeat and the fact that this is part three of “Five Chefs Compete” it feels like forever since someone was sent packing).  Let’s see if Ramsay has finally had enough of his current crop of chefs and starts to whittle down some of the dead weight.

                We open with an individual challenge in which each of the chefs had to make their own gourmet burger.  Ramsay prefaces this challenge by showing them his own gourmet burger that he casually mentions can sell for upwards of $100.00.  Go back and read that again, I’ll wait.  That’s right, a $100.00 hamburger.  Holy shit what has happened to society when we are selling burgers for $100.00?  It’s not even that a chef would put that rich of a price tag on it, it’s the fact that we have people out there willing to shell out their hard-earned cash to keep it in demand enough for it to stay on the menu.  This thing had better be made out of endangered baby seal meat with an orphan-tear aioli and tomatoes grown in the ashes of holocaust victims (too soon?) for me to even consider paying that much for a hamburger. 

                Okay, rant over, I feel better now.  The competition itself is not just a standard “make your burger and Ramsay will judge it along with one of his colleagues” though.  Instead, Jean Phillipe, the snooty Maitre D has invited a bunch of his friends to the restaurant.  They will all taste the burgers and vote on their favorite.  Upon completion of the tasting, Ramsay reveals everyone’s least favorite burger (blonde girl, which is not that surprising) and then states with forty percent of the vote, which based on the fact that there were five people competing is a crazy number, Mr. Mohawk wins.  His reward is a spa day and he is allowed to bring one of the girls with him.  He chooses mixed up Cyndi because (as he says) “She’s one of the guys”.  This kind of makes sense, because I have no doubt the other three would be talking his ear off the whole time.  Well played Mr. Mohawk.  Not only that but these two are the strongest chefs and most likely to land in the top two, so banding together now would help them in the long run. 

                While Mr. Mohawk and mixed up Cyndi get their facial on (it’s not as dirty as it sounds) the rest of the chefs have a laundry list of stuff to do as Ramsay has given Jean Phillipe and his staff the day off.  This includes steaming the tablecloths, setting up the dining room and even washing Jean Phillipe’s car.  Not only that, but then they have to set up for dinner service that evening.  That’s a lot of work for only three people in the time allotted, but through the magic of television they get it all done.

                The dinner service is a mess compared to the previous one where the chefs narrowly lost out to the returning champions.  It is not really as bad as where the chefs came from (they completed it, so that’s a plus) but it is still not up to par with where they should be and far below Ramsay’s standards.  Mr. Mohawk and mixed up Cyndi have a solid outing (maybe because of spa day, I don’t know for sure) but the other three are train wrecks.  Squeaky voice sends up shitty fish, skinny black girl sends up risotto that elicits a reaction I’ve rarely seen from Ramsay.  When he tastes it, it looks like a baby shit in his mouth, his reaction is that pronounced.  Blonde girl decides that she wants to be “Top Chef” for the day and starts firing tickets.  The main problem is that she is firing the entrees on tickets in which the tables are still waiting for their appetizers.  Ramsay hands her his apron and walks out of the kitchen, leaving her to run the pass and her garnish station.  I will give her a little credit, she actually does it.  I mean, food goes out and we don’t see any of it coming back.  How much of that is her leadership as opposed to everyone else just upping their game, I don’t know for sure. 

                Elimination time comes and Ramsay asks for two nominees.  Everyone is in agreement that squeaky voice should go up.  She’s a good chef but this was by far her worst service.  The last spot has a split vote between skinny black girl and blonde girl.  The only problem is that it’s impossible to have a split vote when you have an odd number of people.  I have no idea how that happened, and Ramsay apparently doesn’t care as he calls up all three of the chefs and sends blonde girl home.  Before she goes, he does state that he may have a job for her in the future if she keeps cooking and keeps her passion.  This is news to me as I didn’t think Ramsay was really into the McDonalds franchisee thing, but to each his own I guess.

                Next time, with the four strongest chefs left in the competition, two get eliminated after they each get their chance to run the pass.  Is there sabotage, intrigue, bad food in store?  We’ll see next time (or we probably won’t).  Only a couple more episodes to go!

                See you next week.

Hell's Kitchen Interlude

No Hell's Kitchen recap today because there was no new Hell's Kitchen last week (probably because Thursday was the fourth and everyone was outside lighting things on fire).  Have no fear though.  I scoured the internet for Hell's Kitchen memes that seem to be popping up more and more nowadays and bring you some of the better ones to tide you over until the recaps resume next week.  Well done to the individuals that created these and put them out there for all of us to enjoy.

And now, my three personal favorites, in no particular order.

See you next week!

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!

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Sixteen: An apparent change of heart.

                I’m not sure if Ramsay just really wanted loud guy gone or what, but for the moment at least he seems pretty content with keeping the five chefs that he has (even if one of them is blonde girl).  The whole mess about “only giving out four black jackets this year” was a bunch of baloney.  I started the episode late, about fifteen to twenty minutes in, and they had all been given their black jackets.  I’m not sure if Ramsay just changed his mind or what (I’m assuming there was some kind of challenge associated with it given the amount of time I missed, but if you know for sure, let me know in the comments below!) but when I started watching the episode it was right before the pressure-cooker challenge. 

                The pressure-cooker challenge had the chefs open up a pressure cooker placed in front of them to determine their mystery ingredient.  This was a “humble” ingredient, not one that you would normally find in a fine dining restaurant, and with the help of a pressure cooker the chefs were supposed to turn that ingredient into something that Ramsay and his two guest judges would deem restaurant quality.  Blonde girl had pork belly, but apparently she had no idea how a pressure cooker worked because she kept opening the damn thing and therefore her dish was undercooked.  Mixed up Cyndi had some kind of pork, a roast or butt I think or something of that nature, and her dish turns out to be stunningly bland.  Mr. Mohawk received lamb shanks and while in the process of cooking them in the pressure cooker, burns the meat.  He tries to clean out the pressure-cooker the best he can in order to finish cooking the meat without it tasting burnt, but he simply can’t.  Luckily the chef at the pass for the women’s team (the one that helps Ramsay expedite food while he is running around ready to tear someone a new asshole) gives Mr. Mohawk a second pressure-cooker so he can finish his dish.  This is after she also sets him up with a new station when his gets overrun by the output from the steamer.  Is she pulling for him or trying to help him advance, or would she do this for any chef in that situation?  I think it’s the latter, especially since we haven’t seen any other hint of favoritism, but who knows.  His lamb turns out ok, but a little undercooked because of the time spent out of the pressure cooker while cleaning it.  Skinny black girl gets goat ribs.  I’ve never had goat anything, but with the way the judges rave about this dish, and appropriately award it a 14/15, I may just have to try some.  Squeaky voice gets beef short ribs, which is what everyone probably wanted because of its versatility.  She decides to make a beef stew with it and makes her own homemade pasta to go in it.  Everything is perfect and she rightfully receives a perfect score of 15/15. 

                For her reward, squeaky voice is given a chance to spend time with her family (which is apparently what the time I missed was all about). She gets a private dining experience at a fancy restaurant, just her and her family.  I believe it’s her mother and husband/boyfriend, but I’m not sure, but either way, they live it up for their short time together.  The losers of this challenge have to do some landscaping as well as dumpster diving to separate the garbage into recyclable/non-recyclable piles.  These are dumpsters that have apparently not been emptied since the first dinner service so a lot of that stuff is pretty rank.  In fact, skinny black girl dumps out a bag of garbage to go picking through it and wonders where all the “rice” came from.  That’s not rice, that’s maggots you dummy.  This sends her into a kind of a tailspin as apparently maggots are the one thing she can’t deal with.  Despite skinny black girl’s inability to get over that fear, the chefs finish their task of picking through garbage and head in to the dorms to clean themselves up.  They get a call from Ramsay to come down the stairs right away, which they do even though blonde girl still has her hair in a towel (and apparently gives away just how cool Ramsay keeps Hell’s Kitchen, if you know what I mean).  Ramsay then states that the black team will be working together for the first time the following evening at dinner service, but they won’t be working in a vacuum.  The black team will be going against an all-star staff (according to Ramsay anyway).  Of course they don’t show us who these people are, but based on the reactions of the current chefs, it’s not people you would expect.  And to be continued.

                Last year when Ramsay did this he welcomed back chefs from the past seasons.  Some were very good, others were just okay.  I don’t remember the end result of the head to head, but unless the chefs didn’t watch last year’s season, they wouldn’t be this surprised and this blown away that Ramsay got the old chefs back.  I don’t think the other team is made up of strictly returning chefs, or if it is, it’s made up of past winners.  I don’t think Ramsay was able to wrangle cooking show heavyweights like Bobby Flay, Wolfgang Puck, etc. either.  At this point, the identity of the opposing chefs is anyone’s guess, but if nothing else it should be interesting.  Not only that, but this week there seems to be a fracture amongst the black team already, which, duh.

See you next week!

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Fifteen: Fooled Again

                First, let’s address the title which is in direct reference to the wild goose chase of information that the producers of Hell’s Kitchen lead us on every single week.  Last week, we were led to believe that the blue team would be sabotaged by skinny black girl and that Ramsay would be losing an eyebrow or something along those lines in this episode.  Neither of these scenarios came true this week.  There wasn’t even a hint of sabotage by skinny black girl and Ramsay, while he did get splashed by a little hot oil when he was putting out a grease fire didn’t even come close to the injury that was anticipated coming out of last week’s promo.  In fact when we hear someone say “medic” in the promo it is not in relation to Ramsay at all (we’ll get to that).  I don’t like the deception, especially at this stage of the game.  If someone is going to watch episode fourteen of Hell’s Kitchen all the way through to the promo at the end, I have a feeling you don’t have to lie to them to get them to come back the following week.  They’ll probably be there anyway. 

Aside from the deception, this was a pretty standard Hell’s Kitchen episode.  We were treated to the return of the cooking relay challenge where the teams had to cook three dishes in 30 minutes.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Well only one chef from each team was allowed in the kitchen at any one time and they only had five minutes to work before they had to “pass the baton” to the next chef.  The chefs had to cook standard Hell’s Kitchen dishes including rack of lamb, roast chicken and halibut. This is not an easy challenge at all, and it’s not supposed to be, but these chefs make it worse because the two big driving forces behind this challenge, communication and teamwork, have not been the forte of these chefs all season long.  Because of that, we get disastrous results from both kitchens.  The red kitchen provides a good piece of lamb with raw and gross garnish, burnt halibut, and no chicken dish.  They don’t have enough time to plate it, so when Ramsay calls for the chicken dishes he receives an empty plate from the red kitchen.  The blue team is able to plate all of their dishes but the lamb is completely raw (however the garnish is good).  The halibut is nicely cooked, and surprisingly so is the chicken.  The blue team wins the challenge.

Let me say that again because you haven’t heard it but one other time this season…the blue team wins the challenge!

The blue team gets a ride in a helicopter over Los Angeles as well as sample some expensive cuisine, while the red team gets to move potatoes off the truck and then peel them, while also setting up both kitchens for that evening’s dinner service.  This is where the “medic” came in.  Mixed up Cyndi, who is not a little girl by any stretch of the imagination, can’t catch her breath after moving boxes upon boxes of potatoes.  She is administered oxygen and seems to be fine after a few minutes of the treatment.  Unfortunately this messes with her a little bit as she can’t get out of her own way once dinner service starts.  The usually sure-handed chef keeps making silly mistakes and service for the red kitchen begins to get bogged down.  Meanwhile, appetizers are flying out of the blue kitchen.  Of course, all that momentum comes to a screeching halt when loud guy fires up the meat station (didn’t they learn anything last week?) and he promptly stops communicating.  And by that, I don’t mean he just gets quieter, or misses a ticket every now and then in terms of acknowledgement.  He shuts down completely, not saying a word.  I can understand getting in a zone when you have a task to complete, but working in this environment requires a little more communication than what he is producing.  His level of failure in this episode is nowhere near what it was in the last episode, but it is still apparent that he is the weakest link left in the competition, regardless of what he thinks.

Despite the issues in the kitchens, both teams completed their dinner services and are declared winners.  Of course that doesn’t mean jack because they still have to put someone up for elimination.  From the blue team, the choice is simple, loud guy has distinguished himself as terrible and the only reason he has made it this far is that he was a little less terrible than everyone else.  The red team has a harder time.  They eventually pick mixed up Cyndi, but Ramsay asks them to clarify their choice.  At this point they each get an individual vote to see where loyalties lie.  Mixed up Cyndi picks squeaky voice, squeaky voice picks blonde girl and blonde girl picks mixed up Cyndi as elimination fodder.  Because no one can agree, Ramsay asks skinny black girl to weigh in, as she worked with all three members of the red team for the majority of the competition.  She picks blonde girl (good choice) and Ramsay calls both blonde girl and loud guy up.  He states that he will only be giving out four of the coveted black jackets this year before he sends loud guy off into the night.  Loud guy, upon his exit, states that if Ramsay ever needs him, all he has to do is call.  Yup, keep waiting by your phone.

Ramsay doesn’t send blonde girl home (though I expected it, it would be a shock to see a double elimination after a successful dinner service) but does hold on to the black jackets saying that there was something else the chefs needed to do before they earned them.  Of course, blonde girl takes the fact that she is not sent home as confirmation that not only does Ramsay want her in the competition, but probably (in her deluded mind at least) that he wants to impregnate her with his angry little Ramsay-spawn (which, coincidentally, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they claw their way out of the womb all Alien-esque).  She refuses to see the fact that Ramsay kept asking people for nominations instead of putting mixed up Cyndi on the chopping block, only stopping when blonde girl was standing in front of him.  Delusion is a funny thing.

Next week something happens, I won’t say because I don’t even pay attention to the previews anymore so I have no idea, but whatever the preview said was probably blown way out of proportion.

See you next week!

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Fourteen: The Crying Game

                This episode picked up right where the last one left off, at the tail end of the “cook me anything” challenge.  Mr. Mohawk winds up winning by the narrowest of margins over mixed up Cyndi, which means that he has immunity during the next dinner service and cannot be sent home.  There was probably a 95% chance that he wasn’t going home anyway considering the fact that he is teamed up with loud guy and guy with no nickname.

 Hell’s Kitchen is open for dinner service that night, and the teams get right to prepping their stations.   Of course it wouldn’t be Hell’s Kitchen if the blue team didn’t have some kind of an issue.  This one revolves around loud guy, who can’t let go of the fact that Ramsay hated his surf and turf dish (one in which he cut a filet into little medallions, effectively wasting the majority of an expensive piece of meat).  When the shrimp is bigger than the beef in your surf and turf dish, you’re doing it wrong.  However, loud guy just can’t get over it.  This makes him visibly upset, as in crying (in the confessional area and, more importantly, in front of his teammates) and he has to excuse himself from dinner prep to cool down.  Obviously this is an extreme burden on the blue team as they only have two people doing the work that was once done by upwards of a dozen.  Mr. Mohawk knocks some garnish on the floor and they damn near set the place on fire as something got spilled on the stove and neither of the two remaining blue chefs notice smoke billowing from the cook-top as whatever is on it starts to burn.  At this point loud guy has the audacity to come back in and say something to the effect of “I left you guys alone for five minutes and you try to burn the place down”. 

Fuck you loud guy. 

This is no ordinary dinner service tonight as the chef’s tables will be occupied by Maria Menounos  and Jeremy Sisto in the blue and red kitchens, respectively.  So not only will the chefs have to complete their dinner service as usual, but they will also have the added pressure of doing so under the watchful eyes of “celebrities” (and I use that term in the loosest way possible).  The dinner service actually starts out fairly well, the appetizers in the blue kitchen don’t run too smooth but all of the issues are things that can be quickly corrected (under seasoned risotto for example) except for the fact that Mr. Mohawk, who is running apps explicitly calls out to guy with no nickname for two lobster tails to garnish his two risottos.  Guy with no nickname gives him one and then, when caught in the screw up, blames Mr. Mohawk for not telling him he needed two.  Other than that, appetizers in the blue kitchen go flying out (most likely because Mr. Mohawk is managing the station).  The appetizers for the red team run into a little trouble when mixed up Cyndi starts to lag (which is unconventional for her) but she turns it around by the end.  One of the most interesting exchanges happens between Ramsay and squeaky voice as she apparently can’t keep her tongue in her mouth while cooking.  It looks like Michael Jordan dunking a basketball, except it’s a sweaty white girl that has her tongue hanging out while she’s cooking other people’s food, so maybe not like Jordan.  Ramsay calls her a cat because of this and of course the producers insert a typical cat-noise here.  Man, this show isn’t subtle at all is it?

Entrees, oh entrees.  You are often the bane of the chef’s existence in Hell’s Kitchen, and this time was no different.  Not for the red team, mind you, they do a decent job of finishing their dinner service.  Of course when it comes time to make desserts for the diners, blonde girl can’t be bothered, instead sauntering over to Jeremy Sisto to flirt.  She even has the balls to announce to the camera during a confessional that she wanted Sisto to notice her and maybe give her a call.  Yeah, sure.  You just came off a dinner service so you are sweaty and smell like a mixture of different foods, plus you’re not that good looking to begin with (not to mention that trash heap you call your personality) and yet you want this guy that could probably walk out onto the street and have “10’s” throw their underwear at him to give you a call?  That’s cute.  Lady, you’re a Syracuse “5” at best, so in California that knocks you down to at most a “2”.  Get a grip.

While the blue team doesn’t have to deal with a member of their team that is delusional in terms of their chances with a celebrity, they do have two individuals that are delusional in terms of their ability to successfully cook.  Guy with no nickname kept sending up raw fish while loud guy royally screwed up the meat station.  Not only did he send up two beef Wellingtons (at the same time) one being raw and the other dry and overdone, he also didn’t prep enough extras to cover that.  Instead, he avoided telling Ramsay that he needed more time for the Wellingtons as he made brand new ones (a twenty minute wait as they had to be cooked from scratch).  This caused Ramsay to do something I have never seen him do; he actually went to the red kitchen and borrowed two Wellingtons from them so that he could send the table.  It got even worse (I know, you thought that was the worst it could get, don’t feel bad, so did I) as loud guy, on one of the final tables, was asked to prepare one order of lamb.  That’s all well and good, except the lamb that he cooked was burnt all to hell.  It literally looked like shit.  Instead of taking the criticism like a man and just dropping another lamb, he waffled around, trying to deflect the criticism, or soften the blow to his ego.  Ramsay eventually said “fuck it” and went to cook the lamb himself.  Ramsay just muscled his way onto loud guy’s station and finished the ticket.  Of course loud guy couldn’t let it just happen, he tried to help (he was quickly rebuffed by Ramsay) and even had the gall to ask how to cook the lamb, as if he shouldn’t have known that already considering the fact that we are down to the final seven people.  Ramsay turned this around on him (of course) by making fun of him.  “Should I tell you how to wipe your ass” and other such insults flew from his mouth as he finished the ticket, much to the delight of the chef’s table. 

Needless to say that the blue team lost.  Because Mr. Mohawk was safe, guy with no nickname and loud guy were both up for elimination, with Mr. Mohawk providing the recommendation to eliminate guy with no nickname.  Ramsay agrees with this recommendation (though I would have sent loud guy home, if not both of them).  The red team was tasked with coming up with one chef to send over to the blue kitchen (again) and they chose skinny black girl.  While I don’t quite get exiling one of the stronger chefs to the land of misfit toys, I kind of understand the logic in terms of a long-reaching strategy.

This week we witness intrigue, sabotage and Ramsay loses and eyebrow?  What. The. Hell?

                See you next week!  

Hell’s Kitchen Episode 13: A Whole Lot of Not Much.

                We got to cross off another event from the Hell’s Kitchen checklist with this episode’s “Blind Taste Test” in which the chefs are blindfolded and then have to guess the food that is put in their mouth while Ramsay ridicules them for thinking that Brussels Sprouts is Cauliflower (that actually happened, no joke).  Before we get to that though, Ramsay quizzes the chefs on their senses (kind of as a precursor to the whole taste-test thing) and he picks guy with no nickname and mixed up Cyndi to test their sense of touch.  This involves the chefs putting their hands through a box with holes cut into it and into a bowl of a mystery food.  The foods were eggs, polenta and oysters.  I’m impressed by their tactile ability as I don’t think I would have answered correctly to any except eggs (to be fair, I’ve never touched an oyster before, so there’s that).  The blue team won with a clean sweep, three out of three!  Their prize…

…nothing.

                Yup, Ramsay pulled the old switcheroo on them.  That was all there as a setup for the blind taste-test.  Even when the guys win they can’t win.  It is therefore hilarious to see their reaction when they think they are the victors only to realize that they’ve won nothing.  On to the taste-test, where Ramsay gives them pretty standard fare in terms of food to taste.  The real comedy comes from watching Ramsay have fun at the expense of the chefs.  He’ll say the name of a food and then give a look to the un-blindfolded chefs as if to say “I could get this right with my head underwater and a pit bull (the dog, not the douchey “singer”) clamped on each nipple, and I bet you these fuckers think it’s something stupid like peas”.  Then we also get to people that are force-fed spoonfuls of food and the process they go through to determine what that food is.  Some people eat it normally, some (like loud guy) basically immerse his entire mouth in the food, almost like he’s using it as mouthwash.  It’s equal parts funny and disgusting, like when a baby shits on someone.

                You know what the best part is about the guys winning the not-quite-real challenge?  The fact that they lost the actual challenge…again!  The girls got a nice little day of relaxation and horseback riding (which makes me wonder if Ramsay held off on this reward until fat black girl was gone, for the sake of the horses), while the guys have to prep for the dinner service the following day as well as unload the truck when it comes.  Of course, the guys unload the ice truck a little too much because guy with no nickname just signed the purchase order without actually reading it so Hell’s Kitchen was overrun with unnecessary bags of ice.  The guys then had to put back the bags that were not theirs, making double the work for the beleaguered blue crew.  The other two blue chefs were obviously no longer a fan of guy with no nickname after that.

                So we’ve had the challenge, we’ve had the punishment/reward, now it’s time for dinner service, right?  Not so fast!  Ramsay throws everyone a curveball by offering up a second challenge.  This one is an individual challenge that carries the ultimate prize, immunity from elimination.  The challenge itself is actually fairly simple; just cook a dish, any dish and present it to Ramsay (much like their initial “signature dish” challenge from the first week of competition).  This is to judge the chefs’ growth in the competition.  Some of the remaining chefs put up some truly horrendous meals in that first episode, and Ramsay wants to see who has learned from their time in Hell’s Kitchen.  Everyone that has ever been a chef, or even known a chef, realizes that the profession is a constant learning experience, whether it be new techniques, new dishes or new foods altogether, so this challenge will help Ramsay gauge who is open to and able to learn and grow as a chef.  Ramsay judges it “king of the mountain” style where each subsequent dish has to be good enough to knock the current champion off the throne.  Skinny black girl goes first and maintains her position on top of the throne for quite some time until Mr. Mohawk sneaks in with a well cooked fish dish.  Mr. Mohawk triumphantly sits on the throne until mixed up Cyndi comes up with her dish and…

To be continued.

                While I understand cutting it off at that point, this episode sure felt weird and incomplete without a dinner service in it, hence this week's name.  This week makes up for it though as more celebrity guests show up for dinner, the chefs prove that they are still having trouble cooking even at this stage of the game, and Ramsay loses his cool again.

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Twelve: A True Villain Emerges

                It could be said that this season of Hell’s Kitchen is filled with villains, almost like a Survivor-esque stunt of some sort.  I wouldn’t necessarily debate that point too much (though squeaky voice and Mr. Mohawk have done a good job of playing the game the right way, much like old guy (pour one out!) did during his time in the kitchen).  This episode took a WWE-type turn that really drove home the fact that one of the contestants is a true “bad guy” (at least in terms of this show).  Who is that chef?  Like the producers of Hell’s Kitchen I will string you along for a bit before I tell you, unlike the producers of Hell’s Kitchen, I’ll actually tell you.

                We start off this episode with Ramsay telling the red team to take their heads out of their collective asses and come to a consensus as to who is going over to the blue kitchen.  No more of this “we picked a name out of a hat because we all wanted to be a hero” bullshit.  The red team comes to the consensus that they are exiling fat black girl to the island of misfit toys that is currently the blue team.  The blue team, obviously, can’t be happier that they are getting the queen of the hissy fit on their team.  Fat black girl does some bitching about not wanting to lose challenges, blah blah blah (at this point I have to tune her out or start sharpening my toothbrush for ear drum penetration).

                The next morning, the chefs are greeted with their next reward challenge.  They will be cooking an ethnic dish in a head-to-head style competition between the teams. Ramsay asks one of the chefs who they want to cook against, then they spin the “Wheel-O-Countries” and land on a type of food.  The four cuisines that are selected are Indian, Greek, Thai and Japanese.  Of course blonde girl has to say something stupid and end it with “konichiwa” like she’s in the back of a middle school history class.  She’s dumb, and I hate her probably more than anyone I have ever witnessed in this competition.  Sometimes being a chef means you have to be a bad person (well, you don’t have to but a lot of them are) but she takes the taco. 

                We also get the standard “I’ve never cooked that kind of dish before” from at least half of the chefs.  I’ll admit, I’ve never cooked any of those kinds of dishes before either, but I’m also not on a show where I’m expected to know what I’m doing.  I’ll give you a quick run-down of how the challenge goes, leaving out the point where blonde girl is perplexed by the rice cooker and squeaky voice burns her rice for her Indian dish.  Mr. Mohawk beats squeaky voice on the Indian dish, and I’m not sure if the rice would have saved her as the judges (Ramsay and a big cheese at the Rachel Ray magazine) really liked Mr. Mohawk’s dish. From there, it’s all downhill for the blue team.  Mixed up Cyndi beats guy that doesn’t get a petname in the Greek challenge (not by much, and he’s clearly the second best chef on the blue team), fat black girl gets trounced by skinny black girl when it comes to Thai food (mainly because fat black girl’s dish doesn’t taste like Thai food and the big cheese from the Rachel Ray magazine nearly had an orgasm while eating the dish from skinny black girl), and loud guy gets beat by blonde girl on Japanese cuisine.  The best part is that when she picked him for the head-to-head, he got all butt-hurt and couldn’t believe that she would do so, that apparently it was surely going to be a loss for her.  Granted, this was before they knew that they were cooking Japanese food, and way before he decided to place overdone, dry chicken in his dish (how often do you see chicken in Japanese cooking? (not often).  His dish was terrible and the red team rightfully won this round.  It sucks because Mr. Mohawk seems like the strongest chef in the competition at this point (followed very closely by squeaky voice) but he’s stuck with the single worst team in the history of this show.  I feel bad for him, but at the same time, he signed up to be on Hell’s Kitchen, so I don’t feel too bad for him.

                The red team gets a $500.00 shopping spree ($2000.00 total split four ways) which Ramsay just takes out of his pocket and hands over.  This fucking guy.  I bet he gets off on moments like this – that and calling people donkey.  The blue team gets to prep both kitchens for dinner service that night, while also polishing the stemware and moving in many, many cases of wine.  It’s not the worst punishment, but it doesn’t make it any easier that fat black girl just doesn’t want to help.  The guys move all the wine in by themselves and when they sit down to clean the stemware they are accosted by her bitching about their kitchen and their cooking practices, with that being the reason they keep losing.  She’s talking like her dish was perfect and everyone else let her down.  Someone needs to just hit her.  Please. 

                The red team comes back and gets dressed for the dinner service.  As Hell’s Kitchen is about to open, fat black girl has still not finished prepping her station.  To top it off, she won’t let anyone else help her, and once the cooking starts she continues to try and go it alone, refusing help from anyone else, regardless of the fact that she’s sinking like a stone.  She’s not doing well at all, and I’d like to say that the other members of her team pick up the slack and are able to finish dinner service successfully, but they never get the chance.  Ramsay kicks them all out before they can even send out all of the appetizers.

                Over in the red kitchen it’s not much better.  This is where our true villain emerges.  Blonde girl does what she always does and just goes about her business, expecting other people to play catch-up, and letting them take the fall when stuff goes wrong.  This week’s recipient of that is skinny black girl.  She is on the fish station which means that she needs to send up the scallops to coincide with the rest of the appetizers (a station being manned by blonde girl).  Of course, this is when blonde girl pulls her shit and doesn’t tell skinny black girl that her food is almost ready to go, which means that skinny black girl has to drop her scallops and rush them.  Instead of facing the wrath of Ramsay for not coming up together, and then being able to turn that around on blonde girl and her poor leadership, skinny black girl decides that the best course of action is to only cook the scallops on one side and…hope that Ramsay doesn’t see it?  Really?  That’s your endgame here?  Hoping that the chef with the highest standards of any I have ever seen doesn’t perform the simple task of flipping over the scallops?  I get it, it’s a spur of the moment decision and it’s one thing to be able to watch it play out in front of you on the television and a completely different thing to actually be there when it’s happening.  That being said, it was still a stupid move, though one that was predicated by blonde girl being a horrible person.  To top it off, blonde girl gets in the “confessional” and talks even more about how it’s not her job to help anyone along.  I can’t wait until Ramsay exposes her for the fraud she really is.

                Somehow, someway, the appetizers leave the kitchen which I guess just proves that being a horrible person and a terrible leader doesn’t mean you can’t cook.  When entrees start coming out, Ramsay loses it though.  The fish is raw.  This also falls on skinny black girl, and it is actually all her fault this time.  At this point, Ramsay has already banished the blue team, so his tolerance level is at a low point.  You can see him start to crack before he just kicks the red team out.  It’s almost like watching Roger Rabbit drink alcohol.

                The best part of this episode is watching the chef on each team that is the absolute worst (blonde girl and fat black girl) try and explain that they aren’t.  It’s a little easier for blonde girl because she makes other people fuck up while fat black girl just does it all herself, but still.  Trying to say that she is a better all-around chef than skinny black girl?  Come on.  Luckily the red team puts her up for elimination anyway.  Fat black girl goes absolutely bananas when the possibility of being put up for elimination comes up.  It apparently doesn’t matter that the dinner service didn’t even make it past her station.  She keeps saying that loud guy was sabotaging her (which he denies and we are not shown any evidence to support her claim).  She screams and storms off, saying that she will not be put up for elimination, which is silly because she is obviously outvoted.  We get to elimination and blonde girl doesn’t understand why she is being put up (Ramsay doesn’t either but he also hasn’t seen the tape of how truly horrible she is) and when Mr. Mohawk replies that fat black girl is being put up for elimination she responds with “no”.  As if that will save her.  She’s acting like a fucking child and it’s such a relief when she gets sent home.  No more bitching and complaining, no more talk about her hoo-ha, as one of the blue team exclaims after being dismissed “ding dong the witch is dead”. 

                Next episode claims that one of the chefs does something truly horrible and blah blah blah, you can’t trust the promos for this show, so instead just watch it to see Ramsay lose his mind.

Hell’s Kitchen Episodes Ten and Eleven: Mass Exodus

                If you’re a fan of Hell’s Kitchen, last week was a treat.  A double dose of love, Gordon Ramsay style.  If you like watching good chefs cook and genuine, good people in front of the TV camera, last week was excruciating.  This recap may be a bit longer because of the inclusion of both episodes, but bear with me, it’s a fun time had by all (except for Ramsay…naturally).

                When last we left off, Ramsay was “not done” in terms of sending people home.  He made good on his promise this week as douchey hair grand champion was sent packing.  This is tantamount to a mercy killing in my book though as that poor bastard was just floundering for the last few weeks.  I believe it all got to be too much for him and with a fresh start, in a place without the kind of intense pressure/scrutiny of a Gordon Ramsay operation, douchey hair grand champion will thrive.  I give him a lot of credit for trying to turn things around, for taking a drastic step like shaving off something that had been his trademark, just to kickstart his abilities.  It didn’t work and he got sent home…c’est la vie.

                The reward challenge this episode included making a dish that is not only delicious, but visually appealing as well.  To judge the dish, Ramsay invited back a big cheese from People Magazine.  The winning team would be featured in the magazine and the best overall dish from the winning team would also find its way into the magazine along with a spotlight on the chef who made it.  The catch here is that Ramsay was only going to choose the three best looking dishes from each team (out of five) to evaluate their taste.  The dishes all look visually appealing, except for old guy’s stuffed lobster.  I have to agree with Ramsay here, it looked like an alien, like it was going to jump up off the plate and attach to your face.  I understand what he was trying to do, and maybe that looks good in Boston, but everywhere else, it’s just silly.  In my opinion, if it’s not edible, something that large should not be on the plate.  It’s one thing to have a lobster tail with the meat attached, it’s another to serve a lobster dish in the hollowed out lobster carcass.  You’re better than that old guy; get your head in the game.

                Surprise, surprise, the girls win again.  It’s not even the guys shooting themselves in the foot this time, they straight up got out-cooked.  The only one that didn’t was Mr. Mohawk, who had the highest rated dish of the entire competition, but didn’t make it into the magazine because his team lost.  Mr. Mohawk is setting himself up as a frontrunner right now.  No one else, in either kitchen, seems to be as consistent as he is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is the last guy standing on a team full of girls.  The ultimate winner is squeaky voice as her dish is deemed the best of the three that gets put up.  She is also someone that I can see making it to the end, and if the final showdown is between her and Mr. Mohawk, I would be okay with that.  The girls head off to their reward while the guys get the “pleasure” of doing the annual dorm cleanup.  This is one of the worst punishments, and at this point I have a feeling that the chefs on this show just do stupid shit in the dorms in the hopes that their team doesn’t get stuck with the cleanup punishment.

                Speaking of that, when the guys were stripping the beds of their linens, they found half eaten cookies in one of the beds.  I’ll give you three guesses as to which of the women sleep eats…yup, you guessed it right on the first try!  They even showed a video of fat black girl doing it.  She is just everything that is wrong with humanity.  The guys finish their dirty job, and the girls come back, all made up from their photo shoot.  They look good and you can tell that the guys are paying a bit more attention to them than they normally would.  Everyone settles in to a relaxing night out of the kitchen when they get a phone call from Ramsay, telling them to come to his office as he has an announcement to make.  While Hell’s Kitchen is closed in terms of regular dinner service that night, Ramsay is opening it up for a special dinner for two tables of twelve.  They are honoring returning members of the Army and their families.  Should be easy, right?  One table of twelve for each kitchen, five total courses, with each chef taking the reins on a course.  What could go wrong?

                The dinner service is actually pretty well done, with the main issues being the fact that loud guy and old guy do not work well together, to the point that loud guy actually purposefully sabotages old guy with cold lobster for his lobster spaghetti.  That is the only real problem all night in the blue kitchen.  Over in the red kitchen however, the night starts out poorly when fat black girl decides to add more water to her pasta pot.  That’s okay in theory, but she adds cold water to the pot and then places the pasta in.  Anyone that knows anything about cooking knows that that just doesn’t work.  Not only does cold water not cook anything, but leaving pasta in there as it heats up is not good for the pasta either.  The red kitchen is falling behind (both tables of twelve need to be served together, prompting the two kitchens to need to talk to each other) and Ramsay actually has to step in and show the girls how to boil water quickly (tightly wrapping the top of the pot in aluminum foil) just so they can get the dish out on time.  Of course the fact that loud guy is a moron and is doing more harm than good to old guy’s pasta dish helps the red kitchen get their dishes out slightly ahead of the blue kitchen.  And, of course, one of the plates in the blue kitchen comes back with way underdone spaghetti.  Old guy gets on it quickly, but then loud guy sabotages him, which means that the remaining lobster spaghetti exits the kitchen around three courses too late (it does exit though, small victory!)

                The other courses go up without incident, which is nice to see, for once.  The final course is steak, which if you’ve been paying attention is no slam dunk for these chefs.  The blue kitchen handles the steak just fine, but the red kitchen, led by blonde dumbass on the steak entrée, is having even more trouble.  She needs more time, asking the blue kitchen for an additional seven minutes of time, which the blue kitchen grants her.  She then realizes the steak still won’t be done and asks the blue kitchen for five more minutes, something the guys can’t do without sending up overdone meat.  Ramsay lays into her with the usual “get your head out of your ass” speak and she eventually gets her steak out.

                Ramsay is not happy with the service though (even though by these chefs’ standards this was a success) and so each team has to nominate one person to go up.  The red team chooses fat black girl because asking for more time on steak is not nearly as rookie of a mistake as trying to boil pasta in cold water.  The best part is, fat black girl gets all upset about being put up, like she didn’t do anything wrong!  This girl is delusional, and how she is even still in the competition I don’t know.  The guys choose to put old guy up, though it was really close between him and loud guy.  Of course when loud guy hears his name come up as a possibility he flies off the handle.  I fucking hate that guy.  At elimination, when Ramsay hears of loud guy’s sabotage, he invites him up with old guy and fat black girl.  Ramsay then sends old guy home.  This sucks, and you can see that Ramsay respects old guy because we see our first handshake of the season upon elimination.  Old guy was not the best chef there, and just about every dinner service he made at least one mistake, but he was not the worst, and better yet, aside from that one blow up a couple weeks ago, he played the game with integrity and class.  You will be missed, old guy.  Please join me in pouring one out for him.  May he come back and kick ass when it’s time for the final two to choose their brigades.

                Wait, I’m at over 1400 words and that’s just the first hour?  Christ.  I told you this would take awhile.  Strap in for hour two!

                The remaining chefs head back up to the dorms to get some sleep after the elimination of old guy (pour one out!) and are rudely awoke at around 430am by Ramsay’s two assistants blaring air horns and banging on pots.  It’s fun to see people aroused from their slumber in the meanest way possible.  The only thing that was missing was having a large bucket of ice water dumped on them…maybe next week.  Everyone is summoned downstairs because it is time for the annual tradition of having the teams create their own menus.  They have a short amount of time to actually come up with the ideas for four appetizers, four entrees and two desserts, then they need to utilize all the prep time to not only prep all of the ingredients for the dishes but make samples for Ramsay to taste and judge.   This goes great for the blue team as their menu is incredibly well received by Ramsay (to the point of being a surprise to everyone).  The red team just does a piss-poor job of devising a diverse and appetizing menu.  It doesn’t help that fat black girl decided to devote all of her time to her gumbo dish and didn’t help out her teammates, but still, the blue team put together a good menu with four people, the red team should be able to as well.  Ramsay asks them to alter their dishes a bit, to make them more appealing in the short time before dinner service (he doesn’t really ask so much as demand, but to him that’s kind of like asking). 

                Because the menus are their own, there is a heightened sense of responsibility, that they should be able to get the work done quickly and up to Ramsay’s standards because they aren’t cooking someone else’s dishes this time.  Each kitchen has minor issues to deal with during service, issues that should be corrected by now but aren’t like raw food going up, cold sauces, etc.  The blue team fails miserably though.  Their entire service is fraught with raw food.  Loud guy sends up raw pork, snooty stringbean two sends up raw fish, it’s sad, and contributes to Ramsay labeling them the losing team.  It should also be noted that snooty stringbean two, after failing on multiple attempts to correctly cook fish, is sent on a timeout at the bar.  An actual timeout, with a timer and everything!  This begs the question, why have they not tried to shoehorn Ramsay’s talents into a show about a struggling daycare?  I would watch the shit out of Ramsay calling a four year old a “fucking donkey”.  The blue team is tasked with coming to a consensus as to the one person that should be going home.  While they are deliberating this, the red team is called into Ramsay’s office and is given the assignment of finding one person to switch to the blue team (as that team will be down to three members as opposed to the five on the red). 

                Everyone on the red team wants to look like a leader, so they all volunteer for this assignment.  After drawing names out of a hat it’s mixed up Cyndi that gets the boot over to the sinking blue ship.  Of course when Ramsay asks the red team if they came to a consensus, something that he required for this decision, they say no and explain that they drew a name out of a hat.  Just say yes!  Damn.  Don’t make things harder on yourself by everyone trying to look like the hero.  This pisses Ramsay off to no end because it’s clear that they cannot take direction.  This is even worse because right before that, the blue team proved that they were also incapable of the simple task of coming to a consensus.  The votes were split down the middle, two for loud guy because he is a terrible person and two for snooty stringbean two because he kept sending up crap fish.  Ramsay is pissed at this turn of events, and sends snooty stringbean two home.  At this point it is incredibly apparent that loud guy is being kept around because he is an instigator.  He is the Elise for this season (the mouthy bitch that loved to cause trouble a few years ago that somehow stayed around until nearly the end). That is the only way that he can be put up for elimination three straight times, be reviled by his teammates, lie to Ramsay about all the dishes on the menu being his idea, and still come out unscathed.  That’s not even counting the stupid alter ego he came up with for himself (which I do not care enough to remember, to tell you the truth).  Loud guy is like a cockroach, he just won’t die. 

                This week fat black girl loses her cool and someone from the past may be let back in the competition.  I don’t know what’s going on, all I do know is that reaction shots of the current chefs show them all with wide eyes, so this has to be good…right?  Please? 

                See you next week!

*Edit - If you are following along at home, please note that Hell's Kitchen looks to have moved to Thursdays at 8pm on Fox for at least the next two weeks.  I'll still update on Tuesdays just in case it moves back, but if you want to watch it yourself, please note the time change.

Hell’s Kitchen Episode Nine: The Ravioli King

*Please note that due to the fact that Hell's Kitchen is on Monday this week, you will be treated to the recap a day early (which also means there is no recap tomorrow).  Depending on Fox's summer TV schedule, the recaps may permanently move to Mondays, but we should know that within the next few weeks.

                Episode Eight of Hell’s Kitchen, despite being the annual “Steak Night”, was a little bland.  This episode, being a young Hispanic girls Quinceanera proves to be a little more exciting.  For those of you not up on your Hispanic culture, Quinceanera is basically a sweet sixteen party, it just celebrates the fifteenth birthday and the “transition into womanhood” instead.  This dinner service obviously comes with a bit of pressure then.  There is a bit of pomp and ceremony that goes into this particular party, and as we will see shortly, there’s a slave driver at the helm. 

                The reward challenge this episode therefore revolves around creating a menu for the Quinceanera   This includes one hot and one cold appetizer, a pasta dish, a chicken dish and a steak dish.  The judges were the fifteen year old that was the recipient of the party, her mother, and the party planner which was either an aunt or a family friend (I can’t remember which) but she easily weighed as much as the other two judges combined, which made it even funnier (to me at least) when the chefs asked what they liked to eat and she piped up with things like “big piece of meat” and “steak” and possible something about hearty portions.  Regardless, there were specific instructions that were given by the judges such as “not too spicy” “medium-well to well done” steak (which, really?  Come on!) and the fact that cheese, cream and lemon were integral parts of the menu (they are the honoree’s favorites).  At this point, loud guy (in the “confessional” of course) states that he has no further questions for the judges and they should just let the chefs cook.  How out of touch with reality is this guy that he thinks that the people that will be judging the finished product don’t know what they are talking about.  Seriously.  Even if they asked for the dumbest dish in the world, something that is clearly beneath you to cook, you would cook it, right?  If they are the boss, then you cook for them.  His attitude bugs me big time.  Many of the other chefs are dumbasses, but he may just win out because of his level of disdain for everyone else.  

                The food that was made, from both kitchens, looked great.  Seriously, these chefs are very creative and despite their lack of ability to perform under pressure, they do seem to be able to create stunning dishes from the ground up when they have forty-five minutes to work on them (this is where this week’s title comes from as Old Guy claims to be the Ravioli King or some such nonsense because he finally made a dish that wasn’t beaten by an opponent on the red team).  Much like last episode when the steaks were all equally appealing, it comes down to specifics.  And again, this is where the guys trip over their own feet.  Don’t get me wrong, the girls didn’t run away with this challenge by any means, and yet again it came down to the final dish to determine a winner.  However, I am convinced that the guys could have at least won, if not outright dominated, if they had just listened to the judges and been able to translate that direction to their dishes.  The two most egregious errors were douchey hair grand champion (again) that decided to unload a half bottle of hot sauce into his cheese sauce for the fried mac and cheese hot appetizer.  The poor honoree nearly gagged on his dish when she took a bite, obviously not expecting that much spice when it was specifically stated that she would not eat spicy food.  The haircut from last episode didn’t work, he has officially fallen down and can’t get up.

                The second major screw-up of the challenge came from snooty stringbean two, who cooked his steak much rarer than the judges would have liked (which was fairly obvious by the big pool of blood on the plate under the steak).  This wasn’t a matter of not hearing the direction as much as it was the inability to judge how long it would take to properly cook the steak to the desired specifications (remember, they had forty-five minutes to complete the cooking, way more than enough time to cook a steak to well done).  He misjudged it, gave the judges an underdone steak (which I would have probably enjoyed more than a well done one by the way, but alas I wasn’t one of the judges) and subsequently lost another challenge for the boys.  The record so far in reward challenges is 7-1 in favor of the women.  I don’t think I have ever seen a more lopsided record in the history of this show, and the fact that the last two were there for the taking if the guys had just been a little more vigilant, must sting pretty bad. 

                As a reward, the women get to travel to Knott’s Berry Farm, an amusement park in California (and if you believe the claim on the sign, the very first amusement park in the United States).  The guys, meanwhile, get placed under the watchful eye of the party planner.  Let me tell you, if you think Ramsay is tough, this lady makes him look like Mr. Rogers in comparison. You can tell Ramsay knows that this will be a rough day for them as he leans on the table, almost head in hands as he delivers the news.  I don’t know, maybe this is to hide a smile as he can’t help but laugh at the idea of the guys tying pink bows on chairs, dressing dolls with pink tulle, or unwrapping pink candy by hand to fill up large jars (something like 200 Starbursts, I know your hands will start to hurt just thinking about it).   I get it, you only get one Quinceanera  but she is pushing these guys like a slave-driver.  I fully expected one of the guys to snap, but I have to give them credit, not only were they able to work through it and find humor in the situation, which kept them going, but they actually did a great job. 

                Oh dinner service, how you trouble these chefs so.  This episode, the head table (which included the three judges and their family) was split between the red and blue kitchens (meaning that all of the appetizers and entrees had to go out together between the two kitchens) with the rest of the dining room being split between red and blue as it usually is.  The two kitchens still needed to be relatively coordinated though as there was a special dance that needed to take place after all of the appetizers were served.  Everyone needed to be on their game in order to accomplish this.  The blue team started slow but bounced back with a purpose as the two guys on the appetizer station (two guys that haven’t distinguished themselves up to this point so I don’t even have clever names for them yet) killed it.  The red team…not so much.  Between the whiny girl that was up for elimination last week and fat black girl, they couldn’t pull their heads out of their asses.  It all came down to tuna.  They couldn’t get it seared correctly (it was ice cold in the middle) and when they did, slicing it turned it into a giant mess.  There were still two tables that needed to be served appetizers before the dance could start, and everyone else had finished theirs.  This, of course, prompted the party planner to inquire on the whereabouts of the missing food (which I am sure is just what Ramsay wanted to see at that point) and the eventual completion of the appetizers.

                Entrees were a mess for everyone.  It was not the total catastrophe that other dinner services in the past had been, but at this stage of the game, being unable to cook a steak, or sending up practically raw pasta is something that just shouldn’t happen.  Because of the continued ineptitude of the kitchens, no winner is declared, even though the guys finish well ahead of their counterparts in the red kitchen.  It’s quality over speed this time though, and there was no quality to be had anywhere.  The guys put up loud guy and douchey hair grand champion, while the girls put up whiny girl that got put up last episode and mixed up Cyndi (seriously, that’s how she spells her name, give me a break) because she fucked up the steak order for the last table.  Personally I would have put up fat black girl again, she’s loud, she never takes responsibility and acts sooooo surprised when someone calls her out on something  (and she keeps talking about her hoo-ha). 

                Ramsay sends whiny girl that got put up last episode home after more impassioned pleas where mixed up Cyndi makes sure Ramsay knows that she “gives a big shit” about this competition.  I know what she was trying to say, it doesn’t make it any less funny though.  But wait, there’s more!  Ramsay exclaims how disappointed he was with the dinner service that night and says that he is “not done yet”.  To be continued….

                So what’s it going to be tonight?  Will Ramsay send multiple people home?  Will he flip flop chefs on to different teams for the first time this season?  Will he have an aneurysm when he has to step into the kitchen and help out because the chefs are royally screwing things up in what appears to be a fairly important dinner service (or so the producers want us to believe)?  Find out tonight on Hell’s Kitchen, and come back next week for more fun with yelling!

*Edit* Big thanks to Nik for digging up the proper spelling of Quinceanera for me.