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.