By Buzz Byrne
Would you hand over your wedding reception to a game show, just so you could be on TV? Carlota and Cyrus decided to, and for their willingness to subject their most precious day of love to a middle round of HELL’S KITCHEN, they got a honeymoon package to the Green Valley Ranch Resort, Spa and Casino in Las Vegas. This is sort of like getting food poisoning and the restaurant giving you a gift certificate to come back. This season’s winner on HELL’S KITCHEN will become head chef of a new Italian restaurant at … Green Valley Ranch Resort, Spa and Casino in Las Vegas. Hope you liked the food, Car and Cy!
Whittled to almost the halfway point, the teams are poised to start making bolder food and leadership choices in the kitchen. The men (Blue team) have to learn to live without Vinnie from Jersey — they are better for that — and the women (Red team) are more of an open field with Julia still struggling with the unfamiliar products they are using and Bonnie ready to weep, pee herself, or expel something if Chef Ramsay looks at her cross-eyed. This is the chance for Jen or Melissa to assert themselves and really deliver a crushing blow to the men, who would be down to two chefs if they lost. In an interesting choice of tactics, Melissa decides to go right ahead and sabotage everything she could. I like that initiative.
The first challenge was to prepare a tasting for Carlota and Cyrus; an appetizer, a fish dish and a meat dish, all within a $100 budget and prepared in under an hour. The men got the votes for their crab starter and rib eye meat course. The seafood option was lost the second they used a foam as a garnish. Ask Marcel from last season’s TOP CHEF how well those work in TV food competitions. Why not add more bones to the dish? Who came up with this foam nonsense being high-end?
As if answering the challenge to offer something worse than foam, the first of Melissa’s sabotages emerged with a lone, overcooked duck breast sitting unadorned and grey on a big white plate for Car and Cy to taste. Mmmm. Julia had been on the meat station for this challenge and duck was not in her repertoire. Who knows if she had cooked it right, because when she called it ready, Melissa swooped in and popped the delicate, fatty piece of flesh back in the oven to decay. Why they couldn’t toss a sprig of parsley on it or even a few shotgun pellets and call it “Fudd’s Revenge,” I don’t know. Chef Ramsay called it his biggest embarrassment ever in that restaurant. Remember, just a few weeks ago, he had Aaron assaulting customers’ flounder with clumsy carving and sweat, tableside.
So, the men won and had a spa day. Rock likes acupuncture now. Rock likes that a lot. The women got to meet the wedding coordinator, Francisco, who promised to create a “Garden of gorgeousness” in the restaurant. I’m all for having a little fun with reality TV, but really, there is no chance this was not a guy from central casting. Even the ever-affable Jean Philippe wanted to punch him out. Mon Dieu!
When it came time for the wedding dinner, Melissa seemed to have taken on Nixonian nerves. Paranoid that Rock was giving her the wrong recipe, she forgot that fresh-cut potatoes oxidize and turn an unappealing black if not handled properly. Then, when it came time for the entrees, she tried a clumsy pull-the-rug-from-under-you move on her team by saying she
needed three more minutes for her side dish and then asking in front of Chef Ramsay if they all still needed four minutes as she was ready for service.
Melissa, Melissa, the cameras are going to catch that every time. And, then she gunked up the sabayon sauce for the desserts. Maybe she felt she was hitting her stride and needed to leave a mark on every course served. By the end, she was frazzled and seemed more like Cha-Ka from LAND OF THE LOST with a Bronx accent than head chef at a resort and spa.
Dinner service was complete, the sister of the bride implied white was an inappropriate color for the gown, and Jean Philippe may have garroted Francisco behind the standup freezer. The women lost, Jen got nominating duties and the chef going home was … wait, I won’t tell that. I will say that Rock doesn’t like the results. Rock doesn’t like it at all. Brad is still my pick to win, with Jen making a stride forward tonight. I think one of the boys gets eliminated next.