As the wannabe chefs head off to their quarters they reflect on the disastrous performance of last week. Jen said about her picking spaghetti out of the trash bin that she lost her sense of judgment under pressure. Vinnie said he totally made a mistake. We are in Hell.
As the new day begins and the Blue and Red teams gather around Chef Ramsay he prompts Jen to stay away from the {trash} bins and asks Vinnie if he had nightmares last night. Vinnie’s comeback was that he dreamed about Chef Ramsay. Jen accepts her knocks with humility but always the smart aleck Vinnie has to get the last word.
Besides knowing how to cook what would be the next most important thing a Chef needs? Perhaps the ability to know what it is they are tasting? Or what something they are serving is supposed to tastes like?
Well Chef Ramsay thinks that is exactly what these hopeful Chefs need. So the challenge this week is to identify food he gives them. They are blindfolded and have head phones over their ears. The winners of this challenge will have a ‘unique’ dining experience with Chef Ramsay. The losers will be required to continue honing their palates on special foods chosen by Ramsay and do the dinner prep for both kitchens.
First up are Brad and Julia. They are fed American cheese, Fried chicken and boiled carrots. Julia correctly identifies the cheese and chicken but thinks the carrots are radishes. Brad gets only the chicken correct. Women lead 2-1
Melissa and Rock are given egg yolks, boiled potatoes and venison. Melissa gets only the potatoes correct. Rock identifies the egg yolks and potatoes so we are tied 3-3
After some fussing with the head phones so Bonnie can’t hear she and Josh are served Bok Choy, lobster and a pear. Bonnie gets the Bok Choy and pear correct and Josh misses them all. Women lead 5-3
Vinnie and Jen get only the seared tuna which Vinnie can’t identify making the women once again the challenge winners.
If you are not into throwing up you might want to skip this next part. Some of the items the men had to eat to hone their palates included: beef liver, pig’s feet, tripe, kidneys, pigs tongue, herring and so many other nasty things I can’t even write them down without losing my dinner. The cow’s stomach finally did Rock in and he fled to the bathroom.
The unique dining experience the ladies enjoyed with Chef Ramsay was eating in total darkness. We were not privy to what they were served but we did get to see the playful side of Chef Ramsay as he chose to throw dinner rolls at the women. I wonder if someone in his restaurant did this how he would have reacted? I guess anything is okay if HE chooses to do it but there would be Hell to pay if someone else did the same thing. Of course we have the flirtatious Bonnie who can’t help but say she thinks Chef Ramsay has a nice voice in the dark.
When the women returned the men accused Bonnie of cheating in the challenge. They said she repeated exactly what Chef said. She denied it and of course there is no way of knowing if she could still hear or not, and the rest of the women just chalked it up to the men being poor losers. The food in question was the Bok Choy.
{bok choy also pak choi (bŏk' choi') n.
A Chinese vegetable (Brassica rapa subsp. chinensis) in the mustard family, having a loose head of dark green leaves with thick white stems. Also called celery cabbage, Chinese cabbage}Just before the evening dinner service Chef Ramsay reminded everyone they now have a one in eight chance of winning the grand prize: Head chef of the Green Valley Rock Resort restaurant in Las Vegas. {Is this stating the obvious or what? Is he going to say next week they have a one in seven chance and then one in six and then ……}
He also told them that tonight the customers would be determining the winning team. They will fill out comment cards at the end of their meals.
Things did not start out well in the Red kitchen. Julia told Melissa that she over cooked the scallops and needed two more minutes before she’d be ready. Melissa called out that she was ready to serve her dish and Julia repeated she needed two minutes. Melissa, being Melissa said she told her that a minute ago isn’t it now just one minute? Ramsay came in and asked what was going on and Julia said she needed two minutes because she overcooked the scallops. Oddly enough Ramsay didn’t yell at her, perhaps because she spoke up right away and gave him a truthful answer?
Melissa on the other hand was not so lucky. Ramsay told her she wasn’t a team player and was deliberately running ahead. He also called her a bimbo. Melissa of course said to the camera that she believes Ramsay puts more pressure on the more experienced cooks and rightly so. He should expect more from them. Then she turned to Julia and told her every time she (Julia) messes up she (Melissa) gets yelled at.
In the men’s kitchen Josh is on appetizers and once again the Risotto is not cooked properly. Chef walks in again and Josh is doing nothing. He told Rock to put Josh on scallops and after 45 minutes the men have appetizers going out.
Vinnie slows them down when once again he has trouble with the meat section. He over cooks the Wellington and says he needs another 15 minutes.
In the red kitchen Bonnie is on the meat. She frustrates Chef Ramsay to the boiling point when everything he asks her she says yes even if the real answer is no. Case in point. He asks her if the chicken is in the oven and she says yes when it is obvious it is still sitting out. She reaches for it when he asks, to THEN put it in the oven. He tells her every time he asks her a question he gets a dumb blond answer. Then he looks at all the women and tells them they are ‘screwing themselves.’ Once again he goes on the attack with Bonnie and tells her to stop lying to him every time he asks her a question. He admonishes the women to work together.
With both kitchens messing up on the meat sections, after 2 hours the women have served 14 entrees while them have served only 6.
One female customer gets tired of waiting on her food and goes over to the service counter and tries to talk to Chef Ramsay. He pretty much ignores her and instructs Jean Phillipe to find out where she is sitting so he can check on when her food will be up. She gets upset and accuses Ramsay of being rude to her. {Personally this looked pretty staged to me}
The blue team are told to stop being donkeys. Chef Ramsay said that the meat is rare and Vinnie doesn’t care. Then they began getting food back because of raw spaghetti thanks to Josh. Chef Ramsay also discovers that Vinnie has his own private 'trash pile' at this station filled with wrongly cooked meat. This of course does NOT sit well with Ramsay.
Bonnie is freaking out in the red kitchen. She still can’t get a handle on the meat. She is either over cooking it or undercooking it and has forgotten the timing for medium Wellington. Good hearted Melissa decides Bonnie needs her help and even Julia comes over to give a hand. This freaks Bonnie out even more because she has no idea what Melissa has done and has no answer for Chef Ramsay when he asks when the meat will be done. When she looks at Melissa for an answer Melissa just stares back at her with a blank look and offers no support. Finally Bonnie admits to Ramsay she has to start over on the meat.
Chef Ramsay calls the men and women together and reminds them the customers will be determining their fate tonight and yet they are still giving them poor service. He tells them if one more dish comes back he is shutting them down.
Guess what … one more dish came back … actually more than one. The problem was salty garnish and cold chicken. To punctuate that it was all over for the night Ramsay threw the returned food, dish and all, onto the floor.
SHUT IT DOWN!
In tears Bonnie tells the other women she doesn’t know if she is cut out for this. She wants to go home. To the camera she says on her job as a nanny/cook she cooks for four people and if she doesn’t have the meal prepared on time it is not a problem. Me thinks she needs to go back to being a nanny where there isn’t much pressure to perform. It also makes me wonder how in the world she could have it in her to constantly nail Julia because of her lack of experience when she (Bonnie) obviously has even less experience than Julia. At least Julia serves food to more than 4 people.
Trying not to blame anyone Rock told the blue kitchen that they panicked. When everything was going well for them and they were getting close they panicked.
Ramsay reported that he had gone over the customer comment cards. On the positive side the majority of the people who were served liked the meal. On the negative side 65% said they would never come back because of the slow service. So once again there is no winning team.
Tonight Rock was told he gave a solid performance and would be choosing one person from his team to be nominated to leave.
To Melissa, who evidently was supposed to be running the red kitchen, he said that she would NOT be nominating anyone because she was not good. She was pathetic. He told Jen, though she wasn’t brilliant she wasn’t bad either and she would be nominating one person from her team. He told them to cut the worst performance.
Rock already made up his mind who it would be but said nothing.
Jen was stressing over the nomination. She obviously knew Bonnie was the worst but she said she liked Bonnie. Vinnie popped in with his opinion and told her she needed to nominate her greatest competition. He said she didn’t come to be a nice girl but to win.
When Chef Ramsay asked for their nominations Rock said he nominated Josh because he has maxed out his potential. I figured immediately this would not sit well with Ramsay because Vinnie was the one who messed everything up tonight, but Rock does seem to want Josh gone since this is the second time he nominated him.
Jen announced her nomination would be Melissa. Ramsay was sort of incredulous at that one.
He said he was very disappointed in both of them and he was over ruling both nominations. They did not choose the person in either kitchen who had performed the worst.
He chose Bonnie and Vinnie … no surprise there.
He asked Bonnie why she should stay and she said she knows she really messed up but she learns from her mistakes and is sure that even Chef Ramsay made mistakes when he first started. Okay … I will grant you she is probably right in this respect but this is NOT a training program for beginners. The winner of this competition will immediately run a 5 star restaurant and it is definitely not going to be successful if the head chef is doing on the job training.
Cocky Vinnie said he should stay because he is the most qualified chef in the competition. Ramsay asked him when he was going to accept/admit his screw ups? He was oblivious to knowing how to cook Wellington. Vinnie was not only oblivious to how Wellington was cooked he had no idea what anyone else in his kitchen was doing. He couldn’t even say if Josh had done anything wrong or not.
Vinnie has left the building … er kitchen. Ramsay said Vinnie talks the talk but can’t walk the walk. He told him “I can’t go any further with you, you have peaked."
Chef Ramsay is going to go crazy if there are any more excuses.
Well come back next week to see just how crazy he gets.
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