Do you perhaps wonder how the two teams feel about Melissa’s move from the Red Kitchen to the blue? Well according to Jen, Chef Ramsay did them a huge favor by taking Melissa away. According to Melissa Chef Ramsay did HER a huge favor but getting her out of the Red Kitchen. As the night progresses we will quickly see who benefited the most from Melissa’s move.

Prior to the start of the days the final 7 are sitting around talking and it comes out that Jen has worked with some very fine and well known pastry chefs. She had been keeping that to herself. Rock thought she did the right thing but others thought she lied about her experience.

The challenge for tonight is for each kitchen to come up with 3 lobster dishes. The catch is that they have to get their own live lobsters from the tank. Bonnie freaks out. She hates killing lobsters. She likes to eat it, she just hates to be the one to kill it.

Bonnie tried to get out of getting her own lobster from the tank by running into the kitchen saying she’d get the pans. It didn’t work. Julia and Jen got their lobsters only and Bonnie had to go and get hers. She threw it into the boiling water and Jen said she was proud of Bonnie overcoming her fears.

In the Red Kitchen Jen helped Julia a little since Julia was not familiar with cooking lobster. Chef told Josh since he can’t taste the difference between scallops and lobster he’d be sitting out this challenge. He would be able to talk to the cooks but he would not be involved in the challenge. He tried to coach Melissa, who for once didn’t try to chase someone away.

Bonnie and Melissa presented their dishes first. Bonnie made a grilled lobster salad with apples and Melissa made a citrus herb salad with poached lobster. Chef really liked Bonnie’s dish but felt Melissa’s lobster was not cooked properly. Bonnie won.

Next up were Julia and Rock. Julia made a lobster risotto which Chef said though good, was boring. Rock served milk fried lobster tail and chef said it was cooked perfectly. Rock won.

Finally Jen presented a lobster and crab bisque and Chef Ramsay really liked it. Brad also served a lobster bisque and chef liked it too. He said picking a winner would be hard but the Red team got the win.

Their prize was a cover shoot for In Touch magazine with Chef Ramsay. The losing team would be going through all the trash and separating anything that could be recycled, wash it and put it in the proper containers. Rock totally went ballistic. He couldn’t believe the women won because they weren’t creative in their dishes, nor was Brad.

Chef and the women left for the photo shoot. They had make-up done professionally. Their hair styled and gorgeous new dresses. Plus there was food and champagne on the set. At one point Jen asked if Gordon was going to get make-up and he said Chef’s don’t wear make-up. She asked if he was going to get his hair done because he looked like he’d been in a wind tunnel.

Back at the trash pile Rock was still raging over being made to go through the trash. He was then told he was needed at the photo shoot. When he arrived he was wowed by the women, but his moment of happiness died immediately when Chef told him to take the trash from the set back to Hell’s Kitchen. Rock asked if that was it? Chef says yes you can go now.

Once again Rock went off. Back at the restaurant trash pile he said he would never ask his cooks to go through trash. If you don’t like what I throw away then fire me. He is really on the verge of exploding.

Later to the camera Rock said he was very angry but now he’s over it and ready to cook.

Blue team says: First time cooking with Melissa and they feel confident
Red team says: First time cooking without Melissa and they feel confident.

Chef Ramsay announces that they are adding Bonnie’s lobster salad to the menu tonight and for the balance of the men’s punishment for losing the challenge, they will get the lobsters for both kitchens when they are needed. Josh looked over at Rock and said he (Josh) would do the lobster runs. Ramsay then looked at Melissa and told her this was her last chance.

He told the women they were down one chef and would have to work quicker.

Rock is watching Melissa, not to help her succeed but to win the service. Unfortunately he can’t watch her every minute.

Josh takes Julia her first lobster and she says she is happy someone is getting the lobsters but it would be so much easier if they were already in the kitchen … that makes sense to me too. I don’t understand the lobsters being anywhere else BUT in the kitchen since the diners are not going to be choosing lobster from the tanks.

In the Red Kitchen everything is going smoothly and they are getting their appetizers out. In the Blue Kitchen Brad is bombing. He gave chef 3 appetizers instead of two and one was a risotto that wasn’t asked for.

Jen is doing great on the appetizers in the Red Kitchen while Melissa messes up the scallops in the Blue. Ramsay says she screws up everything she touches.

The red team is working very well together and Ramsay tells them it is their best start ever and if they screw it up it is their fault and someone will go home. No sooner said than done. Bonnie catches a pan on fire and instead of backing away she picks it up and tries to figure out where to put it. She finally sets it on the floor. Ramsay of course screams at her and tells her to never pick up a pan on fire unless she wants to burn down the restaurant.

There is still nothing edible coming out of the blue kitchen.
Josh doesn’t have the potatoes done so nothing else can go forward.
Red team is still turning out excellent entrees.
Melissa cooked the risotto in the blue kitchen and Brad couldn’t serve it because it was mushy.
At one point Julia gets fluster on the fish station but works it out and continues to turn out entrees.

In the blue kitchen Melissa overcooks the monk fish. Gordon takes her off the fish station and puts her on garnishes. Rock takes over the fish. As she walks away she says she isn’t going to cry, she isn’t that kind of person.

Everything is going so well in the red kitchen you just know something has to go wrong. Julia starts crying when Bonnie yells at her. Fortunately it doesn’t slow down their progress.

Back in the Blue Kitchen they run out of potatoes. At the same time Jean Phillipe comes to the kitchen carrying a number of entrees returned by Blue Kitchen diners because the lobster is chewy and the beef is over cooked.

SHUT IT DOWN … Gordon once again ends the service. Poor Jean Phillipe must go out and tell the diners their dinners will not be redone. Once the kitchen is closed it is closed.

Tonight the losing team is a no brainer. Blue loses. Gordon said the service was unbelievably lopsided in favor of the red kitchen.

Gordon told them they just got beat by a nanny, a waffle house cook, and a pastry chef. He told them to go back to their room and choose two for nomination.

They come back and Chef asks if the decision was hard and they say yes. He says, Liars!

He didn’t ask for their choices. Instead he called Melissa forward and told her to take off her jacket. Then after she left he said he wasn’t done and called Josh and Brad forward. Josh has been an over all disaster most of the time and Brad had his worst performance ever.

After reviewing their performance in his mind he told them to get back in line. It is now 3 to 3.

He ends by saying Melissa sounded like a leader but she didn’t cook like one.



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Chairo, that was a fabulous recap.

First of all, did anyone else feel the reward situation must have already been decided beforehand in Ramsey's mind? Can anyone see the guys doing the photo shoot? Would they have gotten makeup and dresses and posed as Charlie's Angels? It just seems to me that the prize was a girl thing and that seemed fishy!

However, as to the contest, this is the first time I have been impressed with Bonnie's cooking: grilling the lobster is tough to do. It dries out quickly and becomes tough with as much as 30 seconds too much heat. Melissa, obviously still with her Medusa hairdo, but past her PMS bout from last week (which is what I was implying by asking if it were a girl thing) seemed positively sedate and contrite; at least I THOUGHT she was sedate until she became completely inept. I don't think she did a THING right through the whole service. I was surprised when she came out with a lobster salad (which Josh suggested to her.) Poaching a lobster is lots easier than grilling one so I was disappointed when her dish didn't come out. In all fairness, Bonnie's was stunning.
Julia was stabbing at culinary excellence with the lobster risotto. It would have required some other ingredients to be interesting...but I have no idea what they would be. Maybe some fresh peas or corn for color and a bit of tarragon? Josh's buttermilk tempura was really quite clever and he deserved to win easily. His presentation was also excellent.
Lastly, while Jen made a decent dish with the lobster and crab bisque, Brad's with his sauce Chantilly (didn't LOOK like Chantilly sauce) was clearly well done and FAR more interesting, especially in presentation. Since both of them were prepared properly, the edge should have gone to the more complicated dish which was Brad's. However, in all fairness, 3 of the 4 would have looked silly in makeup, but I was looking forward to someone fixing Melissa's hair! Once again, NO HAIRNET in a kitchen is unthinkable!
By the way, Jen said that she had never made lobster bisque: how do you get out of culinary school without that one?
Anyway I have no idea what happened to Melissa's cooking abilities: she looked like a novice tonight. Also in the later shots, I saw Brad making the potatoes and they were very gluteny and sticky: those would NEVER pass muster in a kitchen! That is probably what happened when they ran out of potatoes. How is it possible that a chef from culinary school could make such a mistake? Assuming that they rice their potatoes, this comes from beating them too fast before enough warm liquid is introduced. It's a mistake no real chef could ever make.
The girls were like magic and seemed to work well together.
Ultimately the men fell apart. I still think that Josh can't cook, but Brad must have had a really terrible night to do what he did. They have been preparing these same dishes for weeks now; how is it that they can't figure out how to sear a few scallops and cook a beef Wellington? Lobster is just a few minutes in boiling salted water: 5 minutes for the first pound and about 2.5-3 for each additional pound. You undercook it just a bit if it will go into a pan.
Despite Bonnie's coup, I still don't think she can cook under time constraints. Julia is practically maxed out. She struggled tonight with the lobster. I would love having her as a line cook with someone directing her but would be afraid of her if she worked alone, such as on the broiler or on sauces, much less directing people in haute cuisine. Jen is the real standout now that Melissa has folded and Rock seems to be the only one who maintains his cool. Lastly I think Ramsey just wanted to see if he could get Rock's goat by sending him over to the photo shoot to get the trash. The other guys appear to have been more rattled than Rock. That doesn’t bode well for Brad or Josh.

Wow Bentley you know so much about cooking maybe you should be writing this recap instead of me. I can't and don't even try to pronounce half the things they cook

Great re-cap Chairo! :yay:

I laughed pretty hard when he said this, because he actually left the "up" out of the sentence. :lol:

I think Jen came out as the force to be reckoned with this episode. They are really setting the show up for a Rock/Jen finale but I actually hope it's a Jen/Bonnie one. Rock scared me tonight with his temper tantrums... and his attitude about the sorting recyclables was really horrible.
I warming up to Bonnie... she's a good cook (just gets a bit frazzled under pressure), but the best thing about her is her facial expressions... it's hilarious how she doesn't hide anything!

Toque ... I try to edit for family viewing LOL. I don't put in a lot of what Ramsay says in his tirades. I have read other sites that do and just .... well it's not me. I am still not a Bonnie fan though. I expect to see Rock and Jen in the finals .... Julia has just reached her limit I think. SHe's a nice person but nice doesn't always cut it. Of course the twist could be that the two we least expect with be at the end: Like Josh and Julia

Oh.
Sorry! :lol:

Yeah, I agree, it'll probably be Rock and Jen. If it is, I hope Jen takes it because his arrogance grates on my last nerve.

I like Jen but not sure, unless she is hiding something other than her experience, she has the personality to run a restaurant. Maybe this is the year there should be dual winner. Rock to run the entire kitchen and Jen to make sure they have the best pastries in LV.

You are too kind, but you are doing a much better job than I could on covering the entire drama. I hope none of my comments is taken for more than what they are intended: amplifications of what I see going right and wrong. I do not try to be an authority, but only an observer with a little culinary background.

In addition, a chef's temperament can go many ways. because it is a high stress environment and one which commands attention to detail over long periods of time, chefs often develop nasty attitudes. Concerning Rock, I was glad to see him let off the steam and get it out. Unfortunately, I think it a distinct possibility that his temper tantrum may have affected the way his team performed.

Chefs are a lot like engineers in the respect that they like working with "things" rather than dealing with people. In a kitchen, you expect others to do his or her job because you are depending on each person to become a cog in the machine.
When people don't do as chef's would like, chefs oftentimes turn to anger or humiliation in order to spur someone to better behavior. Personally, I believe this attitude requires a therapist's intervention, but still people continue to take it from certain people in the hope of becoming better themselves.

Too often chefs develop what I call the jazz musician approach to food: they develop the moody or bad attitude in order to prove they are great chefs rather than being competent and allowing others to discover their proficiency. Being arrogant is associated in their minds with being in control. It is sad that this myth is perpetuated just because the situations are often highly stressful: you often live your life in the job. The big salary comes at a high price of much of your personal life.

You have good insights. I'll make a deal with you. After reading my recaps, if you want to let people know what the food being prepared was please go for it. As I said I can write but don't know nothing about cookin no food LOL .. Julia knows more about the prissy dishes than I do. But I must say I had the beef wellington many years ago on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building in Chicago and I still have dreams about how great it was.

Well, chairo, I always enjoy reading your re-caps, and I also agree that Bentley has some great insights as well. It makes for a nice reading combination. :)

That's really interesting... unfortunately, it seems there are more than a few careers that result in that kind of life.

Thank you I love Hell's Kitchen and it is fun to write about. Glad you enjoy it