The final three head back to their dorm rooms and as they are leaving Rock asks to talk to Jen. He tells her he is sorry for his actions at service and she apologizes to him also. They hug and a new beginning starts.

About Julia’s leaving Bonnie says she feels bad for her but she still had a lot to learn. Rock says that Julia was an inspiration to him.

The following morning Chef Ramsay says he wants to introduce him to his mentor and favorite chef and out walks his mom carrying one of his favorite childhood dishes. Macaroni and cheese.
He says everyone has a comfort food and even in restaurants we like to see something that is familiar. He said the secret is to take simple dishes and make them into something that could be served in a 5 star restaurant.

The challenge tonight is for each contestant to choose an American classic and turn it into a gourmet dish.

Jen chose Fried chicken. Bonnie picked franks and beans. Rock chose spaghetti and meatballs. They are given an hour and all the resources of the kitchen to make these dishes into something special. I am not going to even try to repeat what the dishes were they created because I know our members with more knowledge in this area than I have will do them more justice than I could hope to.

I will say this, Bonnie claimed she has never heard of franks and beans. MMMMMMMMMM I wonder what country she comes from … oh yeah America.

Chef Ramsay says that he has brought in special judges to pick the winning dish. The contestants are over joyed to discover it is their moms.

Jen’s chicken dish won the competition. Ramsay says that she and her mom will join him and his mom for lunch.

As the losers Rock and Bonnie have to completely clean the dorm rooms. Bonnie says she doesn’t know how to do cleaning. Rock says how can a nanny not know how to clean. She says she is a personal chef and does a little child care. She doesn’t clean. Rock actually says she is a diva and bossy and a complainer but she wasn’t that bad to hang out with.

Meanwhile Chef Ramsay, Jen and their moms are having a great lunch. She says having alone time to talk with Chef is the best prize. The lunch isn’t the end of her prize. Ramsay gives her $1000 to spend in a kitchen supply store. She spends $998.00 and is estatic.

Dinner service is about to start and Chef tells them they will each be given a turn at running Hell’s Kitchen. He calls them all over individually and gives them a little assertiveness training. Bonnie surprised me when she tears into Chef for making a mistake. Chef Ramsay says she did well. Rock was praised after his second go at it as was Jen.

During the service Ramsay has his sous (?) chefs deliberately make mistakes in preparation. First on the hotplate (pass?) is Jen. She doesn’t do well at quality control as she prepares to let the dish that was deliberately done wrong go out for service. Chef stopped it and made her check the food. She did well in keeping the kitchen running.

Next up is Rock. He discovered the missing ham in the in the monk fish and sent it back. He passed the QC test, but was tentative and a little slow in running the kitchen. He says he was so concerned in getting what he was doing, done right that keeping the kitchen running quickly slipped past him.

Bonnie passed the QC test but stumbled over placing the orders. She did keep the kitchen moving however.

Finally Chef took the kitchen back and the service was completed. He tells them when the kitchen closes that it was the best service ever in Hell’s Kitchen. He said it was good but not great and someone will go home. He tells them to go back to the dorm and think about why they want to remain in Hell’s Kitchen.

Back in the room Bonnie and Jen talk and Jen says she really wants and deserves this. She asked Bonnie if she really wants it and Bonnie says she wants it and then she says she isn’t sure, and then she says she does. Jen says this is her and Rock’s life. It’s not Bonnie’s life. Rock says this means everything to him. It is his dream.

When they return to stand before Chef Ramsay he asks them why they should stay. Bonnie says she is getting better every service and feels she has what it takes. Jen says she lives for food and is at home in the kitchen. Rock says he has grown a lot, not just as a chef but as a person and he didn’t come here to finish 2nd or 3rd.

Ramsay tells them they all had some tremendous highs tonight. But the one going home is, Rock … (the look on Rock’s face was crestfallen and defeated) you have to be here for the finals. Congratulations. (Rock says don’t do that to me)

The one going home is Jen. He tells her he knows she will be successful and not to stop. She has nothing to be ashamed of and she should keep her head high.

The remaining two have yet another surprise. Chef Ramsay calls out Rock’s wife and Bonnie’s mom and dad. (Rock’s wife wonders if they can have a conjugal visit)

Next week is the make or break week. Bonnie and Rock will each decorate half the restaurant and create their own menus. Don’t miss this competition.

No doubt, that was a surprise. For the second season in a row, the undeserving bimbo has been in the final two. I mean, who thinks franks and beans is English and has to ask how it's made, but also thinks that high school kids want to eat salad with fried goat cheese?

Incidentally, the challenge this week was almost identical to one that was done on Top Chef a few weeks ago. Those chefs had to choose among unhealthy but common American comfort food dishes and make them healthier. They even had fried chicken and franks and beans to choose from.

I was glad that this show opened with Rock apologizing to Jen. Both of them seemed to need that and I thought it should have been shown last week. Nevertheless, it was a welcome moment for all. However the moment was broken when Bonnie once again announced that the moment appears surreal to her and that she sometimes does not feel worthy to be there. I find both of these statements extremely indicative of Bonnie’s inability to lead a kitchen as executive chef, but more about this later.

Ramsay opens the show in a rather cheerful mood, somewhat uncharacteristic of what we have seen. Then he introduces his mother who comes bearing a dish of maccaroni and cheese on which Ramsay says he was raised, although one thinks he must be speaking generally of comfort food. He then suggests that upscale dishes like this work on a different level, like his own modifications of maccaroni with lobster, shaved black truffle and parmesan. Although I love black truffles a great deal indeed, I wonder whether that dish would have worked in combination. BTW, I had no takers for my offer of the Gorgonzola Maccaroni with or without portobello recipe and I KNOW that one works:)

Anyway they had to draw from five common comfort foods and then they had an hour to modify them to something above the common standard. Bonnie blindly picked franks and beans, Jen got fried chicken and Rock got spaghetti and meatballs. Immediately Rock describes Bonnie as “starting her Bonnie thing.” She seemed confused about the dish of franks and beans. In any case, she didn’t inspire me with leadership and confidence. For a while it looked like she wasn’t going to be finished in time.

Bonnie produced mini bruschetta (which, for the record is pronounced bru-sketta in Italy as a ch denotes a hard c sound, the c by itself a soft c sound) with, if I understood what she said, cream of wheat sauce. I assume that she used some sort of variety of sliced sausage with some variety of beans atop some sort of sliced bread. The dish looked better than it sounded and one has to admit that it is pretty inventive.

Second, Rock produced three mini spaghetti dishes which I couldn’t remember, but the last one was with spicy chorizo. For the record, chorizo IS spicy as it is a Spanish cured sausage of pork with smoked red peppers and paprika, the last giving it its distinctive red color. It is wonderful along with scrambled eggs on a Sunday morning, but I digress.
Rock’s dishes sounded inventive and they certainly had diversity. The one problem I had with the dish was that it might be harder for one person to like all three together.

Third, Jen’s version of fried chicken was nothing short of genius. She made chicken roulades. Technically this would be a flattened chicken breast that was rolled. What was interesting about Jen’s was that I think she stuffed hers with some smoked ham and perhaps sun dried tomatoes and then breaded and deep fried it. I wish I could have had a closer look because it looked good and, in any case, it was the favorite of the three mothers. It was an extremely inventive take on the fried chicken. By the way, if you fold the chicken breast in when rolling, you can seal it and then fold it with cheese, delivering a lovely melted cheese when it is first cut. This would be similar to Chicken cordon bleu, but again I think she did something else.
So while Jen is off on her lunch and thousand dollar kitchenware sale, I began to think that this might be another Julia: certainly Ramsay wouldn’t get rid of Jen before Bonnie, would he? Perish the thought!

However back at the dorm rooms, which Bonnie and Rock had to clean, Rock is once more stunned by Bonnie’s constant whining. She apparently doesn’t know about cleaning much of anything and we are led to believe that perhaps Bonnie has led a very sheltered life indeed. She says she is good at making beds. That’s kind of like saying you are good at rolling bandages during an epidemic. Ultimately she doesn’t seem well connected to the real world. At the end, Rock is careful not to say anything negative about Bonnie, but with all the times we hear Bonnie whine or complain, she sounds like a little spoiled kid. Rock allows only that it has been a long day.

When the service begins each has to take his/her shot at the pass window, inspecting and prepping the plates before they go out to the diners. I finally got a chance to see the spaghetti dish: it was done with chopped tomato and crabmeat. I saw that because Ramsay told his sous chef to prepare the spaghetti without the crab. Jen failed to catch that. I think this along with the lackluster way she reprimanded Ramsay in the “bad chef” exercise may have sunk her. Rock said that Jen was also a bit jumpy at the pass, but she seemed to settle down after a minute or two.

Rock was slow working at the pass window but caught the missing parma ham on the monkfish and properly chastised the chef who screwed up. I noted that while he was working with the plates, he lost contact with his kitchen, but he said that was because he wanted to make it perfect. His worst failing was that he was slow.

Bonnie was all over the place at the pass window before she settled down. She caught the pigeon skin not being crispy and deemed Jen’s risotto improperly seasoned. Bravo Bonnie! Unfortunately they were then out of rice as the remaining risotto was overcooked. Well, somehow the service was over and we didn’t hear much about another 20 minutes or more for the risotto.

Ramsay said he was pleased but they each made mistakes. Back at the dorm, they each take stock of themselves. Bonnie insists that she is getting better. Jen loves learning and is gaining confidence with every serving. Rock says that he has grown as a person and not only as a chef. You can sense that Ramsay knows what Rock says is true when he hears him say it. Jen certainly is getting better each time, as is Bonnie. However, I think Ramsay is either blind to Bonnie’s emotional disconnects or chooses not to see them. You would think Ramsay’s spies would have told him how Bonnie acted during the day but apparently they didn’t. Between Bonnie and Jen, I would much rather have Jen in a kitchen. Evidently, Ramsay has something else in mind for the next showdown and we have to wait and see. I ultimately think Bonnie cannot handle a whole kitchen.