Hell’s Kitchen“Day 5”
Original Air Date: April 29, 2008
Kara – TwoCents Reviewer
This week, the first challenge is a fine dining pizza challenge. The contestants must use the various ingredients supplied to create a high end, super classy pizza. They did this on Top Chef this season, except I’m pretty sure squid, duck and kobe beef weren’t ingredient options. Is that really still a pizza? I mean, isn’t that just crazy food baked onto some bread? Personally, I like my pizza with just cheese and yes, grease please. If you can’t see through a paper plate when you’re done with the pizza, it’s not a pizza to me but what do I know? This is yet another reason why I’m not a contestant on Hell’s Kitchen.
Continue reading...
Posts
Hell’s Kitchen
ReplyDelete“Day 5”
Original Air Date: April 29, 2008
Kara – TwoCents Reviewer
This week, the first challenge is a fine dining pizza challenge. The contestants must use the various ingredients supplied to create a high end, super classy pizza. They did this on Top Chef this season, except I’m pretty sure squid, duck and kobe beef weren’t ingredient options. Is that really still a pizza? I mean, isn’t that just crazy food baked onto some bread? Personally, I like my pizza with just cheese and yes, grease please. If you can’t see through a paper plate when you’re done with the pizza, it’s not a pizza to me but what do I know? This is yet another reason why I’m not a contestant on Hell’s Kitchen.
Each person must cook one pizza and each team must then choose one of those to serve to Gordon Ramsay and represent their team. The women choose Jen’s pizza and the men pick Ben’s without tasting Petrozza’s, who was still working on his when Ben and Bobby made their decision alone. The men have many problems, the main one being that they are completely unable to communicate with each other. Matt asks his team questions during the pizza challenge and no one responds. There’s still no response even when he calls them on it. So, the men choose Ben’s duck confit pizza, which also includes mushrooms and a truckload of other ingredients. All I can think of is “Gordon likes food simple” flashing over and over in my head as Ben rattles off everything that’s in the pizza. The women win the challenge, not because of the simplicity of their pizza but because Ben didn’t properly clean the mushrooms. When Gordon says the mushrooms have grit and he can taste it, that’s a problem. The men are obviously frustrated as they can’t seem to win and Louross pitches quite the fit, complete with crying and putting a towel over his head. I get that it means a lot to him but that seemed like a bit much.
While the girls are off taking a helicopter to Santa Barbara to eat at Square One, the home of the $90 burger, the men are preparing the food for the upcoming service and complaining the entire time. Matt wants the team to talk about their teamwork and communication, which is what Gordon said is keeping them from winning. Unfortunately for Matt, he’s stuck on the idiot team and they want nothing to do with discussing teamwork or discussing anything other than bitching about not winning. Matt says if they don’t listen to Gordon, they’re crazy and he’s beyond right. You’re there to learn from Gordon Ramsay and to possibly win a position at one of his restaurants and he’s flat out telling you what’s keeping you from achieving that and you can’t spare some time to listen to that advice? Yeah, that’s a good plan. So, the women have a great time while Ben and Louross keep complaining about pizza tasting like Pizza Shack, which leads me to wonder if that’s located right next to Radio Hut.
Service is the next day for once, which hopefully gave the contestants a much needed, itty bitty break. During prep, the aftermath of last week’s kitchen injury comes into play. Vanessa says she must see a plastic surgeon about the burn on her hand and she can’t expose it to heat or water. In Hell’s Kitchen, I can’t imagine how either of those are really avoidable. She attempts to do what she can with her hand and a decent amount of her forearm bandaged. Vanessa, frustrated with her struggles in the kitchen, decides to go talk to Gordon about it. He leaves it up to her to decide whether or not to stay and tells her she still has every chance of winning. Now, if Gordon Ramsay told me that, I’m pretty sure I’d stay, especially if I had come that far in the competition. He’s basically telling her he’s not going to look negatively upon the injury and what she can’t do in the kitchen, which to me seems like a free pass through the next few eliminations. Vanessa, however, decides to leave, since she can’t give it her full one hundred percent. She says goodbye to her team and so exits Vanessa from the competition.
Gordon throws another curveball at the chefs, announcing Hell’s Kitchen will be offering pizza delivery that night. It seems like it would be a huge issue but aside from Ben having to deliver one pizza, from which there didn’t seem to be any complaints, it’s really nothing memorable.
The mess-ups of the night go to Matt, Shayna and Rosann, with an honorary award going to Louross. Matt cooked the eggs wrong, prompting Gordon to say they were like Pamela Anderson’s implants, Shayna tried to serve raw beef wellington and barely got a slap on the wrist about it and Rosann screwed up the mashed carrots and got yelled at so badly, it was ridiculous. Here’s my problem with that whole mess. Shayna tried to serve raw food, which can kill you. She also was the one who caused the fire that burned Vanessa and she hasn’t been yelled at yet for obviously having no idea what she’s doing in the kitchen both with actual food preparation and how to use a stove. Why he doesn’t rip into her, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem fair at all. Rosann did mess up the mashed carrots but they’re mashed carrots, which seems rather gross by the way. I don’t know what’s going on with Gordon but he’s really got to make sure he throws some anger at the right person. Louross gets an honorary award for messing up as his beef was cooked wrong and Scott rejected it, telling him to cook another one. Instead, Petrozza sliced the burned part off and Scott said it was a lot better. Score one for Hen in a Pumpkin.
Both teams actually finish service and finish it pretty well. Gordon says there is no losing team and each team must nominate one person for elimination.
Who should be nominated:
-Shayna. In my book, raw beef beats crap vegetables as a major screw up any day.
-Louross. That’s solely based on my If You Screw Up Cooking Meat rule, as in part of the three things you don’t screw up in Hell’s Kitchen: meat, risotto and scallops.
The women nominate Christina and the men nominate Louross. Gordon asks Jen if she’s threatened by Christina’s intelligence and Jen says no. She also says that she determines her fate in Hell’s Kitchen and is quickly shot down by Gordon who lets her know that’s his job. Oh, snap. Louross is asked who the worst chef is and he picks Matt, who makes a face straight out of the bad DeNiro impression book. Seriously, it’s quite the face. Not a good look, dude. And then, Gordon says the person leaving Hell’s Kitchen—oh, amp up the suspense—has already left. Too bad it wasn’t Shayna.
So, what did you think about this week’s Hell’s Kitchen? Please tell me someone is as frustrated with Shayna as I am. And don’t forget to post your TwoCents in the comments here about this episode and your guesses for who will win this season. Remember, doing so provides you bragging rights if you end up being right and if you’re not, we won’t hold it against you. I’m still betting on Jen.
Next week, it looks like someone tries to serve raw meat at a sweet sixteen party, which should be an automatic ticket home, except that Gordon’s not punishing as severely for raw meat anymore. As far as I know, it’s still really bad, really gross and really dangerous. Also, a new chef joins one team. Which team and which chef, I don’t know. All that and more next week, on Hell’s Kitchen!