Previously: Like The Spice Girls, 2 became 1 when Ramsay merged the Blue and the Red teams. And like the Spice Girls after 1997 or so, it didn’t go well. Corey burned herself, Matt had a migraine, and Ramsey shut down the service early. Matt was eliminated, but the tip of his finger presumably lives on in Hell’s Kitchen.
Yes! We start off with Jen complaining about cleaning up after everybody and she drops my favorite reality show chestnut: “I’m not here to make friends.” Everybody take a drink!
The next morning in the kitchen, Ramsay informs the remaining five contestants that they have a new special tonight: Lobster spaghetti. He demonstrates how to prepare the dish and then tells them that they’re opening a cooking school. Their individual challenge is to teach a student the dish. The best dish, of course, wins.
So the students come in, and it’s a bunch of housewives. Specifically housewives who look like they took a booze cruise straight from Dina Lohan’s weekly bridge game via the Tori Spelling Bolt-On canal and somehow wandered into Hell’s Kitchen. That’s what I love about Fox: you know they’ll always keep it classy.
The women are predictably bad in the kitchen, but I’ve got to say I completely empathize with the one who freaked out over killing the lobster. I probably would have cried. Or pooped my pants. Point is, it would have been a major stressor.
The main rule in this challenge is that the chefs are only allowed to teach—they’re not supposed to do any of the cooking. Poor Christina’s student keeps trying to cut things in her hands and while Christina keeps on asking her not to, she can’t just take it away and chop it herself. Jen, on the other hand, keeps trying to cut vegetables when Ramsay isn’t looking. Luckily, nothing gets past Ramsay, who sees what she’s doing and tells her that she’ll be disqualified if she doesn’t stop.
Judging starts off pretty well. Petrozza’s dish is perfect, but the pasta is overcooked. Christina doesn’t have that problem, however. Ramsay says that her dish is “quite nice.” Bobby’s however, is a disaster. Corey fares better though, with Ramsay calling it nice. Last up is attempted cheater Jen. Apparently her cheating didn’t pay off, as her dish ends up bland, with no tomato sauce and the pasta in a big congealed clump. It’s down to Christina and Corey. Ramsay decides that the best teacher in Hell’s Kitchen’s first cooking school is Christina.
The losers get to spend all day cleaning, while Christina gets to have a nice lunch with Ramsay and two of L.A.’s premiere restaurateurs. As a thank you, the students all receive a set of Ramsay’s cookware, so their housekeepers/nannies will have really good equipment to use.
Tonight’s dinner service has a minor twist: a 12 top. With Ramsay’s slavish devotion to getting the entire table’s order out at the same time, the chefs really have to be on top of timing.
Christina is on appetizers with Corey and has a bit of a shaky start when she sends one spaghetti to the window instead of two. She quickly recovers, however, and thirty minutes in to dinner service, appetizers are “flying” out of the kitchen. Bobby also started out badly on the meat station with burned Wellingtons. Jen is having problems of her own with undercooked or overcooked fish, leading Jean-Philippe to frantically tell the wait staff to push the meat. When Bobby keeps on burning the meat, he tells them to push the chicken. All of the problems lead the kitchen to come to a standstill.
Eventually, after several more mistakes and Jen talking back to Ramsay, food starts leaving the kitchen again—right in time for the arrival of the 12 top of Hawaiian Tropic models. Christina and Corey do a good job of getting all of the apps out. They start preparing desserts while the remaining three begin working on the entrees. The raw/burned food problems continue, and result in Ramsay temporarily kicking Jen off of her station. Afterwards, Jen, Petrozza and Bobby manage to get their act together and send out the 12 top’s entrees.
While the chefs managed to complete the service, Ramsay is still disappointed in their performance. However, he does say that Christina really stood out. He tells her to go back and nominate two chefs for elimination.
When they return for eliminations, Christina’s first nomination is, unsurprisingly, Jen. Her second nominee is Bobby, due to his inconsistent performance during tonight’s dinner service. Ramsay tells Bobby he sucked tonight, but tells Jen that she’s generally inconsistent. Before he makes his decision, Ramsay asks Christina who she thinks should go home. Christina says Jen should. For some inexplicable reason, Ramsay decides to send Bobby home. Could it be that he didn’t want to lose his last remaining villain in Jen? Oh well, at least Matt’s still gone.
Next week: Someone burns Ramsay!
