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‘Hell’s Kitchen’: That’s shambolic!

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Did you reach for the remote? I sure did. I thought Holli said she had the biggest ‘corn’ collection of anyone she knew, and I thought, ‘Hmmm, that’s unusual, but then again she is a chef.’ Well, it turned out she said she had the biggest PORN collection of anyone she knew. And that she often made, er, private films with significant others. These tidbits were revealed during a ‘let’s get to know each other’ session led by the Italian Dr. Phil, a.k.a. Salvatore, who has a gift for getting people to gab.

Not to be outdone, Siobhan offered up that she used to dance in the nude and perform S&M. Presumably for money.

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OK, ladies! Thanks for (over)sharing and making your families proud on national TV! And although one person is expected to get a gig running chef Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at the London Savoy, maybe there will be two new gigs this season: We gotta get a talk show for Salvatore. (Especially since we know he cannot cook pasta.)

This week started with a squeal, as Ramsay had the cheftestants trying to wrangle cute baby pigs for the first challenge. Luckily, there was no butchering involved. But the little piggies helped determine which, um, pork dishes would be prepared in the next challenge. (I hope no one told the pigs.) The women lost -- again -- and had to give the piggies baths while the men got a day at Glen Ivy Spa and got to ogle Autumn in a teeny-weeny yellow bikini.

The night’s dinner service was all about making laid-back BBQ dishes, and the theme was so popular that Ramsay threw everyone a curveball: There would be two services, with the teams taking turns tending to the kitchen and the front of the house. The women managed to muck it all up. Nilka inexplicably started frying the chicken hours before service began, and Maria pulled off an amazing feat: delivering crab hush puppies that managed to be burned on the outside and raw in the middle. Impressive, when you think about it. Other highlights: ‘Old dog’ Fran managed to get some kudos from Ramsay, and Salvatore admitted he could barely read and write because he had never finished school. In the end, muggy Maria got the boot.

By this time, the red team was in shambles. They could no longer blame Autumn, who appeared to be getting along just fine on the men’s team. And it was becoming increasingly clear that Scott, who had an opportunity to shine by helping the women’s team pull together, was himself falling apart. He had an incredibly inflated view of himself -- kept talking about himself as a leader and a teacher, blah blah blah, but couldn’t handle his own meat station.

Then came the mother of all challenges: a challenge about mother sauces, and it was judged by Ramsay’s mother, and Ramsay’s wife (the mother of his children, he noted). Was anyone else struck by the fact that the women both seemed so quiet, sweet-natured and mild-mannered? It made me wonder what dinnertime was really like in the Ramsay households when Gordon was around and the cameras were gone.There’s a TV show for you!

Here, we learned that Salvatore simply could not cook pasta -- I think Italy might disown him -- and later we learned that he couldn’t keep a story straight, either. He was caught lying to Ramsay about his risotto dish and why he was caught shoveling a second serving of uncooked rice in there. Answer: Because he missed the part about two servings being ordered. It sent Ramsay over the edge, and future ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ contestants take note: You can get away with bad cooking cause, hey, someone has got to win the show. But you cannot get away with lying. Shreiked Ramsay: ‘Working with a cook that tells lies is 10,000 times worse than working with a chef who can’t cook! You just lost my trust! How dare you!’

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The next service was ‘family night,’ with a dining room full of parents and children, including a little girl drawing a picture of Ramsay yelling, ‘You donkey!’ Don’t make me curse in front of the kids, Ramsay told his chefs. That lasted for about 10 seconds. He threw the entire red team out of the kitchen and then did the cooking himself along with his two sidekick chefs who put it into overdrive and finished off all the outstanding meals. (That’s yet another show for you -- I would have loved to have watched them cook all night long.)

Scott ended up, again, on the chopping blog and had the nerve to say, ‘This team will die if I am not here.’ Um, not really. The team will be fine without you, Scott. Bye-Bye!

In a stunning show of confidence, Ramsay ordered Benjamin -- who was a standout over the past two dinner services -- over to the red team to replace the departed Scott: ‘The one thing missing from that team is a leader: Run it, and get it together,’ Ramsay told Benjamin.

Wonder how long that’s going to last.

Single favorite moment of the night was another reach-for-the-remote moment: Ramsay yelling, ‘This is shambolic!’ Had no idea that was even a word.

--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch

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