‘Hell’s Kitchen’ recap: ‘Did he call you a donkey?’
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Is it me, or is this taking forever?
Let’s get down to business!
No one went home this week, and the highlights were Gordon Ramsay, super-taster, and the ‘taste it, now make it’ challenge. (Complete aside: To date, I’ve always looked forward to the blindfolded taste-test challenge. But the ‘taste it, now make it’ challenge may now be my favorite. It gives us a chance to see into Ramsay’s mind, how he tastes, how he thinks, how he cooks. And we got a little more of that later in the episode when he had to rescue Trevor’s beef Wellington. Which brings me to my point: I think Ramsay’s next show should be a straight-up how-to-cook. Just cooking. No competing. No salmon shrapnel. No tears, or doughnuts, or donkeys. Wouldn’t you watch that? Fox, you gotta get on that. (And I should get a piece of that deal.)
OK, now where were we?
No surprise, Nona and Russell were the last two standing in the ‘taste it, now make it’ challenge after Trevor second-guessed himself to defeat. We also learned that Ramsay doesn’t like too much starch in his chef whites, and that he has a heart. When he called Jillian in for a one-on-one, I thought has going to say, ‘Oh dear, oh dear, let’s do something about those eyebrows, shall we?’
Instead he urged her to begin believing in herself.
Dinner service just served to put the spotlight on many shortcomings. Trevor is just a rush-about, and keeps messing up in his haste. An exasperated Ramsay even took a rare visit to Trevor’s meat station to show him how to do it right. (For a guy who never seems to win anything, how is it that Trevor manages to keep winning his way into the next round.) Nona just gets flustered under pressure. She seems to be the person who can be led and molded by Ramsay into a mini-me, but her lapses in judgment are troubling -- like when she sends out a risotto that she ‘knew was wrong, but sent it anyway.’
Russell is just big for his britches. (I did a TiVo double-take when he answered Ramsay with a ‘Yo!’ leading Ramsay to do his best Rocky Balboa imitation.) Threatening to hit Trevor upside the head? I was glad when Ramsay pulled him up short: ‘I get concerned when your arrogance outshines your talent.’
Perhaps in the spirit of the season, no one was sent home. Which means two people need to go home next week, right? And there were visits from family.
Best line of the night, from one of Jillian’s cuter-than-cute sons, asking how Ramsay has been treating his mommy: ‘Did he call you a donkey?’
--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch
