TV Recap: Hell's Kitchen - Heading Straight For An Iceberg

Previously: Jen joined the Blue team—and didn’t exactly win any popularity contests. It was the Red team, however, that had a meltdown, forcing Ramsay to close their kitchen and have the Blue team run it. Ultimately, Rosann left, to no one’s surprise.

We begin tonight’s episode with everybody back at the dorms. Matt is apologizing for screwing up and Corey interviews that he may be good at something, just not cooking. She suggests that he’d make a better used car salesman, which I have to disagree with. The only thing I would ever buy from Matt is a bottle of Mace, which I would then immediately use on him.

Today’s challenge revolves around a big issue that everyone is having: timing. Each team will make three items off of the menu—but there’s a catch: only one person will be in the kitchen at any time. Each chef has 6 minutes to cook before the next person comes in. When they switch off, they have 15 seconds to get their replacement up to speed.

Both teams manage to cook and plate their dishes, so the winner is determined by the tasting. Ramsay looks at the first dish, and the Red team completely forgot to add their salad, so that’s not a good start. The scallops on the Blue team were raw though, so the Red team gets the point. The presentation on the Red team’s second dish is “dreadful,” but it doesn’t taste too bad. The Blue team burned their sauce, so they didn’t include it. However, it tasted good and had a good presentation, so they got the point.

The third dish, unsurprisingly, is the tie-breaker. The Red team’s dish is nicely cooked and moist, but they forgot the baby leeks. The Blue team’s is nice too, but they forgot the sauce again. Ultimately, Ramsay chooses the Red team as the winner because the Blue team missed the sauce on two dishes.

For their reward, the Red team gets to go to the beach in a convertible. While they’re doing that, the Blue team becomes the Hell’s Kitchen maintenance crew. They’ll be spending the day sprucing up Hell’s Kitchen.

So just as the contestants were getting halfway competent at cooking the items on the menu, Ramsay switches it up for tonight’s dinner service, telling each team they’re going to make their own menu. They split up into their teams to figure out their menus. The Red team immediately works together and comes up with several good ideas, while the Blue team struggles. Jen simultaneously comes up with ideas that no one else likes while shooting down ideas that anyone else has. It doesn’t look good for them.

The teams meet in the kitchen to present their menus to Ramsay. The Red team goes first, and Ramsay seems to be impressed, calling it “clever.” He says that if they can actually pull it off, they’ll be in great shape. The Blue team presents their menu and Ramsay says it’s “ghastly.” He asks if the team is happy with the menu, and LouRoss immediately volunteers that he is not. As Petrozza says, Jen is captain of the ship and heading straight for an iceberg. Ramsay sends them back to the drawing board and the team comes up with an entirely new menu, which Ramsay likes a lot better.

For all of their preparation, the Red team gets off to a rocky start when Matt sends out an overly salty pasta appetizer. The Blue team, on the other hand, is sending their appetizers out pretty rapidly. Things only continue to go downhill for the Red team, as the appetizers that they do manage to send out are getting returned to the kitchen.

Although the Blue team has managed to get all of their appetizers out, they immediately run into problems with their entrees when LouRoss sends out undercooked steak. Basically, LouRoss is doing as badly on the meat station as Matt did on the hot appetizer station. When he finally manages to get a properly cooked filet out to a table, it’s a little late, as the table has walked out. Meanwhile, Matt has gotten kicked off of his second station.

While Matt and LouRoss are melting down, Christina and Corey are working really well together. However, over in the Blue kitchen, Bobby and Petrozza aren’t quite feeling the love toward Jen. She’s on desserts and has apparently made a complete mess out of the station. When she tries to serve a raw soufflé, Ramsay dumps it out, breaks a dish and tells her that she’s done for the night. In the end though, both teams complete the dinner service.

At the post-mortem, Ramsay tells them that the customers chose which menu they wanted to eat from. The customers ended up choosing each menu about equally. Ultimately, however, Ramsay decides that the Blue team loses and deems Petrozza the best of the worst. Ramsay tells him to go back to the dorms and nominate two people for elimination.

At elimination, Petrozza nominates LouRoss because he “lacks the skills to compete at this level.” His second nominee is, of course, Jen because she feels that she has “more to teach than she has to learn,” but really has more to learn than she has to teach. Ramsay asks Jen and LouRoss to step forward and then says that he’s going to do something he’s never done before. He asks Petrozza who he ought to send home. Petrozza says that he should send LouRoss home and Ramsay says he completely agrees.

Ramsay, however, isn’t done yet. He’s upset because he gave the teams complete control and they let him down. He tells Matt to come forward and tells him and Jen that he’s unconvinced about both of them. He tells them both to take off their jackets and has them switch back to their original teams, making it men against women once again. Nobody is happy about this development.

Next time: It’s down to the final six. This involves Vegas, blindfolds and briefcases full of cash—and Matt going Full Metal Jacket. Now that’s awesome.