As daylight breaks with stop-motion rapidity over the Manhattan skyline… boy, now there’s a memory… sorry… young Jeffrey tells us that it’s like they’re about to go on vacation, except for the part where the rest of the Padawans will be hanging about, bumming smokes off the locals, wearing thongs…
And just when they think it’s going to be a nice nap-time flight on Jet Blue, they find that Ted Allen is there at the airport terminal waiting for them. With him is, as Jeffrey says, ‘some guy in chef whites’ – Michael Coury, ‘Concept Chef’ for OTG Management who run all of the fine dining establishments at Terminal Five, or T5 – and they are there to present the last five Padawans with the challenge of being assigned one of the restaurants in T5 and to cook a dish consistent with that’s restaurant’s cuisine. In thirty minutes.
No pressure.
Jeffrey is assigned Aero Nuova, an Italian eatery; Michael gets La Vie, the French restaurant; Melissa gets Piquillo, a topless – sorry, tapas – restaurant; Jamika pulls Deep Blue, a sushi restaurant; and Debbie gets Five Steak, an American establishment which focuses on steak. Whomever wins…
…wait for it…
…gets to have their dish put on the menu.
Wow.
The Padawans are stunned by this stunning revelation and share looks of amazement all round. I do too. My cats are sleeping on the coffee table in front of the gentle spin of the fan and have no interest in sharing my amazement, however.
Jeffrey, who loves Spain, feels that his ‘Cooking Without Borders’ (which is now, I guess, his official Culinary Point of View) will be well represented at Aero Nuovo by a Bruschetta (the Italian version of Spanish tapas) with Poached Egg. Jamika, unhappy with the airport regulations which require all knives to be attached to the counters by limited-length cords (you must be fucking kidding me!) creates a Seared (Rare) Tuna Salad with a miso/citrus vinaigrette and Michael, soon discovering that he can’t shuck oysters with a shitty knife strapped to a table, opts for clams and shrimp with a bacon Hollandaise sauce. Melissa, who grew up speaking Spanish and who has been to Barcelona, decides on a Chicken a la Plancha with potatoes and chorizo. Debbie thinks that everyone at a steak house will want steak, so she chooses to do an Asain Spinach Salad. Whoa! Asian? Where the hell did that shit come from? What is she, Korean or some— oh. Yeah. Okay.
Jamika is the first one to face the Jedi Council, sans Lord Flay who is busy taking care of a difficult terminal worker who does not understand the true nature of the Dark Side…
Bob T, Susie ‘I Love A Good Laugh’ Fogelson, ‘Conceptual’ Chef Coury, Ted Allen, a Jet Blue pilot and a flight attendant are waiting to taste her dish. And then she talks about how the airplane toilet is nobody’s friend. Mmm. I am hungry already. The pilot takes a second to wash this down with a drink of water. The flight attendant appears to have been insulted. Perhaps the toilets are his responsibility. Ted Allen nods with his eyes wide, as if he is trying to stay awake. Susie speaks up and asks, ‘Am I alone here in not wanting to hear about bathrooms on airplanes when I’m about to eat something?’ Ted concurs. This is TMI, he nods. Bob T has no apparent complaint. But then he has eaten paste. He does, however, decide that there is ‘nothing new’ in Jamika’s dish.
Debbie drops a bomb by offering a salad in place of a steak, to the chagrin of the Jedi Council, and Jeffrey wows the panel with his personal story – a narrative, if you will – and his ‘Without Borders’ style. Melissa also knocks her dish and presentation out of the park, giving the panel some great points. Even Bob T says her dish has all of his favourite Spanish flavours. Is paste Spanish?
Michael actually does pretty well with his presentation, with a small bit of prompting, but his dish falls a bit far from the mark. And in the final tally, he is told that his dish just wasn’t ‘quite there.’ Jeffrey is deemed the over-all winner of this challenge – for which he is ‘super excited’ – and his dish will go on the menu at Aero Nuovo.
And then they have to catch a flight…
In their hostage van, they are driven to their hotel in Miami. Melissa is only certain that they are in Miami when she sees the palm trees – an indigenous plant found only in the state of Florida – whilst everyone else points out the window to the big blue wobbly thing and says ‘Wow, that’s the water!’ Yes. The Atlantic Water.
They arrive at the Eden Roc hotel – where Jamika screams in Michael’s ear, just like on the previews – and then they discover a note which reads: ‘WELCOME TO MIAMI! Meet me in the lobby.’
This is from Ted Allen, of course, and Jeffrey tells us (from the OSR) that, after only one small challenge, he is already ‘starting to not like seeing this guy.’ Ted tells them that their next challenge is going to be working as a team to cook for a cocktail party at one of Miami’s hottest night clubs. They will have two hours and each contestant must create at least two hors d’oeuvres and create a signature cocktail because they are, after all, ‘about partyin tonight.’
The five of them will shop for one hour with a budget of $1500. Jeffrey, having won the earlier challenge, will get to assign tasks to each of the other four Padawans. With luck he will not hand the $1500 to Michael or Debbie who, it has been proved time and again, cannot handle a budget of any kind.
Jeffrey doles out the tasks: Michael will be behind the bar. ‘I can definitely work a crowd,’ he says; Debbie is given charge of the kitchen and ‘as a caterer for Hollywood,’ she tells us from the OSR, she ‘threw some of the hottest parties in town.’ I swear it sounded like she said ‘oddest parties.’
As they decide who wants to do whatever hors d’oeuvres, Melissa is surprised that no-one (especially those with far more experience) had thought to do a vegetarian dish, so she decides she will cover that base and do three dishes to everyone else’s two. Jeffrey confides that he feels there are some needlessly complicated dishes in this challenge, but he thinks everyone has a right to do what they want in this competition.
Shopping, as always, is at Whole Food and also, as always, is a nightmare of indecision and second-guessing. They somehow manage to buy everything for $1490.94.
Jeffrey is going to produce a crab tostada and a Cuban bite with spicy sauce; Debbie is going for a passion fruit chicken on daikon and a Korean torta (is she, like, Asian or something?); Melissa will prepare chicken skewers, salmon shooters, and a vegetable Asada; Jamika prepares a shrimp with pineapple coleslaw and jerk chicken skewers; and Michael does Margarita salmon skewer and chili lime shrimp.
The signature drink, a chili-spiced Margarita will apparently take hours to prepare and may not be ready in time for service.
The trick is, Melissa and Debbie, as the assigned cooks, will have to know how to prepare the dishes of everyone else whilst Michael and Jeffrey run front of house. This should be interesting. Debbie says that Michael’s dish is high maintenance and rather passes off his explicit instructions on how it is to be prepared. Melissa explains that all of the dishes are somewhat labour-intensive. Sounds like poor planning and very little team work.
As the hors d’oeuvres are passed about, Jeffrey’s choices are generally panned as not being terribly spicy by the Jedi Council – and also by Lord Flay who has finally joined us after parking his personal Star Destroyer out by the Atlantic Water and stopping to kick over a couple of sand castles to make some children cry. Jamika fails to impress either with her style before the Jedi Council or with her jerk chicken, but her shrimp and slaw went over fairly well.
From the OSR, Melissa tells us that she has no idea what Debbie – ‘The Expeditor’ – was doing (other than plating her own food) but that, without the help Debbie was supposed to be giving, things were getting out of hand. The Jedi Council seem to like Melissa’s food – mostly – and her style, but the execution of a couple of the dishes was a little ‘off.’ That’s a fairly general statement.
It is fast becoming clear that food is not making it out of the kitchen as quickly as it ought to do and there are people at the party who have not yet eaten and not been served. It seems The Expeditor is not as expeditious as she ought to be and is still busy with her own food, ignoring that of the other Padawans. Lord Flay finally gets up from his comfy chair and marches back to the kitchen to see how things are going. He tells Jamika, who he sees first, that he is still hungry and would like to have one of her hors d’oeuvres if he may.
Debbie looks up from plating her dish, surprised (or as surprised as the epicanthic fold will allow one to appear surprised) to see Lord Flay in the kitchen and digs back in to plating her own dish. ‘We got lots of hungry people out here,’ Lord Flay reminds them. ‘Get that food out.’
‘This is not a good sign,’ Debbie tells us from the OSR. ‘Front of the party should never know there’s craziness going on in the back.’ It would seem that the only ‘craziness’ going on is that Debbie doesn’t appear to be pulling her own substantial weight and is letting everyone down. Maybe she did mean to say she threw the ‘oddest parties’ in Hollywood – those crazy Emperor’s New Food parties with big empty plates that she didn’t slave over for hours…
At last Debbie emerges from the kitchen to pass round plates of her own food – which are by far the favourites of everyone. Well of course. She spent half the night on them and fucked everyone over in order to make her own hors d’oeuvres the best. This is not the spirit of a team player. Even Michael stepped away from his assignment of serving drinks to bring out some more food, only to be criticised by the Jedi Council for not spending enough time with them and treating them as common guests. Of course he makes the fatal mistake of telling them that he’s great with crowds but it’s the camera he’s afraid of. That admission goes over really well. Bob T sits there staring up at Michael with his mouth open like a dog expecting a Beggin Strip (which he can’t get for himself because he doesn’t have thumbs).
In the end, the cocktail party was largely an epic fail.
Back from a much-needed advertising break, we watch as the Padawans gather before the Jedi Council (with guest judge Ted Allen) as Susie Fogelson recaps the details of their challenges in case they weren’t there. Lord Flay explains that the cocktail party was something of a disaster because he was starving and didn’t get enough food. And that other people had to wait as well.
Jeffrey explains, and quite rightly so, that most of the dishes were much too time-consuming and overly-complicated to have been prepared on time. Lord Flay asks him if he was in charge, to which Jeffrey says that, as the winner of the first challenge, he delegated certain tasks. One of those tasks, being in charge of the kitchen and to organise things behind the scenes, was given to Debbie – The Expeditor. She tells the rather dour Jedi Council that ‘I just did the very best that I could at that moment. I was basically the only person standing in that kitchen by myself at all times.’
This tear-filled little white lie garners a sideways glare from Melissa.
The Padawans are assessed in turn. Jeffrey is given high points for his hosting and his charm, but his recent dishes seem to lack the spice and the heat he claims to want to impart. Michael is called ‘the hostess with the mostess’ at the party, however he was not the favourite of the crowd. He is also told that his shrimp hors d’oeuvre was such that, despite its simplicity, it needed to be prepared in such a way that it burdened the women in the kitchen who had eleven other dishes to prepare. Well, except for Debbie who was concentrating primarily on her own dish to the exclusion of all else.
Jamika was one of the favourite personalities as judged by the party-goers and her shrimp and slaw was a hit, albeit difficult to eat, but her jerk chicken was lifeless. Melissa is scolded by Susie for taking on three dishes because it meant that her concentration was spread too thin. Melissa defends her position and says that the vegetarian dish was necessary – to which Ted Allen agrees.
And then we turn to Debbie to watch her squirm beneath the magnifying glass of the Jedi Council. Lord Flay calmly explains that her food was his favourite of the night, though he would like to understand what her role was and why the kitchen seemed to be so chaotic…
‘I was trying to do whatever I could just to get the food out,’ she lies. ‘I guess I was under the understanding that Jeffrey was the team leader.’
‘How would that have changed,’ Susie asks, ‘and made you more successful?’
‘My thing is, like, if I was catering an event,’ Debbie tells her, ‘I’m back in the kitchen first just to make sure food goes out then I go out there and greet the guests.’
This is all very nice, except that she has just explained Jeffrey’s role in the party and not her own. Perhaps Teddy – sorry, Debbie – feels that she can pass the blame on to the Team Leader and divert attention as she continues to dig her grave. Jeffrey says that he had every confidence that Debbie could organise two people to put out the food, since that’s what she does for a living, but that it just came down to the fact that this wasn’t happening.
‘Debbie, when a kitchen breaks down,’ explains Lord Flay, ‘it’s the chef’s problem.’
Debbie’s response to this is that she could only do so much and she was being selfless in order to make sure everyone’s dishes got served. The hint of martyrdom does not go unnoticed and Susie presses Debbie for a further explanation of what she was doing in the kitchen. Debbie counters by saying that there was just no way, given the skill level of the various dishes, that one person could produce all eleven hors d’oeuvres in a timely fashion.
Melissa appears rather perturbed by the ‘one person’ comment and finally steps in to say that Debbie did not, in fact, work alone. ‘I think I did five. I did your two,’ she says indicating Jeffrey, ‘and my three.’ She turns to Debbie to ask, ‘Did you plate some of my stuff and I didn’t know it? I was single-handedly in charge of plating five dishes with zero help from anybody. I was in charge of Jeffrey’s two; Jamika was in charge of Michael’s two…’
Bob T stops her because he needs to get the math right: There were eleven dishes over all; Melissa did her three and Jeffrey’s two; Jamika did her two and Michael’s two; and that leaves two dishes. Debbie’s two.
Debbie’s defence is that she did a couple of plates of Michael’s salmon too – the easy salmon dish which was essentially taking the salmon out of the marinade and putting it on a plate. Debbie nods. Obviously Bob T has no appreciation of just how hard it is to plate salmon and so Debbie tells him that there was some time involved in this Herculean effort. Ultimately Debbie explains that she wasn’t there to plate six dishes, she was there to ‘expedite.’
Bob T hangs his head in defeat and mutters ‘Okay.’
The Padawans are sent upstairs then whilst the Jedi Council deliberate. In the hotel room Jeffrey goes off on Debbie for not orchestrating and organising things the way she was supposed to have done and chastises everyone for having complicated dishes which needlessly burdened the process. Debbie’s position is that ‘It’s all me at the end of the day.’ Jeffrey refuses to let Debbie play the victim when she’s anything but.
In the Council Chambers, Bob T applauds Jeffrey’s hosting and feels that it’s part of what being a star is all about. Lord Flay says that he found Jeffrey’s food to be ‘not so good.’ Jamika, says Susie, had a bad week but she believes in her as a talent. They are overwhelmingly in agreement that Melissa is turning out to be quite a resourceful and smart lady who can learn quickly. They feel that Michael came up with a couple of lame appetisers and then just tended bar. They also feel that his confession about not being able to stand the camera will be his undoing. Debbie has shown them all a very unattractive side of her personality this week. Yes her dishes were the best, but does the end justify the means of back-stabbing everyone?
The Padawans are called down to the Council Chambers and Susie explains that this is the hardest part but, in that there are only about 2 minutes and 40 seconds left in the show, Jamika is safe to move on to the next round. Lord Flay tells Melissa that she is safe as well. Ted Allen gives Jeffrey another chance. This leaves Debbie and Michael in the bottom two. Bob T explains again how difficult this is – especially since Debbie clearly did not own up to her lies – but Michael is shown the door. Not the Brown Door To Nowhere (because that’s back in New York). Michael tells us from the OSR that he was surprised – that everyone was surprised – and that the Food Network won’t forget him anytime soon, honey, because he ‘brought it.’ Or ‘buh-wrought it,’ as he says.
Next week, still in Miami, we will see the Padawans demonstrating their food and cooking skills on live TV. Jeffrey wonders what happened. Debbie will have all of her Asian ingredients taken away by Lord Flay (sweet!). Susie, in a light moment, will say that ‘It’s cuckoo to me!’ Someone shuts down, Debbie cries, and Bob T asks the burning question ‘Who is ready now?’
Indeed…
