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Hell's Kitchen Season 6

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puddin:
SPOILER >>>  highlight >> It came down to Dave and Kevin, Dave kicked ass and so deserved the win and he did win!

puddin:
A very interesting article


'Hell's Kitchen' Claims about Araxi a Tad Overdone
Cooking show says winner gets to be 'head chef' at a top Whistler restaurant. Actually, no.



http://thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2009/10/13/HellsKitchen/

tory:
i am soooo happy dave won!!!!! :hearts: :hearts: also i wondered about the job thing becuse i rember the head chef being on hk and he was judging a dish.. hummmm it all makes sence now.
 two yrs in a row i danny and dave yea!!!! :hearts: :hearts: :happy: :happy: :party: :hellkitchen

apskip:
puddin,
That was a fascinating article. Thanks. For the 4 HK finales that I have watched, Gordon Ramsay always hypes the positions that winners get to make them seem more important than they really are. HK6 is the first time that I saw a slight dose of reality in making clear that Araxi Restaurant already has a top chef, as he was highlighted as a diner with the most votes in the HK dining room on last night's teelcast. The fact that Dave will be #4 in the hierarchy there is not that important; the key is that he is not #1 as you would have expected based on FOX and HK publicity from earlier this season. The $250,000 "salary" is out of line for even the top position. Hell's Kitchen is doing its winners no favors by raising unrealistic expectations. A cash prize would be a much more appropriate way to go, but FOX and Granada America executive producers Arthur Smith and Kent Weed have elected to go with less than full disclosure.

apskip:
HK6, ep. 15, Semi-Finals

We start this episode with Dave, Kevin and Ariel still standing, but by the end of this episode one of them will be gone. Only 2 chefs will be moving on to the finals. Who will those lucky 2 be?

An International Challenge was immediately offered, 45 minutes to cook a meal of the nationality identified by random draw. It turned out that India, Mexico and China were the 3 cuisines and there was a generous array of ingredients to use in the dish chosen. A chef whose expertise is that cuisine was part of the judges' panel:

Vikas Khanna from the VK Hospitality Group
Elio Wong from the Mr. Chow's
Thomas Ortega from Ortega 120.

In designing an Indian dish, Dave had to consider the meat preferences of the major religious sects in India. I would have chosen fish if I was not sure. Vikas during judging told Dave that his choice of not-beef was good because Hindus consider cows sacred. However, Moslems, a subtantial minority in India, find pork unmentionable.  Vikas told him that chicken or fish would have been the best choice. Dave chose pork, but I think the decision will be based on his flavors and textures, not on Moslem beliefs.

The dishes selected were:
Dave - pork tenderloin with a bean puree
Ariel - duck breast marinated with plum-lychee puree over noodles with broth
Kevin - orange and cumin marinated pork tenderloin with mole chocolate sauce

All judges plus Ramsay taste all of those dishes. Comments were:

On Ariel's dish, the comments were "not together", interesting and good but Wong supplemented with "watery" (the killer remark).
On Kevin's dish he forgot to put the mole on. Mole is my favorite Mexican food and I order it almost always when in a Mexican restaurant. Without the mole, it was just pork and Dave had a better pork dish. Kevin still received some positive comments from Khanna and Wong, but Ortega sealed his fate with the statement that it would have been good with the mole to balance out the flavors.
On Dave's dish all chefs really liked the flavors he developed from Indian spices.

The vote of those chefs was 3 for Dave and 0 for Kevin and Arial. As winner, Dave got to have the signature dishes of those chefs prepared by them especially for Dave, his fianee and his sister. Thomas Ortega explained that his mole has 27 ingredients (which is fairly typical for a good mole).

The losers got the usual drudgery. They got to polish a huge amount of silverware under the exacting supervision of Jean Phillippe, restock and do the initial prep for the dinner service. Dave later joined them on the prep.

Ramsay gave a speech before dinner service. He points out that he will test each one of them at running the kitchen and the quality control responsibility which comes with it. He tells them he has never thrown anything at this stage of a Hell's Kitchen season. That's supposed to be a joke, but given the reality of life in Hell's Kitchen too much reality was involved so I think it fell flat on the floor.

Hell's Kitchen opens with its usual flair. It takes little time for Ramsay to put Kevin at the helm of the pass. Kevin is a bit rough in my opinion in ordering Ariel around. Always watch out for anything coming from the sous chefs is what I have learned from past seasons of Hell's Kitchen. This time the producers don't even show Ramsay's culpability in giving the orders for various types of sabotage. The first "quality control test" is Scot substituting halibut for sea bass. Kevin is on the ball and catches it. Ariel was slow on lamb, then she showed Kevin a set of bone-in lamb chops that were done that way to help it cook evenly. Kevin ordered the bones out and the lamb refired. It was no surprise to Ariel or to me that it came out overcooked. Orders could not leave the kitchen for lack of lamb components, so all of this made Kevin look bad. I am sure that he decided to reatliate when it was Ariel's turn at the pass.

Dave was next leading the pass and he was very aggressive and directive. It was almost as if he wants to demonstrate how macho he was. Asparagus risotto became spinach risotto. Dave did taste it but failed to notice the difference other than minor taste discrepancy as he sent it out, but it was immediately intercepted by Ramsay. Next, he got a second QC test with tuna not seared or having requisite sesame seeds and he failed again. In semifinals of seasons 3, 4 and 5 any chef failing the first two tests would have his stint terminated precipitously and they would be prime candidates for elimination later. Ramsay obviously wants Dave to succeed as he is given 3 more chances. One was tuna overcooked and the others no sauce on asparagus and no salt on potatoes. Dave was more vigilant and he caught all of them.

Next it was Ariel's turn. Heather prepared parsnip puree to substitute for the desired potato puree. Ariel tasted it but missed the flavor difference. Scot sends a salmon to substitute for sea bass. Ariel caught it. Next Ariel faced her biggest challenge, retribution by Kevin on multiple scallop dishes for what he preceived Ariel had done to him earlier. It did not matter what Ariel tried to motivate Kevin. He was going to punish her no matter what she did. Ramsay gave her low marks for leadership.

Ramsay rated hot plate performance at the pass good. He asked each of the 3 to nominate one of their colleagues for elimination. As always, I feel this is unfair and demeaning. Anyone but a fool knows that Ramsay makes the final decisions so these nominations are just window dressing to torture the chefs and occsaionally to calibrate them (but not in the finals). In this case Dave and Kevin nominated Ariel and Ariel nominated Kevin. I rated it as anyone's game, with Dave in the lead by a little and Ariel lagging a little. Ramsay called Dave a one-armed bandit, Kevin a country club chef and he eliminated Ariel. However, he expressed his belief that Ariel is a fine chef by asking her to keep her Hell's Kitchen jacket.

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