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Hell's Kitchen Season 7

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TexasLady:
Tonight is the night!!!  :hellkitchen


  :wohoo: :jumpy: :wohoo:

redwings8831:
This first dinner service is a disaster. Seven of the 16 chefs have been thrown out so far, but the remaining nine were able to finish it.

TexasLady:
You can really see the stronger players already. Wow! What a first service.

ugot2bekidinmeny:
That was insanity!!   :ascared    get out.. get out.. get out.. LOL one after the other!! :lol:

I tell you what.. he had me for a second when his wife was impersonating a contestant! but then i knew it was her from  watching him on his BBC series "The F Word".

i'm not gonna say who i like so far.. they are all NUTS!!!   :yess:  everyone's going DOWN!! :meow:

apskip:
HK7 Ep.1

This episode really opens when Gordon Ramsay at a press conference guarantees that the first dinner service will be completed by these fine chefs. How can he make such a bold prediction when no first-night dinner service has ever been close to completion in 6 prior seasons? I don’t know, but it sets the bar quite high for this season.

We have been introduced to the 16 new denizens of Hell’s Kitchen. Several of them brag to the camera about how they are the best and will undoubtedly win this competition. Overconfidence and braggadocio may have their place somewhere, but Hell’s Kitchen is not a good place to express them on camera.  One thing we can be sure of is that Ramsay will remove all overconfidence from remaining chefs as the others drop out episode by episode.

Ramsay starts it off fast with a signature dish competition that serves as the first challenge between the Blue team (men) and Red team (women). Teams know from watching past competitions that you never want to lose a challenge, as the losers get some onerous labor and the winners a nice reward that in the midst of the chaos of the kitchen can be a pleasant respite. However, Ramsay has a trick up his sleeve first. Some of the cheftestants have hairdos that express their personal style in a flamboyant way and Salvatore has the world’s thickest Italian-American accent like he’s just off the boat from Sicily, which did happen only 21 years ago. He says that the super-thick accent attracts females, which is why he retains it. Ramsay calls on a mousy woman who claims to be a mother and cookbook author (both quite true). Ramsay tastes her veal dish and proclaims it fabulous, then starts kissing her. It turns out be me Ramsay’s wife in a mask and wig. Maybe she just needed FOX to pay for a vacation away from their kids, who knows. Ramsay used this incident to make the point that it does not matter what your tastes are; all that matters is how tasty the food you cook is.

The actual competition was pretty low-key after that opening. The men scored points from Jason’s grits, Mikey’s brie-stuffed lobster (Ramsay asked him if he fell in a vat of wax to get that much on his hair but he redeemed himself by having a huge Hell’s Kitchen logo tattoo on his chest), Benjamin’s lobster rigatoni and Jay’s seasoned steak. The women scored on Autumn’s heavenly chicken, Siobhan’s ahi tuna wrapped in mint leaves and Stacey’s unidentified dish. The most interesting development was that Salvatore did not make his own bucatini pasta and he was originally from Naples; Ramsay pronounces this as shocking as well as overcooked! The second most interesting was farmer Andrew, who presents steak tartare inspired by raising and butchering his own animals yet liking to eat them raw; Ramsay asks if he is some sort of Hell’s Kitchen Hannibal Lecter. Nilka started off with spicy chicken wings. She used a half bottle of Tabasco sauce, which is several times the maximum appropriate even for nuclear wings. The Blue team won 4 to 3. The punishment and reward are not announced yet. 

Ramsay does state that the winner will be head chef at a Ramsay restaurant in the London Savoy Hotel. What he does not say is that that is about 4th level down in the hierarchy of chefs there. He also does not say that the winner will be receiving a salary of $250,000. Those type of salaries were revving up competition for chefs to be on this show, but it was not real. It was way out of line for chef salaries and effectively was just a one-time bonus for winning past Hell’s Kitchen seasons.

The teams go to their dorms to study and receive the menus, recipe books to study, a set of Henckel knives with a cleaver and a Hell’s Kitchen jacket of the appropriate color. They get one video lesson from Ramsay on how to make lobster risotto:

1.cook rice (no mention that it is arborial rice and has to be slowly stirred for about 25 minutes)
2. add shallots
3. add mascarpone cheese
4. add garlic
5. add lobster stock (no mention on how to make this in advance from lobster shells)
6. add white wine

Throughout the night, the fire alarm goes off to announce a new Ramsay video to study about every 15 minutes until 219am. The second is on Filet of Beef. The third is on Scallops. Sous Chef Andi wakes the women up at 619 am to have them prepare and serve breakfast for the Blue team in bed. The Blue team sleeps until about 8am.

The teams spend the day prepping Hell’s Kitchen for its Grand Reopening with the usual FOX extras as diners filling all tables. Scott the team member takes charge of the Blue team with his mouth, but not with his deeds. The menu includes Lamb Wellington and Lobster Risotto as entrees and Scallops and Capellini as appetizers. Jay and Nilka are assigned to do tableside preparation.

Dinner service opens with Stacey showing difficulty by not seasoning scallops properly with salt or with curry powder. Also, her sautéed scallops were raw in the center. Although Ramsay does not state it, clearly she did not taste her food, a major lesson that Ramsay is teaching to all the competitors if they haven’t learned it previously.  Salvatore burned the capellini add-ins not once but twice in a row. Fran has problems cooking potatoes and is buckling under the pressure of the first night service. How is she going to make it through 15 or so such nights? Autumn, who is on the Garnish station and has spare time on her hands while the dishes are not reaching her, glibly attempts to rally her Red troops by telling them to just reset their minds to begin anew. I think she would have gotten more long-term value by just pitching in and helping her colleagues than by giving them a pious speech. Benjamin is making a sauce for pasta but unthinkingly puts his tasting spoon back into the pot, contaminating it. Ramsay rightly reams him out. Fran then puts crab instead of lobster in with the risotto.

Jaime undercooks something and Fran laughed at this, followed by Maria. I believe they were displaying a nervous laugh and not a ha-ha laugh. Ramsay is so pissed off that he banishes them from the kitchen along with the hapless Jamie. He asked Jean Phillippe to bring Nilka back from tableside service to enable Red to cover their stations.

Scott is on the Garnish station. Mikey presents raw halibut. Benjamin and Salvatore are on the Blue Appetizers station. Benjamin made the mistake of putting the rice for risotto in after the stock. Salvatore was found putting a cold sauce on hot steak. They were both sent to Siberia (the dorms) as punishment. Stacey said she needed 5 minutes for her salmon to cook. Immediately she changed that to 3 minutes, which caused Ramsay to question her and conclude that she does not know how long to cook salmon, a MAJOR mistake. Stacey is the 4th Red team member to get banned from the kitchen. Mikey does the raw halibut trick a second time, so he is banished.  It is 2.5 hours into dinner service. A customer claims that she is glad she ate before coming. That is the ultimate insult!

Ramsay sends the 3 remaining Red team members to join the 4 remaining Blue team members and finish the dinner service. They are told to work hard and double up on stations to get all the food out quickly.  Ramsay stated in very plain English that he will not shut the kitchen down. Is this a sinking ship? I think not, as the wheat (those remaining in the kitchen) and chaff (those sent to the dorms) have been separated. Ed takes control of the temporarily consolidated team and did a fine job of leading it to task completion.

Ramsay did not beat around the bush after all team members are returned for the post-mortem. He judged that the Red team lost, so they had to nominate their 2 worst members for him to consider for elimination. They nominated Fran and Stacey despite Fran’s attempt to sell the idea that Autumn had not helped the others (which I will make a hunch is a theme we will see again in later episodes). Fran defended herself by saying that she was a Jewish chef and she’s learning, asking for the time to do so. Stacey says she is a team player and that she screwed up. Ramsay took Stacey at her word and eliminated her. He stated that it’s a good thing she was a personal chef, as he had no confidence in ability to cook for the public.

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