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"Marcel's Quantum Kitchen"

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I can see that Marcel Vigneron's popularity has led to incredible interest in his new series, which is why there have been no comments in this thread for a while. He started a catering company so he could experiment with molecular gastronomy and impress people with his ability to push the edge of what is possible with food. Marcel made a disparaging reference to the belief many (but not me) share that he is a jerk. His self-defining term is "perfectionist." He has hired these people as his catering staff:
Jarrid - an all-around chef type whose self-image of that of an out-of-the-box thinker
Devon - a mixologist who went to culinary school with Marcel 
Robyn - a party planner type

His first client is Carlton Jeddia, who is throwing a cocktail party to support her favorite charity Wildlife Waystation. It has 400 animals that are residents. Carlton has a party planner Chester who is critical for this event. Marcel tried to meet with Chester, but was told there was not time for that until the day of the event at the site. Marcel put on a demonstration for elementary school children and Carlton and her daughter observed. Marcel and Jeddia toured the Wildlife Waystation to develop ideas on what they would create for the party. They saw a Himalayan tiger and asked if it could be at the party. There was a bright-colored parrot that was also invited for the party. Marcel heard that the mission of the organization was Education, Relocation, Rescue and Rehabilitation for wild animals.   

Marcel did develop several interesting ideas for what he would present at the party. One was Tiger's Breath, using liquid nitrogen with a sweet dessert to have the guests exhaling what looked like steam. He wanted an Edible Map. In the Amazon Rainforest, he wanted to do mozzarella balloons and also Snake in the Grass with an Edible Tree, logs with something akin to a python among them. Another dish was Bird'sEye Surprise. Once he had these ideas he had about 3 days to actually figure out how to make them in a reproducible manner. Robyn was delegated to cut apples and create the Edible Map. However, it took her too long and he had to reassign her to get it done. Technical problems with the potatoes used for the bird's nest in Bird'sEye Surprise were solved by Jarrid who switched to chicarrone fried pork skins to mimic pythons. The "eggs" were mozzarella balloons injected with tomato water and tomato gelatin. 

Carlton came by for taste testing about 1 day and some hours before the event. She hated one item she sampled. This caused Marcel to plan to do an all-nighter to get the ship back on course, as the reproducible part had not been solved for anything at that point.

Event day came and Marcel's team went to the kitchen while Marcel met Chester, who had done nothing to prepare for his part of the event. Marcel loaned him Robyn, which got Chester out of a huge whole and didn't really cost Marcel since Robyn was not culinary expert and she was slow in the kitchen. 30 guests would be arriving in about 10 hours.

The layout of the venue was to create separate South American Room (with the parrot), Southeast Asia Room, outside for the Himalayan Room where the live Himalayan tiger was placed  tethered to a stake.

The guests were herded in a group from room to room as the food was ready for that room. The first item was the Edible Map composed of apples, butter, honey, sugar, allspice and ascorbic acid. For the South American Room, Devon had created a Caipirinha cocktail from syrup, rum, lime juice and liquid nitrogen. The Bird's eye Surprise dishes were hanging from a tree outside. Snakes in the Grass were from beef tenderloin and spare ribs cooked sous vide, with broccoli, salty potatoes and mushroom sauce. Tiger's Breath was served in the Himalayan Room (this I think was the outside courtyard) and composed of wild rice, sugar, coconut milk powder and liquid nitrogen.

The guests were all well pleased and so was Carlton with Marcel's catering. I felt that he went overboard on visual effects and did not use molecular gastronomy on the taste aspects of food enough.   However, I did like it well enough to watch the rest of this series, which is on the SyFy channel from 10pm to 11pm EDT Tuesday nights.

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MQK Ep. 2

This episode started with Marcel meeting Greg and Karen, who were high school sweethearts and newly engaged 30 years later after divorces. Karen had a very impressive diamond ring on her left ring finger, but they wanted to celebrate with close friends. They mentioned that Greg had prepared steak and lobster for her on his grill, so Marcel wanted to do some version of surf and turf. The site was the Church Winery and Bob Church led a sampling of his pinot noir wine. Marcel made a mental note to incorporate wine into the food for this occasion. Marcel met party planner Summer, who acted as a control freak with many details set and inflexible about changing them to accommodate Marcel’s food. The biggest point of contention was the large square white plates that Marcel believed were needed for the surf and turf and which Summer stated was “over my dead body.”

Marcel had the same team as from the first episode of Jarrid, Devon and Robyn. As he got into planning his menu, he decided he needed an experienced pastry chef, so he asked Sally to join the team. Menu ideas were developed including:
Surf & Turf
Wine in Food
Edible Flowers
Hearts of Palm salad
Hearts of Fire
Foie Gras
Edible Engagement Ring
Oysters
Shellfish
Planning began right away to test out specific concepts, the first being the wine noodles. They were originally going to be 3 different wines of varying color, but that proved too complicated to execute. Marcel was able using agar agar and gelatin to get it right, then cooled with an ice bath and extruded, finally served over dry ice roses and black currant. This was so complicated that they decided to only offer one 30 inch wine noodle to the engagement couple so they could eat it like the lead dogs in 101 Dalmations ate spaghetti.
For the hearts of palm salad, Marcel decided to use watermelon cubes that were put through a Gastrovax machine to suck out the air, which made them able to absorb a liquid and go with blood orange gel. This was combined with other ingredients including Hamachi, avocado and nasturtium flowers and of course real hearts of palm.
The piece de resistance was the 3-tiered surf and turf. The first tier was heart-beet ravioli with Sicilian pistachio cream and powder and spiny lobster. The second tier was foie gras truffles over spot prawn and Brussels sprouts. The third tier was sous vide flatiron steak with Alaskan King Crab legs with pinot noir sauce and truffles.
The final course was the edible engagement ring, which Sally had made with a ring of poured sugar and cubes of poured sugar bonbon, with a tiny ring glued into it with sugar.
This was a real cutting edge meal. Marcel deserved the accolades he got for his food. However, I doubt that he will ever collaborate with Summer in the future.

georgiapeach:
This reads like science fiction, amazing that someone can actually create meals like this!

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Peach:

Exactly what the Science Fiction Channel must have concluded when they signed Marcel up for 6 episodes! This is molecular gastronomy that you have seen most frequently on Top Chef from either Marcel or new Top Chef Richard Blais or when Top Chef once visited wd50, the restaurant of Wiley Dufrense, or had him as a Guest Judge.

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MQK, Ep.3

This episode involved catering a party a motorcycle shop owner was throwing to introduce his line of biker clothing at his motorcycle garage. This time Marcel was the individual running the event, so he got to hire Party Planner Milo G, whose responsibility as to transform a grungy outdoor space into an attractive space with motorcycle themes. The “kitchen” had to be set up inside the shop and there was no real space or equipment to do so. That made this an extraordinary challenge.
The first task taken on by Marcel, Jarrid, Devon and Robyn was to design the menu. They developed these ideas from the desire of the motorcycle shop owner to have pedestrian food items. The menu was:
“Root Beer” Float – Devon concocted this out of ginger, scotch and carbonated beer
Chicken Fried Steak – using chicken skins and barbecue sauce
 Fries “Animal Style” – fries with caramelized onions and beefonaise (substitute for mayonnaise)
 Mac and Chains – they had to experiment to make this work; macaroni made solely of cheddar cheese and polysaccharides by dipping a super-cooled with Liquid Nitrogen rod into a vat of cheese/polysaccharide and sliding a tubular shape off it
‘Smores – classic graham cracker, chocolate syrup and marshmallow ice cream that was cold inside and hot outside from being bruleed

The next order of business was to select models for the event who could look good and serve food and drink. One of the guys probably flunked his audition by spilling the contents of a wine glass and then dropping the glass, which shattered. However, a nice contingent of models (5 female, 2 male when what I could see) was hired and they did a good job.

Jarrid took on the task of transforming an ancient motorcycle into an oven to cook the steak and fries on. He succeeded eventually, but I think this created a lot of tension. When things go wrong, Marcel is very intolerant.

Marcel chose to over-manage and underappreciate his staff to the point where I thought Jarrid was going to punch him and Devon to leave. Robyn was not directly in the line of fire and she observed that it was all about Marcel’s perfectionism and not a team effort. She said that what happened was not Marcel’s Kitchen, it was Hell’s Kitchen Gordon Ramsay style.

The guests had a good time and the motorcycle shop owner was very pleased with the event. Marcel’s reputation for catering was enhanced. However, it appeared that besides Robyn Milo G was also an up-close observer of what went on and I doubt that she will risk using Marcel in the future when the tables are turned and it is her event with power to hire the caterer.

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