So happy we finally got to the real show! Quickfire and Elimination challenges are back! It was a good episode tonight. The send-home decision wasn’t very controversial, it was a clear-cut win, and everyone is getting along, very little personality drama so far. There were a few curious decisions by the cheftestants however.
First of all let’s recap the quickfire. Cook some rattlesnake. Now I’ve never cooked or eaten rattlesnake and like a few of the cheftestants I do not like snakes at all so I was curious what they’d do with it. I was guessing that most would do some sort of frying and the immunity winner was Dakota who made beer battered rattlesnake. Most of the dishes looked good but you could tell more than a few chefs didn’t know what to make of it. Dakota now has immunity and won some cash. On to the elimination challenge!
Everyone drew knives from the knife block and they were split into 2 teams. The challenge: preparing a buffet for a quinceañera. No suspense here. When one team purchases pre-cooked shrimp, pre-cooked anything actually, and a box cake (but only for the directions!) you know they’re in trouble from the get go. Neither team made their own tortillas which was curious. If you’re familiar with the show (and if you’re competing on it I’m guessing they all are) you KNOW the judges are going to ask if you made everything. So the pink team was already in trouble with the pre-cooked shrimp and pre-made tortillas. The green team had the pre-made tortillas but they also had a Mexican-American chef who knew how to cook goat (it’s a favorite of the girl whose party they’re catering) and a former pastry chef (both teams had to make a cake) so they were looking ok. Green team’s cake looked horrible but sounded like it tasted ok. Pink team was smart and gave the cake job to the immunity winner. You can guess how that turned out. None of the food presented really wowed me but the Green team won easily. At judges table the chefs all ganged up on Keith a bit for being the person who bought the pre-cooked shrimp and the judges criticized him for using flour tortillas in the enchiladas. He tried to defend himself by saying they didn’t use corn tortillas in enchiladas where he was from (North Carolina). Riiiiiight. Judges came back with an easy decision and sent Keith home for using flour tortillas in his enchiladas (making them burritos) and buying the pre-cooked shrimp which wasn’t used.
I really need more Emril as judge instead of Hugh. Hugh’s kind of annoying like Gail and he’s got a uni-brow that is really distracting. Hopefully the chefs will kick it up a notch in the episodes to come. For such a talented group they disappointed a bit on the first real day of competition.
The Roaming GastroGnome 