Episode Report Card LTG: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Day 8
By LTG | Season 3 | Episode 8 | Aired on 07.22.2007
The trendsetters they'll be cooking for are actually teenagers at a local school. And if you saw my niece and her friends still trying to work the Uggs in 2007, you might be pretty doubtful that teenagers are really trendsetters. (I love you Jaime, but I've told you those shoes have got to go.) In any case, the chefs have 60 minutes to produce lunch for 100 teenagers, whose votes will decide the winner. Although we're shown a kid criticizing her grilled chicken and cheese sandwich, it's Julia who pulls out a commanding victory, with 51% of the votes. For the record, Rock made a Kobe meatloaf on a ciabatta roll, Josh came up with a baked salmon with pineapple salsa, Bonnie served up some dubious breaded, fried goat cheese on a bed of greens, and Jen went straight for the kid palate with a baked chicken fettuccine with lemon chive butter sauce. Jen also was the most notorious in sucking up for votes, telling one teen, "I like your sweater. It's great, it's great." The kid does not look convinced.
Julia's prize is a trip to Las Vegas with Gordon. She also gets to pick one lucky chef to join her, and she pretty quickly chooses Jen. They fly off to Vegas in a private jet, which blows them both away. (Julia: "Wow. We just sit anywhere?") Once they arrive in Vegas, the girls are blown away by their guest suite at the Green Valley Resort. It's harder to tell whether they are more excited about the pool table or the bidet. (I'm more excited at hearing Jen call Julia "Jules." While they have occasional blowups, I really get the sense that all three of these women really like each other.) The two women get massaged, scrubbed, and otherwise pampered. And the next day, they have a chance to meet Heather, last year's winner, at "her" restaurant. She shows off some food and gives them a few generic tips about wanting to win.
While Jen and Julia are in Las Vegas, the three losers have to spend a long night cleaning the front of the house. Josh demonstrates that champagne catching really is his only talent as he proceeds to fuck up the vacuuming, and Bonnie gets a demonstration of Rock's temper as he blows up at her for not wholeheartedly supporting his plan to iron the tablecloths on top of a table. (He seems to think she should be a housework genius since she's a nanny, but she calmly tells him, "I'm a chef. I cook dinner for them every night, dumbass.") The next day, the three of them are still alone as they do all of the prep for that night's service. Bonnie makes the colossally dumb move of binning a tray of monkfish after deciding that it smelled bad, without asking a single other person to confirm her feeling that it had turned. This catches up with her when Mary Ann looks for the missing fish, and it gets even worse for Bonnie when neither of the sous chefs think anything was wrong with the fish.