Episode Report Card Daniel: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Ramsay Arranges a Meeting With the Five Families
By Daniel | Season 11 | Episode 16 | Aired on 06.20.2013
Cyndi's family is proud of her for making the top five, and I'm going to LOSE it again. Ja'Nel's mom looks EXACTLY like Ja'Nel only older. Like if Ja'Nel went missing for twenty-five years and the police used aging software to depict what she might look like, it would be her mom. I really like Ja'Nel. I hope she wins. She gets a little choked up with her mom, and then has to apologize for cursing.
Susan is holding hands with her mother and brother and then Ramsay interrupts the family reunions to assemble the chefs -- their families behind them -- and reminds them that there are only four jackets for five contestants. And then he says that as he's watching them with their families, he thinks any one of them can win and that's why he's going to give out five black jackets.
And there is much jubilation. Ramsay is like a cult leader at this point. Pretty much all of the chefs are crying and the black jackets are marched out, and they're awarded to (in order) Jon, Ja'Nel, Cyndi, Susan and Mary. "How special do those jackets feel?" asks Ramsay, before telling them to say goodbye to their families because their individual challenge is coming up. Jon in particular is feeling cocky after getting his black jacket, predicting he'll be working in Vegas: "Come up and see me sometime."
The final five chefs assemble -- in their black jackets -- in the dining room, and now Susan is wearing glasses... probably because the black frames match, but they work for her. Ramsay says the winner of the upcoming challenge will get to spend the afternoon with his or her family, something they're all excited about. But the challenge is a real pressure cooker, says Ramsay, and Susan uses "literally" correctly as five pressure cookers are wheeled out. You guys recorded this before the Boston thing, right? Apparently no one but Mary has even used a pressure cooker before. Ramsay says he wants to see who can create a five-star dish from an inexpensive cut of meat, which are laid out in the pressure cookers themselves.
Cyndi picks her pressure cooker: pork roast. Jon gets lamb leg. Susan gets pork belly. She's also wearing her hair down, and I hate to admit how much I'm digging that. Maybe it's the glasses and her proper use of "literally" that's getting me excited. Ja'Nel gets goat ribs -- people eat those? -- and Mary gets beef short ribs, which she says she was hoping for.
They've got forty-five minutes to cook and they get to work. Jon is thinking "old French rustic style," and Susan is saying something about fennel while Mary's talking about beef bourguignon. Ja'Nel's working with okra, and Cyndi's going to incorporate some squash.