Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Incompetence! It Burns!
By Monty Ashley | Season 5 | Episode 10 | Aired on 04.09.2009
The San Francisco crew is at One Market, where they'll be sitting at a table inside the kitchen. Oh, it's one of those "Chef's Table" things. I heard about those while watching a show about Disney restaurants, I think. They'll be having wild nettle ravioli with fresh California snails on the bottom. Robert digs in and claims that it's delicious. I'll just take your word for that. Chef Ramsay congratulates Ben and Robert.
Back to the kitchen. All four chefs jog out to a van which contains twenty John Dory and thirty-six lobsters. This is traditionally where they should be carefully checking the merchandise before signing the manifest. They bring the boxes into the kitchen, where Sous Chef Scott encourages them to open everything up and check it carefully. We see Danny out at the van deciding that they get everything in the van with the exception of a single small box. Just then! The chefs in the kitchen discover that they've only got 34 lobsters. Uh oh! Two lobsters must have made a break for it! Go lobsters go! Sous Chef Gloria tells them they better get out to the parking lot and stop the driver before he leaves. Meanwhile, Danny is taking an invoice and thanking the driver. We see Danny and Giovanni running through the office park yelling for the van to stop.
They successfully stop the van, just as Andrea ascertains that they actually have 36 lobsters after all. Oops! Giovanni's out at the van, and the driver is on his cellphone. Giovanni's saying all the right sort of thing in this situation, like "I'm not leavin' this invoice the way it is; you gotta scratch it out and gimme credit for two lobsters." Yup. I like the way he's handling this. He has to pretend it's a regular restaurant here. Anyway, Andrea comes out and tells him they're not short lobsters after all. Giovanni is ticked off, and I think he probably has a right to be. Stomping back into the kitchen, he shouts at everyone about checking the delivery at the truck before bringing it all inside, and then Paula shouts at him about how he was the first one bringing stuff in and so on. Everyone's tired and angry, is what's going on here.
Everyone's back in the dorms. Ben and Robert come back and Ben starts telling everybody about every detail of the trip, including "a place called Fisherman's Wharf". Oh, I know that place. That's where I, as an eight-year-old boy ate myself silly on Cadbury Creme Eggs. Did you know that an eight-year-old boy will just keep eating candy for as long as he can, until he throws up into the San Francisco Bay? And then he won't be able to even look at the things he spent hours gobbling? It's true! And while I admit that my little story is irrelevant, it's more interesting than Ben's minute-by-minute travelogue.