Episode Report Card Keckler: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Day 10, Part II
By Keckler | Season 3 | Episode 11 | Aired on 08.12.2007
For Rock's part, his menu features a crispy chicken breast and crab cake over jasmine rice (his signature dish), a pan-roasted prime rib eye, and a vanilla bean milkshake with chocolate chunk cookies for dessert. Ramsay's notes are that the rice is way too garlicky and the milkshake is "too clumsy as a dessert." He recommends Rock "soften it up a bit" by serving a smaller amount of the milkshake in a cocktail glass instead of a predictable tall glass.
Passing over Ramsay's inspection of the two "newly designed" restaurants (because see: DOESN'T EVER MATTER), we move into Ramsay's pep talk to the two finalists, after which he anoints them with executive chef jackets and JP flings open Hell's Kitchen. Before service gets underway, Brad -- who has always been pretty awesome on this show -- wishes Rock luck and tells him he's there for him all night. Mr. HK Narrator tries to make us care about how the diners will react to the finalists' food because, as he puts it, "feedback from the diners is more important than ever, as Chef Ramsay will consider their input when choosing tonight's winner." Yeah, but it really doesn't and he really won't.
The first orders for appetizers come in and go out without incident. When the next orders come in, Bonnie comes down on her team for not calling back. She tells us that she thinks her team disregards what she says because they still don't take her seriously. Bonnie starts to run into real problems with a completely silent and fairly blasé Julia, who tells us that she wasn't really even paying attention to who was doing what since she just wanted to get dinner service over. Later on, Bonnie doesn't respond to Julia, and Ramsay comes down on her for fostering a silent team. Somewhere in all of this, Bonnie runs out of her egg fettuccine as well as her prawns, so no more orders for her signature dish can be had. JP is left to make peace with the freeloading customers, who later complain about cold, undercooked food. A still mostly-silent Julia tells a barking Bonnie, "Just be happy I'm giving you your food." Damn, way to show future employers what a team player you are, Julia! Finally, in the last movement in the Bonnie v. Julia cacophony, Bonnie asks Julia to wrap something up and put it away, but Julia chooses to turf that job to Jen. When Bonnie hears this, she comes down hard on Julia, they argue and squeal, and Ramsay orders Bonnie to run her kitchen.
On Rock's side, nothing goes out of his kitchen for over thirty minutes, and Josh burns the crab cakes again and again, so Ramsay pulls Rock aside and tells him Josh is screwing up his restaurant. Rock yanks Josh off fish and puts him on stuff that really doesn't need much done to it except heating. With Brad adding his voice of encouragement to Rock's orders, Rock kitchen is finally, um, rocking.