After the first part of tonight's double episode ends, we start in on number two, and you know the thing in the beginning of the show where the intense voiceover guy says "Viewer Discretion... is advised"? I just noticed that it claims this show has "suggestive language." No it doesn't! It has filthy sailor talk. Suggestive language sounds like Regency-era ribaldry and the occasional saucy double entendre. It's not just a cavalcade of [bleep]s.
Although if Gordon Ramsay ever does a one-man show on Broadway, he should totally call it "Cavalcade of [Bleep]s".
Gordon Ramsay's Bleep-O-Fucking-Meter: 27
Contestants' Bleep-O-Fucking-Meter: 51
Most Relevant South Park Quote: "That's Scott. He's a dick!"
The chefs go back upstairs and Nilka immediately starts hurling [bleep]s at everyone. I was under the impression that it was Fran who made the decision to nominate her, but Nilka has decided she hates everyone: "[Bleep] y'all! And I mean that from the bottom of my ass." When Fran makes the mistake of walking into the same room as Nilka, Nilka explodes at her again. Fran claims to feel bad.
The morning, I learn that the spot where the chefs are lined up in the dining room to get their morning challenge is called the "roll call." They couldn't have mentioned that a few seasons ago? Well, fine. It's time for roll call. And during roll call, Gordon Ramsay would like to quiz the chefs on some cooking basics. Jay! Name a mother sauce! Hollandaise is correct. Nilka! Tomato is also acceptable. Autumn? Bechamel, yes. Holli? Velouté. Good. And Scott rounds it out with demi-glace. Great. If any of them had missed one, they would probably have been sent home.
Anyway, the challenge is for each team to prepare five dishes to represent the five mother sauces. And to make it more complicated, each team gets twenty ingredients, each of which must be used exactly once.
There is some planning. The sauces are already made, which should save some time. Jay tells Salvatore to make pasta with the tomato sauce because he's so very Italian. The blue team appears to be working together, but the red team has a problem with Nilka, who's not listening to anyone. She just takes all the ingredients she wants and walks away to her own corner of the kitchen. Chef Ramsay finally makes the red team make their choices and get to work.
Scott is a little unhappy about being left with duck. And he keeps calling it chicken, which is a little odd. Over on the blue side, Ed and Autumn are working together. And it seems to work pretty well. Autumn talks rapturously about being allowed into the men's secret clubhouse or something. On the red side, Scott is still telling people what to do. Nilka tells Fran to drop her pasta, and Fran is ticked off. Fran shows that she's never watched the show before, saying "I don't like so much chatter. It's a nuisance. If they all left me the [bleep] alone, I'd be fine." See, Gordon Ramsay loves the chatter.
All the dishes make it to the pass at the last second. Chef Ramsay recaps the alleged prize (head chef at the Savoy Grill), although he looks like he hates doing it and is rushing through it. There are two guest judges this time out: his mother and his wife. See, because of the "mother sauce" angle. Get it?
Tomato Sauce Battle! Salvatore vs. Fran. Fran made oysters fettucine, and it worked. Salvatore used the squab, but his pasta was undercooked. The red team wins. Jay gets a tiny bit racist.
Hollandaise Battle! Jay vs. Siobhan. Siobhan butterflied a Cornish hen. Gordon corrects her: it's a pigeon. She's thrown for a second, but then she just agrees that it's a pigeon. Also, it's pooling blood. It doesn't even get tasted. Jay has a pan-seared duck breast, which also doesn't go over very well. No points for either team, and Siobhan looks a little relieved to get out of there with a tie when her dish was so very wrong.
Velouté Battle! Holli vs. Ed. Holli misidentifies her sea bass as halibut. But it's apparently very tasty. Ed also did sea bass, which is a little boring. Blue wins, and we're tied 1-1.
Demi-glace Battle! Jason vs. Nilka. Nilka pan-seared a steak. I could go for one of those right now. Jason grilled a strip steak, which also sounds pretty good. I've got to start eating before recapping. Nilka wins, and the red team leads, 2-1.
Bechamel Battle! Benjamin vs. Scott. Benjamin did a John Dory, which is apparently tasty. Scott roasted the duck breast, which Gordon's mother hated. The blue team wins, so we're 2-2. And everyone hates Scott. But back to the competition: the tiebreaker is Jason's strip steak, which was better than all the dishes other than the one it went up against. So the blue team wins again.
The red team will clean all the ovens, which is a good idea to do occasionally. And they'll also prep both kitchens for tonight's dinner service. Meanwhile, the blue team will go to a mystery place that reminds Gordon of England.
As the chefs file out of the dining room, Chef Ramsay praises Nilka's dish. Scott points out in an interview that it's easy to make a good dish if you grab all the best ingredients. He continues to complain about that in the patio, and Fran tells him to shut it. Her opinion is that if you didn't say anything at the time, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Quit making excuses. And her opinions of the punishment is "Well, it's not the first oven I've cleaned." Exactly. Just do the job and get through it.
The blue team takes a double-decker bus to some place called Ye Olde King's Head, where they drink beer. It's the authentic British experience! It has a picture of Gordon playing soccer, which everyone remembers to call "football" while they're in Pretend England. Meanwhile, the red team is cleaning ovens. Nilka complains a lot. The ovens are gross, which is why you're supposed to clean them.
The blue team has a gimmicky dart challenge, in which Autumn is the only one able to stick the dart into the board. They get some product-integrated cookware. Meanwhile, Siobhan is claiming to be allergic to almost everything in the world. She's being careful with the cleaning chemicals, but it doesn't look like she's actually avoiding any work. She gets pale and hives start to appear, so she rushes off to see the medic. The medic cuts her isolation suit off her and tells her to stay away from the chemicals and to let him know if she has trouble breathing. So Siobhan goes off to have a smoke on the patio while the rest of the team finishes cleaning.
Siobhan rejoins them for prep, and Scott is on Fran's nerves. There's some mild drama about a possible lack of potatoes, if that's the sort of thing that interests you.
The teams are lined up in the kitchen for the pre-service talk. This probably has some clever name like "roll call" that they've just never mentioned on the show. Anyway, tonight's gimmick is that it's kid's night, and that means that Gordon would appreciate it if they didn't make him "[bleep]ing swear". Good luck with that. Anyway, Siobhan is fairly confident in her ability as a pub chef to cook fish sticks.
The first order comes in to the red team, and they sound like they're in sync. But then it turns out that none of them is prepared to actually cook the spaghetti. I think this is what happens when the executive chef suddenly announces a whole new set of menu items two minutes before the doors open. But the garnish people are the ones who are supposed to cook the spaghetti, which we learn from the blue team, who appear to have a plan. So Siobhan's on spaghetti. She seems panicked. And Chef Ramsay yells at her for trying to cook the pasta in non-boiling water. More shouting.
Red customers complain that they haven't gotten their appetizers. But the blue side is being served. There's a moment when Salvatore is unsure if he needs one or two risotto, and he ends up adding rice to a risotto that's almost done. Chef Ramsay claims that working with a cook that tells lies is ten thousand times worse than a cook who can't cook. That seems a little extreme.
Back on the right side, Nilka brings up a risotto, but there is no lobster. [Wait, the kids get lobster? - Zach] Nilka curses reflexively, and Chef Ramsay reminds her about the children in the kitchen. Then there are some charming shenanigans in the dining room.
Fran brings up some overcooked scallops, which makes Chef Ramsay shout a few [bleep]s (in full view of the child-infesting dining room) and also use the word "shambolic."
On the blue side, Jason has a chicken that's not ready. He tries cooking it longer without reporting the situation, and Chef Ramsay reacts about as you would expect. Both kitchens are moving to entrees. Scott holds the red team up when he claims that he was told one Wellington instead of two. He vaguely blames his teammates, which fails on two counts. First, it doesn't give Gordon a target for his wrath, and second, it doesn't satisfy his teammates, either. Holli accurately points out that Scott should be listening to the tickets and not blaming other people. In an interview, Scott explains that the reason he keeps screwing up is that his teammates don't have fine dining experience. Then we see him bring up some raw Wellingtons. He thinks much more highly of his abilities than seems strictly merited. A new order comes in, and Chef Ramsay says that everyone should tell Scott he's got a beef on. Everyone dutifully choruses, "Scott, you've got a beef on!" That was fun.
Blue side. Benjamin tells people what to do and then brags in an interview about being a natural leader. Jay claims that he's only pretending to let Benjamin tell him what to do.
Red side. Chef Ramsay hates some chicken and beef and makes everyone touch it. That's always fun. He throws everyone out, at long and obscene length. The twist is that he won't let them switch the ovens off; he says that he'll finish the service himself. Awesome! I've always wanted to see him do that. It will be nice to see him do some actual cooking on this show, and I suspect he'll enjoy it as well.
So the red side is now being staffed by Chef Ramsay, Sous Chef Scott, and Sous Chef Andi. They complain about the state of the stations, but they also get to work. The red team, meanwhile, is upstairs complaining at each other. Scott tries to blame some nebulous "the way you guys do things," which is somehow completely different from the way the blue team operated. That doesn't explain his numerous mistakes.
The blue kitchen is probably enjoying the fact that Chef Ramsay can't pay as much attention to them, but he still has time to call out their orders and spot-check their food. They appear to do well.
After the food has gone out, the red team comes back to clean up. Then they're declared the losing team. Chef Ramsay sends them away to pick two nominees for elimination, telling them to "[bleep] off out of here. Leave me alone." Aww. Poor sad Gordon Ramsay.
They're in the patio. Scott sits back, resting his hands on his head, and calmly nominates Siobhan and Nilka. Nilka confronts him and asks for his reasons, and all he can do is "It just seemed like a lot of food came back, I don't know." Nilka points out that that only one risotto came back, and he switches his vote to Fran. He claims that unlike Fran, he's getting [bleep] done, but Fran isn't putting up with that. He emphasizes that he's the only one that works in fine dining, so his experience means that he's great. Everyone is skeptical of this claim.
Down in the dining room. Gordon asks Fran for the two nominees. She starts with Scott, who smirks and shakes his head as though to say "This crazy broad! Nominating me! Crazy, right?" She explains that Scott has totally fallen apart. The second nominee is apparently Fran herself, which she doesn't have an explanation for. Gordon asks her for an alternate, and she puts Siobhan forward, blaming her jitters. Gordon asks Nilka for an explanation for Fran's nomination over Siobhan, and Nilka says that Siobhan's a team player and that Fran's slower.
Gordon asks who the best chef on the red team is, and Scott announces that he is. Nilka disagrees, and the two of them argue. Scott goes back to his argument that "None of you guys work in fine dining restaurants," and Fran shoots back, "You could have surprised us, the way you've been producing," See, that's the problem with using the same line over and over again. Eventually, someone's going to come up with the perfect withering comeback.
Gordon has Fran, Scott, and Siobhan step forward. Fran, why should you stay? "I've got the guts." Siobhan? "I take pride in my work." Scott dumps on Siobhan for a bit. Okay, Scott, why are you up here? "I've had a tough couple services. I bust ass every day."
Gordon cuts him off. "I can't take it anymore!" Scott's out. Finally. He won't shut up, but at least his babbling will be off television.
But wait! Benjamin is sent over to the red team, and he's told to run the team. Jay claims that now he's in charge of the blue team. We'll see.
week: Benjamin gets cranky and Jay cuts himself pretty badly. And there's supposedly a huge surprise and a shocking conclusion.
Watch the episode here, discuss it in our forums, and see why we'd never eat here!
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Monty's daily blog is Mysterious Exhortations. You can email Monty at montykins@gmail.com if that's your idea of a good time.