Previously: Red Team sucked so bad both before and during a high school reunion dinner that Elise came out looking like the strongest cook on the team. The Blue Teammates fell way behind an early lead and had to have Red finish their service for them. Ramsay demanded Blue nominate not two, but three people. Alas, ultimately the cheese stood alone, and Monterray was eliminated.
We rejoin the teams after ol' Monty Burns Food leaves the competition. Jonathon, having been singled out, knows he needs to prove himself in the few days. Over on Red, Krupa is getting wasted on cheap wine chugged straight from a full-sized glass. She yanks her pants up and parades her camel toe around the chefs' apartment as her competitors laugh at her. Eventually, Natalie unofficially cuts her off.
The morning, Krupa isn't feeling 100% when everyone piles into the challenge. Ramsay presents them with a table full of delicious fresh fruit, vegetables, herbs, and spices. After the chefs volunteer what they would make with the ingredients, Ramsay brings out this week's guests judges, Hallie and Christina, who explain that they would make beer with anything on the table. They're beer sommeliers. As such, the contestants will be cooking with beer today. The chefs have 45 minutes to taste, conceive, and execute their dishes. Krupa in particular is still a little green around the gills and has a hard time focusing. Tommy and Jonathon seem especially comfortable with the challenge.
Before the chefs present, Ramsay tells Red Team they'll have to rank their dishes and eliminate the lowest one. Red immediately vetoes Krupa's dish, which angers her. Blue puts Paul's dish in the bottom. The fifth-place dishes present first. The judges enjoy Carrie's fillet with raspberry and stout sauce (which the ladies deemed "weird'). Paul's salmon with Hefeweizen broth is way too spicy and sends the judges into coughing fits. Red Team wins, and Ramsay deems it Carrie's best dish yet. up, Elise also prepared a salmon in Hefeweizen, which earns praise for its lightness. Jonathon takes the lid off his dish, and it's... a huge chunk of pineapple, a whole lotta fruit salsa, and -- somewhere in there -- some chicken. The sommeliers think it's too sweet and unbalanced. Red wins another point.
The tide shifts when Jennifer's Hefeweizen chicken and sausage stew looks like leftovers compared to Natalie's chocolate stout fillet. Elizabeth's amber mussels and clams are deemed too salty, and Will's lambic-infused venison loin wins the point. With that, the score is tied. Jamie's top-ranking dish, Hefeweizen-marinated duck with garlic and shallots, faces off against Tommy's duck in raspberry lambic with Brussels sprouts. Interestingly, the judges said they wanted to taste this very dish before Tommy presented it. They agree that it has a depth of flavor and a sweet-salty vibe they like. But was it enough? Indeed it was.
Blue Team will be VIP at the Long Beach Grand Prix car racing event while Red will be unloading and stocking 20 trucks' worth of deliveries. Elise immediately starts crying like a real ninny, and everyone is all, "WTF, woman?" Naturally when the trucks arrive, Elise stands back like a brat and complains that she's being punished for her teammates' rookie mistakes. Says the fourth place finisher who won primarily because her competitor plated poulet à la canned pineapple. Needless to say, her mood doesn't improve upon the arrival of the kegs, which probably outweigh her 40-50 pounds. Even with Jennifer helping her, Elise refuses to carry the keg and commandeers the one cart they have to slowly carry each keg from the steps to the interior.
As the Blue Team chills out after a reward day, Jennifer takes it upon herself to call a team caucus to confront Elise. Everyone jumps the bandwagon, accusing Elise of taking it easier than the rest of them during punishments. To which she basically interviews, "Of course I do. They're not the boss of me." To their faces, however, she promises to try harder. She sticks to her word the day, she jumps to assist her teammates, and they're unsure what to make of this Helpful Hattie persona. On the other side of the kitchen, Blue preps for dinner... and redemption.
The doors open for that evening's Beer Night service. There are beer towers at each table, and Ramsay has added Belgian ale-steamed mussels and stout-spiced venison to the menu. As orders start rolling in, Red Team looks unified and solid. Over on the Blue Team, Paul and Natalie are the point people. If either of them has a bad night, things could swiftly fall apart. Paul delivers a perfect risotto, but Natalie screws up her scallops. Soon enough, in the Red kitchen, Elise's supposedly helpful attitude comes back to bite them in the ass when she forgot to drain the salad per Carrie's instructions.
Nonetheless, Red is gaining a healthy lead over Blue as Natalie biffs a second set of scallops. Ramsay comes over to inspect closer and finds literally 30 improperly cooked scallops just sitting on the sidelines. Will steps in and shows her how to sear a scallop, which sets the team back on track. Back across the kitchen, Red has moved on to entrees. Jamie grows frustrated that Krupa isn't calling her times correctly, and they both end up walking up undercooked proteins. Elise takes the opportunity to try to help her teammates by expediting.
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Back on Blue, Jonathon offers up a Wellington with raw pastry. He throws Tommy under bus, and they have to refire every single Wellington at their station. This hold-up creates a serious backlog for the Blue kitchen, giving Red a chance to sort out their service and expand their lead yet more. Not satisfied with a pleasant, drama-free evening, Elise amps up the attitude and starts yelling at and ford all of her teammates. In her frustration, Krupa overcooks her Wellingtons.
This setback would give the Blue Team a chance to right its service. Except they suck too hard. In anger, Ramsay tells Jonathon and Natalie to fuck off and leave the kitchen. Jonathon takes it a step further and quits. Ramsay follows him out of the kitchen, but mainly to piss on Natalie some more and prove that a Ramsay tantrum always gets the last word. While Natalie wipes away her tears, Jonathon bitches about being the fall guy for Tommy's shoddy prep. Back in the kitchen, Blue Team is down to just Paul, Tommy, and Will. As they race against Red to complete service first, Ramsay welcomes Paul back to old form.
All the tickets go out, dinner service closes, and Ramsay reconvenes the contestants to announce tonight's losing team. Make that teams. Both teams have to nominate two of their own to leave tonight. Natalie scrambles desperately to fight her inevitable nomination. Likewise, Jonathon blames his screw-ups on Tommy. Children, you got kicked out of the kitchen. Accept your fate. Meanwhile, Krupa volunteers herself for nomination. Elise pipes up that Jamie should be nominated because Ramsay was yelling at her all night. Jamie laughs in her face and tells her to take responsibility for her mistakes, too. They go back and forth, and Jamie gets so made that she starts slamming tables on the ground. After Jennifer steps in to mediate, Jamie says she's done wasting her words on Elise.
The teams head downstairs to announce their nominations. Blue calls out Natalie and Jonathon. For Red, Carrie names Krupa and Jamie. She's obviously frustrated with this decision, and Ramsay picks up on it. He asks who she would have preferred to nominate, and she names Elise for her bossy attitude. Elise counters that Carrie is intimidated by her assertiveness and insists she was being proactive where others weren't. Ramsay agrees with her and ultimately spares Jamie. He also allows Jonathon and Natalie to stick around. Krupa is dismissed. After she leaves, Ramsay tells the teams, "You're not done..."
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week: The chefs must cook for a celebrity guest, and they pepper their dishes with a little extra hate on what Mr. Announcer Man calls "the most combative Hell's Kitchen of the year.
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