After the contestants were rocked by the Commander's Palace dish re-creation challenge, they go back to their house in New Orleans to recover and deliver some backstory. Nicholas calls his wife, who he has many children with. He has all the more to prove, we see.
The chefs are just hanging out at the house when Emeril pops in with Eddie Huang. Emeril has cameras in all the rooms like Big Brother. Sara refers to Eddie as "almost like a food archaeologist," which is probably a good thing? Anyway, Emeril says there won't be a Quickfire this time. They're going right into the elimination challenge and this one is all about the Vietnamese influence on the shrimping industry in New Orleans.
The chefs will be broken into groups of five and each group is tasked to create a Vietnamese menu. Travis is excited because he has been to Vietnam and his boyfriend is Vietnamese. Carlos is much less confident. He's already down a peg and now he has to make food he has never eaten before. Emeril says one of the menu items must include shrimp, then breaks them into teams.
The green team is the most excited because they have Travis, who loves Asian men. To prepare the chefs who aren't Travis, Eddie and Emeril have a "crash course in Vietnam" prepared. Travis says he could probably teach them a thing or two. This tells me he is most likely to fall hard in this challenge.
The red team has the other resident Asian, Shirley, and they are following her lead. Meanwhile, Michael is confident because he's from New Orleans so the bus goes by a bakery and he's like, "Oh man, this bakery is the best. Are we going to stop there, Emeril? Awesome, it's the best." Nina calls Michael out for being a fake kiss-ass in an interview.
Sure enough, Michael's favorite bakery is the first stop. Eddie shows the chefs the best Bánh mì "in the world" and where most of the other places get their French bread. In the bus on the way to the stop, Travis is telling his team how much he loves to use romaine for lettuce wraps and Sara is like "whaaaaaat" but who is she to argue with The Expert on Vietnam?
The stop is fucking disgusting. The chefs watch shrimp fishermen suck tons of shrimp up a tube and dump them into various containers. Those little things look so nasty when they're not presented in cocktail form. Shirley takes advantage of the opportunity, and her Asianness to ask the fishermen's wives how they prepare the shrimp. Oh my god, what the hell kind of shoes is Emeril wearing? He looks so stupid. I just noticed that they're all wearing those boots, but they definitely look the most stupid on Emeril.
Janine gets a shrimp recipe and prep ideas from the fishermen, but she is also on Travis's team, so you know… good luck trying to have any ideas on this challenge. Janine has worked in a Thai restaurant and spent a month in Thailand so she knows a little bit about Vietnamese food, not that Travis would hear of it. Travis suggests a tomato-based sauce, which Janine has never served in any of her restaurants but even after strike two, they decide to follow his lead.
Carlos is like "Huh?" this whole time and it's starting to worry his team. The final stop is at a noodle house for some Pho and other tasty flavors. Patty is excited to learn about new food and tries everything. Travis tells Emeril, "it's home," of the Pho and that is pretty much it -- the last straw. Perhaps the producers chose this challenge knowing it would bring out the most obnoxious side of Travis. I'm loving it, but also rooting for him to fail miserably. I guess if Travis was more humble he wouldn't be a chef.
"We get it," Sara says, "if he's going to be Captain Vietnam, he'd better bring it." The chefs toast, and Travis tells them that in Vietnamese it's "Vo." He is officially set up to fail.
The final stop on the Vietnamese New Orleans tour is the premiere Vietnamese supermarket. The chefs run around it, taking everything. Travis is put out because Sara is grabbing items he has already grabbed. Sara says they threw things in without thinking about it. I like Sara, who doesn't mean to be a bitch but also knows what she's doing.
The red team's menu is set to "tell a story of Vietnamese cuisine and the story of Vietnamese people in New Orleans." It's looking good for them, because it seems like they really took in the trip Eddie and Emeril treated them to. Meanwhile, the green team is relying heavily on Travis's over-confident expertise. Bene is creating the Vietnamese style tomato sauce, which he learned about from Travis/"Captain Vietnam."
The orange team practically doesn't matter, except it includes the clueless Carlos and douchebag Michael, who is working "back-up" and support for the chefs. This is bad for Michael, who won't have a dish to call his own this round. It's like working Front of House during Restaurant Wars.
Then, the green team loses their lemongrass. "We really need lemongrass," Janine says plainly. They start freaking out, as Justin quietly admits he bought too much lemongrass and if they just asked for it he would give it to them. Loving you, J.
Eddie and Emeril swing through the kitchen to see how prep is going. It's looking good for Shirley and Justin's red team, while the green team is tanking hard without that lemongrass. Eddie even calls Travis Captain Vietnam. He stumbles under pressure when asked about the lemongrass, and we discover from the poll that about 60% of the viewers are not rooting for Travis. I imagine that number would have been even higher had the poll taken place after Travis said, "Eddie is Taiwanese/Chinese. He only knows a little bit of what he knows. Sorry, Eddie, you're kind of a douchebag." Booooo, you whore.
On the orange team, everyone is worried about Carlos's soup. Emeril tells him to "push it" and Carlos doesn't know what that means so he just adds more tomatoes. Aww, oh no.
Nearing service, all the teams are plating rapidly. Janine of the green team knows she screwed up the shrimp dish, but has few options at this point. She shoves them back in the fryer, then covers them in sauce. Justin, again, quietly watches their bad decisions go up in flames.
Before dining, the judges talk about the challenge. Eddie shares that he advised the chefs to "taste it until you hate it" because they can often get too excited about new flavors that they overdo it. In the kitchen, Travis and Michael are stomping all over the place, pushing Shirley out of the way and walking really unsafely with knives. If only one chef goes home for this challenge, there will still be at least one asshole left.
The orange team is up first, with Nicholas's black pepper squid opening up the menu, followed by Brian's pork belly spring roll, then Carlos's fish head soup and Louis's beef broth pho. Fish head soup? Oh no, Carlos. Most of the dishes are good, except Carlos's soup that needs more acid. Eddie notes that the soup tasted better the first time they tasted it. He failed to punch it up, but succeeded in adding more tomato. Louis's aromatics in the pho are also struggling.
The red team is up and Shirley refuses to go home on an Asian food challenge. The course starts with Nina and Carrie's raw beef salad, then Shirley's BBQ shrimp, then Justin's beef pho and Carrie's lemon custard with caramelized Bánh mì. They pretty much killed it. Shirley was right to ask the fishermen's wives. The only bad thing is Carrie's afterthought custard and its terrible presentation.
The green team is up and Eddie already hates them for losing their lemongrass and getting weird about it. This menu starts out with Travis's lettuce wrap, Sara and Stephanie's rice wraps, then Bene and Janine's weird shrimp and Stephanie's coconut macaroon closes out Travis's Big Idea.
Then, Gail says the shrimp paste in Travis's sauce smacks you in the face. Padma says she was "happy to be smacked in the face by something," and Gail says, "that's how you like it," in a very dirty way and everyone just lets that fly. In the kitchen, everyone gathers around Travis to hug him, embracing him as their savior. They have no idea the shrimp is terrible and the rice is "atrocious." Stephanie's coconut macaroon is the best part of this clunker menu.
In the stew room, the screen lights up for the chefs to watch the judges discuss their menus. They talk about the orange team first, and Carlos is still confused. More tomato? The red team is clearly the winner, with Shirley and Justin competing for the win. The green team wins the biggest disappointment, aside from the little macaroon that could. Travis watches what little he can when his eyes aren't rolled back into his head.
"They didn't get our food at all," Travis says. Yeah, they didn't need lemongrass anyway.
Padma calls the red team in first to deliver the good news. Shirley was able to weave what she learned on the trip along with her personal cooking style and she was very successful. Justin made a great pho in two hours, which is nearly impossible. The winner who best captured the spirit of the Vietnamese community in New Orleans is Shirley. She can go back to her Asian friends with her head held high. 88% of the viewers agree with the decision, even though they tasted 0% of the food.
The green team goes in to face ultimate judgment. Sara tries not to get too emotional defending the menu. Travis tries not to be too apologetic, and succeeds in being a complete ass. He says he has had that tomato dish in Central Vietnam three times. Three whole times, guys -- it exists. Janine speaks up saying she has never come up with a tomato-based sauce in her study of Vietnamese flavors. Bene stands there, dumbfounded, forced to take credit for everything shitty on the menu. Janine is responsible for the twice-fried shrimp and Sara takes the bullet for the failed rice. Tom asks why they would even serve the rice and Sara says, "because we're stupid, I don't know."
The only person without fault is Stephanie, who made Eddie's favorite "janky, ratchet Vietnamese dessert." Can we just blame Travis for this? Please don't send Sara home for that awful rice. No one can decide which food is most atrocious. Tom thinks it's the shrimp, Padma thinks it's the rice. Eddie still wants to stick it to Travis.
Tom tells the chefs, once they're back in the room, that the shrimp dish put them there. In the end, it's our hot Aussie Janine who is told to pack her knives and go for that twice-fried shrimp. The viewers agree at 82% that Travis should go home instead, because duh, we hate that guy and now we're hungry, but no pho restaurants are open.
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