Quantum Kitchen: The (non)gooey kablooey

Put that white stuff on your nose, and spray your crotch with shark repellent. We’re goin’ SURFIN’.

Marcel and Robyn are driving to Walden Surf Co. to meet their new client: Brandy, girlfriend of proprietor and surf legend Steve Walden. I don’t know anything about surfing. Well, I know that, from below, surfers sometimes look like seals, which leads to unfortunate misunderstandings of the eating kind with sharks. But other than that, I’ve never even seen Point Break. So, Steve Walden. Famous surfer dude.

Retirement=Kickboard

Turkey Hair and Robyn meet Brandy and this week’s batshit party planner, Antoinette. We’ll get to that noise in a minute. First, Brandy. Brandy’s the little MILFy blonde surfer’s eternal-girlfriend-never-wife that you’d expect. But she talks with a lateral lisp. So when she describes the luau she’d like, it sounds like this: “Thisch schelebration isch about Schteve’s 50 yearsch of making schurf boardsch.” Her jaw hardly moves when she talks; her teeth never separate more than about a half an inch apart. (Reality TV doesn’t require you to think much, so you have a lot of time to pick the people on the show apart.)

You could have asked the doctor for smaller teeth.

Tiny Toons lisp aside, Brandy has a lovely, honest, and open smile. The party planner—Antoinette—does not. As soon as Turkey Hair and Robyn arrive, she bares way too many billboard-sized, sand-blasted white teeth in a fake smile and shrieks “HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! HOW ARE YOOOOOOOO!!!!!” and starts hugging everyone in sight. There’s more fake here than an Orange County Housewives Evening Drink and Bitch. Antoinette looks to be about 7 ft tall barefoot, and augments it with heels. She could swallow Marcel whole. And not the good dirty way, either.

Brandy says she and Steve have been to sooooo many luaus, and she wants Marcel to modernize the idea. Shake it up. “Reinvent the classics,” Marcel says. No, Brandy, no! Don’t stare into his wild eyes! Don’t let him brainwash you! HE ALWAYS WANTS TO ‘REINVENT THE CLASSICS’. He does that every time! This won’t be special for Steve at all!!! “Yeah, reinvent the classics,” Brandy agrees. Oh, Brandy. He got you so easy.
Marcel thinks this will be a challenge, because he’s not familiar with luaus. And they usually take place in Hawaii, where the local ingredients are fresh and easily procured. Antoinette is going to clear out Steve’s surf shop and transform it into a tiki hut. I hope they have tiki torches! I love tiki torches. Every time we have a cook out, I want tiki torches. My friends hear the words “tiki torches” and they get that look like they want to punch somebody in the baby maker.

Marci loves Hawaii! It’s where Ilan beat him on Top Chef! Memories.

Brandy asks “Do you want to meet him?”, like Steve is the frozen head of Walt Disney or something. Robyn squeeees. She claims to know who Steve is, and to have surfed on his boards when she was a wee kinky-haired lass. Marcel acts semi-interested. Steve is one of those older Californian dudes who is probably 113 years old and still runs triathalons. And wins them. He’ll probably live forever, but if he ever does die, he’ll still look pretty good after three or four years in the ground. They blah didity blah blah about how special the party will be, and then, of course, Steve asks them if they want to go surfing. They do want. But, to my everlasting disappointment, Steve does not ask them “if they know about the bird”.

They go down to the beach and Steve surfs. Marcel, and Robyn—who supposedly surfs—paddle around a lot and manage to wobble to their feet once or twice. Robyn says that, away from the stress of the kitchen, she’s seeing a whole new side of Marcel. She means the non-asshat side, but she doesn’t say it. On the beach, Marcel finds inspiration in nature. He’s going to use seafood. “Seafood at a luau” is really underwhelming me as a first idea. Fuck, I could have come up with that myself. Then Marcel finds a rock. He’s thinking about how he could maybe cook on it. He can’t wait to get back to the kitchen.

On the drive back to Turkey Hair’s kitchen lab, Robyn brings up that the last party got a little “hairy.” I’ll tell you what’s hairy—that mass of brill-o curls on Robyn’s head right now. Robyn QViews that Marcel doesn’t have any idea that feelings got quite as hurt as they did. Marcel asks/states that maybe he raised his voice in the kitchen last time? Was he too harsh? “Yes, to be honest,” Robyn says. Marcel QViews that he’s just dumbfounded that there’s still a problem. “I thought that whatever happened in the kitchen stayed in the kitchen.” C’mon, Turkey Hair. That bon mot doesn’t even make sense!

If your chemical pasta doesn’t stay in the kitchen, your shitty attitude doesn’t either. Can’t have it both ways.

Marcel decides to have a “family meeting”. He convenes the crew at a pub, and, over a few pints, he “lays everything out on the table”. Devon is trying too hard to make a serious, glowering face. He doesn’t give a shit. Jarrid, though? I think Jarrid really is pissed. He’s just sitting there all stony, and he won’t even look at Marcel.

Marcel, clearly uncomfortable, and clearly aware that he fucked up, starts stuttering and abusing the word “like” as if he was a 14 year old girl. “That was a crazy party, man. I feel like, we had a bunch of issues, like, that we need to, like, sort out. I was trying to wrack my brain and figure out, like, what went wrong, other than me flying off the handle, as usual.” That was actually good. Preempt people from accusing you of being a dick by admitting that you’re a dick. I’ll have to remember that maneuver. Marcel admits that having Jarrid and Devon working so intensely on their own projects meant they weren’t up to speed when they had to help prep the other dishes. Jarrid, in particular, says that when it came to the food, he was lost: “I was looking to you for help, for guidance, and I wasn’t getting it.” I do recall Jarrid at the biker party asking what Marcel needed, and Marcel just throwing a tantrum, instead of leading. Although Jarrid was way too focused on constructing that motorcycle grill. That was all he cared about, at least until it was party time.

Marcel says that it’s all communication, and he promises to work on his communication: “speaking a little more politely, and not being such an asshole.” That gets everybody to smile. Jarrid QViews that he’s not totally convinced, and you can’t blame him: “Marcel can say ‘sorry’, but when we get thrown back into the fire, we’ll see how well that holds up.”

Communicating with monkeys? Get Sigourney in here for some mediation.

The sensitive guitar music tells us that the current crisis has been averted through the magic of talking it out. So now there’s a modern luau to be planned. To the whiteboard and the Slacker Couch!

Brainstorming the menu:

What are the traditional luau items? Poke is a must, Robyn says. Poke means “small pieces” according to Devon. It’s little pieces of raw tuna marinated in soy sauce and seaweed. They talk about poi being another luau staple, and Marcel says poi always make him think of taro. What if they make taro into chips instead, and make something like a dip out of the poi? Devon says “I have to tell you, whenever I think of Hawaii, I think of Spam.” I thought that crazy mixologist’s train of thought was a runaway, but then I learned that food shortages in Hawaii during World War II made Spam popular, whether you wanted it or not. So, Spam is imprinted on the Hawaiian psyche. (Sorry, Hawaii. But hey, at least you’re not Puerto Rico!) Spam dip it will be.

They talk about salmon, maybe a tartar, and amadai finds its way onto the whiteboard, and Marcel writes lomi lomi next to it. Then, opihi, opihi, everybody’s saying “opihi”. What manner of critter is that? It’s a mollusk, actually a barnacle, found in Hawaii. Barnacle, yum! They decide to do something with opihi. Marcel thinks they need some meat on the menu. I guess they still have some short ribs left over from the wildlife fundraiser, because beef is back on the menu, baby. Marinate it, cook it hibachi style?

Jarrid’s crazy rebel idea for this week is to build a volcano that spews sauce instead of lava. Devon over-emotes with his incredulous people’s eyebrow. Marcel then says he wants to work with coconut, but make a coconut out of something else, and call it a “fauxconut”. “Oh, bravo, my friend,” Devon enthuses. Shut it, Devon.

With the menu roughed out, Marcel QViews that this party is unusual because no one is coming in for a tasting, so it’s all on him to make everything right. Well, he never ready for the tastings, anyway, and the clients rarely have much to say about any of the dishes. So, aside from manufactured dramaz, the tastings are a waste, anyway. But it is useful foreshadowing. Could it be that everything won’t come together this time?

Unimaginable.

Prep Day One:

Short Ribs: The crew has decided to collect smooth round beach rocks, heat them up to 500 degrees in an oven, and let the guests cook their own beef at the table on the hot rocks. Unless you’re brain dead, you’ve probably figured out what Turkey Hair and crew didn’t: when you heat up round rocks, they can explode. While the crew is experimenting with heating the rocks in an oven versus heating them on a gas burner, a rock explodes with a mighty crack. Well, it didn’t “explode” exactly, part of it violently shattered/cracked. I was hoping for hot, flying rock chips. And facial injuries. But everybody looks fine. Boo!
Jarrid is trying a quarry rock, rather than one of Marcel’s authentic beach rocks. He claims it’s more porous and holds heat better. He’s had his rock in the oven, slowly bringing up its temperature so as not to “shock” it. The rock doesn’t detonate, and it holds its heat long enough to cook a short rib all the way through.

Volcano with Pineapple Lava: Jarrid has a little electric pump, around which he will build the volcano. The pump and a system of tubing will carry pineapple-saffron “lava” that will flow down the slopes of the volcano into a sort of moat around the volcano’s base. I guess the pineapple lava is a dipping sauce for the short ribs. Outside, Jarrid sprays expansion foam on cone-shaped forms and leaves two of the volcanoes to harden. I guess the volcanoes themselves aren’t edible, only the pineapple sauce “lava” will be. Making and painting the volcanoes is no problem, but Jarrid is having trouble getting them to spew the sauce from rubber tubing inside. He worries that he can’t get the lava sauce to flow where he wants it to—into a lava bed at the base of the volcano. But his current worry is the consistency of the sauce—it’s either too runny or thick enough to clog the tubing. He’s also having trouble calibrating the gas pressure that will cause the volcano to “erupt”. Currently, the lava sauce sort of explodes out of the volcano’s top and splatters everything within 30 feet. I don’t understand the problem. Don’t 4th graders build these things as science projects every day?

If I don’t get at least a B+ on this thing, I’m soooo grounded.

Opihi Shells with Tuna Poke: Marcel and Robyn decide to serve the opihi meat in edible “opihi shells”. First, Robyn tries to paint the shells with a mixture of some grey gunk called kaolin (an edible clay), milk powder, and dashi (Japanese broth made with kelp and seaweed) “to emphasize that fish flavor”. It was supposed to harden over the shell, which would act as a mold. But the gunk is too thin, and it tends to run off the shells like water. Robyn suggests first coating the shells with oil and cornstarch, to make the grey gunk stick better. The shells go into the oven and bake.

Marcel plans to freeze tuna, then use a shaved ice machine to achieve the “poke” part. Then, the tuna poke will be served on a bed of seaweed and pears. Marcel QViews that the problem is, he’s never used a shaved ice machine before. But shaved ice is really popular in Hawaii, and at luaus. So it’s a must have.

Later, the primer gray-colored opihi shells come out of the oven. And they taste about as good as they look: awful. Gritty, sandy, and altogether icky. Dramatic music pounds. Marcel hyperbolizes that this could be “the first complete and utter failure in the Quantum Kitchen.” No, that would be your music video, MC Turkey Hair. Marcel swears and tosses a baking pan, but you can tell that it’s just for the cameras.

Prep Day Two:

Marcel QViews that they have one day left in which to prepare the components for all the dishes and finish the volcanoes. Too bad they didn’t start until 48 hours before the party. Seems like this is the fourth time they’ve started exactly 48 hours before the party, and they’ve had to run around like their asses were on fire and their hair was catching. Dumb-ass fake dramaz.

Fauxconut: I still think this is a dumb name for a dish. Marcel wants to take a coconut ice cream base, pour it into a balloon, and roll the balloon in liquid nitrogen to make a frozen hemisphere of ice cream. Then, he’ll peel off the balloon, fill the center of the hemisphere with coconut cream, and dust the sphere with cocoa powder to make the brown skin of the coconut. I love coconut anything, especially coconut cream anything, so I was definitely dabbing at the corners of my mouth with a monogrammed NWMTV napkin at this point.
But the balloons don’t freeze into spheres, they get all shrunken and lumpy. Boo! The coconut ice cream inside is delicious, though. On subsequent tries, Turkey Hair determines that he has to fill the entire balloon with enough coconut cream to make a solid sphere, rather than just a hemisphere, and that he has to pierce the balloon about half-way through the rolling/freezing process, which somehow keeps the whole thing from collapsing in on itself. Devon eventually gets it right, but it takes him way too much time to produce one fauxconut shell. That’s trouble, considering that the fauxconuts have to be made on-site and served promptly, unless Marcel plans to sell this as fauxconut ice cream soup.

It’s not too late to serve a Friendly’s Wattamelon Roll!

Volcano with Pineapple Lava: Jarrid still doesn’t know if he can get the pineapple lava to flow, and he also can’t control where the lava flows if it does erupt. He’s already got channels carved into the volcanoes’ slopes, but I guess that isn’t working. He’s farting around with more tubing, but he knows plastic tubing running down the sides will look dumb. He says he’s got a vision in his head, but he keeps doing the wrong thing to make this vision materialize. I think he should have gone to iParty and been done with it.

Marcel in a QView: ”It’s becoming abundantly clear that we may have some issues with this volcano. And this is the center piece of the party, so we’ve gotta get this thing working.”

Just serve it off this guy.

Opihi Shells with Tuna Poke: Back to the drawing board with the opihi shells. Marcel has dispensed with the edible clay idea, and now plans to make a cracker crumb-based shell. He wants to improve the appearance and try for a two-color, striated pattern, like the actual shells display. He’ll do this by adding kelp powder and squid ink to the cracker mixture. Food coloring? Fuck food coloring! We’ve got 24 hours ‘till party time, and we gotta make this as complex as possible.

Later, the cracker-based shells come out of the oven, and there is much suspenseful tasting, chewing, and thoughtful staring into space. The music tells me I should be in suspense. Reality tells me that chewing and swallowing is not inherently suspenseful.
The new shells look better—or, at least, more like shells—and are judged by Marcel to be much tastier: “super buttery, nice and salty, and they’ve got that kelp flavor.”

Look for kelp-flavored Ritz bitz in a quality grocer’s near you.

Toward the end of prep day two, Marcel realizes he’s in the weeds. He hasn’t started the amadai or the taro chips, the fauxconut manufacturing process is still dodgy at best, and Jarrid’s volcanoes? Dood’s still standing over there with handfuls of tubing and a perplexed look on his face.

Slap it on a plate and call it “Rustic”.

Marcel: “We’re going to be up all night working on this menu. I’m so fuckin’ stressed out about this party.” Marcel grimaces and rakes his hands through his ridiculous hair. We get reaction shots of his crew as they look at him warily and wait for Mr. Hyde to emerge.
Party Day, T minus 3 hours:

Turkey Hair and crew arrived at the surf shop to find “literally” six tons of sand covering the floor. [If there was actually six tons of sand, then Marcel was using the word properly. But I doubt it.] The crew discovers their make-shift kitchen, which is under one of those party rental tents. It’s tres small, and Marcel is having flashbacks to the last party, where the makeshift conditions and tight quarters caused his panties to constrict enough to impair the blood flow to his brain. Perhaps to remind himself, Marcel tells the team to focus on organization, execution, and communication.

You’re on!

As they’re unpacking the opihi shells, there’s a woman in chef’s whites with his/her face blurred out, and a male assistant working with Robyn. Now just a minute! Who the hell are these people? I haven’t been introduced to them. Were they up all night too? Or, were they up all night while Marcel was in his Spider Man bed dreaming of riding Tom Colicchio around like a pony? I call shenanigans.

Under the kitchen tent, Jarrid is still cutting plumbing pipe with a hacksaw and screwing around with putty and chunks of Styrofoam. The volcanoes are still not ready to spew.
Party planner Antoinette arrives, gives Marcel a big fake hug and a “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!”, then goes from zero to snooty snatch face in .06 seconds when shown the volcanoes. In a QView, she bitchifies “How do they think that’s going to look appealing on any table, much less a custom party that I designed for Steve Walden.” To Jarrid and Marcel, she wants to know exactly what the volcanoes will spew. Marcel and Jarrid don’t help themselves by describing it as burning hot magma, but don’t worry, they’ll tone it down so that the guest won’t get burned. Marcel says “Well, I’ll leave this to the two of you,” and beats feet the hell out of there. Later on, when, I presume, Antoinette has mounted her broom and exited Jarrid’s airspace, Marcel realizes that the volcanoes may not work out at all. Now Jarrid has what looks like blood all over his hands. He says it’s edible ink that he used to paint the “lava chutes” on the volcanoes. “Well, that doesn’t look edible at all,” Marcel responds. He decides to make up another batch of the pineapple dipping sauce in case the volcanoes fail, and they have to resort to plain old serving bowls.

I coulda been a Housewife.

Spam Poi with Taro Chips: On-site, Devon soaks Spam chunks in cream and milk, to pull out the salt, and then makes a Spam puree. It’s their take on regular everyday poi. Devon and Robyn have large surf-board shaped chips made of taro. The two of them seem to be pretty good at stenciling shapes onto food (remember they painted the detail on the edible adventure maps a few episodes ago?), and they paint the chips to look like surfboards with the Walden logo on them.

Now do Shepard Fairey’s Obama!

Lomi Lomi Amadai: Of course, Marcel ran out of time to even test the amadai fish-based dish, so he’s winging it on-site. He describes the amadai as having “tiny edible scales that, when they come into contact with hot oil, it creates a chemical reaction explosion, lifting the scales up and making them super crispy and delicious.” Maybe Antoinette should be worried about this…

Jarrid heads out to the main dinner table with his first volcano. There’s nowhere to put it, because Antoinette’s people have already laid everything out, perhaps purposely leaving no room. Jarrid says, “Well, here it is, I gotta go get the other one.” Antoinette loves the idea of one volcano so much, she’s positively moist over the idea of two. She makes frog faces in a QView, saying “This is the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Respectfully I say that. These volcanoes look like elephant dung.”

An elephant with a really painful hemorrhoid.

Jarrid flatly tells her that there has to be two volcanoes, because they can’t have 15 guests trying to get pineapple sauce from one volcano. Well, when he puts it that way, he’s obviously right. Antoinette turns her forehead into a mass of hyper-dramatic wrinkles of dismay and begs one of her assistants to help her keep calm and deal.

Look what he’s done to my chins! BASTARD!

Party Time
Steve and Brandy arrive. Brandy: “Itsch really important to me that Schteve getsch the schelebration he deschervesch.” The guests sit down at the table, decorated with volcanoes and Hawaiian flowers, candles, and Devon’s taro chips with Spam dip. Schteve says “I’m afraid to touch anything.”

Antoinette is fulfilling her role as the lash wielder, informing Marcel that Steve and Brandy are here, and the service is already running five minutes behind. Marcel says “We’ve got highly perishable ingredients, things are freezing, melting. This is the most ambitious menu my team has ever tried to execute.”

Marcel walks out to greet the guests and introduces the taro chips and Spam poi. Marcel falters, “Kind of fun plate…. did you get to try it??” The taro/spam appetizer platters are sitting there untouched. Steve: “No.” Brandy: “We didn’t know we could.”

…with my mouth

Marcel: “Holy shit! They missed the whole first course. We decided to have them out on the table, and the guests just didn’t get it. Clearly that was a mistake.” Marcel lamely encourages them to try the chips and dip now. Guests chew noncommittally. Steve says “That’s good!” probably to end the awkwardness.

Next up, bigeye tuna poke with opihi shells. Marcel steps up to the shaved ice machine, drops a chunk of frozen tuna in it, and rams down the plunger. The whole machine shakes and roars as frozen tuna shavings drop out the bottom. The guests watch, some bemused, some faintly alarmed.

I have lemon-lime, cherry, and bigeye tuna.

Jarrid: “So, first the guests miss the first course, and now it sounds like Marcel is chopping up a body in an ice machine.”

Marcel instructs the guests on the best way to eat the dish—never a good start in my opinion. I think food should be intuitive. Marcel says to “maybe just smash it, mix all the ingredients together, have a little fun with it… and hopefully enjoy?” Then he flees back to the kitchen, leaving behind a puff of smoke shaped like Wily E. Coyote. The guests, though, seem to be enjoying the tuna poke much more than the taro and Spam. One guest says he loved the opihi shells “even though I was nervous, because it looked like we were definitely eating shells.”

In the kitchen, they’re ready to fry and plate the lomi lomi amadai. Where’s the frying oil? Does anybody have it? The whole crew frantically looks behind things. “This is a total shit show,” Marcel euphemizes. Antoinette is on the scene, and is about to deliver an extra large litter of kittens. Then, the producers slip a bottle of cooking oil under one of the tent flaps, and Robyn “discovers” it. The amadai dish can continue, although seriously behind schedule. Antoinette asks for an ETA. Marcel ignores her. Antoinette formally requests an ETA. Marcel swears at a spatter of hot oil and ignores her. Antoinette orders Marcel, as his commanding officer, to give her an ETA! Marcel cooks fish and doesn’t answer. Antoinette returns from whence she came, bereft of an ETA. Jarrid tells us what we can already see, that the situation is nuts, but he says with some satisfaction that it was all hands on deck and they worked together as a team.

The lomi lomi is served, with its edible scales, tomato conasse, broth, and scallion fluid gel. Marcel demonstrates the rising scales trick for the guests. He pours hot oil over a piece of amadai, and the fish skin ….writhes ….as the scales pop up. Ugh. Count me out.

Live, crispy crunchy fish scales! I command you to live!

The guests are eating it, but not with as much gusto as they did the tuna poke. One (Mexican? Spanish? Drunk?) woman on the wrong side of 50 says that Marcel is “breengeeng a leetle flavor to the Hawaiian estyle.”She emphasizes the words Hawaiian and estyle with vampy nods of her head. Okay, thank you. We have a lot of people to see today. You’ll be contacted if there’s interest.

Now it’s hot-rocks short ribs and volcano time! Marcel describes how this is an extremely dangerous dish, and can you imagine what would happen if one of these rocks dropped on a guest? Meh. Those fajita platters they drop in front of you at On the Border could burn you as bad as Freddie Krueger. I ain’t afraid of no hot rocks. Marcel tells Jarrid to turn on his volcanoes, and wonders in a QView if he hasn’t made a serious error in judgment with this dish.

The trays of meat and hot rocks go out, and a rock is placed in front of each guest. No one ends up needing skin shaved from their ass grafted onto their scalp. Sadly. Marcel tells the guests that their rocks are coated with sea salt. That does sound yummy. Marcel informs the guests that the volcanoes should start flowing… now. Antoinette glowers and mouths “oh my god!” The volcanoes light up, light glowing redly through the edible ink…

… and they do nothing. No pineapple lava eruption is forthcoming. Antoinette face-palms disgustedly. The guests are once again bemused. Jarrid QViews: “So what do we have? We have a couple of lights that look like volcanoes. Yaayyy! [claps] Yaaaay! I’m a freakin’ genius.” Poor dood. I kinda felt for him there.

Luckily, Marcel has the backup pineapple saffron sauce to serve with the short ribs, and the guests seem to forget about Jarrid’s (non)gooey volcano kablooey once they taste the exquisite flavor of the short ribs.

Nuclear elephant dung

Onto the fauxconut! Devon has been back in the kitchen prepping the fauxconut desserts for the last 30 minutes. “How many have you got?” Marcel asks. Devon: “One.” Marcel: [Bleep!] Turkey Hair comes up with emergency plan B, and gives the crew a crash course in using liquid nitrogen. They have to fill ladles with coconut cream, then sort of roll them back and forth in the liquid N so that a frozen shell forms, with melty coconut goodness in the center. The guests will each get one of these lesser versions, while Schteve will get the one fauxconut Devon produced. Marcel is getting good marks from the crew for not turning into a flaming dillhole under the pressure.

Out in the tiki hut dining room, Brandy surprises Schteve with a visit from his daughter and his grandson he hasn’t seen yet. Whatevs. The baby is chubby and drooly and blank-eyed. If Schteve’s daughter had brought her new puppy, then I would have recapped more of the surprise.

Get that kid some food.

The desserts go out—Schteve’s fauxconut (coconut cream, chocolate sponge cake, macadamia and hazelnut praline) and the 14 lesser coconut cream cocoa-dusted spheres. The textures are a little funny, maybe, but they do look yummy. Several guests enthuse that “It looked like everyone got their own coconut! They looked just like a coconut!” Well, genius, I’m glad you understood the dessert better than you did that taro and poi appetizer.

Please don’t cook the baby

Back in the kitchen, Marcel thanks the crew for coming through in the clutch and asks them how they feel. Devon and Robyn are smiling, and Jarrid is taking his (non)gooey kablooey pretty well. Marcel pulls them in for a group hug, and I’m pretty sure someone coped a feel off Robyn. Then they spray Robyn down with chocolate cream to “initiate” her. Did the three guys spray each other down with chocolate cream when they formed a catering business? I wonder.

So, what’s your take at this point? Does molecular gastronomy add anything to the food, or is just a gimmick? Does Turkey Hair have any redeeming qualities, or do you think he should be chemically neutered? If I found a 50,000 gallon tank of coconut cream, would it be obscene if I swam in it?