Top Chef: Acting Forever 21

Well, here we are again, foodie friends, just past the halfway mark in this Season Seven that Sux, and FINALLY we happen upon an interesting and drama-filled episode that doesn’t revolve around smooshed up vegetables!  Nope, this time all the vitriolic hatred being spewed centers around accusations of what someone allegedly didn’t do, instead of the things that they did… which is pretty much par for the course with this silly bunch of boogerheads.  Seriously, this edition of the much-anticipated “Restaurant Wars” is going to leave you much like it left me…

wondering if you’ve stumbled into an episode of Hell’s Kitchen

But I’m getting ahead of myself in my excitement to bring you all the bitchery and dumbshittedness that happened in this episode of Top Chef (JerseyMoobs’ tantrum above is just the tip of the doucheberg here) so let’s back the fuck up and start where we always do:  The Bilious Brownstone.

The first thing I noticed with this week’s episode is that they did not run the title sequence that introduces the chefs by name, I guess because there was just so much shit to pack into 47 teensy minutes it had to be cut.  Instead, we start off with Bloody Mandy awakening to a ShortyPantsless house and saying that she’s really gonna miss her “little buddy”…

even more than she misses using conditioner

Her sadness is short-lived as she descends into full-on lunacy when she says “the best of the best are definitely in the competition and I’m starting to believe I could do it… I mean, I’m still here?”  Yeah, it’s a good thing she ended that sentence on a question mark, because unlike Steve Perry and Journey said…

sometimes you have to stop believin’

Seriously, you can tell even she doesn’t believe that she’s really one of “the best of the best”.  However, someone who does believe it (at least for himself, anyhow) is good old KennEgo, who is sullenly cleaning up the kitchen (while wearing that fugly green sweater he does every single interview in) and is continuing last week’s rant about how “perplexed” he is that he keeps winding up “in the middle”.  (I see he’s still conveniently forgetting about Episodes 2, 4 and 6 when he was in the position decidedly below “the middle”, which would of course be “the bottom”)  Then he says for the 938,471,265,174,285,396^th time that he’s just going to have to “unleash the Beast” in the kitchen…

which, thanks to his size and tendency to sweat big smelly buckets will likely drive everyone in the immediate area to tears

First thing when they arrive at the Hiltchen, they see red and blue aprons laid out on the prep tables.  Then Bloody Mandy gets inappropriately excited when she sees there are also blindfolds because she thinks this is going to be some kind of S&M challenge, but no, it’s the same old “Tag Team Relay Race” that they introduced in Spectacular Season Six (and already reused once just this past season of Top Chef Masters) in which there will be two teams, each team has 40 minutes to create a dish, each chef gets 10 minutes to cook their part of the dish.  The blindfolds are to make sure they have no advance clue to what the previous chef is doing… they’ll have to either figure it out or dump a bunch of gravy over the top of everything and hope for the best.

Scar drops the bomb that there will be no more immunity given from here on out BUT the winning team will get to split $10,000.00 amongst themselves.  Then she trots out the Knife Block and they start picking stabbies, except this time they’re weird, because the knives are blank until they get to JerseyMoobs, who picks one that says “FIRST CHOICE”, and MassholEd, who gets “SLOPPY SECONDS”…

as usual

So JerseyMoobs goes first and naturally picks KennEgo, claiming that they’re “good friends” and have gotten “close in this competition” and that The Ego’s the only one he trusts, which just shows that Moobsie is so busy licking KennEgo’s balls that he doesn’t notice the rivers of arrogant crotch sweat he’s being slowly drowned in.  If he thinks for one second that the Alpha Dawg considers the two of them to be chefs on the same level then he’s likely to be in for a rude awakening to his irrelevance soon.

As for MassholEd, his first choice is very much based on sex appeal strategy because he immediately chooses ChesTiffany, which manages to simultaneously piss off OranJello…

while making ChesTiffany extremely uncomfortable

Perhaps it’s the awkward half-hug Ed’s giving her, or the way his voice is jigging up and down between registers as he says how much he’s been looking forward to cooking with her that’s making her look like that.  I suspect, however, the real culprit is the giant erection that he keeps thwopping her in the thigh with.  In any case, JerseyMoobs picks Miss Swan next, making his dislike of OranJello clear, and giving MassholEd the chance to snag The Citrus One next.  Moobsie’s final Reverse Sophie’s Choice™ to round out his Team Blue Balls is Bloody Mandy, which leaves Nosferatu to fill the last spot on Team Satanic Red.  Being chosen dead last does not bother Baldy in the slightest…

in fact, this is the least-hated he’s going to be feeling this entire episode

MassholEd, on the other hand, is none too happy to be saddled with his pasty ass, especially when he considers himself, ChesTiffany and OranJello to be sort-of on the same page, while Nosferatu’s not even in the same bookstore.  Well, duh, this is because he’s at the dirty porno one downtown, still trying to score that hooker/8-ball combo he’s been longing for.  Anyhow, Scar gives them all 45 seconds to decide the order they’ll be cooking in.

Here’s the first surprise of the episode:  I had figured that KennEgo would have automatically chosen to go last for Team Blue Balls (like OranJello does for Team Satanic Red) because he’s a total control freak and surely he’d want to be able to “correct” the other chefs’ “mistakes”… but instead he’s decided to let Miss Swan be The Closer for their group while he’s taking the first slot.  However, as their 40 minutes start, it becomes clear that he chose that role because, as he so proudly tells us, he’s known back home as “The Preppin’ Weapon”, which, hahaha, that’s better than the nickname I came up with for him…

“The Pudgin’ Bludgeon”

Yes, he sure can cut stuff up real fast, which would come in handy if this were a busy night of service in a crowded restaurant serving hundreds of diners… but since they’re only making one dish here it seems like more of his usual overkill.

ChesTiffany is starting for Team Satanic Red, and she believes there’s a lot of pressure that comes with that role since she’s responsible for trying to lay out a roadmap of exactly what direction they should be taking with their dish.  This sounds far more level-headed and strategic than making sure you can leave your teammates with an assload of chopped up veggies.  She’s doing some mise en place stuff, too, but she’s also preheating sauce pans and gutting some snapper (making sure she helpfully leaves the head attached so they know what kind of fish it is).  That’s actually a really good idea, because as we will see later on, Nosferatu is likely to easily confuse his proteins… even ones that come from completely different species…

and Miss Thing is taking no chances

Meanwhile, KennEgo’s finished dicing the entire contents of all seventeen Hiltchen Refrigerators and has finally decided to make a mustard-cream sauce for some freshwater prawns that he found.

Time runs out for them both, and we begin the Loser’s Segment™, which belongs to the weakest chef on each team.  In this case its Bloody Mandy for Blue Balls and Nosferatu for Satanic Red.  I think of it as the Loser’s Segment because it’s the place they can stick chefs so they’ll do the least amount of damage to the final dish:  It’s too early to actually cook much of anything, it’s too late to make major decisions for what’s going into the dish, and there’s maximum time left to fix fuck-ups.  Things should be pretty good, right?  Unless one of them can somehow fuck things up in a BIG but not obvious way…

here’s a hint, his name rhymes with Blowsferatu

Well, for starters, Bloody Mandy runs over and sees the mounds of stuff KennEgo has left for her, begins stirring and tasting the stuff in the pans and correctly deduces that he’s wanting their team to make some capellini pasta with a mustard-cream sauce and some shrimp.  You can see the *bing!* moment happen for her and she knows exactly what she needs to do:  blanche the pasta and sauté some mushrooms.  Good for you, Mandy, you win an Alpha Dawg Paw Print™ in KennEgo’s book!

Nosferatu does the same thing, looking over what ChesTiffany left behind, sees a bubbling broth and the head-on fish, and decides to immediately salt it, which causes ChesTiffany to make this face…

which I’m going to call her “WTFMF?”-Face™

Tiff says she doesn’t understand why he’s messing with the fish at all, they have 30 minutes left, he should just leave it alone instead of dicking around with seasoning it already.  Initially I didn’t understand why this was such a concern to her, but just wait a couple of minutes.

Round Two ends, and now we have MassholEd going in for Satanic Red, and JerseyMoobs working for Blue Balls.  Ed’s also taken note of the bubbling broth and decides it could be a poaching liquid for their red snapper and starts cutting up the fish that Nosferatu helpfully salted.  Over on the side, ChesTiffany is trying to find out if her worst fears are about to come true…

and they are

She’s worried that MassholEd isn’t going to be able to see that the snapper has already been salted and will salt it again, thereby making it super-salty and screwing up their dish, plus losing them the $10,000.00.  Nosferatu insists that Ed will clearly be able to see the salt already on the fish…

oh yeah, salt would totally show up on that nice white surface…

…if you happen to have Supernatural Undead Vision Powers™ that is

Over in Blue Ballsville, JerseyMoobs tastes the sauce, continues cooking the mushrooms, dresses the tomatoes, picks some basil and crisps some parmesan cheese.  Easy-breezy, no worries, wonder how this is going to turn out.

Scar blows her whistle to signal the Final Round, and luckily MassholEd didn’t resalt the fish!  Yay!  However, OranJello’s none too happy to see that the workstation is one giant messy-ass wreck, shit is laying around everywhere and he has no idea of the direction of the dish.  Boo.  First thing he does?…

unknowingly sprinkle $10,000.00 away

All ChesTiffany, Nosferatu and MassholEd can do is stand there helplessly and watch him salt the fuck out of that fish, and they can’t do a damned thing about it.  Meanwhile, Moobsie is patting himself on the back for having left a clean and organized station for Miss Swan to work in, and sure enough, she’s been able to pick up their Blue Ballsy thread no problem and is sautéing the shrimp and putting finishing touches on the plate.

OranJello finally tastes the fish and realizes too late that it was already salted, “which absolutely makes no sense to me!”  In order to try and counteract the sodium overkill he adds some dill and cilantro to try and “brighten it up”, but I think we all know how this is going to end as time is called and we see the two teams reactions…

hi-fives vs. strained smiles?

To make things extra-specially exciting (and therefore embarrassing for the losing team) Scar then brings out today’s Guest Judge, who is none other than the current reigning Speaker Of The House, Nancy Pelosi…

heyyy, stop dicking around on reality television, get back to work and fix this health-care fiasco!

I’m kidding, I’m actually glad that Nancy took a few minutes out to appear on the network that’s run by a bunch of boys named after her.  We all know that asshole Newt Gingrich would never have been so cool, lesbian half-sister or no.  In any case, Miss Swan is just thrilled to have cooked a dish for the first ever female Speaker Of The House and the woman who holds Spot #3 in the Line Of Succession.  OranJello looks like he just hopes the old gal doesn’t heave or gag or immediately dehydrate from all the salt in their red snapper.

Scar welcomes Nance, who is very gracious and tells the chefs she’s been a foodie for a long time, and then mentions her doctor insists on her having a low-sodium diet.  KIDDING!  But that’s about how the luck is running for Team Satanic Red.  So let’s start off with Team Blue Balls’ dish instead…

which looks pretty much Presidential

Miss Swan is sweating a little, since she admires the Nancester so much and because she knows ultimately she is responsible for having seasoned and put the dish together.  The Speaker mentions her roots in San Francisco and says the flavors in the dish remind her very much of home, giving special kudos to their having achieved al dente angel hair pasta, a feat which is apparently even more difficult than making a viable immigration policy.

Next up is Team Satanic Red…

which looks pretty much Secretary of Homeland Security

Nosferatu says he hopes that Scar and the Nancester find “the umami” in their dish delicious.  I guess that’s his word for salty?  Anyhow, he notes that the fish appears to be cooked perfectly (no thanks to him) and hopes the dish wins the $10,000.00 (again, no thanks to him).  I suspect he’s talking out of his asshole…

especially since Nancy’s mouth has just puckered like one

The Speaker carefully mentions it was delicious and wholesome, “But a little, maybe salty is the word?”…

so fucked

It is therefore no surprise at all when the Nancester awards this QuickFire win to Team Blue Balls, insisting their dish only had a slight advantage, but enough of one to gain them $2,500.00 each.  Then the Speaker really does head back to annoy legions of Conservatives on Capitol Hill.

ChesTiffany is pissed, she thinks the Satanic Red dish could have actually won if not for Nosferatu’s massive screwup.  We don’t even need to hear from MassholEd or OranJello to know that they feel exactly the same way, and now they’re stuck with him for the Elimination Challenge, which is, once again, Restaurant Wars!

Because he is high on the sweet scent of victory, KennEgo takes a moment to tell us about how awesome it would be if Blue Balls were to also win Restaurant Wars, and, of course “to let Angelo know that he’s not the only one here that is organized and disciplined…”

‘…and he’s not the only one who’s won $40,000.00 in High-Stakes QuickFire Cash Priz—oh, wait, I guess he is.”

Here’s where the producers have made it far easier for them than they did in seasons past:  both teams will be taking over the kitchen of the already established Redwood Restaurant in Bethesda, MD.  This sucks, because I always enjoyed the part of Restaurant Wars where chefs chose fugly drapes, hung kitschy artwork and placed candles on the dining tables that were heavily scented with Peaches’N’Ass.  *sigh* Those were good times.

NOW, all they have to do is show up somewhere and cook some stuff in someone else’s kitchen and then serve it in someone else’s dining room, yawn.  Nevertheless, each team has to come up with a three course meal, two choices for each course, and everyone on the team must be responsible for a dish.  Also, their Guest Judge for this portion is not going to be Erique The Rippert (because he is far too busy going off and being French somewhere other than D.C.) but instead will be Frank Bruni, who is the former Restaurant Critic for the New York Times and also apparently Satan’s Gay First Cousin…

at least, according to the usual round of Oh-Shit-faces the chefs are giving us

I want you guys to take special notice of who is NOT making an Oh-Shit-face here, but is instead smirking in OranJello’s direction as though The Citrus One should be:  yup, it’s KennEgo, who clearly does not fear Brunhilda.  Both Miss Swan and JerseyMoobs, on the other hand, say that Frankie is no one to fuck with and he will gouge you a new fuckhole faster than you can say “irrelevant”.

Brunhilda doesn’t make an appearance at this time, but Scar does introduce two additional guests…

a pair of late-stage alcoholics?

NO, sillies, those are the Terlato Brothers!  I’m sure you’ve heard of them before, right?  Bill and John?  And their excellent adventures in the Land Of Blotto?  My mother visits there quite often.  Anyhow, they’ll be providing the wines for this season’s Restaurant Wars, and that giant anal-probe of a bottle is also going to be awarded to the winner.  GayNold would be soooooo jealous, he’d be breaking out right about now.

The teams split up, with JerseyMoobs, Miss Swan, MassholEd and OranJello heading over to Whole Paycheck Market, while Bloody Mandy, KennEgo, ChesTiffany and Nosferatu are going to hit up Restaurant Depot.  On the way there, Nosferatu’s telling a clearly disinterested ChesTiffany about his ideas for what they should do when they get to the store.  She’s telling him quite curtly that he should be writing his shit down so he doesn’t forget about the things he needs to get for the dish he wants to do…

and leaves it unspoken that perhaps he should stop bothering her before she impales him with her pretty blue Bic

Over in the other car, MassholEd’s asking OranJello if “Tiff and Skeletor” are going to be in charge of picking up their meat, and The Citrus One says he’d rather Nosferatu not have “his hands be all crazy into it”.  JerseyMoobs is sitting in the backseat pretending to look at the pretty scenery going by, but he’s straining to catch every word and somehow draws the conclusion that Nosferatu is “not really involved” in Team Satanic Red’s food, and furthermore posits that “Angelo and his team are gonna figure out how to do it without him.”  Naturally he begins to pontificate about how wrong he thinks this is, and that the team should all be working together as a team.  Okay, well, A) I didn’t get that they’re cutting Nosferatu completely out of the loop, and 2) it’s hella easy to trot out that “There-Is-No-‘I’-In-TEAM” bullshit when you’re not the one saddled with a ploddingly dimwitted second-rate vampire, and 3^rd)…

there is an ‘I’ in GOSSIP

I’m not disputing that Team Satanic Red has serious doubts about Nosferatu’s cooking skills (MassholEd says almost exactly that) so they’ve decided it would be best if he did the front-of-house duties.  However, it’s not like they’ve made plans to prevent him from doing anything at all.  In fact, they still clearly need his help, because ChesTiffany’s having issues with OranJello on the phone insisting from faraway Whole Paycheck that he does not want to have to work with frozen lamb chops.  She’s looking a little frazzled and saying that they didn’t really have time to make up a shopping list, so she’s hoping they’ll be able to find what they need on the fly.

Meanwhile, KennEgo and Bloody Mandy are standing on the other side of the Depot watching Nosferatu and ChesTiffany frantically shopping ‘til they drop and reveling in Team Blue Balls’ clear superiority…

he’s right, they really ought to be collecting items and placing them gently on the cart

Bloody Mandy has the chutzpah to get an attitude and call Team Satanic Red’s methods “dangerous” as she watches ChesTiffany running around the store… as if that’s not exactly how she’s spent, oh, every single minute of every single challenge since the start of this misbegotten season.  It’s not totally her fault, though.  Standing so close to the fusty miasma of body-odor sheer awesomeness of The Beast clearly messes with the mind and the memory.

Back at the Hiltchen they begin the two hours of allotted prep time, and MassholEd tells us Team Satanic Red still needs to finalize their menu.  OranJello jumps into the driver’s seat as Executive Chef and directs Nosferatu to start butchering their proteins while he begins expertly prepping their deceptively simple first course…

although I would point out that those tomatoes could be cut into slightly smaller chunks

They appear to have a pretty ambitious second and third course, and seem to have decided against dessert altogether…

surf’n’surf’n’turf’n’turf

It’s hard to say if this will work against them or not.  Last year DirtyBear’s group didn’t do one, and they got trounced by 80’s Hooker’s pear pithiviers and Big Volt’s sexy chocoturds.  Similarly, Miss Swan says her Blue Balls teammates have elected her to make her famous chocolate ganache… and to lead the Front Of House.  She says that she wants to do a cold soup for their first course as well, because this way she can execute both dishes before she has to go out and play door-whore…

something she is technically not required to do

especially when she could just serve that giant bar of chocolate by itself and call it a day

I feel like I should bring up the fact that in the past, the person who does Front Of House duties does not have to go back in the kitchen and cook as well.  Last season, DirtyBear is the one who cooked Sticky Wickett’s dish for her.  Badly, but he still cooked it, and it’s not like she would have done any better, she was busy hiding from a hungry-ass Daddy Tom and Scar by taking 40-minute smoke breaks with the dishwashing staff.  Anyhow, I just thought I would mention that.  Just in case it should come up later on.  You never know.

Over on Satanic Red’s side, OranJello is noticing with some dismay that Nosferatu appears to be doing a pretty hacky job with the butchering he’s been tasked with.  Maybe it’s because he’s not so skilled at butchery (just bloodletting) or maybe it’s because he’s woozy from someone using garlic in the near-vicinity…

or maybe it’s because he’s using a butter knife

I dunno, but he’s fucking it up badly enough that The Citrus One steps in to finish it for him, and sends him over to butcher their fish instead.  Meanwhile KennEgo’s waxing proud about how smoothly Blue Ballsy’s two hours of prep time has gone by, so much so that they actually have some extra time on their hands to stand around and be judgmental and laugh about how Nosferatu’s still butchering fish.  “It seems like it’s going to be a crash-and-burn situation” he loftily opines, totally secure in the knowledge that he somehow can see into the future and extrapolate anything at all about tomorrow based on today’s events.  In other words, he don’t know shit and should really just shut it.

The next day the chefs arrive at the Redwood Restaurant and we find out that Team Satanic Red has chosen “EVOO” as their restaurant’s name, which is possibly the stupidest name since last season’s ReVolt.  And yes, it does stand for Rachael Ray’s super-annoying acronym for Extra Virgin Olive Oyl, because OranJello says they wanted to “extract true Mediterranean flavors” from their menu…

which you just can’t do when you have a really cool name, like Tiffedgeloex

Oh well, they’ve got bigger problems to worry about, such as having to work almost on top of Team Blue Balls, who have chosen to call their restaurant the even less imaginative “Twenty One 21” (i.e. the house number of the Bilious Brownstone, which, if you’re going to be so damned generic about it, why not just call the place “Restaurant” and be done with it??!?).  In any case, things seem to be getting even rockier for the poor EVOOites, OranJello is having to hurry Nosferatu along as he leisurely prepares the lamb for his dish prior to his going out and doing Front Of House.  Even worse, ChesTiffany has discovered that Nosferatu’s butchering of her striped bass is also horrifically wrong, there are scales and pin bones everywhere in it, and she’s going to have to spend part of their 4 hours of prep time redoing it all.  Nosferry is lucky that he chooses that exact moment to traipse his way out of the kitchen.

Three feet away, KennEgo, fearless leader of Forever 21 is just so super-impressed with his team and how well they are communicating with each other, and how smoothly their prep time is coming along.  Even OranJello admits that they seem to be having a very easy time of it, there seems to be a lack of stress and fuss.  However, The Citrus One believes it can be dangerous to be overconfident (something I think he had to learn the hard way ever since that whole “I’m going to win all the challenges” comment he made back in Episode One).  Sure enough, all is not totally sunshine and buttplugs, because Bloody Mandy is having to use a woodburning grill, something she has never done before, and naturally KennEgo is standing over her and ever-so-smoothly micromanaging her over every single piece of wood she is feeding to it…

“This smoke is totally irrelevant.”

Still, he has plenty of time to stop and eavesdrop on OranJello bitching about having to redo most of Nosferatu’s prep work and gloat observe that “To see Angelo get this ramped up… is crazy.”  And by “crazy”, he clearly means “highly enjoyable”.  In any case, he sees this as the two of them finally going head to head as Executive Chefs of competing restaurants… or as he more douchily puts it, “The best versus The Beast!”  Barf.

As for Nosferatu, he’s getting pissed that The Citrus One is ordering him around the way he is, saying that its bullshit that the other chefs don’t seem to trust him and insisting that he’s far better than they think.  Except when it comes to knife skills and butchering…

Or scaling.  Or deboning.  Or dicing.  Or seasoning.  Or searing.  Or tasting.  Or plating.  Or thinking.  Or breathing.

So what does poor Nosferatu do when he’s feeling down and picked on in the kitchen?  Why, he goes to the Front Of House and terrorizes the staff out there by belittling them, talking down to them and ordering them around!  It’s wonderful to hear him bullying a twentysomething server about how he wants all of the tables to look “brand new” and that they damn near need to spit-shine the chairs, even.  Even cuter is when he starts barking Spanish orders like “¡Mucho rapido!”…

at the African-American staffers

Naturally, in direct contrast we have Miss Swan, who has never done Front Of House and is being super nice and sweet to her serving staff, telling them to please come to her with any and all questions or concerns that they may have, and she will go ask KennEgo what to do handle it.  She also makes sure to bring out the dishes for the staff to taste so they’ll have a deeper understanding of how awesome Forever 21’s food is.  This seems like a smart idea, so of course Nosferatu chooses to skip it, saying his descriptions were so vivid that those servers didn’t need to have a portion of EVOOfood wasted on them.

Once again, KennEgo weighs in and clucks disapprovingly at how rude and nasty Nosferatu is being to the wait staff and how he’s putting out all this “bad negative energy”…

which is the complete opposite of the kinder, gentler, good positive energy that he’s been known for this entire season

You know, part of the reason why I hate this dickbag so much is because he’s a total hypocrite.  He has had shitty things to say about every single other chef this entire season (which I view as an irritating encroachment on my territory) not to mention his constant pooh-poohing of any Judges criticism that comes his way, and yet he’s convinced he has plenty of moral ground to stand on and pontificate about someone else’s “negativity”.  Ugh, I wish there was some kind of Karmic Sinkhole™ forming right this moment under his chunky stank-ass as we speak, but alas, time is running out and they’re about to start serving.

Man, things are so tight in that kitchen that when JerseyMoobs playfully leans over and does a little grab-assing on MassholEd, he unintentionally overexcites him!  Honestly, though, you can’t really blame Ed’s wood for popping up…

same size tits, wrong black person

Service starts, and the dining room fills up pretty quickly.  Mistakes start getting made by the servers, and KennEgo’s spouting more of his hypocriticisms as OranJello is dressing them down for it:  “Leadership doesn’t mean that you’re the loudest voice in the kitchen.”  Oh really?  I would try to come up with a witty comeback to that one, but the constant KennEchoes in my head when I watch this show are so distracting.

In any case, Nosferatu is trying to deal with the server mistakes in the dining room when, lo and behold, Scar, Gail, Daddy Tom and BrunHilda arrive…

and begin Waiting To EVOO

Eventually another server seats them, and when Nosferatu finally notices that they’ve arrived he comes by the table so Scar can make the introductions…

and clearly they are already EVOOwhelmed

Yeah, that’s a great move to start with.  It’s an even better move to stutter and stumble your way over difficult words like “Washington” and “seafood” and “and”.  Scar puts him out of his misery by ordering two of everything, and OranJello puts extra priority on getting the Judges fed, starting out with his own dish…

and it’s creamy Velveetyness

This is followed by ChesTiffany’s opener…

you betta hope they ain’t got no scales or bones, gurrrl!

Gail says that ChesTiffany “missed the subtlety” with the fish, and that it’s “amazingly salty”.  JeeZUSS, did Nosferatu ALSO season her fish when he cut them up?  This seems like such a sad mistake to make after all the bitching in the Quickfire.  On the other hand, the diners are saying how much they love OranJello’s soup, and BrunHilda says he’s intrigued and believes The Citrus One’s cooking can take him in some “interesting directions”.

And boy, could OranJello use some good news like that now, because Nosferatu is fucking up the timing of their tickets right and left and seventeen ways to Sunday.  This in turn is causing the Judges table to have to wait on their second course, which is pissing them off to the point where someone starts acting like a total diva…

and Scar isn’t happy, either

Daddy Tom starts to make a cellphone call, but then Gail stops him with the news that the food is coming (because she sees servers headed in their direction carrying plates).  Hahaha, that food is for other diners!  Now GAIL looks peeved, too.

Oh, this is a fiasco, things are all fucked up in the kitchen, and JerseyMoobs is taking great delight in that fact, saying that OranJello’s “spinning around with his head cut off” and that the EVOO side of the kitchen is such a mess that he doesn’t even want to LOOK down their way…

and yet, somehow, he can’t stop himself

Please, he’s enjoying this, their whole team is, and we all know it, they should just own it.  In any case, EVOO finally gets their shit together and gets the second course out for the Judges, starting with ChesTiffany’s second fish dish…

served with the usual tasty tufts of spider legs

followed by MassholEd’s flatfish dish…

turbot go slow

BrunHilda immediately comments on how much he likes MassholEd’s fish, it’s not overly aggressive and his seasoning of it actually tastes Mediterranean.  Daddy Tom agrees.  Looks like ChesTiffany’s sorta 0 for 2, cuz Gail says her fish is slightly overcooked, but she does like the flavor of it.  At least it’s not BURNT CHARRED RUBBERY EGGS!!  On the other hand, BrunHilda thinks it’s a “nice recovery” from the first course, he’s enjoying the chorizo with the seafood, so let’s say she’s ½ for 2 in the final.

Nosferatu’s much quicker to bring out the last course, but then as he begins to present the food he weirdly misidentifies his own dish as pork instead of lamb…

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, enough with the fucking pea puréeeeeeeeeeee!

Maybe he secretly has no teeth and that’s why he likes to put that shit in every single dish he makes?  I dunno, anyhow, last up for EVOO is an OranJello/MassholEd (Masanjeled?) combo…

mmmmmmmmmm, figgy!

After tasting some of the lamb pork lamb, BrunHilda says it was actually cooked perfectly, but he wishes Nosferatu had considered adding some texture to the dish.  As for the steak, Daddy Tom says he actually liked the walnuts in the potatoes, but BrunHilda says except for the figs he’s not getting much of a Mediterranean taste from the dish.

We cut to the Terlatoholics slurring how much they enjoyed the food and how well seasoned it all was (as well as how great it goes with *hic* their nice, nice wine *burp*).  As for the service, BrunHilda notes that it was very “hit and miss” with Nosferatu, he told them they were having pork when it was clearly lamb, and he’s so not happy that his water glass is close to half-empty, you guys!  Hell, I can see his skin cracking and turning to dust from here!  I’m kidding, though, I really hate it when a server lets you get dry, too.  In the end, he thinks the EVOOlians were concentrating so much on their kitchen that they kinda left the Front Of House “a little bit unattended”.  Daddy Tom recalls that they were not greeted at the door,  so “Let’s see if we get a goodbye!”…

aaaaand that’d be a big bald nope

It’s okay, he’ll have a chance to say goodbye later… to winning.  Although, in tonight’s vignette, we get a chance to see that things are not totally smooth over at Forever 21, because some of Bloody Mandy’s steaks are starting to come back as overcooked.  Miss Swan is being extra-bitchy about it…

and yes, she actually made Mandy talk to the hand

Mandy’s whining that she’s never cooked “grass-fed beef” before, and complains that “it’s like cooking a wild animal!”  Um, I guess she is far more used to cooking tame animals, such as puppies?…

busted

KIDDING!  I would never advocate the harming of baby animals!  Well, except for baby sheep and cows, cuz they’re so tender and delicious, and baby chickens because they are so good on those McMuffins, and baby fish, because Alexis Carrington eats them, and she is so fucking cool I want to do everything she does.  Wait, where was I?  Oh yes, Forever 21.

So Miss Swan is extremely aware of how dangerous it can be to take on a leadership role in Restaurant Wars, and knows full well that it’s often the Front Of House people who get sent home if they fuck up…

so it’s a good thing she wore her best oversized “FlashDance” sweatshirt to really impress the Judges

She may be dressed like a Jennifer Beals reject, but she was there at the door to greet the Judges and see them to their table.  She then tells them that the food of Forever 21 is “progressive American cuisine” claiming the menu “speaks of the moment and of the season”.  Scar’s perusing the menu and mentions how excited she is to see a cheese course as well as a dessert course.  I don’t blame her, I love cheese that much, too.

She heads back to the kitchen to call out the Judges orders to KennEgo.  He then makes my head nearly explode in disbelief when he claims he is not bringing his ego to this challenge, “The reality is, what’s the best for the team?”…

“Obviously, it’s for them to do whatever the fuck I tell them to do.”

Yeah, sorry, not buying this bullshit, but we’ll let him keep on saying it just the same.  In any case, he’s saying that his two dishes were created based on the concept of the entire group, which to my suspicious ears sounds like a curiously easy way to blame everyone else if they don’t turn out perfectly.  You’ll see how wrong I am in a few minutes, but this was my first thought when I heard him say this.

Anyhow, they’re starting off with soup’n’salad, the cold soup being provided by Miss Swan…

and a pasty-looking dead crab

and the salad by committee Kennego…

I guess there was a sale on chorizo at Whole Paycheck Market?

Scar starts the ball rolling by asking Daddy Tom how he liked Miss Swan’s soup.  He says there wasn’t a lot of corniness in it and it’s far too thin, “There’s just no flavor in this dish!”  Ouch.  Gail says she likes the fact that Miss Swan used a seasonal local ingredient, such as the crab, “and then there’s the corn, which… isn’t seasonal right now, which is, I think, why it had no taste.”  Daddy Tom agrees that in three months it would be a great dish.

Oh well, KennEgo will save the day with his super-salad, right?  Welllll, BrunHilda says the ole Alpha Beast has loaded down the salad with “a lot of stuff”.  Daddy Tom then quotes CoCo Chanel’s famous line about how when you’re getting ready to go out, you should take off one accessory before you leave the house, and that KennEgo’s salad needed “three or four accessories taken off”!

Funny, back in the kitchen we hear both KennEgo and JerseyMoobs loudly barking orders at the wait staff, and they sound none-too-friendly while they’re doing it, which is exactly the same kind of behavior they were criticizing OranJello for 20 minutes ago.  Selective Perception, thy name is Forever 21. Or JersEgo.

Miss Swan returns with the second course, which consists of Bloody Mandy’s wild animal carcass…

rawrrr and stuff

Followed by JerseyMoobsies version of a fish dish…

which we could also call “a study in beige”

Daddy Tom and Scar try the steak, and Daddy says it’s just cut too thin, which is why she wasn’t able to get a rich crust on the outside of it when she seared it.  BrunHilda says you can tell just by looking at it that “you’re not going to get the pleasure from it that you want.”…

if Daddy looks confused, it’s because he’s not well-versed in getting pleasure from meat

but Gail’s sure giving it a shot

Daddy says he does like the sauce she made with the beef, though, and he’s about to go on when Miss Swan comes sneaking up to try and overhear their criticism.  She’s so sneaky!  Shoo, Swan!  You gotta wait until Judges’ Table like everybody else!

As for JerseyMoobs’ fish, BrunHilda says it’s very pretty, and that Moobsie should take up painting.  Or, as we’ll see in a few minutes, yelling.  Daddy Tom says there’s a lot of flavor in it, the fennel is really nice, and the sauce is delicious.  It looks like the other diners agree!  It also looks like Miss Swan stuck within earshot, because she runs back to tell Moobsie how BrunHilda said his fish was pretty.

Last course, and KennEgo just got done telling us he’s aware that people who take on being the Executive Chef in Restaurant Wars ALSO go home a lot of the time, but he’s not gonna let THE TEAM down because it’s all just a matter of execution.  Yeah… theirs if The Beast doesn’t win.  Miss Swan is currently presenting his cheese course…

which is pretty savvy of him, everything tastes better when it’s deep-fried

And lastly we close on Miss Swan’s sweety-sweet note…

which just needs a crumbled-up cookie on top and then it would be perfect

Gail is jizzyjazzling all over her panties over the tart, she loves the crust, she loves the chocolate, she loves the creamy silkiness of the ganache.  BrunHilda’s got a reality-check for her, though, saying the ice cream had no flavor at all.  That is an absolute travesty against the utter holiness of ice cream, and Swan should have her nipples spanked for perpetrating it.

Then they consider KennEgo’s cheese brick.  After a beat, Gail says “Is it me, or is that a massive piece of goat cheese to serve for one person?”  Frank BrunHilda is in the process of taking a bite…

and I’m going to take a wild guess that he’s not a swallower

He looks like he’s almost gagging and blurts out “This is awful!  It’s a horror show!”  Gail agrees, “It’s soapy, and the crust is so salty!”  Scar wonders aloud who the Executive Chef was for Forever 21, and Daddy Tom reminds her it’s The Beast, KennEgo.  Ruh-roh.  I think Random Restaurant Patron™ says it best…

word

There’s no talk of this having been the “best Restaurant Wars evah”, Daddy just says it was “a good showing”.  I agree.  Of what not to do.  But we’re not finished yet, because it’s time for Judges’ Table, and shit is about to get real, y’all.

It starts off when Scar appears and asks to see MassholEd, ChesTiffany, Nosferatu and OranJello.  After they leave, Bloody Mandy’s trying to make the case that EVOO did NOT win, saying she’s never felt this confident going into an Elimination Challenge, but the ever-sharp Miss Swan strongly suspects Forever 21 is on the bottom, which causes Moobsie to growl that his mind will be “blown” if that’s the case…

meanwhile, KennEgo’s starting to smell himself and rethink his whole “Beast” moniker

Well, they better get prepared to be blown-of-mind, because EVOO wins the Challenge!  Mostly kudos are being bandied about (although they boof Nosferatu a bit for being so damned nervous at their table) and then Daddy Tom wants to know who came up with the lamb dish.  OranJello says Nosferatu, and that MassholEd and himself were responsible for tackling it’s execution in the kitchen.  I do recall The Citrus One talking to Nosferry earlier in the episode and asking him about whether or not he had finished marinating it, so it’s clear he did have some hand in the preparation, even if he wasn’t actively cooking it.  You see, he couldn’t, because he was responsible for the Front Of House.  I think at first they thought there were going to be complaints, but Daddy Tom says he really enjoyed it.  So who wins the top prize on Team EVOO?…

ChesTiffany’s boyfriend MassholEd!

He’s pretty proud of himself for having taken first, but honestly, I think he should take a step back from his self-loving, because it was OranJello who really had to do a lot of fixing of Nosferatu’s multiple mistakes.  Eh well, he wins a trip to the Terlatoholic’s vineyard, and that giant dildo-like bottle of wine, which he plans to go swimming in as soon as possible.

So they come back to the Stew Room and give the news that MassholEd’s the winner, which brings the Weakest Applause In The History Of Reality TV…

seriously, like barely two claps each

And then it’s time for Forever 21 to face the myoooozik.  JerseyMoobs already has an attitude the second he comes in the room…

which causes BrunHilda to adopt one just as formidable

Scar tells them they lost and one of them is going home.  KennEgo immediately starts talking shit about how he watched the poor execution and “miscommunication” going on over in the other team’s area, and that he’s just shocked that his team lost.  Or that their team won.  Prolly both.  Gail immediately shuts his ass down:  “As diners in a restaurant, we don’t care or judge on the communication in the back of the house… what we judge on is: how the food tastes, how the service runs, and that’s why you’re here.”…

Dear Gail Simmons:  I love you.  Please go shopping for some better blouses soon.  love,  J-Mo 

BrunHilda says Miss Swan had a “clumsy charisma” in her demeanor, but Scar wants to know if she meant for her corn soup to be so much like gruel.  Miss Swan insists she likes her soup on the thin side, and BrunHilda says that made it tough to even tell it was supposed to be corn soup at all.

Daddy Tom brings up KennEgo’s beet salad, and Gail says it’s a perfect example of her wanting him to “reel it in” and leave a couple of the ingredients off.  You can see KennEgo struggling not to roll his eyes at her as he shrugs off her criticism.  BrunHilda’s even less kind:  “I felt like this was a beet salad done through the guise of Hamburger Helper…”

oooooooh, no he DI-ent!

Oh yes, he did, and that’s the first time that JerseyMoobs has wiped the shitty-ass look off of his face since he walked into the room, which is a good thing, because he’s the only one to get compliments from them on his fish dish.  Right after that it’s back to dissecting suckitude, because they let Bloody Mandy know her beef was cut too thin and was way too dry.  She acts like she didn’t know she was serving giant hunks of shoe leather with a dollop of jus on the side…

so she resorts to making her usual deep-fried-puppydog faces

And then it’s time to talk… cheese.  BrunHilda says he liked KennEgo’s ambition in doing a version of a cheese course, but as to the execution of it… well, he can’t even finish the sentence.

KennEgo can’t take it anymore.  He sort of half-acknowledges that they may have had execution issues (which means “not really” in his lexicon) and then goes for his fallback position:  trying to refocus attention on EVOO’s problems, thereby removing it from Forever 21’s shitty food.

So what’s his huge complaint?  That all four of Forever 21’s chefs actually cooked their dishes, and that there was “a representative” on the other team that did not.  Miss Swan starts to nod emphatically.  He goes on to say if OranJello and MassholEd were not fellow “Beasts in the kitchen” (and oh, how it must chafe him to have to use that term in conjunction with anyone other than himself!) that they would not have made it through service.  The then accuses them of having put Nosferatu in the front to prevent him from cooking.

Daddy Tom is looking thoughtful:  “So, are you saying that Alex did not conceive of that dish?”  This time it’s JerseyMoobs who blows his top, and oddly enough he must have become psychic in the process, because he is insisting in all certainty that he knows for sure Alex did not think of doing a lamb dish, it was all MassholEd and OranJello’s idea.  Daddy wants to know why those two would have let Nosferatu do that dish then, and KennEgo says it’s because they have no faith in his cooking abilities.  Daddy’s finally starting to see the direction they’re trying to take:  “So, am I hearing that you guys really think that Alex needs to go home?”

JerseyMoobs takes the bait:  “Absolutely!  I’ll say it.  I’ll say it to him, I’ll say it in front of anyone, Alex needs to go home.  Bottom line.”  My.  God.  I.  Can.  Not.  Be.  Lieve.  This.  Bull.  Shit.

and it looks like neither can the Judges

JerseyMoobs can say as many times as he wants that he thinks Nosferatu should be sent back to his little corner of the Ninth Circle Of Hell, but that doesn’t change the fact that Alex wasn’t on the losing team today.  This means he isn’t eligible for elimination.  But you know what?  We’re not done yet.  Let’s watch what happens now…

Forever 21 stomps back to the Stew Room and sits down to glare at EVOO.  KennEgo mutters that it’s a bunch of bullshit, and Miss Swan starts to say something, but before she can get her own special brand of bitchery going, JerseyMoobs has literally exploded and is screaming and yelling while making Jersey fist-pumps in Nosferatu’s direction:  “You didn’t do shit!  You didn’t do nothin’, I’ma call it right out, you didn’t do a fucking thing!  Your ass should be going home!  Your group even threw you out under the bus!  Your group threw you under the bus!  Your ass should be gone! YOU DIDN’T DO A FUCKING THING!”

calm down, Mary, before he decides to take your fat ass back to Hell with him

OranJello and ChesTiffany both speak up and defend Nosferatu, stating calmly that the Judges knew exactly what he did.  Then KennEgo jumps up and starts yelling over everyone (which is not the sign of a leader, remember?) and demanding that they admit Nosferatu did not conceive of making a lamb dish, and that OranJello did it all for him.  He’s really frightening…

and they are clearly terrified

His whole argument is crap, and here’s why:  it’s never been a requirement that the Front Of House person go back in the kitchen and actually cook their entire dish.  That’s just stupid and it would be logistically impossible for someone to do.  Miss Swan chose to make cold dishes that she could entirely prepare beforehand, and good for her (except, you know, for making that shitty tasteless corn gruel) so her other team members did not have to cook anything for her.  But she didn’t have to do that.

Also, Nosferatu was clearly involved in the preparation of several things, the lamb included.  Granted, most of his prep work was horrible and had to be cleaned up by other members of his team, but for Moobsie and KennEgo and Miss Swan to all be clamoring that he be sent home because they don’t like him and are horribly embarrassed that their food sucked so bad they believe he violated the challenge rules is just plain retarded.

Additionally, I think it’s extra-shitty behavior on Moobsie’s part to lose his fucking mind like that, it’s totally unprofessional and reeks of projected anger and extremely poor sportsmanship.  Ditto that for KennEgo and his sad attempts to deflect from the true issue, which is the fact that Forever 21’s food just wasn’t as good as EVOO’s, and since he was the Executive Chef, he’s likely responsible for that.  His assertion that he “left his ego at the door” rings false to me, if he were really trying to help guide his supercool teammates, he would have let Miss Swan know her soup sucked, and he would have guided Bloody Mandy to not be cutting her meat too thinly.  I think he let them do what they did so that the focus would not be on him in case they lost, and he figured his faith in his own awesome cooking skills would carry them through to the win…

whoopsie

And finally we hear Scar say the words I’ve been waiting all season to hear:

“Kenny, please pack your knives and GTFO…”

Okay, so that’s not really how she said it, but it’s how I heard it in my head, and that’s good enough for me.  His response to being sent home makes me wish she had said GTFO, though, because he mutters in a barely audible voice “Arright, thank you” and just leaves.  That’s it.  There’s no “I’ve enjoyed meeting you all” or “Thank you for this opportunity” or “I had a great time here” or “It’s been my pleasure to cook for you”.  Nope, I’m sure on his way out he’s already thinking of starting several “I Hate Alex” FaceBook pages.

And even in his exit interview, he’s unwilling to accept responsibility for having cooked two bad dishes, he’s still harping on Nosferatu and how he “didn’t prepare his food at all” and that “there should have been more dialogue about that”…

and “I’m a giant crybaby and sore loser, so now I’m gonna pout.”

And so the internet furor begins.  I have already seen where some yahoo on the Top Chef page on FaceBook started a “Bring Kenny Back On Top Chef” page, which is utterly stupid, and clearly this person doesn’t realize that this stuff was all filmed months ago, so unless someone has a time machine for rent, there ain’t no way KennEgo’s coming back on the show.  Dumbass.

Let’s add to the furor ourselves!  What did you guys think of this episode?  Do you disagree with them sending KennEgo home?  Should Bloody Mandy have been the one to go instead since she fucked up her one dish?  Can you believe the temper tantrums this season has so proudly showcased?  Are you as embarrassed for Forever 21 as I am, that they would stoop so low as to try and get someone from the winning team kicked off by mob mentality?

Thanks for your patience and commentary guys, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did.  Now I must go get some coffee, cuz somebody stoled mine…

Love,  J-Mo