Unmarked Spoilers Abound!
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Well, Andrea’s gone. It’s about time. I was upset with Ramsey’s decision last week. It seemed for some time a foregone conclusion that it would come down to Danny and Paula.
Danny sure fumbled the pass at the beginning. I laughed when his voice squeaked like a 14-year old’s. And Andrea was certainly the bitch. I think her philosophy was to send everything back, so she wouldn’t miss the trick dish put up. I thought Scott was going to murder her. Heading up the kitchen means making people do their best for you, not undermining their efforts. Paula stumbled a bit, but overall was quite good. I really think the Borgata job is hers to lose.
Yeah, she did ride Scott like a rented donkey. I can only assume there was a bunch of pent-up hostility against him. I have no idea what he’s really like, but through all the years I’ve seen him on HK and on the Food Network, he always seems rather prickly.
I agree that Andrea should have been gone weeks ago. I really would have liked to see how well Ben might have fared at expo. Early on, he seemed like he was able to run a kitchen, but he torpedoed himself with so many stupid line cook level screwups. If only he’d used the red snapper last week…
I agree also that Andrea should have been gone a long time ago; however, the way she ran the pass last night was exactly what was expected of all three of them. You don’t see Chef Ramsay all worried about people’s feelings. I thought that was the first time she actually acted like a real Chef. But I also think it was too little, too late.
Dogzilla - I think Andrea was sending back stuff not because of actual flaws, but because she knew Ramsey was watching and because she was afraid she’d miss a “quiz” dish. So instead of being confident in her tastings, she just sent everything back.
One of the tasting chefs made a comment that I didn’t quite get, but maybe it depended on actually tasting the dish. He said, about Danny’s dish, something like “why would he use halibut for a tasting? Stupid decision”.
What is it about halibut that made it categorically such a bad choice? Or was he just being a pompous prick? It seems that if it was well seasoned and prepared, it wouldn’t matter whether he used halibut or salmon or eels.
Halibut is pretty bland and doesn’t contribute much to a dish, flavor-wise. The guest may have been saying, “Why not just serve me a shooter of the sauce, since the protein doesn’t contribute to the flavor of the dish.”
Given the exceptionally uniform dislike of Danny’s dish, I’d guess it was a fairly common sentiment.
The halibut was just too ho hum for the chefs. My guess is his dish would of fared much better in front of a different audience (which they didn’t know who that audience would be ahead of time, so it was a gamble).
The problem I had with the way Andrea acted at the pass is that she hasn’t shown she is skilled and respected enough to act like that. Ramsey gets away with it because everyone knows that he is that damn good.
I don’t know that there was a ‘dislike’ of Danny’s dish; the vote was for least favorite, not boring or inedible.
I suspect halibut is a great fish for restaurants because it is a safe support of an interesting dish and can stand up to a bit of slinging about.
And really, isn’t the seasoning what we eat out for? Even I can cook up a nice expensive slab of protein for its own taste.
(I don’t want Danny to win; I want him to work under very good chefs for a few more years. I like him and I want him to be a well-trained star, not a show dog.)
I don’t think Ramsey would have had Scott working for him for this long if he was as incompetent as Andrea’s expo would have us think. Ramsey knew she was just trying to act tough and that Scott couldn’t possibly be screwing up that much. Odd that she didn’t try that act on Paula or Danny, though.
Bolding mine. Not really. Obviously Paula had figured out that Ramsey’s chefs were the ones with instructions to intentionally screw up their dishes. She wasn’t tht interested in quality control with her competitors. The odd thing is that she didn’t kick back anything Ramsey’s female chef made (sorry, don’t remember her name).