Marcel was never the worst cook. There was never a week that he deserved to be kicked off.
[…raising hand…] They showed it to me! 
I’ve gone on at length about his passive-aggressive sabotage and his tuning out of the rest of his teams, so I won’t bother raising that again.
But I gotta say that some people are carrying it a bit too far, like the woman who smashed his face with a beer bottle in Las Vegas once she verified that he was indeed Marcel. That’s even worse than what Cliff did, in my opinion.
Marcel was also the one who kept shrugging off all the harrassment he got and kept trying to make it about the cooking. It was the Mean Girls group who kept trying to make it personal.
I never saw anything I felt was intentional sabotage. I did see a tendancy towards tunnel vision and lack of awareness about the others but I never thought it was malicious, just that he tended to be oblivious when he was locked in on a task.
I saw that. That’s insane. He did say that the response he’s gotten from the public has been overwhelmingly positive aside from that one incident, though. He also said that Ilan has been calling him and leaving him voice mails every day since the finale but that he hasn’t returned them.
You know, thereis a fundamental problem in the show, in that in a kitchen all the chefs work as a team. However, on the show, of course, they are not working as a team, they are working against each other n many ways. Hence, Ilan has no qualms about using all of the burners without regard to how it will effect the next dish. Hence, Marcel’s loner attitude can come off as being pompous and rude.
The bottom line is that this is a cooking competition, not a personality contest. Hell’s Kitchen is closer to a competition where the cooking and the ability to command and inspire your team are at stake (although the cooking on that show is far inferior).
I still think Ilan is an ass, especially this week when he instiagted the whole dram at the Judge’s table but then basically let Elia take the fall (not that it had any effect). Elia was clearly the bottom of the totem pole this week. She lacks the creativity, it seems to go with her obvious technical skills. I clearly think they picked Ilan over Sam due to the drama factor. Marcel is a very good cook, thoughtful and talented. I never got the impression he thought he was better than everybody, but that he was just confident in his own abilities.
As I pointed out in one of the prior threads, he served undercooked chicken. That’s a recipe for bacterial infection. So far no other chef has managed to serve a meal that could put a guest into the hospital. From someone who likes to cook and has given himself salmonella, there’s no question Marcel should have been kicked. If there’s ever any question about chicken, you overcook it or throw it out, because better a bad meal or none at all than to risk the alternative.
But I do think Ilan is a one-note flute (easy on the saffron, emokid) and that Marcel is likely to win. I don’t think I can watch Pokemon Soulpatch take the prize without weeping openly. I wish Sam hadn’t gotten the knife, he’d be a better match I think. 
That got exaggerated on the show. One of the judges said her chicken wing was “rare” (not raw), but none of the others seemed to notice, and I don’t think there was any serious issue of undercooking, just the usual nitpicking for the show. They still ate it, after all. And Marcel also made the consensus BEST dish in that same challenge, the tempura vegetables. There were also at least two people who did considerably worse than Marcel on that challenge, Sam with his bleu cheese watermelon thing and Michael with his whole, stoner, slacker, cluelessness thing.
But meaning what? Even if we (generously) grant that Marcel is telling the whole truth, all that information tells me is that Marcel is responding with his usual passive aggression. Why not return a phone call? For all we know, Ilan wants to apologize or bury the hatchet.
Ignoring those messages is the same thing Marcel’s been doing the whole season, but in the kitchen.
Grossbottom didn’t say “raw”; he/she said “undercooked”. Rare chicken is undercooked.
He said it was because of how he was treated on the show. It may also be because Ilan has still been trashing him in the press. Ilan’s public tone about Marcel seemed to change a little after the worst of the episodes aired and he saw how the public was perceiving things (I have a feeling they all thought during taping that Marcel was going to come off as the villain and themselves as sympathetic. the opposite happened), but not that much. He (Ilan) still hasn’t really apologized or acknowledged he was ever out of line. He just says stuff like “We were all under a lot of stress,” or “You had to be there.”
I’m sorry, but we must live in two different realities. Every press source I’ve seen (including the one I linked above) paints Marcel as the villain. People all over the Internet (with exceptions, certainly) — and on Bravo’s own show — routinely vote him the least likable of all the contestants and the one who should go home.
So, the opposite did not happen. To you, okay. But not categorically, the way you stated it. 
I agree. For all his perceived faults, he never once trashed anyone. However, I’m still on the fence as to whether he’s indeed truly focused to the exclusion of others OR he instigates for the sake of it. I do think he has an issue with social skills, but since he’s always struck me as one of those geeky kids playing with a chemistry set, I can forgive it.
And I don’t blame him for not returning Ilan’s phone calls either. I’d probably cave in and accept one just to see what Ilan would say, but after what happened on the show, there’d be no way I’d pursue a professional or personal friendship with him.
There’s a reason why you cannot find “rare” chicken on any menu, anywhere. You shouldn’t be able to order it off the menu either, a reputable chef would simply refuse the request. The drama factor spared him from what should have been the ax. Blue cheese and watermelon may have slouched toward Bethlehem to be born, but “rare” chicken is beyond what is remotely acceptable. It’s a health code violation.
Never a week that he deserved to be kicked off? No, sorry.
If the chicken was so undercooked, then why did they eat it? The fact that they ate it anyway mitigates against any suggestion that it was truly a health hazard, IMO.
I actually didn’t buy the raw chicken bit. As you pointed out, he didn’t say raw, he said “rare”. Which judge said it, anyway? Chicken cooks pretty fast, and even cooked chicken can have a pinkish-rare look around the bone. Anyone cooking chicken has seen this. If it was raw or undercooked they wouldn’t have eaten it. It may have had a pinkish, unappealing look.
I’ve worked in restaurants where people have sent chicken back saying it wasn’t cooked but it really was. People freak out over the slightest pinkish color. If chicken is undercooked it has an altogether different texture.
Ilan should have cooked the luau leaves with much less water to try to achieve a higher temperature. You are trying to break down the chemicals which cause the itchiness. Laulau’s-meat steamed in luau leaves are typically steamed for 4 hours. :eek:
Those outdoor propane cooking stoves are notorious in going out when turned down low.
Cooking nerd :dubious:
Poi goes well with salty food-kalua pork, lomilomi salmon, laulau, etc.
Hardly. Just a fan of the show. In our house we’re lucky if we have more than 5 home-cooked meals a week.