Hell’s Kitchen Recap — Week 1

So, the beginning was a little disappointing because the “head to head” signature dish competition between the men and the women didn’t even show what Andy’s dish was… just that he went away “empty handed”. At least the men won the first challenge though and got a a special take out meal from Ramsay’s signature restaurant. Glad to see that Andy wasn’t the one to do the cannon ball into the hot tub though!

The first night’s challenge (opening night in the kitchen) began with memorizing some recipes the night before and then cooking them. The Hell’s Kitchen restaurant has a standard menu and a dining room that the chefs have to cater to. The red team (the girls) messed up their first order. The blue team (the men) had some challenges as well. Not sure if it was good or bad, but Andy kept a pretty low profile during the first challenge. Hopefully it’s not a sign of how long he lasts on the show.

The diners seemed to get impatient waiting for the first night’s challenge. The girls had to start over several times… but the men got their first order out in a decent time frame and started on their entrees before the girls even got their first apps out. Then the girls got in trouble for throwing dish after dish into the trash… wasting the food.

It’s kind of annoying how the “stars” of the show are the most annoying and obnoxious chefs… but I guess that’s TV for you. It’s sort of funny how Chef Ramsay just rips apart the weakest chefs though.

On the men’s side — Louis, the “meat cooker” — sucked. Ramsay basically tosses everything he’s cooked and then tosses him from the kitchen– telling him to pack his bags . It’s clear this is not a low stress situation.

After a long night, Ramsay invites a past chef (who left the show last season due to health issues) back into the show… to take the sucky meat cooker’s position. What drama! Then he basically goes through and talks about how it was the worst dinner service he’s ever seen. He makes the women the losing team (they never got past apps) and then tells the team to nominate which two team member need to eliminated (it’s a team vote).

Melinda and Amanda are the two people nominated. Amanda accidentally froze the fish rather than refrigerating it. Melinda is the one that tossed all the pasta that wasn’t cooked. Ramsay picked Melinda to go home. Shouldn’t have thrown all the food away girl! To strengthen the red team, Ramsay sends Robert (the guy asked back from last season) over to the girl’s team… and that ends the first of the two shows that make up the season premier.

So Andy made it past show 1… will he make it past show 2? Let’s see….

Robert (who is MORBIDLY obese — which was aparantly part of his “health issues” last season) share some trade secrets with the girls.

The next challenge is shrimp (it’s an “attention to detail” challenge) — and how well they are cleaned. Each chef had 10 minutes to de-head, de-shell and de-vein the shrimp…. PERFECTLY. In the end… the Red team had a total of 44 shrimp and Blue team had a total of 45 (with Andy getting a 7 out of 8 shrimp)!!! What a close call! And for the losers? The red team had to serve shrimp cocktail and segment lemons (removing all the seeds) all night! The men got to go to Newport Beach for a lobster lunch with Chef Ramsay and an afternoon on a yacht… lucky Andy!

For the second dinner service, Ramsay tells the chefs they will be serving the diners Scampi — table-side… and picked one chef from each team to be the table-side cooker/server. At this point in the show, Andy is still laying low… hopefully he’s just flying under the radar!

The men started off slow… with Tony cooking some scallops WAY too early in the order. They girls on the other hand, tried cooking without turning the flame on! Then when it was really time for Tony to cook the scallops… they came out raw. WTF? So another chef had to take over to help Tony. In the red kitchen (girls), Robert (past season dude) made his own share of mistakes — burning shit and doing awful.

The blue table-side guy, Van… then proceeds to go to the wrong table and the red table-side chef serves undercooked shrimp to a pregnant woman! Is this crap scripted? If not, these people are morons. Then Van drops a fry pan in the dining room and continuously gets into fights with Ramsay’s right hand man, John Phillip (not sure what his role is yet, as this is the first season I’ve watched — but I think he’s the Maitre d’). Is this seriously real???

The red kitchen was way behind again, and the blue team moved ahead. Then Andy sliced up some chicken and did it all wrong — so he was called a donkey by Ramsay. Classic! Then the red team served up raw chicken… making one mistake after another. Do these people ever learn???

As the meal progressed… more raw food, more mistakes and then some burnt food. Is it just the pressure… or do they pick folks who can’t cook intentionally??? The men were fighting, no food was going out from the blue team… and the red team just kept f’ing up too. Then Ramsay “drew the line” and decided to have everyone do shrimp cocktail so the diners had SOMETHING to eat!

Both kitchens sent out the shrimp cocktail — compliments of Ramsay — and then Ramsay decided to SHUT THE ENTIRE KITCHEN DOWN. A Hell’s Kitchen first. Tsk tsk. He then told both teams to come up with two names… two of which he would be sent home (one from each team). Best quote during deliberations? The blue team… Van: “Suck my di*k bro.” So professional.

So what happened??? Well, the red team picked Tenielle — the one who served the raw shrimp to the pregnant woman. The second person picked was Lovely — b/c of her lack of experience. The blue team picked Tony and Andy –which was total crap because Andy only made one small mistake, yet the table-side dude — Van — was a total a-hole through the entire episode.

Then, the dude from the blue team who had to tell chef Ramsay who was picked and why, totally lost it and became a jackass and refused to tell Ramsay what he wanted to know (and his head wasn’t even on the copping block)… throwing his chef’s coat on the ground and challenging Ramsay to a fight! THEN….

We found out it was…..

“To be continued…”  Ahhh!!!!!