The new season of Hell’s Kitchen premiered on July 21, 2009. Jean-Philippe welcomed the sixteen new chefs with a tour of the set, complete with video tips from former Hell’s Kitchen chefs about how to survive Chef Ramsay.
The final prize this season is a head chef job at Araxi Restaurant and Bar in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, the host of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Signature Dishes
The first step in Hell’s Kitchen is to prepare your signature dish. The chefs had 45 minutes to do this, and when they were done the dishes were pitted against each other, men (blue team) versus women (red team).
Chef Ramsay loved Tek’s beautifully cooked prawns and Jim’s amazing ahi tuna. He was not, however impressed with Suzanne’s undercooked risotto, Melinda’s disintegrated poached lobster or Louie’s “gunk” of sausage gravy and biscuits.
The men won the signature dish competition and a delicious dinner from Ramsay’s restaurant. The women’s punishment was to clean the kitchen and memorize the recipe book.
Season’s First Dinner Service
Dinner went wrong even before service started. Lovely was called out for having already cooked the dessert. The men, who had been drinking heavy the night before, blanked on all the recipes at first.
The women had a terrible start. They had to cook the same dish five or six times because no one could get it right. Ramsay screamed at Melinda for throwing away several portions of pasta instead of just cooking them a little longer. Later, Lovely left the kitchen for over 20 minutes without telling anyone.
The men had a better start but started to falter with the entrees. Louie put the lamb in the oven, a big no-no, which outraged Ramsay, and later he couldn’t handle portioning. Joseph was yelled at for trying to take over Louie’s station. He was very defensive.
During dinner service Ramsay invited Robert from last season, who was dining, to come back. He gladly accepted.
The women lost dinner service because they didn’t send out entrees. The women nominated Melinda and Amanda for nomination. Melinda was sent home. “I expected more,” Ramsay said. Robert was then added to the red team. The women loved having Robert’s help.
Cleaning Shrimp, Not So Simple
The second challenge was cleaning shrimp. Lovely was asked to sit out because teams were uneven, and everyone found her distracting. Each team thought the other was doing horrible but they were doing great.
The stars of the challenge were Amanda, Suzanne and Tony. Tennille failed miserably. Ramsay called her pathetic. The women lost, and their punishment was preparing shrimp cocktail for dinner service. The men’s reward was lunch on a yacht. Joseph told the group he could care less about the lunch because it wasn’t the prize.
Second Dinner Service
Van and Tennille were chosen to work front of the house, and Tony couldn’t get past his problems segmenting grapefruits. Tony then got a little anxious and cooked scallops before needed. When they were needed they were raw.
Lovely kept overcooking the fish. Robert had some problems with flames as well, knocking down his savior status. Tennille sunk her team because she couldn’t keep up with her scampi appetizers.
Ramsay was fed up with the horrible cooking so he forced the kitchens to send out only shrimp cocktail.
Joseph gave Ramsay an attitude and no straight answer about nominations. Joseph had no respect for anyone and went off on Ramsay, saying he, “don’t give a f*ck about anything.” Just as he was threatening Ramsay to take the argument outside the episode was ended. It will continue next week.
Amanda Hamilton - Hello everyone! Welcome to My Suite! My name is Amanda, and I am a 22-year-old journalist from New Hampshire. I graduated from the ...
