Sorry we dropped off on Worst Cooks in America, but we're back with a new season of Food Network Star. And we start the new season with a format change! Bobby, Giada, and Alton are each taking a team of five contestants, thus adding the drama of trying to doing better for their idols as well as for themselves. During the tryouts, people are actually auditioning to be on each person's team rather than just to be on the show, with a completely separate pool of contestants auditioning for each team. To add to the fun, we go back to audience voting to determine the winner.
We're meeting the contestants on each team, and when we meet Martita, Dave's first reaction is to say, "Don't you dare say 'stilettos in the kitchen!' Because she just seems like she would." Dave also thinks that Emily sounds like a recipe for disaster as she says, "I take classic 50's dishes and make them rad." Justin gets asked if his parental consent form was signed, and Dave thinks he looks like he was plucked from the set of Twilight.
Sweet, we get Robert Irvine to introduce the first task! Instead of the Dinner Impossible track, we take the Restaurant Impossible task: open a restaurant overnight with $5000. We find out that Twilight Boy is from Maryland. He's making a salad with "Maryland-style croutons"...crab cakes disguised as croutons. I do like that the coaches of each team are involved in the discussion process, giving feedback to help them learn sooner rather than later. Giada's team is looking at having dumpling soup with dashi broth and key lime pie on the same menu...not sure how that's gonna go over. I'm worried about whether Eric can make his lasagna including pasta from scratch AND fresh ricotta from scratch for 150 people in six hours. And Emily is making bourbon-peanut butter pie on a pork crust (bacon), making up the recipe as she goes along. It's been nice knowin' ya, Emily. Yvan forgot to buy the eggs that Josh NEEDS for his dumplings. So now he's improvising by grinding nori and making fried nori dumplings.
Nikki is making a "roasted corn salad, like you would find at any backyard barbeque." Dave wonders if something from a backyard bbq is really going to impress the judge, but my reaction had been, "I want to go to her cookouts, we don't have that at mine!" (And any of my real life friends who want to rectify that are more than welcome to!!) Eric's milk is not getting hot enough to make his ricotta. His thing is hand-crafted foods, but he realizes that may be his downfall. Ya think?!? It seems like it MIGHT be done now, but we will see.
Each team has to present to the potential customers about their restaurants, and Alton's team goes first. Cristie is WAY too rehearsed. Marti's presentation is GOOD. Justin comes across as...odd. Bobby's team isn't especially memorable one way or another. Giada's team starts with Josh saying in a cutaway that he wants to make sure his team is memorable. Cue Dave and me cringing on the couch! Actually, the only thing he did was jump around as the team entered...his presentation was flat and rehearsed, which made a weird dichotomy.
Josh's plating is taking a while, as he tries to make sure his dumplings aren't soggy. Martita is then in the dining room trying to appease hungry customers. The black bean and cabbage soup from the southern restaurant is solid enough to stand on its own, and customers do not seem thrilled. When Martita is presenting, not only does she get starstruck, but from the looks on the faces of the judges, they don't think her dish sounds good. Alton thinks Linkie's key lime pie tastes "cafeteria"...damn!
As she presents her corn salad, Nikki manages to take 3 sentences to say nothing. "My passion is food." Yeah, and that other kid thought he was walking into Next Twilight Star. (Thank you, Dave, for that gem!) Michelle has twice described her mussels as "sexy." Susie asks her why she uses that word, and Michelle refrains from saying, "Because I'm not allowed to call them 'delicious'" and instead says that having them with a glass of wine makes her want to go back home and... Michelle turns bright red while Bob says that the show just lost its G rating! Eric's lasagna actually did come out right...he's a lucky man! Kara already seems to have a lot of the natural presentation skills. She reminds me a lot of Kelsey from several seasons ago.
I've loved Marti so far...right up until she wasn't able to articulate a culinary POV. Come on, woman, you've seen this show, you have GOT to know what your POV is!! We're wishing we could do a screen shot of Susie's incredulous face at the point where we paused it to write this, because it is priceless! Susie and Giada are blushing like schoolgirls over Justin and making him feel like he's 14 again and a girl winked at him. And Dave uses his favorite sign (since I've been teaching him some sign language)..."awkward!" Justin does do a good job of working into his presentation Alton's comment about his very red lips, showing some good ability to think on the fly. Cristie's "soup" does NOT go over well. It's too thick to even be a Rachael Ray "stoup," seriously! Also, Cristie is pissed about people being on the couch instead of being healthy...that message doesn't go over well unless you make it fun, honey. The pork and peanut butter pie turned out to be good, as was Emily's presentation, and Dave says that he is man enough to admit that he was wrong about her.
Before the evaluation room, each contestant gets individual feedback from their coach about presentation and food. Team Bobby wins the challenge, probably mostly based on Michelle's sexy mussels. Josh is up for elimination from Giada's team first because of his somersault and then because of his soup. Cristie is up for elimination from Alton's team, and we think she's going home tonight.
Oh, another new twist: Cristie and Josh have one final opportunity to redeem themselves with a one on one challenge to make a Mother's Day dish in 30 minutes and then present it. Frittata for Josh versus healthy Scotch eggs for Cristie. Josh points out that rock and roll guys don't really do brunch, since they're usually sleeping through brunch. Cristie has trouble thinking of a story until she remembers that her brother returned from deployment in Iraq on Mother's Day. Josh screws up his first presentation and then is given a second chance...which he then blows by saying that we should thank our moms for giving us one of their eggs. Dave points out that the people coming to this from other types of entertainment generally do NOT do well on this show. He actually is given a THIRD chance...good thing for him that this is a recorded presentation! Cristie and Josh are getting to sit in the "pitch room" with the coaches and judges to see each other's presentations and the tasting. Cristie tries to call her Scotch egg an omelet and then calls it the opposite of an omelet without saying why...it was confusing. And we still think she's going home. The judges sound like they want to send Josh home, but that turns out to be creative editing as they do send Cristie home. And another health nut bites the dust.
Till next week, food fans!
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