New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Before we know it, it’s time for service and Brooke, who Shirley picked for front-of-house duties, ushers in a line of eager diners - among them, our five judges (Padma, Tom, Gail, and our two guest judges). Team Latitude kicks things off with a cured king salmon with pickled kohlrabi from Brooke. Tom adores the different textures incorporated in the dish, declaring that she did a really nice job. Resident underachiever Emily has a squid ink pasta with calamari. Tom finds the pasta mushy and the sauce heavy. Gail finds that the sauce lacks seafood flavor. For those scoring at home, it’s a hit and a strike out.

Next up are two entrées - a snapper with bone broth from Shirley and a pan-roasted halibut from Sylva. Again, it’s a hit and a miss. Sylva’s dish deftly incorporated earthy flavors through the accompaniment of mushroom rice while Shirley’s snapper (though well cooked) might have been better done if braised.

Finally for dessert, we have the only disaster of the team. Worrying that her panna cotta wouldn't set in time, Shirley adds a couple of extra sheets of gelatin before leaving her dessert to set. The minute she starts serving, she knows it’s wrong (too firm). The texture of her plum wine panna cotta with cherries is roundly panned, with Tom saying he’d never order that again. Emily’s poppy seed buttermilk cake with miso butterscotch, though, takes the cake (ba dum dum), with smart, savory flavors.

Having gone one-and-one in each round, I’m firmly convinced that if Katsuji team’s is deemed the winner of the challenge, Shirley is gonna go home. Thankfully, Katsuji’s team is a hot mess. Having chosen to do a restaurant focused on southern cooking, and having picked the name Southern Belle, most of the dishes have nothing whatsoever to do with southern food, much less southern hospitality. Casey is slammed at the start, spending too much time chatting about the theme of the restaurant while ignoring the line forming at the reception desk.

Meanwhile, in the back, John has worked out the worst possible system for coordinating orders between the back of the kitchen (his cooking staff, Katsuji and Sheldon) and the servers, who seem utterly perplexed by his incomprehensible orders (“Fire three number fours and tables 2L and 2R!”). Add to this the fact that John and Katsuji are already at each other’s throats - Katsuji is totally overwhelmed by the prep-work needed for his three dishes (having long forgotten his desire to make roasted nuts as an appetizer), having commandeered his entire team to do mise-en-place for him, thus screwing over people like John and Sheldon who need to oversee the entire operation (John) and prep for his own dish (Sheldon).

Needless to say, dinner is a nightmare. Tables don't get fed, and when they do, they get the wrong orders. The judges are left waiting for dishes without any attention from Casey, who’s gotten sucked into the black hole of John’s kitchen. Meanwhile, Katsuji and Sheldon talk smack about John while he flounders, bitter about the fact that John isn’t contributing to the cooking or plating at all, instead focusing on his cockamamie system for expediting dishes - it’s a DISASTER.

Continued:       1       2       3