Hell’s Kitchen Season Premiere Recap: Here We Go Again

Gordon Ramsay’s most evil creation “Hell’s Kitchen” is back for an all new season. The two hour premiere sets up Season Thirteen to be quite entertaining.

The first thing that needs to be said is this season has a new narrator. His voice is similar to the previous seasons’ narrator, but there is a bit of a difference. People will get used to it quickly.

In the first hour (Episode One) the new chefs were brought to “Pacific’s Cinerama Theater” where they saw a movie of their reactions when they heard they were picked. If you’ve ever seen these types of videos, you’d know what to expect. Of course, since Ramsay is full of surprises, the chefs find out that the back of the theater is really a curtain that reveals an audience with Ramsay front and center. He told the chefs to go across the street to the “Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts” to prepare their signature dishes.

It’s here that we see this season’s intro. The chefs are battling each other like Roman gladiators in the Roman Coliseum with Ramsay as the Emperor overseeing everything. It’s a decent opening with the usual carnage seen in these intros.

With Senatus Populus que Romanus out of the way, we get to see what these chefs are made of. JP finishes with fifteen minutes left. Ramsay grills him for this and JP says he’ll do it again. Looks like we have already spotted the first weak chef.

At tasting, Ramsay scored each dish 1-4 in the season’s first team challenge. It was like many seasons where it started off great with threes and then became disastrous with ones. JP’s dish, a Boston baked haddock, scored a one. Was anyone surprised?

In the end the Red won 24-23 to nobody’s surprise. Their reward was lunch at “Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air.” Exactly how close are Ramsay and Puck? While the Red enjoyed their meal and a hug from Puck the Blue had to bring in all the beds, pillows, pot/pans and other things into the dorms. JR decided to take a long break which made the rest of the guys to get mad.

The first dinner service of Season thirteen went of like you’d expect: lots of mistakes and Ramsay blowing a gasket. Also, Jean Philippe is replaced by a new maitre D called Marino.

On the Blue team, Aaron started off with not answering how long for his risotto which he under seasoned. He overcooked another on his second attempt. Later, JR brought up raw scallops. It seems like nobody on any of these seasons can properly cook scallops the first few episodes. It took the Blue 53 minutes to serve their first appetizers. That’s insane. Entrees started with JP brining up raw halibut. Ramsay threw out both JP and JR. The rest of the Blue got thrown out when Fernando brought up a raw halibut.

The Red finished service despite Janai missing two scallops on two orders. Ramsay even asked her “what’s two times five?” It took her a bit too long to answer.

The Blue nominated Aaron and JP with JP being eliminated. That’s one less J to worry about.

In the second hour (Episode 2) the chefs were woken up by lifeguards yelling in megaphones and blowing whistles. They were escorted outside where they saw sandcastles by the entrance. This was for their first challenge and this season’s first weird ingredient: geoduck. They had to dig through these castles to find the geoducks. The first to find fifteen wins. Santos had the right idea by tackling one of the castles.

The Blue was the first to get to fifteen. Of course, this wasn’t the real challenge. The real challenge was to make fifteen dishes of geoduck sashimi that weighed 200 grams (199 and 201 were acceptable.) The first to make fifteen wins. The Blue has the lead; it was then neck and neck until the end. The Blue were nanoseconds from winning. That had to be the closest contest this show had.

While the Red celebrated their win on a luxury yacht, the men were hard at work cleaning up all the sand outside and then had to prepare that night’s service. As is the logical progression of this show, since they worked with a disgusting ingredient the losers get to eat disgusting ingredients. This time it was boiled cod with a jellied gefilte fish. The typical gross out reactions abound. Sterling on the other hand was eating it with no problem. He even gave a little dance, too. Ladies and gentlemen, this season’s clown. He actually is pretty entertaining, though.

This episode’s dinner service was much worse than last episode’s.

In the Blue Steve had two pans full of scallops that were all overcooked. At entrees everyone was arguing about cooking times, especially with Sterling. Sterling needed one more minute for his lamb when the halibut was already up. It was still raw after that one minute. Also, the halibut was raw. No matter how many times you see it, it’s always shocking to see Ramsay smash a piece of fish with his fist. Sterling would continue his raw streak with re-firing a raw pork loin. When Steve told Ramsay the pork needed four more minutes Ramsay kicked all of them out.

In The Red Janai’s first risotto was like baby food. Her second was like soup. The audience’s reaction at this part was “how did you two different consistencies for risotto?” Third time was not a charm for Janai. Ramsay had to call Marino to give an Italian’s opinion of the risotto. He said it was “mushy.” Ramsay looked like he was about to kill every woman in that kitchen. Instead he took them all into the pantry and told them to sort out their strategy. That helped until entrees. Denine’s raw salmon made Ramsay throw the Red Team out.

At elimination the Red chose Janai and Denine and the Blue chose Sterling and Fernando. Janai was eliminated.

So far, this season is pretty entertaining. The chefs are interesting, the drama isn’t overblown (yet) and the geoduck challenge was fun to watch. If this keeps up this may be the best season yet.