Hell’s Kitchen Commentary: Goodbye Kalen

It’s time for Family Night in “Hell’s Kitchen” and these chefs can’t stay on their best behavior. This is worse when you consider Mommy Ramsay is in the house.

The chefs were woken up by an ice sculptor’s chainsaw. Not a great way to wake people seeing as how most people assume a chainsaw indoors signifies a crazed murderer which some of the chefs thought it was.

In the dining room the chefs saw a table with practically every protein imaginable and another table with five domes. This was for a challenge that’s now a staple in “Hell’s Kitchen”: split into pairs and taste a dish under a dome and bring the protein you think it is. The team that does the fastest wins. The proteins were turkey, calamari, elk, alligator and duck.

As these chefs has said, this is a hard challenge due to not only tasting the protein, but other ingredients too The average wrong answers per dish was three. How many people would ever think alligator or elk? The Red completed the challenge in seven minutes, forty-one seconds. The Blue had to beat that which they did by thirty-four seconds.

The Blue’s reward was a day at “Annenberg Community Beach House” in Santa Monica where they met Olympians Genai Kerr, Tumua Anae and Shea Buckner. You do know what happens when you get a bunch of young guys in a pool with a water polo ball and nets, right? They turn into a bunch of frat boys. None of them had no idea what they were doing during their water polo lesson.

The Red spent the day unpacking pounds of flour, tomatoes and cheese. They also had to grate cheese for that night’s family night service which had a make your own pizza station. They also had to drink “protein shakes.” The proteins in question were scallops, eggs, anchovies and boiled chicken. Yum. The usual gross comments abound. Jennifer even threw up which ruffled Sade’s feathers. They both even had a small confrontation in the dorm.

Family night in “Hell’s Kitchen” is usually fun to watch since there are times were Ramsay curses loud enough for little kids to hear. Here it was no exception. Also Ramsay’s mother was in the dining room.

In the Blue Fernando and Santos were taking too long on making their pizzas. Ramsay had to send Sterling to “gently” tell them to hurry up. Ramsay also had to babysit Aaron on how to properly cook scallops. The first few were good until he brought up some that were still raw. They then finished strong by having all their entrees come out perfect.

In the Red Kalen started with bringing up cappellini that were super dry. She also took much longer than needed to make another one. Kalen also took a bit longer for another risotto. Roe then was behind on garnish. This was when the Blue had one ticket left and the Red five. They did finish off those five tickets.

This is one of the rare times on this show where the Red did worse than the Blue early on. Usually that happens near the end of the season. The Red had some trouble choosing two chefs for elimination because Ramsay wanted overall, not just that service. Kate nominated Kalen and herself. Ramsay even said, “nobody who ever was to be a head chef would nominate themselves.” Kalen got eliminated.

Seeing a Red team do this poorly early on is strange. Usually it’s the Blue that’s getting everything wrong. It’s also a breath of fresh air since this season is not as predictable as previous seasons. This had better keep up if this season wants to stand out from the rest.