Hell’s Kitchen Season 16 Episode 4 Recap: Koop, Aaron or Gia?

This week’s challenge is one of many challenges that tested the chef’s palates. They had to split into teams of two and taste a dish that was underneath a dome and identify which protein is used for an array of proteins in the dining room. The team with the fastest time wins. This season, Ramsay came up with a “surf and turf” variant, meaning that had to find one seafood and one meat.

The pairing that had to worst time was Aziza and Shaina who took 7:44 to figure out they had squab and octopus. It’s understandable since squab isn’t something many chefs work with, if at all. The Red’s total time was 13:41. The Blue beat that time with 3:55 left.

The Blue’s reward was surfing in San Diego at “The Wave House.” Basically, artificial surfing. All of them wiped out while lasting only a few seconds on the board.

The Red’s punishment was to make sausages by hand. And by hand meaning, the grinder and extruder were crank powered. Not really that bad of a punishment. The worst part was, last their last punishment, they had to eat some disgusting food. This time, it was a plate of random food and they had to eat what was in front of them. Ryan had to eat a tarantula even though she said she’s “deathly afraid of spiders.” This punishment wasn’t as disgusting as the last.

At dinner service, the Blue Team took a complete 180 from their last service.

Their problems started when Koop brought up cold lobster. He would then bring up raw salmon. Ramsay had a great line this episode, “there is no sushi on the menu.” On the last table, Aaron had trouble finding his voice. He also brought up cold Wellington. That caused Ramsay to throw out the Blue Team yet again.

The Red suffered some problems, starting with Aziza using too much oil to cook scallops. Gia was the biggest problem of the night. She was on garnish and everyone had to wait for her. Not only did she burn green beans, but she didn’t even have enough for one portion. Ryan had to help her. She doesn’t belong in this competition.

The Blue nominated Koop and Aaron. Ramsay had other thoughts and eliminated Gia.

Gia just gave up. It’s not just her attitude that caused her to get eliminated, she just couldn’t handle a high volume kitchen. This season still hasn’t done anything exciting just yet, but it is far from being the worst season yet. The chefs are interesting even though there is no clear winner yet.