Hell’s Kitchen All Stars Episode Two Recap: Bye Bye Ben

The “All Stars” have their first challenge and dinner service to prove why they should be here in an all-new “Hell Kitchen All Stars.” Now it’s time to see who are the all-stars and the zero stars.

This episode started exactly where the previous episode left off: Ramsay telling the chefs to make a bar menu item and the winning chef will not only have his/her item on the bar menu for the rest of the season, but they were safe this episode.

Right away, Ramsay had guest judges for this tasting. Maybe since it’s “All Stars” Ramsay decided to just go all out? The guest judges were the “Hell’s Kitchen” sous chefs Christina and Jocky. There was one hitch: each sous chef had to choose four dishes for Ramsay to taste. Yup, Ramsay decided to narrow his choices by only tasting four from each kitchen. The four from the Red were Dana (lobster tempura taco,) Ashley (shrimp with polenta,) Elise (lemon pepper wings) and Michelle (lobster shrimp sausage.) The four from the Blue was Milly (fish poutine,) Jared (seafood dumpling,) Van (steak tacos) and Nick (crab fritters.)

The winning dish was Milly’s, meaning he was safe. This was an amazing tasting, no? It also showed potentially weak chefs. This was also the first time we saw the sous chefs explain how to make all the dishes on the menu. The words “smoke machine” are enough to make people want one.

Keeping with everything happening all at once, Ben saw a medic to complain about blurred vision. He did say he was diabetic, which would explain his vision. Good thing he decided that he was well enough to continue.

Again, Ramsay going all out for a first service. This episode already had chef’s tables. The Red had “American Idol” winner Jordin Sparks and the Blue had the star of “Criminal Minds” Joe Montegna.

The Red did great on apps except for Ashley making a carbonara look like “scrambled eggs.” At entrees, Elise brought up an underdone NY Strip, which made Ramsay take all of the Red Team into the pantry. Elise’s second strip was overcooked. Ramsay forced the entire Red Team to go into the dining room and apologize. Ramsay even made Giovanni cook the Red’s NY strips. That’s embarrassing. Later, Manda undercooked her salmon and burned the skin on another. This made Ramsay kick the entire team out.

The Blue also did well on apps except for Josh being super slow to bring up tuna tartar. It’s a cold app that all he had to do was plate. Speaking of cold, Ben brought up a cold salmon at entrees. Despite that, they finished strong.

The Red Team nominated Elise and Manda with…Ben getting eliminated? What?

Well, that was a bit disappointing. Ramsay did say he did not see Ben being able to compete in this tournament. Still, that means we have another episode with Elise. In all, not much happening in this episode. Still, it’s only the second episode. There’s plenty of things to come to make this first “All-Stars” a hit. Also, Elise and Robyn confronting each other at the end just raises excitement for the next episode.