Sir RaiderDuck OMS

My guess: You're asking chefs to come up with a professional-quality dish in 30 minutes using a haphazard set of ingredients that often come down to pure luck, both in terms of what's physically on the platform and what they can see in the limited amount of time the platform is there with a bunch of people swarming around them, shouting, etc. French, German and Scandinavian dishes can often involve complex sauces and cooking methods that can take a lot longer than 30 minutes and, especially in the basement, involve specialized pans and cooking equipment that are simply not present. But a stir-fry is something you can basically do with anything: it takes skill and a knowledge of what taste and texture profiles go together, but it lends itself to flexibility and can easily be done in 30 minutes even if you have to manually prepare everything. Beatrice is one of my and Mrs. RaiderDuck's two favorites this season (Brandon being the other). Yeah, she's kind of cocky, but so were we when we were 18. C'est la vie.

I could see her and Brandon in the final two. Her youthful bubbliness would contrast well against Brandon's smooth professionalism. You could tell the difference in cooking technique between Brandon and the other cook-off contestant just by the judges' reactions: Richard and Nyesha praised the other chef's cauliflower steak as a really good vegetarian entrée, but said Brandon's dish was just a really good entrée, period.

IIRC, Ramsay was in a bicycle accident a year or two ago. He posted a video afterwards basically saying his bike helmet saved his life, and urging all bicyclists to wear helmets. Maybe the scar was from that?

So I did a little research using Grok AI on the show and the switchover from Justin and co. in Orlando to Dolmar and co. in Tampa. Am I the last person to find out that Justin and Ashley were married for their entire tenure on the show (and remain married to this day), i.e. her two kids the show made a big deal about are also Justin's kids? As for the two crews: Dolmar's version is a little less ridiculous. No digging in a kitchen for buried treasure, cameras trained on the exact spot in an empty living room when someone comes crashing through the ceiling, etc. And Samantha is some serious eye candy.

Just a guess: That dining room was tiny. Maybe it's small enough that it's technically a Take-Out place with a seating area, and is therefore legally required to use plastic utensils, Styrofoam take-out containers, etc. Even though those are huge money sinks, there was zero discussion of using metal utensils and proper plates. Maybe it's because they weren't allowed to? Blake was as full of herself as we've ever seen anyone on this show. I legit thought we were getting another Amy's Baking Company until her change of heart near the end (which according to the online reviews, seems to have been genuine -- her food got a lot better post-Gordon). IIRC, in the entire history of KN (both British and American), there's been exactly 1 1/2 restaurants where Gordon actually liked the food. One was on the British show where Gordon cleaned his plate because he liked the food so much, and the owner jokingly said she was going to take a picture of the empty plate (the renovation ultimately failed because the restaurant was so small that the rush time crowds were simply not big enough to make the place profitable, and that area of London wasn't big on take-out food). The other would be a restaurant from the American version where Gordon hated all of the food except for the cakes custom-made by the owner's mother. He actually hugged the mother and told her how much he'd enjoyed the cake (that was the one where Gordon found a dead mouse in the front entryway and the owner accused him of planting it, which led to Gordon threatening to walk out until she apologized). Money is no object when your husband is bankrolling everything including $300/month storage fees for your cookware and air fryers that no one's buying ("I would say the sales range from $0.00 to.... $0.00").

We use Dude Wipes at home, but yeah, that bit was 90% an ad for Gemini Workspaces. And I actually had Gemini AI (the full paid version) on a free trial a year ago or so. Half the promised features don't work like they say. For instance, I connected the account to my Google Docs and asked it to go over my resume and cover letter. It refused, saying it didn't have that capability. When I reminded Gemini that it had literally just told me it did have that capability, it apologized for the error, then suggested I copy and paste my resume and cover letter into its text field so it could go over them. And its suggestions were sound, but I could have done that with literally any AI. Gemini's selling point is partly its Google Docs integration which was big fat fail. I thought it a total waste and did not renew the trial. There are better AIs out there (as in, pretty much all of them). As for the power banks: I think a great place to sell custom-branded ones would be hospital gift shops and vending machines. You've got a bunch of family members who may have had to drop everything to be with a loved one in their time of need but didn't have time to bring their phone chargers. Something they could just buy and charge their phones with would be a godsend. The kids looked bored and uncomfortable. You're basically required to jackknife yourself in there which can't be comfortable for more than a few minutes. Any girl wearing a dress will feel exposed. And if you let your feet or lower legs dangle over the front, you're asking for a bruised shinbone or worse. I absolutely hated the design. He was another annoying putz who thought he was smarter than the people he was begging for money. Robert and Barbara coming back in proved what mensches they are. And I loved the fact they literally made him pay for it (by giving him a demonstrably worse deal than he'd have received if he'd just kept his yap shut). He needed to quit being such a pisher. If I had to guess, he was personally offended (for some reason) that Lori went out and kept trying to haul her back in to validate himself, in the process completely alienating everyone else. I was half-expecting Kevin to offer him a 100% buyout so he could market the product but didn't have work with this yutz.

It was just a few episodes ago when they were touring a college and the tour guide was literally tackled to the ground, unprovoked, by a student with not even a hint of repercussions. See also Daniel-san remaining a minor LA celebrity solely on the basis of winning a couple of children's Karate tournaments over 30 years ago, Kreese intimidating Tori's landlord into not collecting rent without the landlord evicting her or calling the police, etc.

Remember that the entire goal of this kind of interrogation is to get under your skin. A mother being called out for abandoning her kids is going to be a sore spot for many. As for Cam: You could tell he wasn't taking the interrogation seriously, knowing full well they weren't going to yank out his fingernails or set upon him with clubs and mallets and whatnot. His tapping out when they were dumping water on him was more saying "Yeah, I'm done with this. Peace out."

Private Yacht Chef didn't make the cut, once again proving that being rich and famous doesn't mean you have good taste in food. It's another reason I'm not generally impressed by restaurants with pictures of celebrities on the wall. Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Bloomberg, and Rod Stewart all ate at your restaurant. But am I going to have the same taste in food as they do?

I'm guessing maybe Ramsay specifically warned him about putting the fish skin-side up and he still did the exact opposite, which screams "I'm not going to listen to you and will just do everything the way I want." Who wants to mentor someone like that? Jimmy cooked three dishes, and all were Bottom 2. Nice guy and great story, but obviously not a great chef.

No surprise that Ilena was the first to go. She seemed to go full meltdown at the slightest provocation. It's one thing for Gordon to calm down a panicking MasterChef Junior contestant. It's quite another thing to calm down a 53-year-old adult. Was Keith the one who put an entire uncut chicken breast into the fryer? Mrs. RaiderDuck immediately pointed out that while the chicken could be fully cooked that way, the inside would have almost no flavor.

Christina Wilson is gay. Her then-girlfriend was featured during the finale of the season she won, and there was a memorable TH segment when David Beckham showed up earlier in the season: Christina told the camera that even though she was gay and liked women, she'd still totally do Beckham. So while Kyle's statement may technically be true (i.e. the first gay man to win), he's not the first gay winner. Not that any of this matters anyway. I don't care who a chef likes to sleep with as long as the food is good. It would be hella rude for Kyle to win the season over Hannah and Egypt, both of whom desperately wanted to work at a GR restaurant, and then not even take the job. Mrs. RaiderDuck and I have eaten at all the GR Vegas restaurants. We've always thought the food was excellent: expensive, but definitely worth the $$$. We've eaten at exactly one Michelin-starred restaurant: In December 2023, as part of Bangkok food tour, we ate at a one-Michelin-starred noodle shop where they cooked the food over big propane-powered stoves in a cinderblock alley with cats roaming freely around (presumably to kill rats and cockroaches). The interior had old chairs, faded formica tabletops, and silverware that might have been new when Jimmy Carter was President. Damn fine noodles, though.

Hannah's probably seen some season finales where a finalist picked on the basis of pure skill and ended up with one or two malcontents who were technically good chefs but DGAF who won and had no interest in putting forth an honest effort. Filling her team with people who genuinely like her would minimize that risk. And Whit's continued sourpuss act is doing her no favors.

I'm looking forward to seeing Egypt on the next All-Stars season. I hope to never see Kyle on my TV again after next week.

First time I've seen a "chef" literally gleeful that his food sucked and his kitchen was filthy. I wonder if he was deliberately trying to get fired so he could get on Unemployment or something.