- Pop singer Joe Jonas enlists the gourmets to prepare a snack for children taking in a sleepover at New York's American Museum of Natural History. Later, prehistoric sustenance inspires breakfast items for the children, with Season 1 host Katie Lee Joel returning to guest judge.—Anonymous
- Moments after the first challenge the cheftestants reel. Richard is still smarting that he was disqualified. Fabio calls the challenge, which ended up with him on the bottom, a "wake up call."
The next day in the kitchen, they're greeted by Joe Jonas of those Brothers. Antonio's daughter is a huge fan, she's psyched.
Dale T. admits he has no idea who Jonas is. "I thought he might be a pastry chef."
Quickfire Challenge
Padma tells them the American Museum of Natural History is having a sleepover with 150 kids and Joe is the surprise guest. They have to make something for the kids' midnight snack. Joe tells them to make it original but that the kids won't have utensils.
He tells them they have 30 seconds. (He's kidding.) They have 45 minutes. The ingredient bum rush begins. Dale L. worries about picky kid eaters then goes for marshmallow and graham crackers. "Basically I'm making crack for small children," he says.
Dale T. takes the sugar out of the pantry and earns everyone's ire. Tiffani remembers failing in season one when they cooked for the Boys & Girls club. She describes hers attitude at the time as an "a--hole."
Richard tells us he was a heavy kid and used to make himself cereal with heavy cream, "because heavy cream tastes good."
Time's up.
Antonia make a white chocolate and cherry muffin. Richard made white bread with spiced apples and whipped honey. Spike made home made potato and carrot chips with mascarpone and marshmellow dip.
Tre made a cracker with cranberries, cherries and bacon.
Casey made a chocolate lasagna.
Dale L. made sweet tart nuts and caveman boulders with chocolate sauce. He tells them to dip it in the chocolate. "It'll be like a little ten year old rave," he says.
Jamie made mini cheddar biscuits with an apple dipping sauce. Tiffany made coconut rice pudding.
Dale T. made a corn cake with dried cherries.
Fabio made apple slices with dark chocolate, marshmallow and candied ginger. "As you know," he says to Padma, "midnight snack is a roasted chicken and some pasta."
Tiffani made a rice crispy treat snowball with malted milk and graham crackers. Angelo made fried dough with white pepper, old bay spice and cheddar crumbs. Steven made a snickerdoodle sandwich with white chocolate coconut ganache. Jen made a bacon ginger taffy and honey-grilled peaches.
Mike made a chocolate coconut corn bar and coconut horchata chaser. Joe names his least favorites: Tiffany D. (messy), Mike (chocolate wasn't strong enough) and Steven (the stuff in the middle didn't work with the cookie).
His favorites were Spike and Tiffani. He tells them it's a tie and the kids will decide at the museum. They get to pick teams. Fabio is last and gets to choose who he wants. He goes with Spike because he wants to "piss off Spike."
Dale L. describes the teams thusly: "It's like the Spice Girls and a body guard (him) and all the cool guys and their babysitter Carla."
Tiffani and Spike start assigning tasks. Tiffani's involves liquid nitrogen and Richard gets left out. They load up their bags and head to the museum.
The kids arrive in a herd of screaming spazz. The chefs try to talk up their team's food, leading cheering. Jamie wants nothing to do with it. "I have no interest in having children. Ever," she tells us, stony faced.
And then Padma arrives with Joe Jonas and a hundred eardrums burst as the kids start shrieking. He asks the kids which ones they like best. The red team gets dull shouts. Spike is mortified. Tiffani is the clear winner and gets immunity and "another advantage" in the elimination challenge.
The kids file out, leaving bag of detritus everywhere. Then Tom walks in and tells them their elimination challenge starts now. It's 1:30 a.m.
Tom tells them they're joining the sleep over and they have to create a breakfast for the kids and their parents.
Service starts at 7 a.m.
They will be cooking only with what's in the kitchen -- in teams divided by meat and dairy to honor the T.Rex and veggies, fruits and grains to honor the Brontosaurus.
They're sleeping on cots. Steven doesn't like it, reflecting on his loft in Manhattan and saying the situation is creating a sense of "uncomfortability, if you will." (We won't: discomfort?)
Tre realizes he won't be able to sleep naked.
The teams meet to game plan. They agree to pair up.
At 2:50 a.m. Spike, Marcel and Dale L. go on a flashlight tour of the museum as the others sleep. At 3:44 a.m., the alarm goes off and they head to cook. At 4 a.m. they race to the kitchen and are psyched to see they have tons of ingredients -- but the carnivores have no herbs or flour. Team T. Rex is pissed.
Spike and Carla work on a gazpacho.
Fabio and Steven work on a gnocchi.
Jamie cuts her thumb and the medic tells her she needs stitches -- so she leaves for the hospital. Fabio remembers how he continued cooking during his season even after he broke his pinkie. Antonia and Tiffany are making three kinds of frittata.
With 30 minutes til service, Dale L. announces polenta cakes aren't going to happen. Fabio is aggravated to see Spike tossing his gnocchi around. Before service Casey tastes Jen's pseudo pork belly and thinks it tastes like "wet bacon," but Jen is happy with it.
They head outside on the terrace to set up the buffet in an hour. Angelo tastes a plum dish and decides the plums are too large, so he sets Carla to cutting them. Marcel is miffed saying "you don't f--- with somebody else's mise en place."
In the middle of set up Jamie comes back with two stitches. Dale L. remembers a time he sliced a chunk of his finger and duct taped it and kept going.
Casey doesn't have a chance to taste Tre's sauce before he plates.
The diners arrive, followed by the judges. Katie Lee, host of the first season, is the guest judge. Steven remembers having history with her, including serving her a drink called "the bubbling orgasm," which she said lived up to its name.
Dale T. and Mike serve fresh corn grits with stewed peppers and salsa verde. Richard, Marcel and Angelo serve a banana parfait with seasonal fruit and tandoori maple.
Spike and Carla serve their gazpacho. Fabio and Stephen serve potato gnocchi with mushrooms, leeks and spinach.
Tom and Katie join kids to eat. Gail thinks Dale T. polenta was creative. Tom likes the gnocchi. The kids like the parfait.
The judges head for T. Rex.
Antonia and Tiffany D. serve bacon and cheddar, ham and cheese and a chevre frittatas. Tre and Casey serve salmon with shrimp and apple smoked bacon sauce. Jen and Jamie serive braised bacon with hard boiled eggs. Dale L. and Tiffani serve steak and eggs with smoked paprika and crème fraiche Hollandaise. A kid think the bacon is chewy. Tom finds a scale in his fish. His sauce is called very salty. Some of the fritattas are underdone. The steak and eggs gets good reviews.
They pack up.
In the stew room, Padma comes for the Brontasaurii. With them out of the room, Dale says he thought their choices were off. Jen says she never bothers cooking for the diner, who she points out they'll never see again. Judges' Table
Padma announces they're the winners. Tom says everything was really good. Fabio mentions Spike messing with his gnocchi. Katie Lee likes the banana dish.
She announces the winner: banana parfait by Angelo, Marcel and Richard.
"When I'm on a streak I think it's really hard to beat me, to be honest with you," Angelo says. Marcel tells us if one person were to have one for it, it would have been him.
They send Team T. Rex out.
Tiffani claims it wasn't an advantage to pick first. Tom and Katie Lee mention the raw frittatas. Padma homes in on Tre's spicy sauce. He knows it over-reduced, and Tom thinks that means he's admitting he knew it was salty.
Gail asks Jen why she looks pissed. She thinks they should have won. They start bashing the other team for serving non-breakfast foods.
Tom asks why they put everything on one plate.
"You guys are the judges, you're smart enough, why don't you say, 'Hey, can I get a different plate for this?"Jen says combatively.
Tiffani reacts with an "oh wow."
"I'm smart enough to know that," Tom says, "but maybe someone on your team should have been smart enough to know that."
Jen says everyone helped her when Jamie went to the hospital. Antonia says everyone thought Jamie should have kept working. Jen argues with Tom that her eggs weren't seasoned properly, saying she'll "fight to the death" on the issue.
They send them away. Jen manages to make it back to the stew room hauling the giant chip on her shoulder.
Back there she tells the other team: "I think I yelled at the judges more than they yelled at us." Gail says she's never seen them so angry. Tom says he doesn't mind, and if someone's going home it will be for bad food, not backtalk.
Padma identifies that Dale T.'s dish was their favorite so he's safe. They think Casey's salmon was cooked nicely, but the sauce was bad.
Katie thinks the texture of Jen's dish was off and Tom maintains the egg was bland. Gail considers the fact Jamie wasn't there.
In the stew room, Jamie says it feels like she let them down. (If they tell her not to worry about it, we don't see it.)
Verdict Time
Tom recaps. He tells Tiffani and Dale L. they can go. Tom tells Jen he admires that she's up there defending the dish, but it won't make it better. The knife packer is: Jen.
Tiffany lets out a "holy s---."
"I'm shocked," Jen says. "Maybe I was too strong for them. I don't know why I'm going home."
The stew room seems genuinely surprised. "Like my dad always says: 'Second place is still losing.' So I wonder what he's going to say about second-to-last."
"I expected to make it into the finale. I feel like I was robbed," she says. She leaves amid a stream of cursing. "I learned in this process that my style is not going to change. I am who I am, I'm a great chef and I'm a great person. The judges got it wrong," she says.
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