Sunday's episode of Next Food Network Star did NOT begin w/ Robert Irvine banging on a pot at 4am to wake up the contestants. So that right there is a big plus for this week's show. No crazy scavenger hunt thru pre-dawn Manhattan, alas. Instead everyone convenes at the test kitchen and gets their marching orders from Bobby Flay (Alton has the week off, I guess): make a potato dish that expresses their culinary POV and then present to camera. Shane does well w/ presentation, telling a cute story about cooking with his mom when he was a "chubby nine year old" who could barely see over the kitchen counter. Alas, the judges hatehatehate the texture of his potato soup. Lisa (aka Ensign Ro) does okay w/ her dish. It was unmemorable, as evidenced by the fact that I can now not remember what it was, but the judges like it okay. And she's definitely absorbed their advice and come up with a new, actually understandable shtick. Unfortunately, she's so freaked out about running over the 1 minute time limit that she races thru her "beautiful basics" spiel in 15 seconds and gets so flustered that she stammers and says nothing for the next 45. Mercifully not shown in real time. I should mention that one of the briefs for the TV presentation was to share some personal story about themselves and why they cooked the dish they did. Along with Ensign Ro, Jeffrey also completely fails at that. He doesn't run 45 sec. short but he's almost as stammering and incoherent. And boring. Kelseybot (who remains just this side of an SNL parody of a food TV host) also gets out nothing in the way of a personal story. Aaron also flubs the facetime but makes potato wedges wrapped in bacon (what's not to love?) which is so good that Flay jokes that he's going to steal it for his restaurant in AC. Is it just me or is that a backhand way of saying that the dish, while good, is not sophisticated enough for NYC restaurants? Jennifer manages to get something personal into her facetime. Of course, it's the same thing as always -- about how whatever she's cooked is a favorite of her daughter. Alas, what she's cooked is easily the worst idea of the day: mashed potato grilled pizza. It would be the worst dish of the day except Kelseybot undercooked her casserole (raw potatoes AND bacon... yummo!). Plus Jennifer babbles on about healthy alternative versions of grilled pizza and low carb before catching herself and remembering... oh yeah, mashed potatoes. Nipa does not (surprise) storm off in a snit. She makes (no surprise) a curried potato dish. For those keeping score at home, that's the 3rd curried vegetable dish she's made so far. At least she seems to have figured out how to season things this time. Judges like her flavors and like the fact that she talks about herself, about her connection to Indian food and her mom. Except it all plays like she's memorized some talking points based on the verbal beatdown she took last week. The way I see it, she was basically told by Tushman and Fogelson that she's there to be the token South Asian on Food Network and so she better start representing for her tribe. Which she did but not with much heart behind it. Perhaps she thought that she was selected for the show because of her personality and/or cooking skills. And the winner is: Adam. Who fully cooks his bacon cheese fries (again, what's not to love) and does some fairly amusing TMI shtick about all the horrible personal (relationship) meltdowns that might cause one to want comfort food like bacon cheese fries. This, I think, clearly illustrates why Kevin had to go last week. His shtick (excuse me, culinary POV) was basically the same as Adam. Call it lumpen bachelor cuisine. It's hardly a new idea for either of them. But Adam's just putting it across with a lot more snazz.
(2nd half of show to follow -- how do all those recappers keep these things from metastatizing into epic tomes of bloatedness?)