by Todd Betzold

 

Our first team challenge on MasterChef, as the contestants head to the L.A. Times cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles.

 

The team challenge will consist of each team having two-and-a-half hours to prep and two hours to serve a soup, salad, pizza, special of the day and dessert to 350 guests in the cafeteria with the losing team facing a pressure test, where at least one person will be sent home.

 

Having had the two best dishes in the last elimination test, Max and Derrick are team captains and get to choose their teams. Max chooses Christian, Alejandra, Giuseppe, Tony, Tracy, Esther and Jennifer. Derrick chooses Suzy, Adrien, Alan, Ben, Erryn, Jennie and Christine.

 

The teams decide on a menu they want to prepare and tasks for everyone. For Max's team, Blue Team, they go with burgers for their special of the day and Derrick's team, Red Team, goes with lasagna.

 

We see both teams struggle with their specials, as Suzy and Derrick struggle with the lasagna for the Red team and Tony struggles with the hamburger and seasoning of it for the Blue team.

 

Time to start serving the meals to the customers as the lineup of 350 people start coming through the doors. No real issues to begin with and they show people enjoying plates from both teams.

 

Enter our first mistake, Giuseppe runs out of pizza and judge Joe Bastianich starts sending people away. The customers are still given a plate for where the pizza should be and for every empty blue plate an automatic point goes to the red team.

 

More trouble for the blue team, as they start falling behind on the burgers, so Max takes some to the back kitchen to pre-cook them. He places them on a dirty cookie tray and contaminates the meat and all 26 burgers must be thrown out. Needless to say, they ran out of burgers and had to hand out even more empty plates.

 

All 350 customers are served and they place their votes in the boxes as they leave. We find out the results and the Blue Team won the soup and special of the day, despite the issues with the burgers. The Red Team won the salad, pizza (Ben took down the Italian Giuseppe in his specialty) and dessert. So, winning the team challenge is the Red Team.

 

Up next, the pressure test for the Blue Team. This will consist of all eight competitors having 60 minutes to make Spinach Ricotta Ravioli. After the time is up, the judges go through and taste each dish.

 

Some of them shined during the test, including Alejandra, Christian and Max, who got rave reviews from all the judges. Others failed to rise to the occasion, including Tony, Giuseppe and Jennifer, who included nutmeg as an ingredient in her pasta.

 

All eight competitors brought in front of the judges, as Giuseppe, Tracy, Max, Alejandra and Christian are asked to step forward and told they are safe until the next challenge. That leaves us with Esther, Jennifer and Tony.

 

Esther screwed up by not knowing what was in the filling, but Chef Ramsay said she nailed the pasta and was safe. He proceeds to say that both Jennifer and Tony hold a lot of strengths, but Tony had to go home. Chef Ramsay looks at Jennifer and said she is on thin ice, but is safe. So, we only lose one competitor tonight, as Tony turns in his apron.

 

 

MasterChef airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on Fox.

 

(Image courtesy of Fox)

 

 

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