Hannah recaps/reviews Episode #4 of Next Food Network Star!

Photo credit:  Food Network

After taking some time to recover from the stress of tonight’s episode, I’m here and ready to give my thoughts on the episode.  This week centered around the concept of a dinner and a movie and the remaining contestants were split into three groups of three for the challenge.  This week’s challenge gave each group a movie genre:  Romance, Western, or Musical.  Each group would have to make a 60-second movie trailer to introduce their dishes to a focus group.  The groups meals would consist of three dishes: an appetizer, the main entrée, and a dessert.  The teams fell as follows:

Photo credit:  Food Network

Team Romance:  Viet, Damaris, and Chad
Team Western:  Russell, Nikki, and Stacey
Team Musical:  Chris, Lovely, and Rodney

Automatically, I am on #TeamRomance considering two of my favorites (Viet and Chad) both landed on that team.  At the same time, I also like #TeamWestern a lot.  #TeamMusical, yeah, sorry but I’ll pass.  After having some time to plan their genre-centered meals, they went and taped their movie trailers.  After the preview for this episode, I was quite excited for the movie trailer portion of the episode!  The editing made the movie trailers look terrible during the filming, but they ended up being pretty great – as predicted!  #TeamWestern’s movie trailer was pretty calm and Nikki had a great performance.  At the same time, Russell did a lot better than the filming made it look like he did.  #TeamMusical was great – as they made a song to introduce their meal!  I love me a good song and dance!  Rodney was difficult to understand, and the crowd disliked that, but Chris and Lovely were pretty good for their parts.  And finally, they saved the best for last.. #TeamRomance.  Their movie trailer was hilarious.  Damaris was to choose between Chad and Viet (who were representing their dishes).. think: The Bachelorette!  Clearly, the choice was obvious, but Damaris was smart in deciding that she couldn’t decide!  Therefore landing her both Chad and Viet!  (Somewhere, a jealous Hannah lurks.)

Now time for the Russell rollercoaster!  I’ll start this week first with Russell!  As predicted in last week's review/recap, Russell indeed continued on the Russell rollercoaster!  We have now seen Russell go from the bottom three, to the top three, back to the bottom three, and then right back up to the top three!  While next week could be a little sketchy, if he does continue on this path, it’s certainly entertaining to watch.  Russell had a good performance for the movie trailer, but his food was lacking some this week.  While I would have enjoyed his western spaghetti (because bacon,) the focus group and judges were underwhelmed by it.

Photo credit:  Food Network

Next, Viet.  Okay, I’ll start this one by telling you that you lucked out if you’re in the group of people that doesn’t include my family, who had to watch this episode with me.  Frankly, they ignored me by having phone conversations or leaving the room.  (Added note: My sister appeared to be #TeamViet, so it must run in the family.)  But this episode was stressful when it came to Viet!  Viet made his first appearance in the bottom three.  I knew it was coming when the judges and focus group weren’t big fans of his dessert.  I thought the dessert looked good minus the whipped cream stuff.  (I only say that because whipped cream is one of my biggest fears, but anyways)  I just didn’t want it to happen, him being in the bottom three and all.  And I’m not going to lie, I did start to worry when Alton (my favorite judge) went all anti-Viet this episode. (How could you do this to me, Alton?)  I don’t really see why the judges can't picture Viet improving, and unless there’s something that isn’t being shown, I don’t really get why they think he needs to improve so much.  But as previously mentioned, I’m biased (and also, not a Food Network star and/or professional chef) so maybe my opinion doesn’t count for anything.

Another good thing about this episode was the return of Nikki.  She had a great performance in the movie trailer, and despite having no background in working in a restaurant environment, she did a good job at getting her dish cooked under the given conditions.  I think a lot of the reason why #TeamWestern was so successful was because of Nikki.  Yay for Nikki domination!  At this point in the competition, I think Nikki is a great contender and I’m so glad that she’s on #TeamHannah.  Also, Chad returned on this episode!  He’s been doing great up until now, but they’ve not been showing too much of him.  Chad was hilarious in the movie trailer and his chicken wings looked AMAZING!  Also, while it didn’t get the best reviews, one of the dishes that I thought looked the best this episode was Chris’ lobster macaroni and cheese.  I mean, I’m kind of obsessed with macaroni and cheese, so if you just throw macaroni and cheese in as an option, I’ll choose it 9 out of 10 times.  But besides that, it just looked delicious and it made me want to reach through my TV!

Lovely becomes the fourth person eliminated from #NFNS, leaving only eight stars to compete
for the title of the Next Food Network Star. (Original photo credit: Food Network)

#TeamHannah had a great showing this week and all of the remaining five team members stayed out of the bottom three (and the top three were all from #TeamHannah! I told you, #TeamHannah is unified!)  so that was awesome.  So while it’s sad to see Lovely leave, I really don’t mind it too much because that takes Austin’s team down to three, giving me a 5-3 advantage in the draft.  

Also last minute thoughts: I was sad that the dials played such a small role in tonight’s episode since they are one of my favorite parts!  Next week’s episode looks great!  I think it’s the episode where the judges purposely mess up things for the contestants during their presentations in order to see how they’d handle the situation if it were to occur!  And to my surprise, it was announced that one of the first four eliminated contestants will re-enter the competition!  Who will it be? (I kind of want it to be Andres, but I expect it to be Lovely.  Although I know I should want it to be Danushka, considering she is the only one of the four from #TeamHannah.)  You can watch the first episode of Star Salvation HERE. (After watching the first episode, I guess this Star Salvation runs for 5 weeks, so even if any of my favorites get eliminated, they'll have the chance to get back in the competition! YES!!)