Hannah recaps/reviews Episode #7 of Next Food Network Star, and more!

The Recap-

Photo Credit:  Food Network

This week we're down to the final six, which means that only half of the starting cast remains!  They start off the episode by meeting Bobby, who tells them that he's made a dish and they will each have 60 seconds to describe the dish to the camera.  As an added challenge, Bobby bans them from using generic culinary vocabulary words like delicious, awesome, sexy, wonderful, and incredible.  To shortly recap this challenge, I will just say that many of them failed.  The shining stars of the challenge were Nikki and Stacey.  In the end, Stacey won the challenge - giving her an advantage in the main challenge.  Bobby awarded Stacey the win based on the fact that she was the only one out of the six to tell a story during her 60 seconds.

Then, the six walk into a room to find a large stage with a lot of chairs set up.  Their challenge is to make a dish that represents their cooking POV and shows why they belong on the Food Network.  They have an hour to make the dish and then will be given 60 seconds to describe their dish to the crowd.  The crowd is made up of 50 "gastronauts" - which are basically people who eat sophisticated and are adventurous in their eating ways.  After each presentation, Alton will auction off each dish and whoever has the highest bidded dessert will be safe from elimination for the week.  It is also revealed that Stacey's advantage is that her final bid will have $10 added to it.  All the money raised would go to a charity.

My favorite moment of this episode was Rodney's presentation.
His "astronauts" skit was pretty great and you can't tell me
otherwise!  Photo Credit:  Food Network

In the end, the six combined to raise about $1,000 for the charity.  Their dishes roughly sold for $140 a
piece.  Stacey's dish sold the highest and it ended up that she didn't even need the $10 bonus from her advantage.  The judges ultimately decided that Chad and Russell were the bottom two, despite their dishes both selling for $150, which was higher than most of the others.  I can't blame the judges though, as these two did both struggle this week.  Chad ended up being the one eliminated from the competition.  Truly, I never thought I would see the day!

The Review-

The Russell roller coaster continued this week as Russell hit another rough patch.  After the first couple of episodes, I created the "Russell roller coaster" for fun.  I never thought it would actually be a long lasting thing over time!  I credit my psychic ways.  There's not a lot to point out about Russell from this episode though, except maybe the show's focus on him in the kitchen.  I find his ways, of running manically around the kitchen, pretty entertaining.  But sometimes it seems that he steps on the toes of the others.  Come on, Russell, we have to tone that down so we can make it to the finale!  #TeamHannah  Nonetheless, I'm very much expecting Russell to be in the top again next week.

Nikki is getting the golden edit.  She started the season on somewhat shaky, but likable, ground and as the season moves forward, she becomes more likable and her talents begin to shine brighter.  This week we saw her lend Stacey a helping hand when it appeared that Stacey wouldn't finish the Star Challenge on time.  Now that we're at the final six, it's rare to see the others want to help others since it's so close to the end, so it was really nice to see that Nikki isn't letting the competition get to her too much.

With Chad eliminated from the competition, only five remain to compete for the title.  Next week, one of the eliminated will return, though, for a second shot at the crown!  Who will it be?
Original Photo Credit:  Food Network

Other than the fact that I am saddened to see Chad eliminated from the competition, despite the fact that he's on #TeamAustin, I don't have a lot of commentary on this episode.  Compared to many of the other episodes, I found this to be quite the dud.  I liked the idea of the auction, but the rest of the episode was pretty underwhelming.  I'm hoping to see Chad as the one to return from Star Salvation, but only time will tell!