Hell's Kitchen, episode 12: End of the line for local cook, start of something new

WOLFEBORO — It took 12 episodes, but local contestant Nicole “Nikki” Hanna’s run on the 19th season of Hell’s Kitchen finally came to an end. She was eliminated during Thursday's grueling “Black Jacket” episode, when the remaining six chefs break out of the Red and Blue Team jackets to form one Black Team for the final run of episodes.

Only five black jackets were available, though, and the 12th episode featured a series of challenges to see which of the six remaining contestants would earn a wardrobe change. In each of the challenges, Hanna just barely missed the bull’s-eye, and watched as the jackets, one by one, were awarded to other contestants until there were none left.

She didn’t leave empty handed, though, as host and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay offered her a valuable consolation prize to show the impression that she had made on him.

“I’m literally tingling, I have butterflies in my stomach, I am so excited,” Hanna told the camera she was feeling when the black jackets were revealed. “I’m ready to get this black jacket or die trying.”

Challenge 1, taste it, now make it

The black jacket episode is historically filled with some of the most challenging tests, and the 19th season’s winnowing proved no different. The first two jackets were awarded to the contestants who could most faithfully recreate a signature Ramsay dish, using only their palates to guide them. Ramsay presented contestants with a dish, including a piece of white fish, surrounded by drops of two different purees, with a simple green salad under the fish and a different one on top.

Hanna correctly identified the fish as a pan-seared cod, and the purees as cauliflower and butternut squash, vaulting her into the top three. But another chef, MaryLou, added endives to the plate, and Declan added shallots – both of which were missing from Hanna’s plate – so they moved on.

That set a pattern that kept repeating through the episode: Hanna did very well, but not quite well enough to get one of the black jackets available at the end of each challenge.

“I was like an inch away the entire time, I was so frustrated,” Hanna said in a telephone interview on Friday, the day after the 12th episode aired.

Challenge 2, mystery briefcase

This challenge presented the four remaining contestants with a blind selection of six available briefcases, each filled with an assortment of ingredients they’d have to combine into a dish worthy of a black jacket.

Being that Hanna came closest in the previous challenge, Ramsay let her have first pick. She ended up with a briefcase that was right in the wheelhouse of a New England cook: leeks, maitake mushrooms, carrots and tomatoes, meyer lemon, and lobster.

“Oh my gosh, I have a smorgasbord of beautiful ingredients and I’m so happy with my selection,” Hanna told the camera.

In her excitement, though, she left the lobster in the pot a minute too long, leaving the tail overcooked. She sought to paper over that by chopping the tail meat and incorporating it into some polenta, and placing the claw meat on top. Ramsay liked the flavors, but criticized her dish for failing to use the tail as the “hero” of the plate. Two other chefs were awarded black jackets instead, leaving Hanna and one other contestant, Amber, to go head-to-head for the last one.

Challenge 3, definitive dish

The final challenge revealed a defining detail about Hanna’s past. Ramsay displayed a childhood photograph from each contestant’s past, and Hanna’s showed a little girl in a dress, intently decorating a cupcake. He asked her to explain what was going on.

“I was making cupcakes on Halloween in my ballerina costume,” Hanna said, then continued. “That photo was actually taken in a homeless shelter that we lived in. My first relationship with food was a tumultuous relationship because it was scarce. In the beginning, we didn’t really have a home until I was 10, 11 years old, so I think that the importance of food was very prominent in the beginning of my life, and it just grew and grew, until one day, it just connected.”

“And look at you now,” Ramsay said.

“Yes, chef, I’m very proud of myself,” Hanna added.

The challenge for Hanna and her competitor was to cook a dish that was rooted in their past, but which reached toward their future. Amber, whose culinary mind was opened by a trip to France, cooked an homage to boeuf bourguignon. Hanna recalled when she, her siblings and her mother fed themselves on boxed potatoes and canned wax beans, night after night.

Those days are an elemental part of who she is today, she said. She dedicated the meal she prepared – scalloped potatoes, green beans, and herb and breadcrumb coated pork chops – to the woman who struggled to provide for young Hanna’s basic needs, and to establish a more secure future for her family.

“I didn’t appreciate it as a kid, but I do now, so this one’s for you, Mama. Every single piece is for you.”

Amber’s beef dish won the final black coat, but Hanna achieved a different kind of victory: finding a soft spot in the heart of of the culinary world’s most bombastic characters.

“Nikki, you may not have earned a black jacket, but you have earned my respect,” Ramsay said. “You are the most improved chef that I have ever witnessed in the history of this competition. So I will personally fly you to any of my restaurants around the world to stage for as long as you’d like. The world, young lady, is your oyster.”

A “stage” is a term for an internship-like position, in which a budding cook can learn at the elbow of an established chef.

Challenge 4, what comes next

Hanna, who was 25 when the season was filmed in 2018, had only two years of experience as a line cook at Wolfe’s Tavern in Wolfeboro when she was invited to participate in Hell’s Kitchen, and she’s had to keep mum about the details and outcomes of each episode until they’ve aired. She also has had to wait until now to decide how she’s going to use the opportunity provided by Ramsay – and now she is going to wait a bit longer until the pandemic resolves.

A Kingswood Regional High School graduate, Hanna is currently living in New York City and working across the river in Montclair, New Jersey, in a hotel restaurant run by Amber Lancaster, who was her sometimes rival in Hell’s Kitchen.

In a telephone interview, Hanna expounded upon the early years of her life.

“Before we moved to New Hampshire, things were kind of crazy,” she said. She was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and she, her older sister and younger brother, along with their mother, didn’t have secure housing for her childhood. They were in and out of shelters, briefly held apartments, slept in a tent for a period and spent time in the foster care system, before finding stability in Ossipee.

“It was chaotic for a bit. I didn’t realize anything was off because I was a kid, but when I look back, I realize that was not normal,” Hanna said. Adjusting to that stability was a challenge for her, because unpredictability and abrupt change was all she had known in her life to that point. But, once she got to middle and high school, she said she began to form a sense of herself and what she wanted in life.

“I’m going to be successful,” is what she said she would answer when adults asked about her future. And she had a sharpened set of tools to use: grit, determination, adaptability, fearlessness. She knew nothing would be harder or scarier than what she had already faced down as a girl. “I think a lot of that is due to those experiences from my childhood,” she said.

Hell’s Kitchen proved to be another defining experience, something that many, including her competitors, thought she didn’t have the prerequisites for, but something which only served to further prove her mettle. And, something from which she emerged even stronger.

When Hanna was dismissed from the show, she got to keep her set of high-end chef’s knives, her Hell’s Kitchen chef’s coat – which contestants normally have to turn in when they leave – and there was no burning of her portrait, which is usually how Hell’s Kitchen puts an exclamation mark on a contestant’s elimination.

“Hell’s Kitchen gave me everything that I currently have, to be honest. And mostly it’s in intangibles,” Hanna said. Ramsay’s validation focused her on her career and only underlined her desire to be an executive chef with full creative control. Her Red Team members – originally made up of the female contestants – inspired her to launch her own company, Yellowjacket, which creates elegant and functional chef wear for women.

The show also gave her an international platform and a new batch of fans, which pleased the original Nikki Hanna fan.

“I am Nikki’s biggest cheerleader, the president of her fan club,” said Katrina Brewster, Nikki’s mother. Brewster said Hanna used to talk about operating a restaurant inside of a large hotel someday, but after high school took a job working with people who had suffered traumatic brain injuries. Hanna, ever fearless, made a name for herself by standing with patients, some more than twice her size, even when they were having a crisis. She could have gone far in that career, Brewster said, but then she took a job as a line cook at a pub in town, and that was that.

“I hope that she gets to realize her dream and have her own restaurant,” Brewster said. “Now that she’s in the business, she has mentioned that she wants to have a smaller place where she can experiment, use local ingredients, where people can come to hang out and have fun, try interesting food. That’s what I want for her, I want her to realize her dream,” Brewster said.

“She embraces everything fully in her life. She’s an amazing girl, and I’m so proud to be her mother. I don’t know how I got so lucky.”

Hell’s Kitchen airs on Thursday nights at 8 on FOX. Past episodes are available for streaming via Hulu.