Hell's Kitchen, episode 3: Local cook dodges elimination again

WOLFEBORO — Local cook Nikki Hanna saw a bounce-back effort during the third episode of Hell’s Kitchen, but could have seen herself considered for elimination anyway.

Hanna, a Kingswood High School graduate whose only culinary experience prior to the filming of FOX’s long-running cooking competition show was two years she spent as a line cook at Wolfe’s Tavern in Wolfeboro, came into the contest with an inexperience handicap. She tripped up in the second episode, when she didn’t know she needed to remove the so-called “vein” from a shrimp before serving it to celebrity chef and host of the show, Gordon Ramsay. Later in that episode, the stress of the day broke her composure, and Ramsay had to pull Hanna and the rest of her teammates into the walk-in cooler to see if she could pull herself together, which she did.

By comparison, the third episode went swimmingly, with the first challenge being a test of whether the contestants could whip up a classic caesar salad.

Speaking by telephone on Friday, after the Thursday night airing of the episode, Hanna said she was confident as soon as she knew what the challenge would be, since she had prepared hundreds of caesars at Wolfe’s Tavern.

“I’ve got this in the bag, man, I can do this,” she said she was thinking at the time. Of course, no Hell’s Kitchen challenge could be so straightforward, so Ramsay told the contestants that they would have to deliver their finished salads to him via an electric scooter. Speaking to the camera, Hanna said that was icing on the cake for her.

“Yaaas!” she said, adding that she loves any kind of motorized vehicles. “Vroom vroom, let’s go!”

Hanna’s red team members proved as adept and efficient as she, and they won the challenge over the men on the blue team. Their reward was a day of playing in the desert outside of Las Vegas, where the season was filmed, while the blue team’s punishment was to peel hundreds of hard-boiled quail eggs.

It was a hot day in the desert, and upon returning to the restaurant, one of the red team members went into emotional distress. Hanna had been Fabiola’s passenger during their adventurous day of driving dune buggies through the sand, and she figured it was a combination of stress from the competition and heat that caused her to exhibit symptoms similar to a panic attack. Fabiola, after being assessed by a medical team member, was able to rejoin the competition in time for that night’s dinner service, when it became clear that she was still unfocused.

Fabiola was running the pizza station at Hell’s Kitchen Restaurant that night, and sent out pizzas that were undercooked, then burnt, drawing Ramsay's sharp criticism. She wasn’t the only problem in the red team kitchen, as Jordan and Lauren, who were on the meat station, were sending dishes up to Ramsay’s scrutiny before all of the components were on the plate.

Frustrated with their performance, Ramsay sent the red team out of the kitchen and told them to nominate two of their team members for elimination, based on that night’s service.

Hanna suggested Lauren for the first nominee, and the rest of the team agreed. Then Jordan swung the spotlight on Hanna, catching her off-guard by suggesting she should be sent home.

“I have no effing idea what’s going on,” a shocked Hanna told the camera. The majority of the red team followed Jordan’s lead, making her the second nominee.

When they returned to Ramsay, though, Hanna found that she wasn’t the only one incredulous about her nomination.

“What!? What has she done wrong tonight?” Ramsay asked. “Nikki, do you think that’s fair?”

“Not particularly, chef,” Hanna replied.

“How much better was Nikki tonight than last night?” he asked her team. Syann, another contestant, answered, “A thousand percent better, chef.”

“Hell’s Kitchen is a journey, it’s not what you come in here with, it’s what you do. When I ask you to give me two nominees, I expect you to take this seriously. I’m not too sure what kitchen you were in tonight, but from where I was standing, you have the wrong two.” Ramsay then called up Fabiola and Jordan, and told the former to turn in her chef’s jacket.

Speaking after the episode aired, Hanna said she started the third day of the contest feeling like she had something to prove, and felt she had succeeded in doing so. She said she felt empathy for Fabiola, as Hanna had broken down similarly just one day prior, so didn’t want to nominate her. As to why the team turned on her, Hanna said she suspects that they didn’t yet know what she was made of.

“I don’t think it was malice,” Hanna said. Instead, she pointed to the grand prize of the competition, to lead the kitchen at a brand-new Hell’s Kitchen Restaurant. “I think it was more their fear that I wouldn’t be up to the task of taking the head chef job.”

Also, she said she didn’t see Ramsay’s action as protecting her, personally.

“I feel like he was protecting the integrity of the competition,” Hanna said. She has since learned that when Ramsay provides a direction, he expects contestants to do exactly what he asked, and exactly how he asks it to be done. He asked for the two contestants most responsible for the team’s failure that night, and that night, it wasn’t Hanna.

It was a long week waiting for that episode, Hanna said, knowing that the last thing that people saw was her breaking down during a dinner service.

“I see this as the beginning of my redemption, because I felt so strongly about the second episode being the first dinner service, and concern that the viewers are going to see me as the weak link of the team,” she said. “Finally getting past this episode is a relief.”

Hell’s Kitchen airs on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. on FOX, and past episodes are available for streaming on Hulu.