Hell's Kitchen, episode 5: Local chef meats the moment

WOLFEBORO — In the fifth episode of Hell’s Kitchen, local contestant Nikki Hanna found herself with challenges that were right in her wheelhouse. She took advantage and turned in her strongest performance yet on the elimination-style competition.

The episode opened with a Mexican-themed food truck pulling up in front of the contestants, and Hanna said she immediately had a good feeling about where the episode was heading.

“I was excited, I had never seen a food truck on Hell’s Kitchen before,” Hanna said in an interview on Friday, the day after the episode aired. “I was really pretty stoked about it.”

Hanna, an alumna of Kingswood Regional High School, entered the competition as one of the least experienced contestants. Prior to the filming of the show, her culinary career had consisted only of two years as a line cook at Wolfe’s Tavern in Wolfeboro.

But, she said, she collected a surprising amount of Mexican expertise during those two years.

“At the Wolfe’s Tavern we had ‘Taco Tuesday’ every single Tuesday for years, and that was like my thing. I had to come up with five tacos every week for two years,” Hanna said.

The challenge for the day was to take a common Mexican street food and re-imagine it as a fine dining entree. Hanna teamed up with fellow contestant Syann to make the Red Team’s tacos – but first they had to catch their protein and forage for vegetables.

Celebrity chef and host of the program, Gordon Ramsay, took contestants to a barnyard scene that had been created in the parking lot of the Hell’s Kitchen restaurant. Hanna and Syann wanted to make chicken tacos, so Hanna had to catch a live chicken and place it in their corral, while her partner searched eggs that entitled them access to specific ingredients.

“I can’t say that I had done chicken wrangling before, but I’m from New Hampshire. I wasn’t at all uncomfortable. I just went right in there,” Hanna said.

The two women’s tacos were the best dishes offered by the red team, but a plate of enchiladas served by one of the blue team members was deemed best overall, so the red team’s punishment was to head back to the parking lot and, under the hot Las Vegas sun, care for the livestock and remove any trace of the barnyard. Meanwhile, the blue team was being pampered at a spa.

Again, Hanna’s rural upbringing made her feel right at home with the task.

“I didn’t mind it at all. They want you to be miserable. Obviously I would have preferred to be at the spa, but I was just brushing donkeys and herding cows.” Still, the chores were too much for the California-based private chef, Lauren Lawless, who was filmed wandering around, seeking shade and water breaks while the other team members were engaged with the task.

“It was clear she hadn’t had to do anything like that (before),” Hanna said. “She wasn’t into it, she took as many rest breaks as she could and we were all frustrated with her.” Lawless’ aimlessness transferred into that night’s dinner service at Hell’s Kitchen. However, so did Hanna’s momentum.

In previous dinner services, there had been enough contestants that each station had a team of people assigned to it. However, by the fifth episode, enough cooks and chefs had been sent home that there would be one station worked by just a single pair of hands. For reasons Hanna doesn’t know, Ramsay picked her to fly solo, and on the meat station, one of the most important and, if previous episodes are any guide, most likely to draw Ramsay’s explosive ire.

“I was the first to work solo on any station, and the meat station is kind of a beast,” Hanna said, calling it a “Sink or swim moment for me. I felt like he was putting me to the test.”

If it was a test, Hanna had done the homework. “Any meat that you ate at the (Wolfe’s) Tavern between 2017 and 2019, that was probably meat that I cooked. So I felt very comfortable… I didn’t have any issues, I was doing my thing. I was happy I got to work by myself – I got the chance to shine.”

At the conclusion of the episode, Ramsay didn’t have to send anyone home, because a member of the blue team had quit of his own accord earlier in the show. But the host and chef made it clear that the contestants would have to step up their game if they wanted a shot at the ultimate prize: a job as head chef at the soon-to-open Hell’s Kitchen restaurant in Lake Tahoe.

With each day that passed, Hanna said she grew more confident. However, she was also increasingly aware of how quickly she could be shown the door.

“I was really feeling confident after that dinner service and getting into my groove. I was independent and starting to emerge as a leader on the team,” she said. “But one little slip-up can mean the end.”

Hell’s Kitchen airs Thursday nights at 8 p.m. on FOX. Previous episodes can be streamed via Hulu.