Dinner Impossible serves up Hors D’oeuvres for a Hollywood Movie

03/25/2007

So, last week’s Dinner Impossible was all about a movie preview and after party. Irvine found himself in a makeshift kitchen - probably one of the worst setups he’s used - along with some help from one of the George’s along with this new guy we’ve seen in the last two episodes - another sous chef. I think his name is Barry or something. Anyway, this new Sous Chef has a long way to go to actually help Irvine - he got his ass reamed throughout the entire episode. Actually, it seemed quite excessive, really. Barry, who was sent to the local fish monger, picked up a few pounds of shrimp with the head on - and throughout the entire episode, Irvine was reaming him for wasting time with having to clean those. In the end though, they had a few assistants from the theater throwing the afterparty that helped Barry get the shrimp all squared away.

Other than that, Irvine was tasked with creating Hors D’oeuvres for 350 people, including one guy who was a vegetarian; This meant Irvine had to come up with at least three different Hors D’oeuvres for this guy - and in addition, he also had to make a drink for him, and the only thing the guy drank, according to him, was Vodka. So, he had to create a drink for this guy.

Anyway, there were tremendous odds, and now having seen in the past that Irvine can in fact, fail, he succeeded in this extremely difficult series of events. It was an entertaining episode, but only so much can go wrong before you actually want to throw your hands up in frustration. I mean, he burned the sushi rice twice, Barry screwed up, they were running behind, and I don’t think he got everything he wanted to done. Entertainment, but man, I would be pissed if I were Irvine ;-)



Dinner:Impossible - Oh noes! Robert Irvine fails! :-o

03/12/2007

Chef Irvine, how?! That totally wasn’t fair! Dinner: Impossible’s Chef Irvine failed at the Cullinary Institute of America. His challenge? Present 14 dishes to chef’s specializing in their field of cuisine, with 6 student chef’s at the CIA giving him a hand.

Now, in all reality, this was probably a *very* tough challenge. 7 chefs at CIA created 7 dishes that Irvine got to taste, and then had to recreate based on taste alone. I know I wouldn’t be able to do that. Irvine, on the other hand, has years of experience that I don’t have with food ;-) So, putting him against me would be a totally unfair advantage.

In addition to those seven dishes, Irvine had to create 7 new unique dishes of his own. This wasn’t nearly as tough, I don’t think, but with the help that he got from the student chefs, he didn’t meet his objective :-\

This episode of Dinner Impossible was okay - Chef Irvine certainly has the personality, the knowhow, and the presence to pull off even a slow episode of Dinner Impossible. The major thing that frustrated me was the apparent lack of caring about some of the dishes that the students had. One student named Alex did an incredible job at helping Irvine - the other students? Either they didn’t do squat by comparison (which would probably be the reason Irvine failed to get it all done) or the production of the show cast a dim light on their hard work. One of the students took 7 hours to make meatballs. Seven hours. They better taste damn good for that amount of time! Now, before I get flak about how they’re students and learning and so that’s okay to spend that much time on something, let me say this: Irvine repeatedly asked (many many times) how the chef’s were doing with their part of the meal. They All, always said they were doing fine. He even said on the show that if they weren’t going to make it, to let him know. And, at the end, things weren’t done. I don’t know about you, but why would you talk out your ass to someone like Irvine? I know I wouldn’t. The man needs to get things done!



Dinner: Impossible on a Remote Island

03/05/2007
survivor.jpg

So, Robert Irvine was at it again in last week’s Dinner:Impossible. This time, he’s on an island in the Bahamas, serving up dinner to 20 VIP guests. His team? Two guest sous chefs. And Smiling Pat - a Bohemian woman with an enormous set of teeth - hence the name Smiling Pat ;-)Robert is dropped off on the island with a pack of matches. That’s it. What’s he have to cook? Well, he’s got a few crates that were given to him - filled with goat meat, plantains and other random fruit. And fishing line.

This is where we should go back to the guest Sous Chefs. They’re both survivor winners. I don’t watch Survivor, so I could care less about either of them. One was the winner of Survivor Africa - some guy named Ethan. The other Survior was some girl, who really didn’t have a brain or a reason to be on the show at all. I don’t think she actually *did* anything aside from drink Pat’s “fire in the hole” drink and talk nonstop, making the dumbest statements about anything that came to her mind. But, she must know something because she won survivor and I haven’t, right? ;-p

Anyway, Lack of help aside, Irvine was up against a real challenge: Make dinner for twenty VIP guests with only two pots, some fruit, goat meat, Smiling Pat and two formr Survivors. Luckily, the male Survivor spent a few hours fishing, but came up with little for Irvine to cook. In the end, Ethan had some Conks, and managed a handful of Lobsters to cook for dinner. How Irvine managed to get dinner for those people completed is still somewhat of a mystery to me, but he did it ;-) He kept mentioning how he thought that was the one that was going to fail. That, coupled with the shots of Irvine falling on the sandy beaches of some remote island also made me think that this was the one that he wasn’t going to pull off. But, he did. It was entertaining :-)