Food Network Star Season 8 - Episode 9 Recap

This week, the remaining finalists were tasked with doing a 3 minute live cooking demo to a hired audience at the South Beach Food and Wine Festival.  I am guessing the hired audience had to sign a waiver to appear and swear they wouldn't reveal the finalists they saw at the festival.  During their 3 minute cooking demo, they had to present their dish and give cooking tips, but the twist was that each of their presentations would be sabotaged to try to exploit their weaknesses.  No matter what the results, we all knew that someone from Team Giada would be going home to keep the teams even for the next episode.

I think this may have been the first time all season that the contestants were tasked with cooking and talking at the same time (although they didn't do much cooking with only 3 minutes), which is kind of crazy as that is what they will most likely have to do if they have their own show.  All prior challenges have been cooking food, then presenting their dish to the camera, but no cooking and talking at the same time.


Onto the sabotaged presentations:

• Justin Warner is sabotaged by a heckler from the crowd.  Justin handles himself pretty well and offers some witty comebacks to the heckler.  Bob and Susie don't like how when the heckler asked a somewhat normal question, Justin gave a witty comeback rather than answering the question normally.  I could see if a different person asked the questions, but as it was the heckler, I do not see the issue.
• Martie Duncan is sabotaged by all of her ingredients in her parchment paper either not being there or being switched out.  She handles this well and it doesn't seem to faze her, but we all know Martie knows how to talk, so we shouldn't be surprised.
• Nikki Martin had a blender that was not functioning which threw her off quite a bit. I would say she may have had the worst performance, however, since someone from Team Giada was going home, she was lucky to stay safe.
• Michele Ragussis had the time card guy warning her all types of wrong times remaining, which may have been one of the hardest things to overcome.  She stumbled some, but did pretty well considering how harsh this was.  In a shocking twist, Michele made clams and talked about how to catch clams.  Next week, maybe she will share her bearded clam recipe for the finale.
• Yvan Lemoine had his audio go out on him, so he was forced to shout the rest of the presentation, which I am not sure how this plays into his weakness as shouting and getting too excited was one of his weaknesses.  Of course he does well with this obstacle and it seems as if he is not the Team Giada member destined for elimination.
• Martita Jara had her main ingredient of the dish, a poblano pepper, switched out for a smaller pepper.  When she realized this, she stumbled quite a bit and finished her presentation 30 seconds early again, but this time she was able to ramble for the last 30 seconds to fill the dead air time.  She seemed destined for the bottom.
• Phillip Ippy Aiona had in my opinion, the hardest obstacle to overcome.  He had people talking throughout his presentation and had people getting up and leaving.  He handled it the best I think someone could, but because this sabotage was so harsh, it made him look worse than some other contestants. 

With the presentations over, Food Network decided this week, they would pick the bottom* 2 people to go against each other for elimination.  Nikki obviously should have been in the bottom as her presentation was one of the worst ones and has been in the bottom multiple times, but Bobby's team couldn't have just one contestant left, so Ippy was put up against Martita to see who goes home. To Nikki's defense, the Food Network can pretty much edit anybody's performance to make them look good or bad, so who knows if it was editing that made it appear that way.

In what happens on all Food Network shows currently on air, Ippy and Martita have to uncover an ingredient that is covered and immediately talk about this ingredient for 60 seconds.  The ingredient was oranges, and Ippy talks about tangerines and 'bug juice.'  Martita rambles on about all the different uses for oranges in drinks and in cooking and gives us another beso at the end.  She impresses the judges later on at the elimination table when she talks about her dad being an orange farmer, but she seems to be better talking to people rather than in front of the camera.  After deliberation, Martita Jara is eliminated from the contest, and Ippy makes it to the final 6.

Next week each team will lose a member and the remaining 3 contestants will shoot their pilot episode produced by their mentor.  America will then vote on who they think should be the Next Food Network Star.  I would say the favorites to stay would be Yvan from Team Giada, Justin from Team Alton, and Michele from Team Bobby barring any major setbacks.  Who do you think the final 3 will be?

Images Courtesy Foodnetwork.com