Next Level Chef Episode 7: Next Level Seafood

Last week after a tough elimination the mentors were left with their Top 10. One of these cooks was on the road to winning Next Level Chef, the $250,000 prize and the mentorships that go along with it.

After six weeks, the really good cooks are starting to really stand apart, leaving the chefs who may not quite be there yet in their wake. Reuel, Pyet and Courtney are all leading the pack while Tricia and Angie are starting to feel the pressure.

So finding out that this week would include a double elimination had to play havoc with everyone’s nerves. Even the mentors seemed incredibly worried about seeing their respective teams being whittled down any more.

The chefs were tasked with creating next level dishes using seafood, a protein that can be impossibly hard to deal with. With seafood, you either cook it right or wrong. There is little to no room for error. So making sure you grabbed the right elements off the Ingredient Platform would be key.

Which chefs went home this week on Next Level Chef?

Team Ramsay lucked into landing in the Top Level while Team Blais cooked in the Middle Level. That meant Team Arrington would be cooking in The Basement which in a seafood challenge could be a recipe for a ticket home.

When it came time to judge the dishes, it turned out more chefs missed the mark than hit a home run. Angie had problems due to a lack of familiarity with preparing seafood more then anything else while Zach turned his fried tilapia into a bone dry chicken tender. Meanwhile Jonathan took a risk with a salmon dish that didn’t really pan out and Ae, who made a red snapper, couldn’t give her dish any kind of cohesion.

At the other end of the spectrum was Pyet, who once again impressed the judges with her mahi-mahi tacos and Tricia who, despite dealing with nerves almost every week, cooked a sea bass that impressed.

But both paled when compared to Courtney and her fried catfish and homemade curry sauce, which took best dish. In fact, the home cook from Team Blais has grown in confidence and ability so much that it wouldn’t be a stretch to call her the favorite to win the whole thing.

The three chefs that were sent to Elimination were unsurprisingly Zach, Ae and Jonathan. Which meant that Richard Blais could conceivably send home half his team in one episode. For the Elimination Challenge the chefs had to prepare their best shrimp dish and all three stepped up to the plate.

Despite Jonathan making a solid shrimp and gumbo and Zach cooking an elevated shrimp and brandy dish, it was Ae who avoided going home. She prepared a spicy and flavorful shrimp salad inspired by her Laos heritage that won over both Arrington and Blais.

Now the Top 10 have become the Great 8 and unfortunately for the chefs, everything they knew about the competition was going out the window. Next week Next Level Chef goes from being a team-focused contest to everyone competing individually.

Should make for some fun times at the Ingredient Platform.

What do you think Guilty Eaters? Did the right chefs go home? Do you think Courtney can win it all? Leave a comment below and let us know or join the conversation on our Twitter and Facebook pages.