Flipping the bird on TV? Fighting for a pan? Bullying on Chopped Champions'
Tournament? These are just a few of the awkward moments you're about to watch.
Food Network Star is a show about trying to be the next big TV food celebrity, and part of being
famous is keeping your cool around other famous people and not acting like a fangirl. Not every
contestant is up to that task, as this moment from the episode titled Room Service Revenge in season
12 shows. The contestants were asked to cook tableside for Jesse Tyler Ferguson from Modern
Family and Hannah Hart from My Drunk Kitchen. The challenge was supposed to imitate a sophisticated
room service spectacle, but Tyler Ferguson's star power proved overwhelming for two of the cooks.
First, Monterey plated her refined sea bass dish almost completely silently. When Bobby Flay asked
her to tell the judges what she was doing, she snapped back saying quote "be patient."
The judges were stunned. The best part of the whole segment was Jesse Tyler Ferguson's look
of slack-jawed shock. Monterey returned to play a supporting role in the next awkward moment
as she toasted nuts during Ana's presentation, where Ana kept on calling her "nut girl."
The judges tried to laugh it off, but everyone involved looked deeply uncomfortable.
To some people's minds, Robert Irvine is almost like a superhero version of Gordon Ramsay.
Like Ramsay, he's British and prone to shouting, though that habit's been tempered recently,
but Irvine is taller and has bigger muscles,
probably much to Gordon's displeasure. He's a physically intimidating person, which makes it
strange that so many people on the show try to start fights with him. What are they thinking?
The most hilarious example of this happened during the Soup to Nuts Diner episode of
season 5 of Restaurant: Impossible. Irvine had a lot of problems to contend with that week,
temporarily shutting the restaurant down because of an insect infestation
and dealing with a total lack of leadership from the restaurant's management. Big yikes!
But the worst came when Irvine singled out small teenaged dishwasher Andrew
for his bad attitude and decided to dismiss him from the kitchen.
Andrew, who appears to be about a foot shorter than Irvine and at least 100 pounds lighter,
decided to go out swinging, metaphorically speaking. He responded sarcastically to Irvine
and walked out of the restaurant with his middle finger held high.
Irvine got the last laugh, however, telling Andrew quote "that's what little boys do."
"Kids like that we put to bed or send him home, never to come back. He's done."
Chopped is a pressure-cooker environment with high stakes, and sometimes tensions between the
chefs can boil over. In the season 3 episode Judge Knows Best, the competition came down to
Joe Dobias and Joshua Whigham battling it out in the dessert round. Although Joe had out-cooked
Joshua in both previous rounds, he failed to get his cakes on the plate before time ran out.
Judge Marc Murphy asked Joshua if he would let the judges sample Joe's cakes from the pan he
had been cooking them in, but Joshua refused. This clearly infuriated Joe,
as he burst out that he had blown Joshua out of the water in the first two rounds.
Fortunately for Joe, the garnishes he plated contained all the secret basket ingredients,
and the judges enjoyed his flavors despite his disastrous presentation.
After trying to play hardball, Joshua still lost the competition. He attempted to seem gracious
in defeat and congratulated his opponent, but it was obvious the outcome left him seething.
A good rule of thumb in life is to never pick a fight with somebody bigger and stronger than you.
In season 21 of Chopped, fearless grandmother Elda Bielanski threw caution to the wind and
tussled with the much-larger Keith Young over who would get to use a grill pan
to cook their ribeye steaks. The scene devolved into a playground tug-of-war,
with the burlier Keith pulling Elda all over the Chopped set. Elda responded with her own
dirty tricks, trying to bend Keith's fingers to get him to release the pan.
Realizing that Elda was not giving up and that it looked bad for him to push around
an elderly woman, Keith eventually relented and let her have the grill. Yet, he seems to have
had the last laugh. Keith and Elda both made it to the dessert round, where his cake and
ice cream bested her pastry. Still, their fight was definitely one for the books.
There have been many angry business owners in Restaurant: Impossible,
but they don't normally try to shut the show down. That's why it was so shocking in season
5 when Nancy Dupre tried to kick host Robert Irvine and his whole crew out of her restaurant,
Nanny Goat's Cafe & Feed Bin. It had become apparent to Irvine that Nancy's daughter,
Jessica, was to blame for most of this Kilgore, Texas restaurant's struggles.
Yet, Nancy couldn't handle the harsh truth and completely melted down in the middle of filming,
shrieking at the top of her voice for everyone to leave. And boy, was it awkward.
The worst moment in the whole incident was when Nancy screamed at her mother
to quote "shut everything down" while her mom tried to calmly talk sense into
her. After she had cooled down a bit, Nancy allowed filming to continue and the episode
concluded successfully. Irvine's intervention helped save the restaurant. When Food Network
checked in on the business the next year, it was thriving under a new set of owners.
Michelle Karam was one of the biggest personalities on The Next Food Network
Star season 11. Her bold Mediterranean flavors and on-camera charisma took her
deep into that season's competition. In episode 3, she made the judges' jaws drop
by intentionally subverting her normal mom persona with something a little more sultry.
In that episode, Michelle and four other female contestants were asked to create a slimy dish.
They came up with a spinach soup with grilled octopus tentacles, wowing judge Bobby Flay
with their creativity and execution. The five ladies decided to emphasize the slimy aspects
of their dish by jokingly flirting with the judges while they explained their dish.
Michelle leaned into her lusty character, asking judge Geoffrey Zakarian to join her
on a romantic yacht trip. Geoffrey was a little flustered by the attention,
but Michelle moved on to many more episodes. She shocked the judges
again later in the season by quitting the competition to rejoin her family at home.
Maniaci's Italian Bistro in Mohnton, Pennsylvania
dealt with tragedy before calling in the Restaurant: Impossible team. Brothers Tim,
John, and Geoff Maniaci struggled to run the restaurant after their mother's death.
They poured their own money into the struggling restaurant to keep it afloat. They called
in the Restaurant: Impossible crew in season 5 as a last-ditch effort to save their business. Robert
Irvine agreed with the restaurant's staff that the bistro suffered from a lack of clear leadership.
Irvine singled out Tim for being the most deluded, confronting him with customer complaints about
the restaurant's house dressing. Tim, fresh from a drinking session in the dining room,
asked the whole restaurant whether anyone enjoyed the salad dressing.
Not a single person raised their hand. Even Tim's wife told him that she hated
the dressing and that he needed to be less stubborn and to listen more.
After that wake-up call, Irvine was able to introduce some improved organizational
structures and better recipes to the restaurant,
but it was apparently too late to save the business. Food Network Gossip reports that
the Maniaci brothers shut their restaurant down the year after that episode was filmed.
This whole list could be composed entirely of Danushka moments from her three-episode
stint on season 9 of Food Network Star. She announced her vibe right from the beginning,
introducing herself in the first episode saying,
"I'm Danushka, and I want to be [a] Food Network Star or something like that."
She stuck to the same charmless attitude throughout her run,
leaving her competitors and the judges flustered. She regularly insulted her
fellow Food Network Star hopefuls, making fun of Lovely's name, mocking the way Damaris talked,
and accusing Nikki of being boring. Speaking of boring, Danushka claimed to be bored
while competing in a Chopped-style challenge, leaving judge Alex Guarnaschelli speechless.
If we have to pick the most awkward interaction from Danushka's brief reign of terror on the show,
it has to be when she quote "jokingly" said she would take off her shirt to get
an advantage in a challenge. It's safe to say her joke does not land with the judges,
and you can feel their secondhand embarrassment radiating from the screen.
Viet Pham is an accomplished chef and finalist for the James Beard Award,
and so he emerged victorious from his Iron Chef: America battle with Bobby Flay. His head is
filled with an encyclopedic knowledge of food, but throughout season 9 of Food Network Star, he was
often unable to communicate his expertise in front of a camera. His impeccable food skills couldn't
make up for his wooden, awkward performance on video. He was booted from the competition after
a particularly bad showing in the 4th of July Live Challenge episode of Food Network Star.
The challenge in this episode was a live cooking demonstration that featured call-in
questions from viewers. Viet simply couldn't figure out how to juggle everything at once.
A viewer asked him a simple question about appetizers, and Viet went blank. In fact,
he did not answer the question at all and remained quiet for the rest of his
live appearance. It did not make for compelling TV, and it was so clear to
him and everybody else on set that he was not going to be the next Food Network Star.
Sometimes chefs on Chopped seem angry to be competing,
almost as if they didn't know what they were signing up for when they auditioned.
The queen of this kind of whining has to be Rory Philipson, who complained
her way through the entirety of season 15's Viewer's Choice Baskets episode.
"I hate you, viewers."
To be fair to Philipson, Chopped fans tend to let their inner sadists loose when they have
an opportunity to choose ingredients. In the entree round, the chefs had to contend with a
gnarly-looking canned whole chicken. Philipson was able to prepare a perfectly edible-looking plate
of food, but she unleashed her frustration on the judges when they tried to critique her dish.
When Geoffrey Zakarian mentioned that her steak was under-seasoned, Philipson began arguing with
him, saying that she had marinated the steak at the beginning of the round so his complaints were
invalid. The most teeth-grinding part of her showdown with the judges was when Scott Conant
said that the entree was a lot better than the appetizer. Philipson thanked him, assuming he
was complimenting her cooking. Conant snapped back that he was talking about the basket ingredients,
not her food. All she could do in response was to mumble wordlessly.
The dessert round of the first episode of the inaugural Chopped Champions'
Tournament was a shootout between culinary instructor James Gillespie
and restaurateur Wade Burch. The two chefs could not have been more different,
with Burch projecting calm while Gillespie flailed all over the kitchen.
Gillespie spent the entire dessert round talking smack to Burch, attempting to put him off his
game. The trash-talking ended up costing one of the chefs the competition — and it wasn't Burch.
Gillespie ended up distracting himself way more,
burning his sweet potato tarts. The judges were not pleased with his tart pastry and were further
annoyed that Gillespie had let his fondness for schoolyard putdowns overshadow his mission to
cook delicious food. Alex Guarnaschelli served up the knockout punch, saying
"I only talk trash when I know my stuff is perfect."
Gillespie responded that his trash talk was more like innocent banter, to which Guarnachelli
responded by saying quote "just cook your food!" Gillespie was forced to swallow his pride and
congratulate Burch on his victory. When you talk the talk, you need to be able to walk the walk.
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