Aren’t we all.

How confused can one man be by granola?

Each Peach Pair Plum

Having run out of cultures to inflict micro-aggressions against, this week saw the Pairs Challenge twisting the dagger that Simon Rimmer and Tim Lovejoy had already shoved Brunch’s back

Amy and Luca were taking on a Rosti Benedict while Michael and Apl were in charge of torturing whatever secrets they could out of a series of pears and Japanese Souffle Pancakes

Michael was in charge of the recipe and could simply not cope with the fact the instructions didn’t really give strict times or ingredients and given his extremely Shakespearean theatre company style of speech and constant toeing of a panic attack, he looked and sounded a bit like a bamboozled wizard throughout

I genuinely had to look up whether he had played Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit films because the amount of confusion that granola caused him could easily convince me that he had lived in complete isolation in the middle of the woods for far too long – or a bit like he was about to ask you if your hovercraft was full of eels

the granola did however turn out to be the best part of their dishes – which isn’t that big a surprise given the complete and utter immolation of their pancakes

and the fact that as the very concept of maple syrup weighed heavy on Michael’s mind, he started just skipping steps or glossing over important details like the fact Apl wasn’t meant to cut his pears in half

that “We all make mistakes” is hands down my favourite part of the series so far – and again, delivered like a wizard who’d just watched his apprentice accidentally turn an unsuspecting peasant into a frog. Cutting the pears in half wasn’t that big of an issue though, the fact they didn’t then think to halve the cooking time was, as was Michael choosing to boil them at the highest temperature he possibly could for 45 minutes

genuinely unclear as to whether Gregg was talking about the pears or Michael and Apl whose dishes were apparently so apocalyptically bad that they could not be shown in the same shot, never even the vaguest suggestion of a side-by-side comparison lest we all be treated to an oracle’s vision of the eventual heat death of the universe

it’s undoubtedly the worst outcome in a Pairs Challenge but Michael and Apl both seem like genuinely lovely guys and came away from the whole ordeal closer than ever

could you IMAGINE if Michael had been leading Terry Christian through this disaster? There’d have been an aneurysm and a SWAT Team.

Amy was in charge of hers and Luca’s Rosti Benedict recipe and she had a very different leadership style to Michael, which was to basically be as high key horny on main as she possibly could

Amy may have been in charge of the recipe, however Luca was going to backseat drive her through the poaching of the eggs because if there’s one thing he knows, it’s poaching eggs

and bless his heart as he took his eggs out of the water and showed them to Gregg in the hopes he might hang them on the fridge next to Danny Jones’s Macaroni Art

and between their cooperative leadership methods and mutual acceptance that Luca is hot, they ended up with two extremely well made and just about cloned dishes

right down to the identical floppiness of their asparagus

absolutely throbbing sexual chemistry.

Pro Pain Nightmares

This week it was the turn of Luca and Michael to be punished over the burning coals of an indoor barbecue as the two of them were sent to Temper, a restaurant with a simple mission statement

and given the fact chefs who have made fire their entire personality tend to be unbearably awful (I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU CHAOS NIC)

head chef David Lagonell was actually very nice

he didn’t even lose his, for lack of a better word, Temper™ when Michael had to abandon a mound of cheeseburgers because they were overdone

Michael actually coped surprisingly well, although perhaps it’s not that surprising and the arson of his pancakes had bound him forever to the spirits of the flame

Luca however was less familiar with setting things on fire and had to translate the heat of the kitchen in terms that only a Love Island star turned Instagram Influencer ever could

although the kitchen did have much more lax alcohol laws

don’t drink and cook mussels kids

he did eventually stop just about throwing pans of mussels across the kitchen though and by the end of service had earned the respect of David and his barbecue domain

absolutely throbbing sexual chemistry.

Amy and Apl were sent to Hopper, a South Indian and Sri Lankan restaurant owned by potentially the nicest man in the world, Karan Gokani

he was so pleasant and supportive of both Amy and Apl – he had also been nice enough to give them dishes that were relatively simple, I mean most of what Apl was doing was playing a drum solo and conceptualising the next Black Eyed Peas album

and that’s exactly what he was meant to be doing, apparently your tunefulness is paramount to the creation of Kothu Roti

it’s that or Karan is looking to slide into those sweet, sweet Black Eyed Peas royalties cheques.
Other than having to negotiate song rights with both Karan and the BBC, Apl’s only real struggle was the fact he was bleeding Karan’s profit margins dry

do you have any idea how expensive premium spring onions in London are?

Nobody absolutely bombed during this particular set of professional kitchens, but truly Amy absolutely thrived and she didn’t have the easiest dish in the world with the Hoppers

it was simple in that she only really had once thing to do per dish, but she managed to get to grips with the tricky technique very quickly and seemed to be having the time of her life despite burning her fingerprints off

that’s also what Michael says to his pancakes.

Truck Off

Another Food Truck Challenge, another burger as Apl took us to the Philippines by reconstructing a staple of Filipino cuisine, Afritada, as a slider – a staple of American football cuisine (or that’s what every sitcom in the early 2010s has lead me to believe)

John and Gregg were mostly concerned about the fact he was using chicken mince for the patties which can easily dry out (as anyone who has evenly vaguely attempted a new year’s resolution will tell you) but he’d managed to keep them moist in the middle. His chips however were a little overcooked, but given the general trend of handing John a plate of chips that wreaked of deep-fried depression, they were more than happy to potentially risk a filling on his deep-fried woodchips.

The deep-fryers were getting quite the workout and did become a little bit of a battleground as Apl threw chips into them like he was one of the Dam Busters

that’s a 5 minute time-out in the Shame Chimney for you, Apl.
Once Luca had recovered from his second degree burns, he was serving John and Gregg a Cone of Deep-fried Everything™ as he desperately tried to redeem himself in the eyes of fishmongers everywhere after ruining his cod in the last episode

it was at least much more successful this time, Gregg’s only issue was with how greasy it was and really, I don’t know if you can actually complain about that given it’s a Cone of Deep-fried Everything™, if you’re shocked and upset that it’s greasy, that’s on you.

Amy’s fried offering was a plate of Japanese Karaage Chicken with chips, and please remember that Karaage Chicken is Japanese because it’s going to be important in about 2 seconds

it genuinely looks amazing and has absolutely made me crave an almighty take-away so I think we can congratulate her on a job well done. John and Gregg both really loved it and how perfectly she’d cooked the chicken and chips. Then of course John had to go spoil it all by something stupid like…

you could have just said it was nicely spiced chicken and gone, sir.

Lastly we have Michael, who was abstaining from taking part in the Great Deep-fried War of 2023 because he’s much more into open flame combat

his food truck food of choice was a Thai Red Curry, which he had built an entire backstory for

when I first watched the episode I only had half an eye on it and I just heard him mentioning Wimbledon and I truly thought someone was about to out low effort Samantha Fox using an entire hour to deep-fry two funnel cakes by just serving strawberries and cream. He did however make the vegan curry

and my heart broke a little bit when Gregg called it “just vegetables in a flavoured broth” and Michael looked like he was genuinely about to cry

now he’s just a sad bamboozled wizard.

But truly the nail in the coffin for Michael was the fact that following his critique Amy said nothing, whereas after both Apl and Luca’s critiques she just about had to be chained down

Absolutely throbbing sexual chemistry.

A Food Truck Dish Ranking
1. Amy’s Definitely Japanese Karaage Chicken That’s From Japan
2. Luca’s Cone of Deep-fried Everything™
=. All’s Fair in Apl and Fryer Wars
4. Vegetables In A Flavoured Broth™

They could have easily critiqued this group into having another non-elimination, and I think Michael may have been slightly more deserving of it than dragging James Buckley and his Plates of Three Things Only™ kicking and screaming into a quarterfinal, alas Michael Praed was eliminated

we’ll never know just how bamboozled he could have been.

And so, we head in to the last quarterfinal!

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