The Lisa Faulkner Eating Horrible Shellfish Cinematic Universe expands.

Prawn Toast everywhere, I am so sorry.

A Two Course Race

As is apparently mandatory within the union of John Torode and Lisa Faulkner, this was her week to show up and be subjected to some of the most questionable food one could possibly conceive – she never manages to hide the fear in her eyes

a task she was having to do alongside Mica Ven who, legend has it, is still having nightmares about deboning mackerel under a gazebo

and Danny Jones who they are using this show as some sort of sensory toy to distract him from asking where his Strictly invite is

although truly I don’t know if anyone was gagging for an invite this year and we only actually have a full cast via entrapment clauses. ROLL ON THE WEIRD VIBES ANNIVERSARY SERIES!

Vito was kicking things off which was probably a mistake given it was only downhill from here. Or in the case of Dom a disturbing venture into a sort of culinary Upside Down. But for now, and only for now, Lisa Faulkner was safe from disturbing seafood as Vito started his Amalfi Coast themed menu by wafting into the room in a cloud of limoncello

and serving a Chicken Scallopini with wild mushrooms and more lemon than Kim Woodburn could’ve got through in a lifetime of How Clean Is Your House?

it does feel like it could’ve used some sort of sauteed potato to make it look a little more generous and he definitely had the time to do it because 80% of his dessert was just a shot of limoncello

the actual dessert is a mixture of lemon juice, cream and mint sugar which looks much nicer than it had any right to look

I read The Ugly Duckling as a child and decided it does not apply.
More specifically the dessert is a Crema di Limone, or if you’re Danny Jones and failing every step of Duolingo’s basic Italian Course, “Creamer die Lymon”. I don’t remember where my inexplicable grudge with Danny Jones started but I seem to remember it involving cottage pie?

Next up was Dom, and Lisa Faulkner knew she was once again in for a Questionable Seafood Waterboarding the moment she read the description of Dom’s starter

and she went full confused maths lady as she tried to deduce how on earth one could possibly make prawns pinker

the answer to this conundrum: freeze-dried dragonfruit which certainly threw the prawns all the way back beyond Barbie Summer and somewhere into Tubby Custard territory

unfortunately, Dom forgot to account for the fact that once cooked colourings like this tend to dull down so the attempted Pink Prawns were a distinctly upsetting shade known as Summer Fizz

Lovely for a Laurence Llewelyn Bowen designed living room in which the theme is “The Terracotta Army on a Tuscan Vacation”. Less lovely for Prawn Toast.

A baffled silence descended upon the entire room as Dom set his horrible little prawn pate burgers down and it only got worse as every morsel took Lisa Faulkner several degrees further away from prawns and closer to an existential crisis

I’ve never seen a plate of food at this stage of the competition being treated so much like a Bush Tucker Trial

and yet while the guest judges sniffed and poked it like there might be a surprise kangaroo anus centre, John loved it

and Gregg was filled with a deep all-consuming Eldritch compulsion to eat it all despite knowing better

these two men are not ok. AND I DIDN’T EVEN GET TO THE CREAMY SWEET CHILLI DIPPING SAUCE

this is every single one of my very specific food triggers in one tiny bowl. A deeply cursed plate of food. Phenomenal stuff, Dominic.

Dom was continuing his experimentation with colour in his main course. It was inarguably more successful purely on account of it not being laced with enough exotic fruit to keep a yuppy juice bar going for 3 weeks

we’ve seen blue rice before – it famously adds nothing to the plate except making it look a little bit like you’re trying to win 5 points on Taskmaster

but the actual Bang Bang Chicken portion of the plate of food was very successful, although I’m not sure everyone really trusted their opinion or if they were suffering the after effects of prawn toast trauma

is it good-good, or just good by adjacency?

After Dom’s prawn toasts I wouldn’t be surprised if Danny, Mica and Lisa never wanted to look at prawns ever again. Unfortunately for them, here comes Mutya’s starter and it has even more tropical fruit!

it is a little bit too simple and not particularly special but nobody really wanted to say anything too negative because they were at least comforted by the fact they knew they were actually eating prawns this time. This good will would not last for Mutya’s food as everyone was very disappointed with her salmon, rice and half-hearted shrug of a side salad

aside from the fresh out the bag salad which was Gregg’s mortal enemy on sight

the most glaring issue is the fact Mutya was trying to pass off the glaze she’d cooked the salmon in off as a sauce which is just fundamentally not what a glaze is.

A Two Course Menu Dish Ranking:
1. Barely Clinging To The Rocks of Sanity on the Amalfi Coast
2. Dom’s Bang Bang Colour Theory
3. Prawns and Fruit (Tone Indicator: minorly derogatory)
4. You Really Don’t Win Friends With Salad
5. Dom’s Prawn and Fruit Sandwich

I would have bet any money that the moment Lisa Faulkner began running around the studio screaming “IT DOESN’T TASTE OF PRAWNS! WHY DOESN’T IT TASTE OF PRAWNS!?” like a madwoman in a Victorian gothic horror (she’s tasted the Yellow Wallpaper) it was curtains for Dom. And it probably should have been. It’s been awhile since someone has cooked up as malevolent an entity as that prawn toast. However, overcooked salmon and a bag of poorly washed summer salad was deemed the worst crime

“Say anything but smoke. Say anything but smoke. Say anything but smoke.”

And so, we have all our semi-finalists who are contractually obligated to return to judge in the future