My Kitchen Rules Recap: The Straw That Breaks The Chicken’s Shark

Previously on My Kitchen Rules: Josh and Austin are cocks. Everyone got that? Good.

Tonight on My Kitchen Rules, it’s the turn of Ibby and Romel, the team that Josh and Austin hate — according to them because Ibby lied about owning restaurants, but in reality because their creepy mutant home school taught them that gay people are married to Satan.

Will the fact that Ibby knows the bank account details of several chefs prove to be an advantage? Will Romel slap Ibby’s face for using wire hangers?

“I met Ibby on the Sydney social scene,” says Romel, which means they met while climbing the Harbour Bridge, as most Sydney couples do. Ibby is fairly young to own three restaurants, but then it’s pretty easy to build up a portfolio in Sydney where property prices are famously low.

Things get weird early when a strange little man arrives at the house. It’s confusing, but then we discover he’s an interior designer, hired to design the interior. Why has no other team ever thought of this? Is it because other teams have frequently been normal human beings?

The strange little man gets busy in the dining room while Ibby and Romel drive to Coles, a place they have almost certainly never before been in their lives. On the drive they discuss the target that is on their backs due to Ibby having talked to a cook more often than most people would talk to cooks.

“We feel they’re hiding something,” says Josh, because his parents taught him that everyone is hiding something, be it cooking ability, sadomasochism, or poisons in vaccines.

At Coles Ibby and Romel, looking incredibly comfortable, have to touch working class products. Romel is in charge of the shopping list, explaining that he has experience as a manager, which has taught him sophisticated professional techniques like ticking things off when you get them. Watch out, non-managerial shoppers! The entree is lamb shawarma, made famous by the Avengers.

The main is snapper, made famous by Led Zeppelin. Off they go to the fish shop. Once the fish is bought, Romel ticks it off, with the breathtaking skill we’ve come to know so well.

The dessert is milk pudding, but obviously it’s not called milk pudding, it’s called some other words that weren’t on the screen for long enough. Romel ticks off the ingredients at the Lebanese grocery store, drawing an admiring crowd that gasps in disbelief at the grace of his ticks.

Back at home, Ibby and Romel unroll their many many knives, in the manner of TV’s Dexter. Who will be meeting the death they deserve at the hands of these two tonight? I think we know the answer.

It is now time for the far too long preparation segment of the show which reminds us that this season the episodes are two hours long as part of Seven’s “We Will Kick You Till You Bleed” promotion. This will be followed by the far too long talking bullshit at the table segment, before, sometime around midnight, entree is served.

Romel tells Ibby that they must be super-prepared and know their roles. Ibby’s role is to tell Romel how to cook and Romel’s role is to book the models for the photoshoots.

We have some annoying flashbacks to Josh and Austin being annoying. Then cut to Josh and Austin being annoying in the present.

They’re putting camel milk in the dessert, which is a bold and disgusting move.

Ibby is giving a literal play-by-play commentary of every single movement he makes, which I’m sure is because the producer told him he had to, but dear god it is awful to listen to.

“Food is not about rushing, food is about let the flavours develop on their own,” says Ibby, incorrectly. Food is about putting the flavours in yourself: if you leave food to develop flavours on their own everything will taste like dirt.

While they cook, Ibby and Romel discuss Josh and Austin. Ibby thinks Josh and Austin will be honest, while Romel thinks Josh and Austin will be complete shits. Cut to Josh and Austin being complete shits. “The food we’ll be having will be made by PROFESSIONALS!” Josh says in that irritating half-accent he’s got, while his greasy little troll sidekick smiles and stares straight ahead with his dead Pearl-Jam’s-Jeremy eyes.

Back in the kitchen Ibby and Romel have broken something. Their commitment to each other? No, it’s a little…thing. I don’t know. I think the camel milk is ruined. No, it’s a piece of plastic in the tahini dressing. Which traditionally is not part of the dish. Suddenly Romel has a stunning brainwave: strain it! It’s hard to know how he came up with such a left-field idea.

Here come the guests. “Tonight is gonna be just smashed out of the water,” says Josh, because when you are homeschooled you don’t learn actual sayings. I guess being smashed out of the water is what happens when you put a shark into the chicken’s hen. For more of Josh’s wisdom, buy Josh’s Big Book Of Incomprehensible Horseshit.

The doorbell rings. Josh and Austin shake hands, call Ibby a snake and make fun of his accent. The guests walk into the dining room and are stunned by the elaborate decor, apart from the two shitheads who would rather be at McDonald’s.

Josh makes a toast. Karito pulls a face like someone who…well, like someone who is in the same room as Josh, really. Everyone talks about how fancy everything is. The couple from the country can’t believe it: the chandelier is more expensive than all of their utes put together.

In the kitchen…oh who cares.

Here come Pete and Manu. “I want real authentic Middle Eastern food,” says Pete, lying: what he actually wants is a horse femur to suck the marrow out of and a plastic bag of rabbit blood to drink.

As Pete and Manu sit down, we cut quickly to Blake having a small seizure, then back to the dining room. Ibby and Romel tell Manu and Pete what’s for dinner. Manu asks whether they are planning to cook well. Ibby and Romel say that yes that is the plan. Ibby wants to prove that Middle Eastern food is better than Peruvian food. Andy retains her belief that Peruvian food is the best food in the world, and the producers continue to believe conversations like this are entertaining.

Ibby and Romel tell the table that they hired a designer to decorate the room. This causes Josh and Austin to be a couple of total fuckwits. “Sow the seed and let it grow,” Josh whispers to Austin, which is confusing because that’s how their parents described sexual intercourse. Nobody else gives a shit that Ibby and Romel hired a designer, because they are not total fuckwits. “If they hired someone to do all this, what’s to stop them hiring a caterer?” asks Austin, to which the answer is, “the TV cameras, you dicknose”. “Does nobody else think they’re being dishonest?” he asks, an accusation which is hard to sustain against people who told them all exactly what they did without having to.

In the kitchen, the lamb is finished, if that’s the kind of thing you’re interested in. “There’ll definitely be some nervous people around the table, especially Andy and Ruby,” says Romel, even though Andy and Ruby are definitely going through to the next round no matter what Ibby and Romel score, so there’s no reason to be nervous at all.

Josh and Austin keep on trying to get everyone to believe that Ibby and Romel are cheating. Everyone is sick of these little bastards. Lesley asks them what they want to happen to Ibby and Romel. Josh refuses to answer because he doesn’t know, he’s just a gum-flapping little knobweasel.

Entree is served. It looks great, unless it’s not supposed to look like that, in which case it looks terrible. Andy and Ruby are wowed by Ibby and Romel’s ability to carry three plates at once — something Peruvians have yet to develop the technology for. Josh and Austin think the entree looks gross because there are no chips.

The judges taste. There is an ad break. The MKR contestants are already doing ads god help us.

“Have you tried it?” asks Manu. They did not. “What a shame, because you would have realised how good it is,” says Manu, getting an erection from his manipulation of their emotions.

“Perfect in every way,” says Pete, while Josh chews a hole through his own cheek.

“It’s just delicious,” Jodie-Anne sobs, never having known love like this. Meanwhile, Josh whispers to Austin that Ibby and Romel deliberately made perfect food that “looked like trash” to trick everyone. “Sneaky little b*******” say the subtitles. Honestly these guys are just fucks.

Yet at least when Josh tastes good food he admits it’s good. Andy, on the other hand, is incapable of giving anyone else any credit for anything. “All I could taste was garlic,” she snivels, sneering at the idea of serving something that isn’t guinea pig.

The guests discuss the main. Josh asks what it is. They tell him it’s rice. He asks if it’s like Andy and Ruby’s rice. “Yep,” says Andy, but she says it to the camera in the post-dinner interview, so Josh never finds out.

Back in the kitchen, Ibby makes a startling revelation to Romel: he does not want to stuff this up. Romel had no idea Ibby felt this way, and must take some time to think about how he feels. Sadly at this point Manu comes into the kitchen, mistaking it for the toilet. He tells Ibby and Romel that their sous-vide temperature is too high. They reel in horror. Manu leaves. Ibby and Romel decide to ignore Manu’s advice because what the fuck does he know?

Ibby and Romel reach a difficult decision: how you cook the fish is important. They taste the fish they cooked and decide that the fish has been cooked in the manner of a fish that has been cooked. It is now time to cook the rice in the manner of cooked rice. This cooking thing is amazingly riveting television.

In the dining room, Amanda says that Josh is good-looking, which causes Josh’s jaw to dislocate and his pants to become irrevocably soiled. Karito makes the point that it doesn’t matter how good-looking Josh is, he’s very unattractive because he’s a horrible person. Which is true. She also says that Austin is better-looking than Josh. Which is NOT true, unless you’re turned on by school shooters.

Meanwhile Ibby’s fish is ready but his rice isn’t ready. This is a terrible catastrophe because the fish is in a plastic bag and if not served immediately will start laying eggs. They need to find a solution, and quickly. The solution is to travel back in time, which is problematic.

In the dining room, Jodie-Anne tells everyone how it feels to be a pathetic failure who isn’t good at anything. She starts to cry as she describes what a beautiful thing it is to have a dining room full of people who feel sorry for you. “Everyone here is having a go,” she sobs. “Which makes us all winners,” says Lesley incorrectly. Josh doesn’t understand Jodie-Anne’s emotions, or any emotions really, because he is a sociopath who snaps the necks of small marsupials to achieve sexual release.

Back in the kitchen Ibby and Romel are still struggling with their rice. They don’t know what’s gone wrong. Probably it’s the special chip that MKR producers insert into all appliances used on the show: the one that ruins food.

In the dining room, Josh and Austin continue to be baffled by these things you humans call “feelings” while everyone is entertained by Lesley’s drunken exhibitionism. “She has seen things, she has done things, and she is way too old for that,” says Austin, who has neither seen nor done anything.

Finally the rice is ready and the fish is presumably several hours overcooked. However, Ibby and Romel have no choice but to serve what they’ve got. Well, that’s not quite true: they could kill themselves, or just run screaming into the night. But they’re too gutless for that so they just serve it.

Josh notes that Ibby and Romel look like they’ve failed, but that “their failure smells like roses”. Which should please him, because roses taste revolting.

As the judges eat, Ibby and Romel panic about their old, cold, leathery, inedible fish, which they have nicknamed Lesley. Manu says he enjoyed the dish, but it was overcooked. Josh somehow finds this to be proof that Ibby is a professional chef, using logic that nobody who has never contemplated building a torture dungeon could follow. Something about how he overcooked the fish because people paid him to give them fish in a restaurant or…honestly I don’t fucking know. Go listen to some Huey Lewis, Josh.

Ibby and Romel tell everyone that dessert will have camel milk in it, and everyone is a bit grossed out because they are racist.

Andy and Ruby bitch some more about garlic. I think maybe they don’t have garlic in Peru. Austin loves it, though — overcooked fish is his favourite. Others like it, too, which upsets Andy massively — she TOLD them there was too much garlic, why won’t they LISTEN? Josh is upset too, because he’s more convinced than ever that Ibby and Romel are professional chefs. “It’s literally like putting a fox into the chicken coop,” he says, by which he presumably means putting a shark into the chicken’s hen. Either way, it doesn’t make much sense, since the problem with putting a fox into a chicken coop isn’t that they will compete in some kind of competition. It’s not like, you put a fox in the chicken coop and he’ll win the Bushiest Tail Contest easily.

As Ibby and Romel prepare dessert, Andy tells everyone that she has already decided that she hates their dessert and will spit it out. Josh asks whether camels have udders. Everyone laughs at him because he is a moron. “Josh and Austin have been homeschooled by Spongebob,” says Blake, giving their parents far too much credit.

“If they nail this dessert, this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” says Stacy, and she and Ash laugh like only those who are so in love they’ve lost all objectivity can laugh.

I just noticed Ian hasn’t spoken all night. Not complaining, just saying.

Josh smirks as he describes how it’s a huge advantage that everyone thinks he and Austin are idiots. Although of course it’s only a huge advantage if they are not in fact idiots. And they are, so…

In the kitchen there are nuts and…stuff like that I guess.

Dessert is served in unsettlingly quick time. Romel is really proud of his dessert, but then he’s really proud of his clothes as well and look at those. Andy is immediately unimpressed with how the dessert looks and will probably complain it has too much garlic.

The judges taste. Pete is blown away by how deliciously non-paleo it is. Josh nearly eats his own face. “You’ve kept it simple,” says Pete, as if deliberately spitting in Andy’s underpants. Manu describes how much he enjoyed it while Andy and Ruby gradually begin to melt with anger.

“This is literally a rose-flavoured cloud in a bowl,” says Jodie-Anne, even though it is clearly not a cloud of any kind. “I would pay for this,” says Josh, “and I probably will pay for this, at Ibby’s restaurant,” he adds, like a dickhead.

Andy says she doesn’t like it because all she can taste is rosewater, which is the garlic of dessert. Amanda and Blake and Ash and Stacy also hate it. Karito doesn’t say whether she hates it, she just hates Josh.

It is time for the scores: the most exciting part of the final five minutes of the show. The guests give a score of 54 out of 70, which doesn’t please Romel, but nothing fucking pleases Romel does it? Ibby knows what I’m talking about.

The judges give a bunch of tens but also a couple of non-tens that are devastating. The total is 55. Suspenseful music plays before the final score is given because the show assumes none of us can count. The final score is 109, which means they’re one behind Andy and Ruby, which means Andy and Ruby are smug little pricks like usual.

Tune in next week, when unless the promo is lying in a way that would be extreme even for the Official Network of Lies, Channel Seven, it will be almost orgasmically satisfying to watch Josh and Austin “cook”.

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