Marcel's Quantum Kitchen (2011) s01e06 Episode Script

Race To The Finish

Marcel: I'm Chef Marcel Vigneron.
I've had over 15 years of experience, and I use a new style of cooking referred to as molecular gastronomy, which is used by less than 5% of chefs worldwide.
Look at that.
After "Top Chef", I needed my next challenge.
So I decided to give catering a shot.
I've set up a state-of-the-art kitchen.
With my team in place, my new adventure begins.
To Marcel! Real people, spectacular parties, and the most outrageous food you've probably ever imagined.
Announcer: Tonight Oh, yeah, there it goes.
it will be a race to the finish as Marcel faces his biggest challenge yet.
The whole team is flown to Detroit to cater a party for automotive giant, Chrysler.
We gotta do things we've never done before.
Marcel's crew transforms a museum that honors the past into a futuristic showcase.
Can Marcel overcome his worst tasting yet? I'm, like, [bleep.]
[bleep.]
.
- It's different.
- Upper management, they're gonna be a lot harsher than I am.
Will his attempts at innovative presentation succeed? And, for the first time in Marcel's career, a dish is sent back.
The gnocchi looked like blobs.
This is a disaster.
Welcome to the future of food.
Welcome to Marcel's Quantum Kitchen.
Marcel's Quantum Kitchen 1x06 Race To The Finish Original air date on April 26, 2011 Whoo! This is cold.
We are definitely not in L.
A.
anymore.
Marcel: We're in Detroit because I got a call from the Chrysler Corporation to cater a sit-down dinner for 30 guests.
And I'm super psyched about this one.
- Detroit, baby.
- Rock City, baby.
Marcel: After a quick trip around Detroit, we all headed to the Chrysler headquarters.
We have a lot of work to do, so I've decided to split up the team a little bit.
- Man: It's just around this corner.
- Robyn: Okay.
Marcel: I've got Robyn setting up our test kitchen, and we're gonna meet with Nick, a senior designer at the Chrysler Corporation, to get a tour of the car's design rooms.
- Marcel: Nick? - Yes.
- Marcel.
- Nick: Marcel.
The girls.
[laughing.]
Marcel: I've been hired by Nick to cater a party celebrating the students in their mentorship program from the College of Creative Studies.
Nick: Everything around here is top secret.
Jarrid: Oh, oh, oh, crap, we're in trouble.
And if you have any camera phones, I'll need to see those.
The security here was pretty intense.
We had to give up our cell phones.
Marcel: So I can't steal any of your designs.
Nick: Exactly.
- Jarrid: Cool.
- Devon: So where are we going, man? Nick: Can't tell you that.
Devon: I feel like 007, you know, heading to some super top secret laboratory.
It's kind of crazy.
Nick: All the exterior design happens down here.
Marcel: So what can you tell me about this party? Basically, it's a chance to celebrate the students.
Marcel: They're basically, like, the future of design.
Right? Yeah, exactly.
So I wanted to throw this really inspiring event in honor of the students of the mentoring program.
So I called Chef Marcel.
I thought he would be the perfect fit for the type of evening we were looking forward to.
All the students will be there, they get to enjoy your cooking and-- - Yeah.
And I'm super excited-- - Hey, hey, hey, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, come on, guys.
Marcel: So we see these design rooms that are off limits.
But at the same time, we can't help but want to peek.
Nick: Nothin' to see, nothin' to see there.
Come on.
Marcel: You know, I was like, I'm just lookin' for a little inspiration here.
Devon: Nick, you know you eventually are gonna have to show us some of these top secret designs - so we can gain some inspiration.
- We are right here.
This is where it happens.
Nick: This is one of the first stages of doing a real car.
As you can see, we start with a clay model.
Jarrid: I wasn't even aware that you could be a car sculptor.
- Which car is this? - Nick: It's a 200 Chrysler.
- Jarrid: Awesome.
- I mean, this side totally looks like - it could be driving on the road.
- Jarrid: Yeah, totally.
This side looks like it could be in Willy Wonka.
Half the car kind of looked like it was dipped in chocolate.
It looked almost edible.
Devon: Is it edible? I mean, is it toxic? Nick: You can eat it, but it'll kill you.
It was amazing to get to see the process of how they design the car.
They design it in 3D space.
Jarrid: They have a team of designers that get to focus on one little part of that car, it might be just the light.
Man: we use the LED technology to create a graphic, - and it's a C for Chrysler.
- Nice.
They might come up with something just different for the tire.
Man: This is one of the early production wheels.
Jarrid: And that's kind of how we as a team approach each dish.
I mean, we are all so excited to see what you guys come up with.
We'll be stopping by, maybe, for a taste test or something.
We'll see if we get through your security.
The design room was awesome.
I feel like I've got all these ideas now, but I really wanted to hit the track and see one of these cars at work for more inspiration.
Oh, yeah, there it goes.
Marcel: I gotta admit, it feels good to be me at this point.
Oh [bleep.]
.
I'm cruisin' around the test track in the 200.
Oh [bleep.]
.
And the guys are outside in the freezing cold.
I definitely don't want to switch places with the boys right now.
I think I just saw Marcel's jacket.
Devon: Yeah, I think there might have been something just came out of the window.
I don't know, on a day like today, snow on the ground, doing about 100 miles an hour, my guess is he's a little freaked out.
Marcel: Let's do it again.
All: Woo! Freezing! Feels like it's about negative 10 degrees out.
But I feel like I was handling it better than Devon.
Marcel: Awesome.
- Devon: How was it? - Dude, that was awesome.
That was awesome.
Devon: Did you ruin the interior? No yakking in the interior.
Check out this museum, man.
This is so cool.
These old school Chryslers.
Robyn: I love them.
Marcel: Sick.
Nilo! Hey, guys.
So I hired Nilo to be my party planner because I've had a great experience working with her in the past, and I need all the help that I can get on this one.
So what are you thinking about this-- about this space, about this party, about this gig? The-- the great thing is, is that we're really celebrating the students, and focusing on innovation and inspiration.
And so what I wanted to do is have them step into the future, and create a space that's very much luminous and unique and innovative.
So it's pretty much taking it all away and bringing in the creative new stuff you've never seen before, cars you would see flying in 2020.
Marcel: I think that's awesome.
All right, let's check out the kitchen.
Nilo: Um, the kitchen's a little bit a ways, so we definitely need to be communicating all the time.
- Robyn: Good times.
- Why would it be right there? Robyn: I know, right? Yeah.
You want to show me where that is? Marcel: So it's right here, right? Nilo: No, it's actually down this elevator.
It is not on this level.
I've never done an event where the kitchen is on a totally different level than the actual dinner party.
And that's gonna be a huge obstacle for us to overcome.
Let me know what you think.
Marcel: My first thought as I enter the kitchen is, "Where's the kitchen?" There's a coffee machine and an ice machine and a microwave.
Marcel: So this isn't a fully equipped kitchen.
You know, I need burners and ovens.
A kitchen for me means you can actually cook stuff.
Marcel: Not to mention the fact that it's miles away from where we're actually gonna have the dinner.
First off, I'm definitely gonna need two ovens, and I'll probably need 12 burners.
This one table isn't even enough to lay down 30 plates, let alone cook.
Logistically, I'm not gonna lie, the space is a complete and total nightmare.
Marcel: Before we get any further, first and foremost, Sally, it's a sweet treat to have you out here with us.
Marcel: So I called in Sally because she is an amazing pastry chef that I work really well with and that I know I can count on.
This is the biggest event that we've done to date, and so I want to make sure that I have a really good support group around me to help me execute this party as best we can.
We need to honor the future of design of the automotive industry.
Let's go backwards.
Sally, dessert ideas.
All right, I'm lookin' at snow.
- Snow balls? - You know, that-- The car with the clay on it looked like chocolate.
- Like a tire peeling out maybe.
- That's a great idea.
Sally: I don't know, dirt, gravel or a different chocolate texture.
I really like the idea of gravel.
Let's go on to, like, a meat entree.
What if we did something that had wings? Like Chrysler.
[whistles.]
I feel like duck is totally under-utilized these days.
There's this new avant-garde technique called cryo-rendering.
- Cryo-rendering duck.
- Yeah.
And I gotta be honest with you, I've never done it before.
Marcel: We gotta raise the bar, we gotta do things we've never done before.
- I love it.
- We need some accoutrements.
- Gnocchi.
- Nice, I like it.
Yeah, I think it's beautiful.
Let's work on a fish dish, yeah? Marcel: We need something that says speed.
That's an easy one.
Fish that sounds fast.
Turbot.
- Oh, dude.
- Boom.
Turbot.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Marcel: We need something to open up the menu with.
Like a nice little bite size, like, a muse or something.
Marcel: Every college student loves pizza.
So maybe we do our own version of a little deep dish pizza.
- That sounds cool.
- Devon: Love it.
Looks like we should probably get to work, yeah? Marcel: So for this menu, we're gonna attempt to do a deep dish pizza, full spectrum turbot, cryo-seared duck with gnocchi, and a chocolate track and tire for dessert.
Not only is this the largest party that we've ever had to cater, but it's for a major corporation, we're in Detroit, I don't have the use of my test kitchen, so the pressure is really on for this one.
Man: Chef Marcel, I have a visitor for you.
Oh, yes! There he is.
My man.
Marcel: So in addition to Sally, I've called in my friend, Katsuyu, who's an amazing chef.
Marcel: Thanks for coming.
Katsuyu's really well versed in some of these avant-garde techniques.
And he can, basically, help me execute all these dishes.
So this is kind of the brainstorming session.
This one here is-- I want it to maybe to be your first primary focus, or where I needed the most help.
I mean, obviously, we can't do just a straight up pizza.
- Right? Um, and I know-- - Of course not.
Yeah, totally.
How cool would it be if it was just like a little one-bite pizza that exploded in their mouth.
We should take all the classic components of a pizza, like the tomato, the basil, the mozzarella, maybe even the actual pizza crust and tweak 'em and do some really cool technique with it.
Maybe, you know, go a little avant-garde with it.
Like the air breads.
If we do the air bread, then we can actually have it, like a deep dish, but it still has the-- Looks like a deep dish-- But eats like a-- a crispy-- Right.
So you kind of get the best of both worlds.
That would be awesome.
Okay, so I'm going to actually make the chocolate sauce that's gonna be the tire treads.
- The major component that's, like, - Yeah.
the one thing that neither of us has done before.
Yeah, the flexible chocolate.
Dessert is, like, the last impression that we're gonna give our guests, and I want to make sure they have a really solid one.
The most difficult part about the chocolate track and tire is the flexible ganache.
I need to make sure that it's flexible enough to create a circle, but also, at the same time, that it's not too flimsy and it's gonna maintain that stability and actually hold up like a rubber tire.
It makes more sense if the tire's laying flat, so then we can stuff all the sexy goodies on the inside.
and make it flexible enough to where it actually creates, you know, the look of a tire.
- Right? - Yeah.
Sometimes Marcel has very, like, kind of crazy, out there, far-fetched ideas, and when I hear them, I'm like, "What?" We'd have the tire tracks, the tire, and then, like, a pile of snow, kind of like it went into some snow.
I'm a little nervous because, apart from the chocolate, we have about five other components that are going on this dessert, so I got my work cut out for me right now.
- Basic pizza dough, right? - Basic pizza dough.
Marcel: We've decided to make air bread for our pizza dough.
Air bread is, basically, that air pocket that you would find on the crust of pizza, but just consolidated into one bite.
It's the steam, right? The steam gets trapped on the inside-- And the heat makes the water evaporate, turning to steam, which puffs up the dough.
Marcel: But the tricky thing is, we don't have any of the equipment that we would normally use at home, so at this point, we're just gonna wing it.
Since we don't have a sheeter, and we don't have a pizza oven, - we're gonna use-- - Or a pasta machine where we could roll it out very thin.
- Yeah.
- You know, this is gonna be hard work.
Marcel: And it may not even work.
Yeah, we gave ourselves a hard task.
Yeah, we did.
That's all right.
We only have to make 60 of these.
For this dish, we have to stuff several of our pizza ingredients inside of an air pocket that's created as the dough puffs up.
So if the dough doesn't puff, we don't have a first course.
Marcel: Look, look, look.
Look at it.
It's rising.
That looks like a [bleep.]
air bag.
Considering the Chrysler brand is known for innovation, I thought that it would be cool for us to do a take on delivery pizza and be super innovative.
How can we present this in a way that's just gonna, like, blow these people away? I mean, if it's such an airy bread, what if we figured out a way to, I don't know, - Levitate it or something.
- Levitate it.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
- I gotta make this levitate? - Yes.
I think Marcel's trying to give me a heart attack.
I mean, Katsuyu's figured out how to actually make the bread airy, now I need you to figure out a way to serve the bread airy.
You're gonna have me make food fly on top of everything else I'm already expected to do.
Well, I know that I just-- I just popped this one on you.
- Um, so-- - Yeah, you did.
Jarrid: Right now, I'm kind of freakin' out about having to actually make food float, and I have no frickin' clue how I'm gonna do that.
[bleep.]
Sally: Oh, my God.
Robyn: What the hell is that? - Marcel: Jarrid, is this your solution? - A hovercraft.
- Whoa.
- Uh-oh.
We are going to hit someone in the head, and spill food on them.
Jarrid: Hey, that dude's out there.
- He's already here? - He's already here.
Marcel: The first dish is like a square deep dish pizza.
- [coughing.]
- When I first bit into the pizza, it was really dry.
Marcel: This is a gigantic gamble, and right now, it's teetering towards disaster.
We're in Detroit.
Chrysler flew out my crew.
Cold.
It's test day two, and there's still a lot of work to do.
Jarrid is out trying to procure something for our-- for our first course.
This is the biggest party we've ever done.
So in addition to Sally, I've called in my friend, Katsuyu, to help me execute this party as best we can.
Oh, we got the tasting today.
- Yeah.
- He'll be here at 6:30.
All right.
To the stations.
What do you think, Sally? I think that this one right here is like-- - Mucho thin.
- Yeah.
This is like our low profile car.
Marcel: Earlier, when Sally was making the flexible chocolate ganache, I was afraid that it wasn't gonna be flexible enough to shape into a tire but now, ironically, I'm almost afraid that it's gonna be too flexible and not actually hold the shape of a tire.
Marcel: See how it's already, like, totally melting? Even the treads that I cut are, like, dissolving.
Sally: I'm pretty concerned right now.
The flexible chocolate that we tried out today is totally unusable.
Temperature is definitely an issue here, 'cause we can already see this one, like, this is melted.
I don't want to add more gelatin.
What if it comes out funky? We don't have the time to keep testing this.
So I gotta come up with something.
Sally: Yeah, I'm gonna have to do it again.
Marcel: Dude, what the [bleep.]
is this, man? Robyn: What the hell is that? Marcel: Is this part of Chrysler's security? - Stay away.
- Hyah! Marcel: Jarrid, is this your solution? - Jarrid: Yes.
- Sally: Oh, my God.
Jarrid: I feel like you kind of screwed me by asking me to make food float.
And then I found this puppy at the store.
A hovercraft.
Maybe we could put a plate right there - and serve the food on it.
- Yeah, yeah.
Or a pizza box.
A hover craft can hover, just kind of hangs out.
Maybe they can just pick it off the hover craft and eat it.
Marcel: Stay.
Dude, that is [bleep.]
genius.
Dude, this is brilliant.
I love it, dude.
- You ready for operation duck? - Devon: Yeah.
Marcel: Cryo-seared duck is a new cutting-edge technique to cooking poultry.
We will prick the duck to help drain the fat.
Then, freeze the fat on an Anti-Griddle, which is a version of a steel griddle except for it's cold instead of hot.
Then, we'll sear it on the stove top.
Devon: We're gonna prick the duck breast with a brand new dog brush.
With a dog brush, you have so many metal bristles on it that it'll just finish that duck breast off in seconds.
I gotta be honest with you, this is the first time I've ever used a dog hairbrush on food.
Marcel: Basically, all of those holes that we punctured with the duck breast are gonna allow for that fat to render out during the cooking process.
And I can really see from the pricking the oil really coming through.
What we want to do is place this on top of the Anti-Griddle, which is about negative 30 degrees.
and we're just gonna freeze that thin layer of fat.
Devon: We're freezing that layer of fat.
When we sear it, it's gonna render out slowly without overcooking that meat, and you're really gonna have almost no fat and just crispy skin on that duck breast.
Marcel: I don't know.
I think low and slow is the tempo.
- Nilo G.
: Hello.
- Marcel: Nilo.
- Hey, guys.
How's it goin'? - Marcel: It's goin'.
Everything coming together? Marcel: Actually, I have one thing that I actually need to show you.
Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom.
Jarrid: Isn't it cool? This is great, you guys, this is gonna go to, like, one of the students or something.
Marcel: No, the first course is, like, our play on Detroit deep dish pizza.
And you know how, like, everybody - gets delivery pizza? - Yeah.
In the future, the delivery is gonna be by a hover craft.
Wait a minute.
So like-- you're going to fly the food in.
- Is that what you're saying? - Yeah.
Mm-hm.
- Yeah.
- I have concerns.
You guys need to seriously rehearse this in the space before the party.
Nilo G.
: I am really concerned about this hover craft.
I don't want it to hit one of their, like, hundreds and thousand dollar cars in the Chrysler Museum.
I love his creativity, but Marcel is taking some big risks.
It's either gonna be a huge hit, and like, people are gonna be applauding, or we are going to hit someone in the head, and spill food on them, and it's gonna be terrible.
Marcel: The hover craft is a huge gamble, but I'm thinking, the bigger the risk, the bigger the payoff.
I'm not confident in that, I'll tell you right now.
Marcel: I got a call from the Chrysler Corporation to cater this major event.
A sit-down dinner for 30 guests.
And we have [bleep.]
load of work to do today.
Marcel: This is the turbot right here.
They actually start off round, and then they turn flat, and the eyes shift to one side of the head when they start to mature.
The turbot dish is gonna be like arts and crafts in the middle of dinner.
The guests will be served two plates.
First, the bottom plate will be filled with milk, kind of like a saucer.
And then we'll use food coloring to make fun designs.
Then, we'll serve the turbot entree on top of that in a dish with soap covered glass marbles attached to the underside.
The soap on the marbles will push away the milk fat in the bottom dish to create a wild spectrum of color.
And then for the turbot, I want to actually cut it on the band saw so I can create these portions that would be cooked on the bone.
So we want to kind of go just to the right of that line.
and go all the way down-- Yeah.
Jarrid: We had a lot of turbot to cut, so when you have a lot of something to do, you pull out the big guns.
It's a little dangerous, but at the same time, it'll make the process of cooking all of that turbot much faster.
When you cook turbot on the bone, it just extracts all this flavor and stays really moist and delicious.
Jarrid: See the tail? Right there.
That looks pretty centered to me.
With the band saw, we get these super nice looking cuts.
- See how clean those cuts are? - Yeah, that's beautiful.
Devon: Who wants to help me peel potatoes? Now I'm prepping the gnocchi.
Gnocchi is a traditional Italian dish, and really light little pillows that have been made with pureed potatoes.
This isn't your traditional grandma's gnocchi.
After peeling and boiling the potatoes, we'll gonna blend them with sodium alginate and olive oil to create our potato puree, which is gonna be the base for our gnocchi spherification.
So I've never actually made these gnocchi spheres before, and I'm kind of worried that they're not gonna turn out.
Devon: You worried about this? Yeah.
Not a little bit, a lot of bit.
Devon: So now that we have our aerated puree in our siphons, we're gonna siphon it right into the calcium chloride bath.
So I'm gonna shoot it out like a snake, and hopefully, you should be able to cut it.
Let's see if it works.
When the sodium alginate that's in our potato base comes into contact with our calcium, which is in our water bath, it creates a controlled jellification, which creates a membrane around the exterior of our gnocchi.
Marcel: Look at those.
They're like balloons.
Devon: That's a cute one.
How is that? It's pretty tasty, actually.
For the gnocchi, I feel like the test is working.
It's still got that nice exterior crust.
- Devon: Yeah.
- Marcel: But it's got that liquid center.
Timing is extremely critical when it comes to finishing off these potato gnocchi.
Marcel: The gnocchi need to be made at the moment during the party.
If we make 'em ahead of time, they're just gonna turn into, like, pellets.
Marcel: Oh, I just got a text message from Nick.
Man, I was not expecting to hear this from Nick at all.
Marcel: He can't make it to the tasting, and he's gonna send Andy Love, the head of the Chrysler brand, in his stead, and I'm [bleep.]
freaking out right now.
Hi.
probably move my junk-- Hi, is Marcel around? - Jarrid: Hey, how's it goin'? - How you doin'? Yeah, yeah, just a second, let me wrangle him up.
Hey, that dude's out there.
- He's already here? - He's already here.
Okay.
- Hi.
Marcel? - Anthony.
- Andy Love.
- Andy.
Sorry.
Glad to meet you.
- Are you hungry? - Oh, absolutely.
Cool.
We got-- we got - a couple things for you to try.
- Okay.
Marcel: I'm totally thrown off guard when Andy Love walks in for the tasting, because he's like this tall, stoic executive, and I've been working with this young hip designer and I'm starting to feel all sorts of intimidated by this guy.
Marcel: The first dish is like a square deep dish pizza.
And then on the inside, we have little bit of freeze dried tomato with some oregano, so you get that classic flavor.
And then we have a liquid mozzarella spherification.
[coughing.]
Andy: When I first bit into the pizza, the powder, um, went right down my throat.
[coughing.]
It was really dry, so I wanted to cough right away.
Andy: I don't know if you can go down a little bit on the powder.
Maybe if we serve it with its mozzarella first.
It's different.
I, uh wow.
I'm, like, [bleep.]
[bleep.]
.
This is not off to a good start.
Marcel: So to the next dish.
Jarrid: This is our turbot charged dish.
I do have to say that I do have a fish allergy.
Marcel: This is totally not a good sign, and I'm kind of freakin' out.
This is track and tire.
We have a little bit of chocolate to emulate a tire.
My first reaction looking at the dessert plate is it looked like a streak of mud.
Did you think about doing two tire tracks? - Should I get some of this on there? - Sally: Yeah.
Sally: Everything all together.
Marcel: Andy has a very still presence.
It's extremely difficult to read.
- That's fantastic.
- Thank you.
I would just recommend doing two tracks so you can actually recognize it as a car.
This is a very important event for us.
If he thinks I'm a tough crowd, wait 'til he gets in the room when we have upper management executives in the room.
They're gonna be a lot harsher than I am.
Oh, man.
Marcel: We're gonna have to work through the night to tweak all these dishes before tomorrow.
Like, I'm [bleep.]
scared.
Oh, get to work! This is so cool.
Today is the event day.
I've been working my ass off for the past two days, and I'm expecting a lot from my team today.
There's extra pressure because yesterday's tasting was rough, and I just hope that we tweak the dishes enough, because, if not, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
There's a VIP table, and they're gonna be seated over here.
That's the table I should serve with the Exactly.
anti-gravity pizza.
And specifically, they'll be seated here, here, here, and here, so that they're looking at you.
Cooking for Chrysler, I mean, the fact that they flew me out here, my entire team, I mean, they called upon me to cater this event, and so the pressure's on to celebrate the innovative car concepts designed by the students in Chrysler's mentorship program.
I want to, like, really knock the socks off of our guests.
You want to check out the freight elevator? Yeah.
All of the dishes are extremely complex.
Components have to be hot at the moment, fresh, and we have to get it from the kitchen to the table on time.
Nilo: One of the biggest challenges is that the kitchen's on the first level, and the dinner party's on the second level.
But, we have this big freight elevator that Chrysler uses to move cars in and out of.
We thought, what if we do the plating in the freight elevator.
Last I got word, about 10 minutes ago, they were just making sure that there was no other glitches in it, 'cause it was glitchy yesterday.
What does it mean by "glitchy"? Means that, like, sometimes it takes a little bit long to get down, yeah, which is gonna be a challenge for us.
Yeah.
Damn.
But, like, right now, he's working on it to make sure it's perfect.
I don't know, I'm afraid to plate in here if it's glitchy, You know, I don't want us to be in here, and have, like, everything ready to go, and be, like, stuck on the first level, or not be able to get the door open.
Can-- Is that gonna happen? Is this elevator gonna work perfectly? There was definitely a level of uncertainty with this game plan.
I'm still not totally sold on it.
I want to get all the food prepared, and then we'll figure out everything else.
One step at a time.
But we really don't have any other option.
All right, so Devon, where do you want to be? I'm gonna be right here because I'm setting up gnocchi stations, carving board for duck.
- Yup, yup.
- And all my meats will be over here.
Okay.
Jarrid, where are you? Here? Yeah, corner.
I want one person on every dish.
I want us all to take ownership, take leadership, and take the initiative.
Marcel: Right now, we need to push, and to really, like, execute this party because the clock is ticking.
We have to test the hovercrafts, and figure out how that's actually gonna happen, if it's gonna happen I want it to kind of hover, you know, right next to me.
I was hoping that maybe I could just pluck it out of the air, but right now, not only do we not know how to fly the hovercrafts, this is gonna potentially set the tone for the entire evening, and if this thing runs into a car or hits a guest, that's not a good thing.
All right.
Robyn: Okay, send it to Marcel.
I thought you were gonna stop.
All right, I can hover it in front of you.
- Nilo: Oh! Oh! - Marcel: Sad.
[engine revving.]
Jarrid: Not in front of the pole.
And then, um - Jarrid: Uh-oh.
- Nilo: Uh-oh.
Oh, there it goes.
[thump.]
This is a gigantic gamble because it can go either way, and right now, it's teetering towards disaster.
I think it's going to be fine.
Let's go.
It's [bleep.]
half an hour before service.
Oh, my God.
It's time to get ready for service.
Go for Marcel.
I'll see you in about 15 to 20 minutes, okay? I'm kind of freaking out about it because if we can't pull off this anti-gravity delivery pizza in a hovercraft, it could be catastrophic.
For the pizza, we are gonna go ahead and risk it, and send one across the room to Marcel, and then you guys will come out with pizza boxes, and hit each table.
I'm not really sure if it's gonna work, but I just have to hope that it goes inside of the guests mouth and not on the carpet.
Chrysler came to us with a dream project, to tell the story of our lives, and I chose to do a car about my band, so my car actually turns into a stage, and is part of a rock show.
This is incredible.
So, what do you think of the space? Gorgeous.
It's amazing.
My initial reaction when I walked up here was just utter amazement.
I couldn't even believe it's the same place.
It looks like something out of a Vegas club.
[people chattering.]
I think it's gonna be a great evening.
- Sally: Are you nervous? - Yeah, totally nervous.
Yeah, totally nervous.
I don't want to be standing up there, looking like an idiot, but at the same time, like, the bigger risk, the bigger the payoff.
All right, you guys, we gotta go, we gotta go.
We gotta go with the first course right now.
Nilo: So, um, how we doing guys? Marcel: We just gotta get the hovercraft to work.
It's not working.
Can we go up? Jarrid: I'm having some trouble linking up.
I've got the hovercraft, and it has to link up with the computer, and it just would not link up.
I got it to work a second ago, like, totally fine, and now it's [bleep.]
being [bleep.]
.
I'm starting to think "This is fate.
It's obviously not supposed to fly.
" Good evening, I'd like to welcome the students from the College of Creative Studies.
From Chrysler's point of view, we want to celebrate you guys, and all the innovation and hard work that you guys put forth.
Right there at the last moment, bam, there it is, done.
It links up.
I hope you guys enjoy tonight.
I'd like to introduce Chef Marcel.
- Hi, everybody.
- [applause.]
Thanks, thanks.
Well, first and foremost, I just wanted to say what an honor it is to be here.
You guys have really showed me what the future of design is, and I kind of want to show you what the future of food is to me.
So, without further ado, I want to introduce our first course, the levitating deep dish pizza, I've got a little special delivery coming in.
If this [bleep.]
hovercraft doesn't take off soon, this is gonna be a career-ender.
I'd like to introduce Chef Marcel.
- [applause.]
- Thanks.
So, we're about to serve the first course, which is a mini-deep dish pizza that's supposed to fly on a hovercraft directly into my hands, which is extremely nerve-wracking.
I want to show you what the future of food kind of is to me.
My palms are sweating like crazy.
I'm scared to death.
If I move that computer the wrong way, 'cause that's how you activate it, it's gonna smack a car, or it's gonna smack somebody in the face, and this is all gonna go to hell.
Marcel: On that note, I've got a little special delivery coming in.
Should be some levitating, kind of, like, aerating deep dish pizza.
I mean, how cool would it be if you actually had your pizza delivered to you, like, in mid-air? - [audience applauds.]
- Basically, we have, within this dish, you've got your levitating deep dish pizza.
Thank God, thank God, thank God.
Marcel: So, we've made a little air bread for you.
- Thank God.
- It's meant to be eaten in one bite.
Instead of a tomato sauce, we've got pepperoni sauce.
We've taken mozzarella, turned it into a liquid form, and then, instead of having, like, sliced pepperoni, we've got sliced tomato, the opal basil.
And I would like to introduce my chefs, who I couldn't have done this without, and they're gonna be serving this first course to you.
[engine revving.]
There she goes.
[plate clatters.]
Delivery of the future, pizza of the future, so enjoy.
- I'm curious.
- One bite.
Trying the pizza a second time, it was fantastic.
The pizza was really cool.
The hovercraft was a really neat touch.
He moved the spice, it seemed like, underneath the mozzarella, and it was fantastic this time.
We were so relieved, and so ecstatic.
- Nilo: Yes! - Oh, man.
Can you see the sweat just beading off my head right now? Yes! I don't care what happens now.
I mean, like, anything can grow wrong, but at least this went right.
We gotta go with gnocchi.
Let's try this bad boy.
The next course is the cryo-seared duck with gnocchi.
I've already got Devon working on the duck, but the gnocchi needs to be made at the last possible moment.
Wait a second.
[bleep.]
Do you think we need it to be cold? I think it needs to be cold.
We're injecting a potato puree into our calcium chloride bath, and something has gone seriously wrong.
[bleep.]
.
This is [bleep.]
.
Do we have any ice? Can we get some ice really fast? - Devon: You want some ice? - Yeah.
Hey, guys, how is it going in here? We might've just [bleep.]
ourselves.
When we made them yesterday, they seemed to be working, and then today, it doesn't work.
I'm afraid that heating up the bath actually caused the calcium to evaporate.
So I'm gonna make a new batch, and hope and pray that this'll actually work the second time.
Marcel is intense, and very frustrated.
- You make more? - Yeah.
This looks like a disaster.
I wouldn't even [bleep.]
bother with [bleep.]
.
God.
It didn't look anything like gnocchi.
Yeah, it's just so bubbly.
- It broke.
- It's a hot mess.
I want the gnocchi to look like fluffy pillows.
It-- [groans.]
It looks like gelatinous muck.
We gotta do it again.
That sucks.
Robyn: We tried to make the gnocchi over and over again.
I guess both the espuma and the bath have to be cold, but we made them both hot.
We're so far behind, we really needed to just go with this dish.
Get ready.
Start cutting, start cutting.
Also basting, basting.
Devon, take out the finished ones.
It's not ready.
The gnocchi's, like, bubbly and watery and just blobs.
Talk to me.
How are we doing? - We're coming.
- All right.
I'm gonna get the freight ready for you, then.
- Okay.
- We'll be ready to take plates when we go.
Right now, I'm freaking out because it's 30 minutes that the guests have been waiting.
The momentum of the party is really slowing down.
Our guests are getting restless, and we gotta get this food out.
Jarrid, let's go! This plating is gonna be a mad dash to catch up.
Everybody get on here! Get on the other side.
Get over there.
Bring the duck down here.
Nilo: Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Please, hurry, please.
Hey, can I have a server down here? I need you to move these plates as I put the duck on them, okay? The gnocchi are looking just awful.
But the guests are waiting.
We're just gonna have to go.
Okay, don't worry.
Let's go.
Move on.
Just go.
We're telling you to go.
Listen to us.
So, this dish is the cryo-seared duck.
So, what I actually did was froze the duck skin, which allowed me to take a little bit longer to render it out.
And then it's served with just some Brussels sprouts, also some cherries and gnocchi, some rehydrated mustard seeds.
And I hope you enjoy it.
As I glanced over, I noticed that there were some people who were a little bit skeptical of the dish.
One of the guests wasn't very pleased with the gnocchi, and somebody sent a dish back.
The gnocchi was watery, and I had to go show the plate to Marcel.
Hey, Marcel, I'm on my way back to ask you a quick question about the dish.
I didn't want to go tell him.
He's a specialist in this, he's the chef, but I had to.
Chef, they're saying that I don't blame 'em, and now I've gotta go out there and face all these guests after a failing dish.
I've never been in this sort of situation.
I'm feeling all sorts of different things but most of all, I'm super-scared.
Marcel: We're in Detroit at the Chrysler Museum, catering an event celebrating the design students in their mentorship program, and the potato gnocchi is not working.
Someone wasn't very pleased with the duck gnocchi dish.
The gnocchi looked like blobs on the plate, really.
It didn't look pretty.
Hey, Marcel, I'm on my way back to ask you a quick question about the dish.
[bleep.]
Oh, wow.
Man.
The gnocchi did not look good.
One of the guests sent back the gnocchi because they didn't like how it looked, and I don't blame them.
This isn't really a shining moment in my career.
And now I've gotta go out there and face all these guests after a failing dish.
This is a disaster.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to give you kind of a little explanation of what you have before you.
We've got the, um, the "gnocchi", which, heh heh, unfortunately, didn't really work out as planned.
I mean, it worked out when I tested it, but as you guys probably know, sometimes your concept doesn't actually, like, work out, I don't know, the way you planned.
You know, I feel like if I stand up there, and I kind of, like, take ownership of it, it's difficult to do, but it's better to just address the dish, and move forward.
Anyways, regardless, I hope you enjoy the rest of the dish, and, um, so, yeah.
Any questions or comments? Concerns? Thanks.
Man, that did not go so smoothly.
I mean, we're bound to mess something up at some point, and, yeah, I'm disappointed.
But for now, I just want to make sure, for the rest of the night, that I deliver an amazing experience for these guests.
I am completely focused on the task at hand.
We're ready to start the turbot fish course, but the the timing is really tricky.
All right, let's go up.
- How many pieces of fish? - Two pieces.
I have to go leave my food waiting, while I go into the front of the house to explain the special design feature that we have for the next course.
I don't want the food back.
Do we have another solution to Marcel not going out there? No, no, I'm gonna go out there, and I'll do it, but you have your walkie, right? Just walkie back to them, and say, "Start plating.
" So the concept for the full spectrum turbot is that it's a two-tier dish.
Marcel: We have a gigantic base plate, which is basically a charger, and we've given the guests their own food coloring to create their own designs.
So, I'm sure you're probably wondering why you've got milk on your table, and food coloring.
This is gonna be for the design students, and I actually want you guys to paint your own canvas that we're gonna display the next course on.
Jarrid: The surprise is that when we serve them the turbot sitting on another plate, the dishes are going to make a chemical reaction with the food coloring.
Marcel: Just go ahead and have a little fun with it, and then we're gonna have some sort of a reaction take place when I serve the next course.
Where is Marcel? We just plated the [bleep.]
dish.
It's [bleep.]
gonna die.
Now I have to rush back to the service station to get the turbot ready.
This is the special one, yeah? Nilo: Hurry, please.
We literally only have a couple minutes to plate up 30 of these dishes.
Where's that conveyor belt when you need it? Is this ready to go? - Okay, wait a second.
- Sorry, sorry.
Whew.
Look at you, man.
It's a Rorschach test.
What do you see? I see a bunch of drops.
Woman: Look at that! - Is he in there? - That is totally Marcel.
Marcel, yeah! [laughs.]
- Woman: You can see that-- - Man: It's in the hair.
Woman: Yeah, the beard.
So, the next course is the turbot.
It's like the turbo car.
This one's a little bit of a play on words.
And turbot is an amazing fish.
It's a flat fish that comes from the English Channel, and it's served with cardoons and artichokes.
Both are members of the thistle family, and it's kind of like that whole philosophy of, like, what grows together goes together.
And then, we're gonna have a reaction take place when I serve the fish.
Wow, look at that.
That is cool.
We actually glued glass beads on the bottom of these plates that have been dipped in soap, so that way, when the soap comes into contact with the milk, it's gonna propel the fat away from it.
It's as mush fun to watch as it is to eat.
I love the way the colors reacted when the plates sat down.
That was a very creative way to present, and for all these guys, of course, there's a lesson in presentation.
Ooh.
Okay, so guys, put snow.
Snow, snow, snow, snow.
It's extremely important to me to make sure that we finish strong.
I really want to wow these guests with our chocolate track and tire.
Whenever I see snow, does that mean it's done? - Sally: Yes.
- Great.
Sally: Snow and go.
Here you go.
More, more, more.
Guys, is this the last dish? Yeah.
This dish right here is our chocolate track and tire.
This was actually inspired by the rims of the 200.
Just looking at those rims got us kind of-- To mimic the form of that.
But I wanted to introduce Sally, and she's gonna go over the components of this dish.
Sally's my pastry chef.
So what we have for you is a chocolate ganache the we formed into the shape of a tire.
From the bottom to the top is some salted cashew crumble, passion fruit vanilla cream, top it off with some stark caramel cremue.
We have a little bit of a wheel that was made with a sugar crouquant, and then some creme fraiche snow, since we're in Detroit.
- Inspired by the weather.
- We are originally from LA, so we had to do something with snow.
- Enjoy! - Yeah.
Thank you.
Mmm.
That's really good.
It is refreshing.
The chocolate wheel? The taste is delicious.
And the presentation was incredible.
The jeep off-road tire, the stones and the rocks, they dissolved.
And this great, a little bit of an orange flavor, kind of a biscotti taste to 'em.
The tire with the caramelized sugar on top.
Oh, that was good.
- Delicious.
- That was really good.
From the flying in food, to the swirling colors underneath the turbot, I think Marcel did a wonderful job transforming cars into food.
Marcel: Every single one of these dishes was designed for this event at Chrysler, and I feel as though the guests could see that.
It was awesome.
I hope everyone had a great time.
I hope you guys all enjoyed the food.
I know I did.
I thought it was incredible.
Once in a lifetime experience.
I'm gonna invite Chef Marcel to come on out.
[applause.]
Thank you for having us.
Like, honestly? It's been an honor and a pleasure to be here, and to cook for you.
Having spent the last couple days around the facilities, getting test drove around the track in the 200, and doing all sorts of really fun stuff [laughs.]
and so the Chrysler brand, and this style and design and innovation, it's been, like, extremely inspirational with the dishes we create.
This was the biggest party that my company has done to date, and we overcame so many different trials and tribulations, that I'm really proud of my team right now.
Honestly, this menu could not have been accomplished, could not have been achieved without the people that you see before you.
It's been so much fun working with Marcel.
I love his creativity.
I love his excitement and passion about food.
For me, cooking is all about passion, and it's all about love, and I wanted to start this catering company to be able to cook for anybody and everybody.
Because I really believe there's, like, a foodie in everybody.

Previous Episode