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The teams quickly move on to ingredient shopping, which necessitates each team splitting in half to go to Restaurant Warehouse and Whole Foods. Carl starts to stress Marjorie out by running through his ingredient list in haphazard fashion, while she typically likes to organize thing by department. “I’ve worked so hard to get to Restaurant Wars,” she laments, “now all I want to do is crawl in a hole and die.”

Cook now, die later, Marjorie. It’s time to start prepping for the next day’s service. The cheftestants are allowed to prep from 9:00 p.m. until midnight and they’re bound and determined to use every minute. Tensions are running high (as I imagine they’ll be through tomorrow night). Kwame chews out Jeremy for not buying some bacon for him, but Jeremy points out that Kwame told Amar to get bacon but not Jeremy, but Kwame is still pissed at Jeremy, so Jeremy snaps back at Kwame… Ah, it’s like Mean Girls but set in the high school cafeteria.

It doesn’t get better when the cheftestants arrive back home. Phillip will be doing front of the house for dinner for his team, and so he walks his entire group through the plating of his strawberry salad. As steps are followed by more steps and then even more steps, the eyes of Kwame, Jeremy, and Amar start to glaze over. “We need to simplify,” Kwame says. Phillip digs in his heels. It’s HIS dish, and he wants it done HIS way. “Do you know what you’re going to do?” he presses Kwame. “Oh yeah, I know what I’m going to do,” Kwame says insinuatingly.

Amar comments with massive understatement that maybe his team isn’t working all that well together.

Before we know it, it’s time to prep for lunch service. Marjorie will be doing front of the house for Palate, while Kwame will be doing front of the house for District LA . . . but he’s a bit lacking in experience, and so (lucky him!) Phillip arrives to “lend a hand.”

Back in the kitchen, Carl is stressing about his terrine, which hasn’t come out the way he wanted it to. Isaac is prepping for the start of lunch service, but Karen (who’s going to be firing his dish), has no idea when and how he wants that done.

It’s looking like a catastrophe all around. Oh boy.

Service starts and the judges kick things off by heading to District LA. Jeremy immediately stops work on the food for all the other tables - the judges come first.

Kwame takes out two appetizers for the judges: Jeremy’s arugula salad with grilled asparagus and a crispy egg, and his own corn and sage velouté with pancetta (not bacon). The judges like both dishes a lot. Tom says that soup is “really good,” and Padma loves the salad, which feels very appropriate for lunch.

Meanwhile, the other tables get no food. Despite my screaming for the judges to notice this, Tom simply comments that only one table in sight has a first course, and only one other has food.

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