Tonight on MKR, South Australian best friends Alisha and Deanne embraced their larger-than-life personalities by naming their Instant Restaurant Hot Mess – and the chaotic cook delivered exactly what it promised.
The smoke alarm sounded, a sticky date pudding collapsed onto the floor and their colourful novelty plates left food stylist Jane mortified. Yet the self-described classy bogans recovered to produce the round’s first eight and finish the night on 68 points.
Their menu featured Seared Scallops with Burnt Butter and Cauliflower Puree for entrée, Lamb Backstrap with Crispy Potatoes and Salsa Verde for main, and Sticky Date Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce for dessert.
The drama began with the entrée. Alisha lost track of which scallops were cooked and which were not, while Jane was stunned by the colourful melamine plates. “As a food stylist, presentation is key and it detracted from what could have been a beautifully presented dish,” Jane said.
Jane declared that a simple white ceramic plate would have been “absolutely beautiful”, adding: “The plate itself bothered me a lot. You can’t plate on something like that and know what you’re doing.”
Her fixation sparked a table-wide debate over whether crockery should affect scoring. Lucy suggested Jane would be better suited to an interior design judging show if she was assessing the entire aesthetic. Jane fired back that ignoring aesthetics was “really naïve” and, when challenged by Lucy, confirmed: “Yeah, a little bit.”
The judges were more focused on the food. Manu called the entrée “a very enjoyable mouthful” and said every flavour worked together, but the scallops were inconsistently cooked. Colin scored six and Manu five.
As Alisha tackled the lamb backstrap, smoke from the grill plates triggered the alarm. Deanne joked to the waiting guests: “We heard that your conversations were so boring that we had to set the fire alarm off.”
The larger plastic plates used for main course horrified Jane all over again. “This plate to me was an absolute hot mess,” she said. “Images of fruit on a main course. It was like sitting at the kiddy’s table.”
Despite the presentation, the Lamb Backstrap delivered the comeback Alisha and Deanne needed. Manu praised the perfectly cooked, well-seasoned lamb and tangy salsa verde, while Colin enjoyed the punchy salsa and crispy potatoes. Manu scored seven and Colin eight – the first eight awarded in the round.
Then the Hot Mess kitchen descended into fresh chaos when Alisha’s fail-proof sticky date pudding collapsed, spilling batter onto the floor. “We literally have a hot mess in the kitchen now,” Deanne declared.
Devastated that her nan’s recipe had come unstuck, Alisha admitted: “It’s just turned to an utter disaster.” But the pair refused to surrender, salvaging the pudding and getting dessert to the table. Manu said the pudding was everything he expected from the classic dessert – soft, moist and humble – while Colin felt it needed cream or crème fraîche to cut through the sweetness. Manu scored seven and Colin six.
Reflecting on the night, Alisha said: “We had smoke alarms. We had cakes on the floor. We had flour parties. But we done it.”
The guest teams awarded Alisha and Deanne 29 out of 50. Combined with the judges’ score of 39 out of 60, the pair finished on 68 points, placing them at the bottom of a tight leaderboard behind Angus and Simon on 70 and Krysten and Lucy on 72.
