South Australia’sItalian mother and son, Sonia and Marcus, took the reins in tonight’s MKR with their instant restaurant: Nothing’s Off The Plate. But their attempt to pay homage to their family and love for each other was derailed when Marcus stopped following his mother’s instructions.
The cracks started to show when Sonia and Marcus started preparing their first course of the night, an entrée of Crumpets with Buttered Lobster, which had great potential but missed the mark. The lack of butter in the dish let them down, with Sonia requesting more when Marcus was plating.
Desperate to improve, the team returned to the kitchen to prepare their main of Squid Ink Linguine, but the wheels started to fall off again when Marcus forgot to separate the pasta sheets. Luckily, with some guidance from judge Colin Fassnidge: “Why don’t we flour all our sheets, dry them up, get enough flour there,” the team was able to save their pasta.
Unaware of what was unfolding in the kitchen, the guests at the dinner table were expecting a top-notch pasta dish. “She’s Italian, there’s no way in the world that Sonia can get this wrong,” Claudean announced.
As Sonia and Marcus returned to serve the main, their demeanour implied something was amiss. “Sonia looks defeated. It looks like they had a really difficult cook,” Nick and Christian said.
They had delivered a dry pasta, it needed more sauce. Judge Manu had his finger on the pulse when he said: “Like your entree, there was stress, and I can tell you now stress always end up in the plate. Always.”
Defeated by two average courses, Sonia was ready to throw in the towel until a pep-talk from Manu helped fire them up: “One of you needs to take charge in this kitchen and one of you needs to zip it and follow.”
Finally with Sonia in charge, the pair worked as a well-oiled machine in the kitchen to deliver a successful dessert. “Chef for this dish is mum. My role, my only role, was to make sure that chef could do her thing, “ Marcus said.
As Sonia and Marcus served their dessert of Margarita Bombe Alaska with a confident smile, the consensus around the table was success, with Victoria’s Tommy saying: “This is what redemption tastes like.”
Impressed, Manu called their dessert a “bomb” and Colin wiped his plate clean. “I actually put a little smile on my plate. It’s very rare you see that,” he added.
Despite a rocky start, Sonia and Marcus finished second on the leaderboard with a total score of 71/110. The judges awarded them a score of 43, including two 10s for their star-of-the-night dessert, and the guest teams gave them a score of 28.
