Ai-Epu vs Ishihara: Part Two

Round 2

A-Team: Rinka / Sugita Kaoru vs. Kimura Noboru / Tachi Hiroshi
B-Team: Yingling / Kawashima Naomi vs. Tokushige Satoshi /Kanda Masaki


Theme Ingredient/Recipes:
A-Team: Pasta / Spaghetti with Meat Sauce and Macaroni Gratin
B-Team: Octopus / Octopus Rice and Fried Octopus

Special Guest Judge: Takashima Reiko

Recap: This Round features 8 chefs, 4 dishes, and 2 theme ingredients. The teams of four are split into pairs, with each pair responsible for 2 dishes. It sounds confusing, but it makes sense when you see it. A slight change from the January special, they seemed to be running out of time so they skipped some of the judging segments (as they've been doing in the regular show.

Cooking Time was again a matter of all the interesting things happening to one team. There isn't much challenge in making pasta, but when it comes to live octopii... it was the usual Kitchen Studio fun with them crawling onto the stage even before the battle started. Hiroshi looked very apt at his cooking as did some of the other members of Team Ishihara. Meanwhile Yingling was up to her usual antics, frying the entire body of the octopus instead of just pieces of it.

Tasting Time began with Rinka up first, presenting her Spaghetti with... Meat?!? Yes, she apparently forgot the tomatoes. Then she mixed up what kind of cheese was supposed to go into the macaroni. Noboru, who was her competition, did fine on the spaghetti as well as the macaroni. Not a very good start for the Ai-Epu team. Next up was Kaoru, who remembered to put in some tomatoes and was told that her spaghetti tasted like Mom's. There was a great dig on how much drinking she does on the show. They didn't show the tasting of her macaroni, but both dishes were given an okay rating. Hiroshi was her competition and pretty much hit it out of the park. Everyone was impressed with both dishes and there was some playful flirting with Emi-chan and the other women. In fact, all the Ai-Epu's sampled his macaroni gratin it was so good. Ai-Epu was in big trouble and up next was Yingling.

There is no way to be nice about this, this was probably her biggest disaster yet on the show. It opened with her fried octopus, which was leaking ink onto the plate. To the point that Kouji started asking her "Are you crazy" in English. We discovered that she fried it in a combination of baking powder and anise. Kouji got really brave and cut the head open, which brought about Alien references. The rice wasn't much better, though it got really amusing when Kouji and Wataru Tetsuya started getting into it over how bad it was. Kouji challenged him to eat her cooking, which he did. He soon was introduced to the Bucket of Love. Satoshi had some problems, but nowhere near as bad as Yingling. In fact, he was told that he was a Pro compared to Yingling. They didn't even show the judging of his rice. Ai-Epu lost more ground at this point.

All their hope lay with Naomi, who is apparently known for her attention to detail. We didn't see the judging of her fried octopus, but they loved her rice. Masaki was the last one up and the only hope Ai-Epu had was for him to fail miserably.... which he did not. Both dishes were a success as well.

The scores for each chef follows...

Kawashima Naomi: 100
Tachi Hiroshi: 100
Kimura Noboru: 90
Kanda Masaki: 90
Rinka: 60
Sugita Kaoru: 50
Yingling: -50
Tokushige Satoshi: -10

Team Ai-Epu - 160 / Team Ishihara - 270

Final Score: Team Ai-Epu lost their 82 point lead by only scoring 296 points at the end of both rounds, as Team Ishihara finished with 324 points. Now it would come down to the two captains battling for the title.

Final round shortly