MARCEL’S QUANTUM KITCHEN “All Revved Up” Review

MARCEL’S QUANTUM KITCHEN “All Revved Up” Episode 3 – Science food meets bikers with style in “All Revved Up”. Marcel is hired to create the fête for the launch of a vintage clothing line, and this time MARCEL’S QUANTUM KITCHEN is in the driver’s seat. For the first two shows, we had Marcel at war with the party planner. This time Marcel was in charge of hiring the party planner. Their first meeting was a lot of “you are so awesome” going back and forth. Of course his ideas are just brilliant. Of course he’s wonderful. Of course she has ideas.

Once that’s over, they settle down to figure out the menu, going for American comfort food. Burgers, fries, chicken-fried steak, macaroni and cheese, rootbeer floats and S’mores, all with the Marcel twist. This has been the most interesting part of the show for me so far. The creation of the food, but honestly, it’s starting to wear a little thin. How many new and exciting things can we do with cool chemicals to make odd food that may or may not taste good? Case in point: his mac and cheese—pardon me, his mac and chains—because of course he wouldn’t so something so ordinary as have plain old macaroni. No, he’s making the cheese itself into noodles with gel and liquid nitrogen. Or his chicken-fried steak, which we all know is steak prepared like fried chicken. Only not with Marcel—no, he is using chicken as breading on his steak. Sooo amazing, right?

For once, the tasting goes off without a hitch. Which is good to a point. Several of the dishes aren’t finished, and one of the actual cooking surfaces—a converted bike—hasn’t been tested at all. The host is a little worried. We have to have some drama, although compared to the high strung party planners and hosts of the first two shows, this guy’s laid back worry is a little too mellow to add that “will it really come together” drama to the show. He was impressed with the bike stove, I think, he had the same mellow approach to that as well.

But once the party starts all our hopes for drama are rewarded. The team is working hard to get everything out, serve everything from the make-shift kitchen and Marcel has turned into an evil Diva. It builds slowly, until each of the team gets their quiet moment with the camera all saying essentially the same thing. “Dude, you are being a real big diva with delusions of grandeur.” It all comes to a head with Jarrid, he loses it and calls Marcel on his behavior. Such drama! But his team was right to do it, Marcel admits it, he was out of control and needed to communicate better. Did he really get the message though? When the party is over, Jarrid and Devon are still at the point of hating Marcel, and Marcel has no clue, he’s just content to stand in the spotlight and suck in the glory.

I’m not so sure about Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen. The science class cooking is beginning to have a sameness to it. How many times can you gel something to make it into something else? How many times can you use this and make it seem like that? How many chemicals until we finally reach over load?

And I realized tonight, there is a certain smug superiority in Marcel that it really getting on my nerves. I’m not even sure he’s that good of a cook, he’s just got a lot of funky ideas behind his cooking that, like a magician’s mirrors, perhaps hides the truth of the dish. The drama is getting wearing as well, mostly because I am really starting to dislike Marcel. Which is odd, I like an ego now and then, I really enjoy Gordon Ramsey on a rant, but Marcel just gets on my nerves.

Still, I’m willing to give it another chance. I kind of want to see what happens between Marcel and his team. It’s gotten that soap opera addiction going now, the kind of thing where you have to watch, you just need to know what’s going to happen. Will Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen last? I’m really not sure how long it can go on, although shows surprise me all the time. I’ll hang around to see what’s going to happen and maybe next week he’ll gel some tofu or something fun like that.

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