You know, Hunter, the mom-and-pop joints I visit
on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives
serve straight-up delicious food at prices
that won't bust the family budget.
-Flavortown. Magic. -Flavortown, baby.
So, tonight, Triple D stands for,
uh, discount, dollars and deals,
as four top-notch Triple D chefs
put their cost-cutting cooking skills to the test
in an epic budget battle.
-$24.97. -How did that happen?
-Whoo. -[Bryan] That's the money.
-Tasty. -Look at this. Whoopsie.
[Hunter] Let's see if they can turn their budget-savvy ways
into big Flavortown bucks.
Up to 20 Triple Ds.
That's flavor. Pow!
It's Triple D budget battle tonight on Guy's Grocery Games.
Don't you give away all those cheese.
[cash register dings]
Now, let's meet our Triple D chefs.
First up, Bryan Lantagne, executive chef of the New Hampshire joint
serving up crazy delicious fusion food,
like his Thai coconut-chicken tacos.
Bringing beef taco in the window, guys.
This is what I would call a destination dish.
Watch out for this guy.
Working on a budget, you just gotta kinda deal with it,
roll with the punches. But Guy came to visit.
Surprise, surprise, the restaurant got a little bit busier,
which is the dream of every restaurant.
-How you doing? -Looking good with the headband.
Next we have Nikol Zarbalas,
the chef who is a master of Greek cuisine
and a master of budgeting,
'cause she's got five kids.
I shop on a budget all the time,
not just for the restaurant, but at home with my five kids.
My oldest is 12 and works with me on the line.
Only girl at three years old is a fixture in this restaurant.
Thank you. Mmm.
-All right, just-- -[people laughing]
-Nice to see you again. -Hey, nice to see you too.
Oh, she's got great hair.
And then there's Oniel Smith,
the chef-owner of a Caribbean eatery
with a dream of mentoring aspiring young cooks
from his Jamaican homeland.
The chicken's another level.
I have completely lost control of the show,
I am eating with my hands, babbling.
Yeah, man, Jamaican.
You gotta know how to budget yourself in Jamaica to get by,
'cause it's not a lot of opportunities out there.
So what I wanna do, I really wanted to bring up these kids from Jamaica
and start my culinary program.
-Y'all look 500. -Whoopsie!
Whoopsie's in there.
And finally, Elijah Safford,
the chef mixing up New Mexican, Asian and Spanish cuisine
at his New Mexico joint.
[Elijah] Cheese curding on bison chili fry.
-So, you like it? -Oh, no, I love it.
I am 23 years old.
It's interesting, getting thrown into business ownership.
My hard work has forced me to mature in certain ways.
You're probably the youngest chef-owner we've ever had on Triple D.
-Watch out for this guy, huh? -[chuckles]
-Ready to rock? -Yes, sir.
[Guy] Go get 'em, brother.
Welcome to Flavortown.
I invited you here because I know that you all know
how to run a restaurant.
Not only on the Triple D level,
but, you also gotta be a really good business person.
Absolutely.
Tonight, to win the competition,
you're gonna need all the talents.
You're gonna need the cooking talents and the business talents,
because this is Triple D budget battle.
-Oh. -Hello.
[Guy] Two intense culinary challenges
that will force you to stretch your money like pizza dough,
making dishes that you hope taste like the upper crust.
Unfortunately, the chef with the lowest score at the end of the first round
will be checking out, but...
the chef with the highest combined score
at the end of two rounds
will get a chance to shop Flavortown market for up to 20,000 bucks.
There it is.
[Guy] In the first round, I want you to make
the menu item your customers always pick.
Wait a second, menu, menu item customers pick.
Oh! New Triple D game.
It's called menu pick. Hunter, where are you, buddy?
Fantastic.
-What you got? -All right, well, these are mystery menus.
-Mystery menus? -Yes.
So chefs, each of you get to pick a mystery menu
and inside, you'll find out not only the variation
on your bestseller you must make,
but also the total budget you'll have to make it.
So, you've given them a menu with...
-a mystery item. -Yes.
-Whoa. -And a budget.
[chuckles] Oh, boy.
Let's go ladies first.
-Ladies first. -[Guy] Step up, step in.
Come in and be lucky.
Okay, take it over there.
-Don't open it yet. -Don't open it yet.
[Guy] There you go.
-That's it? -Yeah, absolutely.
All right, big man.
Let's see, what you got, Bryan?
In a bowl for 22 bucks.
-All right. -What you got?
Fried for 18 bucks.
You know how to fry something.
Got this.
[Guy] Sandwich for 20 bucks.
Spicy for 19.
Do you think you can handle spicy?
I don't know, I'm Jamaican, let's see.
-[Guy] Yeah, yeah. -[laughs]
Jamaican-me hungry. Okay.
You're gonna go around the store, get whatever you want.
You've gotta follow the budget.
Who picked first? You picked first.
Okay, so I'll give you three the chance
if you wanna trade.
-[Hunter] Or to steal it. -[Guy] If two--
If two of you could swap it
that would leave one of you that couldn't go for it.
But, you just tell me- you guys can go ahead.
[Nikol] Oh, I'm going. [chuckles]
[Elijah] All right, let's see.
I got $20 to make a sandwich.
Dive back into my memory bank,
and one of our bestsellers was a special I used to do called the chopped cheese.
Chopped cheese is a burger, a Philly and a taco
come together with cheese.
I grab sliced cheddar
and some gruyere that's on discount.
Eljah's got a sandwich.
One baguette is not a lot.
[cashier] $19.01.
[Elijah] I wish I could've grabbed red onions
to make a nice pickled garnish.
With 99 cents left, I'm a little tight.
-[cashier] There you go. -Thank you very much.
-What're you thinking, chef? -I'm gonna make you a wrap.
A jerk chicken spicy wrap.
I don't think somebody thinks about a tortilla getting wrapped up
thinking it was gonna be spicy.
Said spicy. It better be spicy.
Some chili, some chili, some chili.
If I had the money and the time,
I would've created my best dish, which is the oxtail wrap.
So, our next best thing, our apple jerk chicken wrap.
Jamaican is known for spices,
so when you talk about spice,
you knocking the nail on the head.
If you go to Jamaica right now,
you order jerk chicken off the street side
and it's not spicy, I think you should take it back.
But, we went by the produce section
to get the crunchy freshness, that cooler.
Chicken is hot and spicy,
so I went for the sweet potato,
because I wanted something sweet in it
that should balance out the dish.
I think that's it for me, bro.
-What's your budget? You're over. -Take that off.
I had picked up a horseradish,
but nah, it wouldn't taste good with the jerk sauce. I just got rid of it.
-[cashier] Take that off? -[Oniel] Yeah.
-Oh. Look at that. -Yeah, that's it.
$18.99, you got nothing left, my friend.
One penny left, right on the budget.
[Bryan] I have to make a bestseller in a bowl.
The only bowls we do at the restaurant right now are ramen.
Ramen is hard to do for $22 dollars.
Microwave rice.
I'm known for doing international flavors,
so instead I'm gonna lean into riffing on
a Thai coconut chicken rice bowl.
I can pack a lot of flavor with inexpensive ingredients.
I saw the chicken cutlets were only $3.69.
Vegetables are cheap which makes it
a lot easier to pack more flavors in there.
I am feeling like I am in college again
and have very little money to be able to spend
to be able to produce food for me and my friends.
-Okay, you're at $21.48. -That's it.
Thank you much.
[Nikol] We have to play budget battle,
and I just have to do fried and $18.
I have the smaller budget.
But I know that I can make chicken and waffles.
It is a Greek spin with the sauce that we make.
We put chilis in it,
there's honey, there's maple syrup.
It is probably the number one seller.
Normally I would use sriracha but it wasn't within my budget.
For the batter, I need milk, I need egg.
The waffle, I basically didn't need to buy anything.
I cross-utilized the eggs and the milk,
and I have flour and cornstarch,
salt and all of the other essentials at my station that I can utilize.
-Hello. -Hi.
[cashier] How are you?
So, $15.41's gonna be your total.
[Nikol] I have about 3 bucks left over.
We're gonna make it happen.
-What'd you get? -Making my chicken waffles.
That's all you need?
-That's all I need. -Really?
-I have everything else here. -Okay.
[Guy] Twenty-four minutes.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have spared no expense
in assembling the finest judges
for our budget episode.
Now, we have the creator of countless fine dining restaurants,
renowned chef, the one and only Shenanigans,
-chef Brian Malarkey. -[exclaims]
Food writer and well-read culinary traveler who is well...
red.
The one and only Sir Simon Majumdar.
And the acclaimed chef behind
a North Cal resort and empire,
-chef Crista Luedtke. -Thanks.
So let's see what happens. So, we got a sandwich going on in four.
[Brian] It's not gonna feel like budget,
because look at the amount of ground beef
he is cooking off there, rendering over.
What's on the menu?
Uh, tonight I'm gonna be doing,
like, a Philly chopped cheese.
So we've got the baguette.
-Cheddar. -Yes, sir.
[Guy] Mayonnaise and some bell peppers.
-You ever get excited? -I'm always excited.
This is game time, baby.
Cool, calm and collected, my friend. That's how I like to roll.
Soon as I slice my baguette into four equal pieces,
I butter it up.
Nice, hefty amount. Pop it on the grill.
Ooh, that is way too hot for what I'm looking for.
Wow, is that grill hot.
Oh, shoot. My bread's burnt.
-I think Elijah burned his bread. -Oh.
[Elijah] There's no way I'm gonna serve this to the judges.
With 99 cents left, I was a little tight.
[cash register dings]
-I think Elijah burned his bread. -Oh.
[Elijah] I'm looking at this burnt bread thinking to myself,
there's no way I'm gonna serve this to the judges.
-Do you have more money? -I got 99 cents.
What do you have you could return? Anything?
-Yeah, I could return an onion. -There you go.
It was one onion that I didn't use.
Did you buy this already? You're returning it
-or your buying it? -I am returning.
Well, let's see what you paid for it.
[cash register dings]
Bread's 1.79 bucks.
-How much you got left? -I got 1.79 bucks.
And sure enough, the bread is 1.79 bucks.
-I should be right on the money. -[Guy chuckles]
By the grace of the Flavortown gods,
I had just enough to get another loaf of bread.
If I didn't have bread, I wouldn't have a sandwich.
Onions are overrated.
This could be very interesting.
We have four completely different styles of chefs,
and they all have a different vessel.
Sandwich, bowl, fried, spicy.
[Oniel] Gonna peel this potato.
Get it out of the way and in a nice boiling pot of water.
Jerk chicken wrap is one of my best seller in the restaurant.
The chicken is another level.
So I got this.
You say you want spicy, you getting spicy.
To the point you say, "Whoopsie!"
I met Guy, we in the middle of a set and he was like, "Stop.
What's this, 'Whoopsie'?"
I was like, "That's my lingo." He was like, "Whoopsie means something bad."
I said, "That's your definition."
He dropped his fork and he was like...
Oops. Sorry. Whoopsie!
I was waiting all day to throw out my whoopsie.
[Oneil] Cinnamon powder, cayenne pepper, paprika.
Little apple jerk sauce right there. Boom.
Everything that I do, I like to stick to my culture.
One of my slogans in my restaurant is "a taste of home in every bite."
Everything about my restaurant is authentic.
Who say you can't get good jerk chicken in America?
So, the first thing I get started on is my waffles.
Utilizing as many ingredients of my pantry as I could.
There's flour, cinnamon, baking powder,
sugar, eggs.
-You make a lot of waffles? -A foodie came in and posted
a video of us making the chicken and waffles.
It got seven million views,
and we had people lined outside
our restaurant for days.
Take that all day long. So what's the key to the great chicken waffles?
-The sauce. -Okay.
I need to start working on the chili maple sauce.
Sriracha on the shelf was $8,
and there was absolutely no way that I could make that happen.
So I made, like, a mock sriracha.
Bryan has the biggest budget of everyone.
He's got $22 and in a bowl.
So he's really got to impress us.
What's your game plan, chef?
Chicken coconut rice bowl.
Is this something you typically do in the restaurant, or...
No. We do a ramen,
but that takes a lot more ingredients, a lot more money.
We have bestsellers from all over the place.
Our Thai coconut chicken which is a bestseller,
our ramen which is a bestseller.
I like to take different ideas,
blend them together, have a good time.
I'm gonna lean into riffing on
a lot of those kinds of flavors.
First thing I get started on is my broth.
I get some coconut milk in it.
Ginger, garlic.
Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes.
I taste it.
Tasty.
My next step is chicken.
I need to get more going.
Key to working with chicken cutlets
is making sure you don't overcook them.
They were one of the cheapest things on the shelf.
Is that little thin chicken breast he's got over there?
He's got a great selection of ingredients,
and a really good base to make a beautiful dish in a bowl.
Nobody likes just straight mayo.
Next I'm gonna work on my aioli dipper.
In a bowl I'm gonna mix my mayo, my red wine vinegar,
little smoked paprika, cayenne for spice.
This is just gonna be that extra sauce
to really push things over the edge.
This look good. This look big good.
With the jerk sauce, I wanted, um...
I didn't want serve the jerk sauce at room temp. I wanted heat on it
because I was serving, like, a hot wrap.
Did you bring me a couple cases of sauce?
Of course I did.
You gotta try this guy's sauce.
I'm not kidding. How many restaurants you got now?
We got two under construction.
Do you really?
-Yeah, for real, real. -No!
-Congratulations. -We on top out here.
The perfect dish has a balance of spice, sweet and savory.
Whoopsie! First time ever. Look at this, bro.
Sweet potato. Oh, my God.
Right now, man.
Next you want that cooler with the spice.
I'm gonna create a salad inside of the jerk chicken wrap.
Let me get some of the grill marks on these real quick.
[Guy] Ten minutes. Ten to go.
[Nikol] While my waffles and spicy sauce are cooking,
I concentrate on my chicken.
If I win the prize money,
I am planning on opening a bed-and-breakfast in Greece.
My family still owns my childhood home in Greece.
Being able to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast has always been a dream of ours.
It's something that my dad spoke about.
It would be an absolute dream come true to be able to do this.
Think we can make some powdered sugar real quick.
What are you working on, chef? Making powdered sugar?
Yes, sir. Couldn't afford it.
No, one of the greatest hacks in the world.
Powdered sugar in the Vitamix.
Uh, right now I'm just working some, uh,
red bell pepper, some onion.
I got my chicken going, my broth.
The last thing I need to do is make my rice.
I've never worked with microwave rice before.
So I wanted to manipulate it with coconut milk.
I started at the bottom. I've worked my way up.
If I win today I absolutely wanna
take that money and put it right towards opening a restaurant.
Call something mine, and be happy doing that.
[Guy] Five minutes, five minutes. You must be plated.
[Elijah] Got my bread ready. It's buttered.
It's toasted. Not burnt.
And next is to start getting
this awesome meat and cheese down
on this bread, followed by the lettuce.
Gives it a little crunch.
Put that aioli in the ramekin,
pop a bun on top and we're golden.
[Guy] We got four minutes.
Four minutes to be plated and finished.
-Where we at? -We about to start plating.
-That's where we at. -Okay.
First I have to put the sweet potato down the middle.
I add some sauce on it, avocado,
diced-up jerk chicken on top.
I put my Romaine lettuce, I put my carrots,
I put my cucumber.
When you're on Guy's Grocery Games,
you want all your plate to be filled up, so I had
leftover ingredients. I just diced it all up, medium diced.
Put it on top like a little jerk chicken Romaine Caesar.
[Guy] Two-and-a-half minutes.
[Nikol] Plating-wise, I start off with
dividing the waffle.
Add the chicken that's already been tossed in the maple syrup.
Finish it with a little bit of the powdered sugar that I made.
And I finish the dish with some more of the Thai maple syrup.
[Guy] One minute to go. Sixty seconds.
[Bryan] First I start off by taking the rice,
plating it in the center of the bowl.
I take peppers and onions which I've chopped up,
put those on top of the rice.
So, the chicken's a little overcooked,
but I'm hoping that the judges get
that char flavor, get it with the broth,
and everything just comes together.
Five, four,
three, two, one. That's it.
Great job, everyone. Great job.
-[applause] -Whoo!
Chefs, let's see whose bestseller
gets the most bang for their buck with the judges.
Let's take it to 'em. Right this way.
[cash register dings]
Here we are, judges. Game one.
Triple-D budget battle.
The luck of the menu draw determined
what bestselling menu item
each chef had to make,
and also what their budget would be.
Chef Oniel.
Something spicy. $19. What have you got for us?
[Oniel] I made you guys a jerk chicken wrap
with avocado and spicy sweet potatoes.
On the side you got the apple jerk sauce, just to kind of show off
the spiciness, to give you a little sweetness to it.
So, I got $19, and I spent $18.99 to create that dish.
Oniel, I love the layers of components you have inside.
You've got some avocado, you've got the sweet potato.
You also have this crisp, refreshing cucumber inside.
So you get this nice crunch.
[Brian] The dip sauce that you made, the jerk dipping sauce,
there's a sweetness in there that kinda mellows it all out.
It's a really fun spice. It's not aggressive.
The only thing I mention about this,
you don't have spiciness, I think, to me.
But I love the chicken that you've cooked.
That's got that real Jamaican flavor to it.
I think the wrap is a great idea.
You know, when I go to Jamaica,
I love going for these kind of hand-helds.
[Crista] I'm a bit confused why there's a salad
with chicken on the side.
And I think if you just delivered this beautiful wrap
with these components inside,
that would have been a home run.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
All right, up next, chef Bryan.
Something in a bowl and 22 bones.
We usually do a ramen at the restaurant.
Obviously I couldn't do a ramen for $22.
So I did my best next thing which is kind of like
a grilled chicken rice bowl with a, uh,
ginger chicken broth.
This is a beautiful dish.
It's like a party in a bowl.
You wouldn't know this is a budget.
You have a ton of technique here.
We can see all the greatness that you do.
Bok choi is my favorite thing on the dish.
But rice got you good.
I've never worked with pre-cooked rice before.
So that was new. Obviously came out
a little bit mushier than I was typically expecting.
I think you could have cooked rice in that period of time.
-Heard that. -And the best thing is the broth.
You have those peas which have this freshness to them.
You have these peppers that have some freshness to them.
But the chicken is overcooked.
I think where it went wrong a little bit for me
was the choice of the chicken.
I know there's chicken thighs here.
They're so forgiving.
I don't think in the whole way it works.
Heard that.
[Guy] All right, up next, chef Nikol.
Something fried, 18 bucks. What have you got?
A little bit of a Greek-inspired
fried chicken and waffles.
A little bit of spice to it.
There's a little bit of cinnamon in the waffle.
18 bucks is pretty tough to feed you all,
but I have five kids. I'm always trying to figure out a way to cut.
And hopefully it worked.
You put fried front and center,
up top for us to see, and so you nailed that.
You chose chicken thighs.
It's smart. They're juicy. And the dredge on the fry,
perfectly done.
These waffles have such great flavor.
There's that cinnamon, like, all these fun spices
coming out in there, these warming spices.
I was confused how it was Greek,
but if this is something you do at home,
then I trust you and I believe you.
-Thank you. -[Simon] Chef.
When I look at this, I'm like,
it's a bit of a mess. But then I taste it.
The crunchiness of the chicken.
Has some spice, the cinnamon in there.
Thank you.
Eighteen dollars, on a budget.
We don't feel like we're on a budget.
We all have extremely full plates.
It's a little sweeter than I would like.
Little more Thai chilli in that maple syrup would have been great.
Thank you.
Not to be outdone, Chef Elijah, what do you have for us?
When I got sandwich,
and I got restaurant bestseller,
I thought specials,
and this is a sandwich I love to special, personally.
Little ground beef, making sure that that ground beef is seasoned.
I like to put the sauce on the side and the reason for that is,
I'm the type of sandwich eater that doesn't set it down.
And I do recommend that you give a little dips and scoops as you eat it.
Wow! It's a dirty sandwich but it tastes clean.
-We call it filthy, my friend. -"Filthy"?
[Simon] You really, really did a great job.
This is like, if a taco, a burger and a Philly had a baby,
that's it.
And I am not mad about that sauce on the side.
Because, like you said, you can go back in.
Like, I'm sticking my fork in it, adding in.
You nailed it on the bread.
We were all worried. Second time around, you nailed it.
I think you could've just given us a little bit more.
I mean, the sandwich is delicious.
But I feel like, there could have been more to it. Perhaps a side.
Just to really make it feel like you owned that challenge.
As a budget challenge with $20, it maybe, wasn't quite enough.
All right. Thank you very much, judges.
Chefs, I think you did a great job.
We'll send you back to the kitchen.
We'll call you when we have the scores.
-Okay? Thank you very much. -Thank you.
Time to decide whose dish is going to be taken off the menu.
We gave you a tough challenge. We gave you a menu, we gave you a budget.
We asked you to make magic.
Unfortunately, not everybody gets to stay and play.
Fifty points available.
Twenty points in gameplay,
twenty points in taste,
ten points in plating for a total of 50.
Elijah, we'll kick it off with you.
Sixteen out of 20 in gameplay,
eighteen out of 20 in taste,
and eight out of plating for a 42.
Oniel.
Fifteen out of 20 in gameplay,
sixteen out of 20 in taste,
seven for plating, for a 38.
Nikol.
Sixteen out of 20.
Eighteen out of 20 in taste.
Seven for plating, for a 41.
One point behind.
Bryan, it's up to you, bud.
You're gonna have to take
a 38 or better.
Fourteen.
Taste, 15.
Plating for an eight, for a 37.
One point behind Oniel.
-Eliijah, not bad. -[whistling]
I've been to all their restaurants,
I know their abilities.
That's one of the reasons I invited 'em.
But I gotta say goodnight. Bryan, nice to have you.
-Thanks. -[Guy] All the way from New Hampshire,
appreciate you coming and playing.
[Bryan] It was nice.
Feels good to be one of the DDD chefs over here in Flavortown.
It's disappointing I'm going home,
but someone had to and I made some mistakes.
This is it.
The second and final round of DDD Budget Battle.
All it'll take is one out-of-bounds dish
to put anyone of you on the path
to winning up to $20,000 in Flavortown Market.
Phew!
-[Oniel] Yes, sir. -Sounds great.
So, for the final challenge,
I want you to make...
a seafood favorite.
-Ooh, yes. -Okay.
Okay.
[Guy] A delicious fish or shellfish dish
that'll have the judges doing the wave.
Let me see the wave back there.
[background cheers and applause]
I'm giving you each...
How much money are we giving them? Hunter, come.
I've only come with $25, each.
-All right. Go give them. -Yeah. Okay.
Twenty-five bucks,
four delicious plates of seafood.
And we're going to go
-in three, two-- -Wait, wait.
What are you doing?
Oh, no. I got something else too. Wait, wait.
Ohh, the tricks.
You can't just give them money and say, "Run off. Take over the store."
They're gonna buy everything.
I wanted to help. So I made them a grocery list.
-Grocery list? -It'll help the chefs kinda stay on point,
or price.
[Guy] We'll see what these are. Hang on a second.
Here we go.
A protein under $5.
[Guy reading]
This is budget grocery list.
-[cash register dings] -[Guy] Shop for anything else you want,
but you have these must-have ingredients,
have to be in your dish.
You have 30 minutes to create your seafood favorite.
With $25.
But you also have to make sure you get all of these grocery list items. Okay?
Okay.
How would you explain to your... You have five kids?
-Five. -[Guy] All right.
So you have three of 'em that can understand a budget
-and how to work with the money? Okay. -Absolutely.
You two have any kids?
-I thought you had one kid. -I have a daughter.
Wait, wait, wait...
I love the eager... I love the eagerness.
It's all... It's three, two, one, go.
You just have to remember that when it's time.
-You're pinpointing on it. -Yeah. Okay.
-I have a daughter. -[timer ticking]
How old is she?
-She just turned 13. -[Guy] Oh, fantastic.
[timer continues ticking]
Ohh!
-[clears throat] -Come on!
-Judges, you get an 'F' for that. -Hey.
Hey!
This is quite a grocery list.
They only got $25. This is half of the budget.
[cash register dings]
Protein under $5.
Vegetable over $3.97.
Frozen item over $3.22.
They only have $25. They have to do these three things,
which is about half their budget.
So it doesn't give them a lot of play
to build out the rest of their dish.
[Oniel] What a lot of people don't know about me,
I don't eat meat.
I'm a pescetarian.
Poopsie!
What type of fish I could get
for less than $5?
Got the best catfish in the house.
Catfish is not a bad call.
[Oniel] I went over to the frozen section.
Frozen green beans cost $3.39.
Really didn't want to do no green beans.
But we had to do something frozen.
Bell peppers is $3.99 per pound.
So, that was my fresh vegetables for $3.99 and over.
Make the escovitch sauce.
It's one of my top seller.
Right amount of vinegar.
Let the sweetness of the vegetables pour through.
[Oniel] We're gonna really make this...
Jamaican. Ya mon.
Cornmeal. I wanna make my fried component.
I said, let's make a festival dough.
The best way to describe it to you is like,
a sweet donut, fried.
It's so cheap. Budget again.
[cashier] Okay.
-$22.32. Anything left in your cart? -That's all for now.
I got my game face on now.
And part two, it's over.
[Elijah] Immediately, I start thinking seared diver scallops.
One of my personal favorites.
Frozen item, over.
I know that this is going to be the star of my show.
Now I have to buy a protein under $5.
Shrimp, $4.99. That's one cent under $5.
The hardest one for me out of this whole list
was a veggie over $3.97 a pound.
[Simon] Oh, yes. What is it?
[Elijah] Sunchokes, $4.99 a pound.
Sunchoke chips. Huh, amazing.
How am I gonna pull this together?
Sitting right there on the aisle is zucchini.
I'm thinking, zucchini noodles.
One of my favorite dishes I special at ACEQ.
I'm in first place. I'm feeling good.
Strategy to keep the lead is to continue to play the game.
[cashier] Nothing else in the cart?
No, ma'am.
-Phew! -All right.
There you are, ma'am.
[Nikol] Seafood is hard on a budget
because it's one of the higher and more expensive proteins.
[mumbling]
For seafood favorite, I know I'm gonna be making
our kataifi fried shrimp and grits.
This is just phyllo dough.
[Nikol] We're basically gonna wrap our shrimp.
[Guy] Wow!
[Nikol] Normally, we use a larger shrimp
but the protein had to be under $5.
Shrimp and grits aren't typical to Greek cuisine.
The way we make it at the restaurant absolutely is.
I needed to grab a frozen item.
Phyllo dough was over $4.
Our grits, I needed this parmesan cheese,
and the feta.
I don't normally add a vegetable to this particular dish.
[Crista] Pick an expensive veggie.
[Nikol] But, yellow pepper...
Try to incorporate it into my grits.
Protein's under five bucks.
I think I would make my children super proud
when they're watching this episode,
that mom killed it, and did my absolute best.
Why are you doing the Greek grits?
Just because you're...
-Greek. -Greek? That's a good reason.
-Uh, $26.96. -No? How did that happen?
I'm $2 over.
Take that off.
Had to put back the feta.
-$24.97. -[Nikol] There you go.
We utilize the feta for saltiness.
Three cents left. I knew I could just add salt to the dish
with some parmesan cheese.
Wooh! $24.97.
[Guy] Twenty-four minutes.
What's on the menu?
[Oniel] Rest of the meal, I'mma be... I'mma do the escovitch catfish.
And I'mma do some sauteed green beans.
Right in his wheelhouse, folks.
-You're gonna pan fry those or deep fry those? -[Oniel] Deep. Deep.
I dredge my catfish in flour,
a little cornmeal, a house blend.
While the catfish is sitting in that,
I'll just make the escovitch sauce.
Escovitch sauce is like a tangy, spicy sauce made from vinegar base.
With onions, carrots, habanero, bell peppers.
And that's how we do it in our restaurant.
I'mma kill it with a little sugar.
So it doesn't be all acidic.
And then are we gonna cool it for the service?
No, I wanna serve it warm.
Gonna serve it warm. Warm escovitch. Got it.
Look at this. Oopsie!
Look at them colors.
Huh? You smell that?
That's flavor improv.
[Guy] Twenty-one minutes.
[Brian] Elijah with the early lead
coming out on the scoreboard, hitting hard.
Scallop's something I worked with many a time.
Working with frozen seafood, never one of my favorites.
Let's get those scallops thawed.
Luckily, the shrimp is fresh.
[Guy] Elijah, what's on the menu, buddy?
Some seafood.
Good talk. Good talk.
[Elijah] Zucchini, squash noodles, seared diver scallops,
and I'm gonna throw some mushrooms and sunchoke chips.
Got it.
-[Brian] Zoodles. -[Crista] He's making zoodles?
I respect a zoodle maker.
[Elijah] Butter, little vinegar,
paprika.
And I don't want these zoodles to overcook.
So it's just gonna be a quick kinda fry in this butter.
When I win, the money is gonna go directly back into the restaurant.
It's gonna go into more training for my staff.
And I wanna just continue to see these amazing people succeed.
Nikol is taking us on an adventure down a Greek island,
we have not explored before.
[Crista] She's actually got a Greek grits that she started in.
She started it early, which is super smart.
You didn't get to keep the feta.
I didn't. That's okay.
Just put a little extra parm in there for the saltiness.
As my grits are cooking down,
I grill the yellow pepper.
What is that going to be?
It's going in the grits. Just for a little bit of texture,
little bit sweetness.
This isn't something we normally use
but I had to use this vegetable somehow
and then set it aside while I prepare my shrimp.
I don't have the kataifi that I normally use at the restaurant.
So, I'm kind of making it. Making my own version of it.
A little bit of flour, and the phyllo dough that I got.
So you top with the phyllo dough,
-so it's easier to get around all of it, versus... -[Nikol] Exactly.
-[Guy] ...trying to wrap it. -[Nikol] The only shrimp you had were tiny. So...
Oh, no. I had other shrimp. You just didn't have the money.
[Nikol] Yeah. True. True story.
[Guy] Fifteen minutes, chefs. Fifteen to go. Halfway.
Oniel cannot play it safe right now.
-He's down four points... -[Crista] No, he's down four points.
...in lead, so it's pull out all stops and go for it.
[Oniel] Catfish is already good to go.
Escovitch sauce is cooking
and to save money, I could use something that's already on my station.
I said, "Let's make a festival dough."
This is like a sugar dumpling.
I see festival is getting made.
-[Oniel] Yeah. -[Guy] Sugar. Cornmeal going in for some texture.
-Flour, salt, baking powder. What else? -Yes, sir.
[Guy] You mix this up.
One of the smartest things that the chefs can do when they're competing is
to use any of these key ingredients in the pantry.
[Oniel] I got these frozen green beans.
We had to do something frozen.
This is the worst sauteed red wine reduced green beans.
Where I'm from in Jamaica, you don't even live to see my age,
much less even get opportunities.
So what I want to do with this money,
I'm gonna go back to Jamaica,
open up a culinary program,
where every summer, I'm able to take three kids,
let them work in my restaurant,
and start expanding their mindset of what culinary is.
We got so many talented chefs out there.
I'm gonna be the life of them.
[Elijah] That browned butter.
Hey, judges. You like a seared scallop?
I would love a seared scallop, please.
Don't overdo it, though.
You don't got a sear on your scallop,
why even eat a scallop?
I got the sunchoke
to not only give my dish some texture,
but mighty tasty as well.
What did you put in your grits here, chef?
Cheese, heavy cream, little bit of salt.
And my semolina grits.
No doubt there's cheese in there.
[Nikol] My shrimp is fried.
And I'm gonna work on my spicy honey sauce.
Cayenne pepper that I pulled from my pantry,
orange blossom honey.
I really wanna win.
I think this seafood favorite
will absolutely get me my bed and breakfast in Greece.
That's something my dad spoke about.
It would be an absolute dream come true to be able to do this.
It came out really great.
Chefs, five minutes. Need to be plated in five.
[Oniel] This dish has to be perfect-o.
Ya mon. Real perfect just like yardman style.
The only thing I'm worried about right now is that green bean.
I wish it was fresh green bean they told us to use instead of the frozen one.
So the escovitch sauce could just spread on both pieces of fish,
pressing and stacking on top of each other.
[Elijah] The first thing I do, I had to make sure to get the zoodles down.
I get my shrimp down.
Get my seared scallops on the plate.
And I top it with some of my sunchoke chips.
Voilà. Money.
Ninety seconds.
I have to try those again just to make sure that
they're as awesome as I thought they were.
-Yes. -That's so good.
[Nikol] My shrimp is fried and they're all ready to go.
I would have loved to have added a little bit of green
or a little fresh herbs to it
but unfortunately, it was not within my budget.
Five...
Four...
Three...
Two... One.
-That's it. -[Nikol] Final one. Final one.
Chef, let's find out whose seafood favorite turns the tide in their favor.
Let's take it to the judges. Right this way.
[cash register dings]
Here we go, judges. This is it.
Game two of DDD Budget Battle.
The chefs had to make a seafood favorite with 25 bucks or less,
that included three budget items on the list.
First up, Chef Oniel.
For my seafood special, I wanted to keep it to my culture.
So I did a escovitch catfish
with deep-fried festival,
and I did some sauteed green beans for my frozen vegetable.
And on top is my pickled onions.
I really wanted to keep my culture once again.
So I put the Rastafarian colors,
this is the green, red and yellow bell peppers.
Just to give the vegetables a little pop.
Oniel, you have a lot of ground to make up.
And this is a great, great effort to get that done.
This does not look like a budget battle to me.
We have giant plates of colorful, bright, great tasting food.
This escovitch, it's my favorite part.
You get this nice, sort of, bright sweetness.
The flavors are incredible.
And then you put this vinegar situation on top of it.
You knocked it out of the park.
Thank you.
This reminds me of eating in Jamaica.
You've got your catfish with that crunch on it.
You've got the escovitch. It's got the peppers to it,
which is perfect for this.
The real star is the festival.
Because, you need to have that bite to it.
You need to have that chew to it.
The one thing I will mention here,
these beans didn't work.
I like to play the game, Hide the Frozen Item,
because they can get watery when they come from frozen.
I think you could have hid that in your pickled situation a little bit better.
Honestly, I was gonna do it.
But then, I was thinking, probably you guys wanna see the frozen item.
-Nah, we don't wanna see the frozen... -No.
Hide that sucker in there. Yeah.
But it's delicious and people should be worried.
[chuckling] Thank you.
Up next, Chef Nikol, what do you have for us?
I went back to my Greek roots with this one.
So, what I have for you chefs is,
a Greek-inspired shrimp and grits.
The shrimp is actually coated with phyllo dough.
That was my frozen item.
Drizzled on top is a little bit of honey.
Phyllo, no matter how you cook it, it's going to be dry.
And that's what the honey is for.
And there's just a little tiny bit of spice in there.
[Brian] I am not familiar with the Greek culture or this dish,
but I feel like I am understanding what is being told here.
The shrimp with that kataifi,
it's a little sweet for my taste.
This is delicious.
And I wanna eat the whole thing
but they'll need to take me out in a grocery cart.
It's like dessert meets dinner meets a party in my mouth, is what it is.
Then there's some heat in the back notes.
I would love for there to be something green and fresh in here.
The dish itself looks gorgeous.
And it's really delicious.
The semolina, that's great.
But your vegetable ingredient,
one bell pepper being whisked into it,
that's a bit worrying.
You need to have something in there as well.
-Thank you. -[Guy] All right.
Not to be outdone, Elijah,
what do you got for us?
Uh, so this evening, what I have for you is,
one of my favorites,
diver scallops.
Local to New Mexico, calabacita squashes,
which I was so excited to be able to get my hands on.
I used some shrimp
because I had some extra money to spend
and then I figured it might spruce it up.
You absolutely did the scallops perfectly.
But I thought, the kind of peppery,
that mix underneath the vegetable and everything else,
that didn't work for me.
You should have put more mint in there.
You had to get that produce that was over the $3.50 mark.
What... That was the mushrooms?
Sunchoke chip.
-Ohh! -[Elijah] Which is right there on top
and that gives a little bit of texture.
It's slightly under seasoned for me.
Plating needs to be more of that bright, green freshness.
The shrimp are a little bit over.
I think your play in the vegetable land was amazing.
Some nice, beautiful vegetables that really elevated this dish a lot.
[Guy] All right. Thank you very much.
I think you guys should be very proud of yourselves.
Send you back to the kitchens.
Call you when we have a final two.
-Thanks, chef. -Congratulations.
All right. Let's see whose discount seafood can earn them a $20,000 profit.
Twenty points available in taste,
twenty points in gameplay,
ten points in the plating.
[Guy] This was a great round.
I think everybody had delicious food.
And let's take a look at the scores.
Fifty points available.
Elijah, you're in the lead with 42.
Fifteen out of 20, gameplay.
Fifteen out of 20, taste.
Seven for plating for a 37
and a total of 79.
Oniel.
Thirty-eight, in the basement. Four behind.
Eighteen out of 20, gameplay.
Eighteen out of 20 in taste.
Plating with an eight for a 44.
And wow! An 82.
-[whistling] -[Crista] Holy cow!
[clapping]
Nikol, you need a 41 or better.
Fifteen out of 20.
Sixteen out of 20.
Plating for an eight for a 39.
And a big come-from-behind win,
Oniel.
[all cheering]
Yo!
-[Guy] Congratulations. -[Nikol] Congratulations.
-Thank you. -Definitely, not scores to be embarrassed by.
And definitely, the level of play that you have to come in here with.
Elijah, Nikol, great to have you. Thank you.
[Nikol] Congratulations.
I think I would make my children super proud
when they're watching this episode.
I'm really proud of myself.
-Keep crushing it, man. -Thank you, man.
Keep crushing it. Proud of you.
[Elijah] Flavortown was disappointing because I didn't win.
But I'm not gonna let that kill my spirits.
You'll be seeing more of me.
[Guy] All right, my friend.
This is a big come-from-behind win.
[Oniel] Man, this means everything to me.
Escovitch catfish never tasted that good.
So if you need my recipe,
come and ask me right now real quick,
because I got you guys. Poopsie!
-[Guy] Congratulations. -Gotcha!
Give it up for Oniel. Come on up here and say hi to the chefs.
Couple ways to win up to 20,000 bucks.
First, we can go on a shopping spree.
I give you two minutes to grab five items
and satisfy a trivia clue about food that's on this card.
Every item that you grab, you get 4000 bucks.
Or, we could skip all that
and we can go to the cheque that's behind the door there right now.
And it could be anywhere from $13,000 to $20,000.
So my gut feeling is telling me, go get this cheque.
You will go for the cheque?
-Let's go for the cheque. -Let's take a look.
How much is that cheque worth?
[suspenseful music playing]
-$16,999. -[all cheering]
Oopsie!
I just won 17 grand.
[screaming]
-Whoo! -[cash register dings]
[Oniel] I'm gonna be able to get in contact
with the directors in Jamaica who I already spoke to about my school.
I want these kids to start playing around with all the kitchen tools.
$16,999.
And he's going to use it to help other people
and bring young kids from Jamaica to learn how to cook.
Does it get any better?
We'll see next week. Guy's Grocery Games. Adios.