In episode nine of Food Network Star the 7 remaining hopefuls perform live cooking demos in front of huge crowds at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Unbeknownst to them, each will face a technical glitch set up by the producers and will be judged on how they bounce back.

Up till now the show has been pretty predictable as to what team will lose a contestant. They have always eliminated from the heaviest team. We will see if that holds true tonight.

The teams are as follows;

TEAM BOBBY

1. Michelle Ragussis - Brooklyn, N.Y.
2. Nikki Martin - West Hollywood, Calif.

TEAM ALTON

1. Martie Duncan – Birmingham, Ala.
2. Justin Warner - Brooklyn, N.Y.

TEAM GIADA

1. Yvan Lemoine – New York
2. Phillip “Ippy” Aiona – Hawaii.
3. Martita Jara – San Diego, Calif.

CHALLENGE

The challenge is to do a three-minute live cooking presentation before an audience and the producers. The judges will taste their finished dish after the live demo. The producers will throw all of the contestants a curve ball to see how they recoup.

• Justin is up first from team Alton and is heckled by the audience. He acts a bit flippid but the judges love his food once again.
• Nikki is off to a good start until her blender does not work. She never recovers and does not finish her demo. The judges loved her food.
• Yvan has feed back on his microphone but shuts it off and does a great job with an elevated voice. The judges also like his food.
• Ippy has the audience talking over him and some get up and leave. He yells at them not to leave
• and gets a bit flustered. His food is liked as well.
• Martita has her peppers replaced with some other kind of pepper which really throws her off as the peppers were the focus of her presentation. She ends her last 25 seconds with meaningless gibberish.
• Martie had her fish removed along with other items but recovered nicely. She finished strong and the judges loved her fish.
• Michele gets the wrong time cues throughout her presentation and gets flustered but finished strong. The judges liked her food as well.

The next day Bob and Susie tell the group the Ippy and Martita would be in the producers challenge which was no big surprise as Giada’s team was three strong and Bobby and Alton had two each.

PRODUCERS CHALLENGE

The bottom two will have to do a live presentation on a mystery ingredient on the fly. The first up is Ippy and when he reveals the mystery ingredient he wastes no time telling a story about oranges as a child and does well with it. Martita does not share a personnel story and just talks about how she incorporates citrus in her dishes.

Bob and Susie get together with the pair and tell them that Ippy is safe and Martita is eliminated.

images courtesy of foodnetwork.com