Justin Emerges as a Leader on Cooking Show

Marietta’s Food Network Star hopeful, Justin Balmes, showed he’s one of the strongest contenders in the kitchen but struggled in front of the cameras during the season’s third episode Sunday night.

In other words, Justin served up more of the same recipe of culinary excellence and TV mediocrity, and the result was the same: The Harry’s Farmers Market butcher/fishmonger is safe for another week.

No one questions his ability to cook. In the Hershey's-sponsored Camera Challenge, Justin rocks out a mustard-crusted pork chop using Hershey’s Kisses with caramel. The judges are impressed by the taste, amazed at the audacity of the difficult dish and bored to tears with his presentation.

At least Justin doesn’t freeze or stutter this time; he just fails to show any personality or excitement.

“Justin is wooden. The only reason he’s still here is because he’s a good chef,” competitor Penny says, slicing through the silliness of the competition. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether your food is any good because nobody can taste it through the TV; it just has to look good.

Justin does get the theme-setting quote to open the show: “Chris is annoying the heck out of everybody. He’s like the little brother you love but just want to smack.”

Sure enough, sous chef Chris hogs the screen time with his dervish-of-destruction routine while trying to prove he’s all grown up. Instead, he comes across as more juvenile than ever and establishes himself as the favorite to go home next week.

He survives this week in part because of Justin, who takes over leadership of their six-member team in the Star Challenge after their celebrity-chef coach, Robert Irvine, explodes at the chaos and mess in the kitchen.

“Looks like World War III in here. … This is totally unacceptable,” says Irvine, who’s used to seeing kitchen disasters as the star of Restaurant: Impossible.

“I’m absolutely ready to take charge at this point,” Justin tells us, and his teammates praise him for being clean, focused and on task.

That task is to produce sophisticated, daring desserts for 150 people in six hours. Each competitor prepares a dessert, and each team produces two group items.

The judges love Justin's dish, kettle corn with white truffle honey butter.

“But I wonder what he did with the other five hours and 59 minutes of his time,” judge Bob Tuschman says.

The judges also think little of the group dish Justin executes, a chocolate-covered bacon, and they hate his unenthusiastic, flat presentation of team dishes to the judges.

“I’m waiting for you to come out of your shell,” Bobby Flay says, meeting his quota for referring to Justin as a turtle at least twice an episode.

But the team wins to earn places in the final 11, and weepy Alicia (her tears fell 79 minutes into the episode, in case you had that number in the office pool) is sent packing.

"I had the crowd favorite dish and no mention of it!" Justin writes on Twitter. "Also, Chris was crying like a little girl and all we saw was puffy eyes. Lame."

The real lesson this week: Never watch Food Network Star for the celebrity-chef guests. Two of Food Network’s must interesting personalities, Irvine and Duff Goldman, had almost no impact Sunday night.

So don’t plan on watching the next episode at 9 p.m. Sunday to see guest Paula Deen; instead, tune in to see whether our man Justin cracks the top 10. Or save yourself the 90 minutes and return to Marietta Patch next Monday for another update.