This Is the Seafood Boil That Beat Bobby Flay

After winning the first season of Beachside Brawl and being crowned Chopped’s Casino Royale champion, Pacific Northwest chef Kaleena Bliss was ripe to take down one of Food Network’s finest: Bobby Flay.

In a Beat Bobby Flay episode appropriately titled “Don’t Yuck My Yum,” Kaleena was asked to compete alongside Florida’s Melissa Donahue for a chance at Bobby himself. She entered the arena wielding a shovel — her not-so-subtle way of telling Bobby that she was ready and willing to bury him when the time came. Guest judges Sunny Anderson and Ross Matthews could hardly contain their excitement (real fans know just how much Sunny loves to push Bobby’s buttons).

To earn a spot cooking opposite Bobby, Kaleena had to use his required ingredient of dandelion greens better than Melissa in Round 1. Her Spaghetti With Creamy Dandelion Green Pesto had Sunny and Ross raving and ranting just a little. Ross commented that the cream sauce “muted the dandelion green.”

“I will say it’s a little bit too cheesy,” Sunny said. “I can’t believe I said that.”

Regardless of Kaleena’s fromage faux pas, her dish was impressive enough to move her on to Round 2 and the final boss.

Kaleena Invites Bobby to the Ultimate Shell-ebration

Bobby might have challenged Kaleena with dandelion greens, but she was ready to assign an equally challenging signature dish: a seafood boil.

For her, who told Sunny she makes it “at home as a snack all the time,” it would be just another day in the kitchen. Bobby was sweating the details as soon as the clock started. After admitting to Sunny that the last boil he attended was in the Hamptons, in an aside, he said, “I don’t really make seafood boils very often because seafood cooks at different rates. It’s a lot to manage.”

Kaleena aimed to shy away from the established Cajun style for her Pacific Northwest Dungeness crab boil with some “Asian-y elements.” In the pot with the Dungeness, she added king crab, clams, mussels, shrimps, oysters, andouille sausage, corn and potatoes in a ginger and Fresno chile seasoned butter sauce garnished with cocktail sauce. To drive home the beauty of the boil, she planned to serve it on paper, messy and family style.

Despite consuming more seafood boils than he’s probably cooked, Bobby got his act together fairly quickly. He chose blue crab, lobster, mussels, clams and head-on prawns to boil in a Peruvian yellow chili broth, served with crispy potatoes and toast with anchovy butter. (He’s always got to work in a crispy element, IYKYK.)

Ross couldn’t resist distracting Bobby halfway through his cook with a little game. Ever the consummate host, he (unhappily) obliged and was tasked with trying some crazy food pairings: watermelon with Dijon mustard and hot dogs and peanut butter. Kaleena welcomed the palate-pleasing pastime.

When it came time for plating, Kaleena grabbed her materials, which had Sunny screaming, “And she’s serving it on paper? Bobby, take notes from Kaleena!” Even Bobby called her dish “so beautiful” after time was called.

One of the Chef’s Steamy Dreams Comes True

For Round 2, Ross and Sunny backed down and let chefs Valentine Thomas (who’s also a spearfishing expert), Jeremy Salamon and Skai Young step up to the plates.

After tasting Bobby’s boil, Skai commented that she liked the “simplicity of this dish.” All three judges noted how perfectly the seafood and potatoes were cooked, but ultimately, it paled in comparison to Kaleena’s buttered beauty.

Jeremy called her boil “certainly a party on a plate.” Skai called the crab delicious, but while noting the sauces were “very different,” she wished that they “were separate so I could have a bit of a different bite.” Valentine got lost in the sauce — in a good way. “Normally when you eat a seafood boil, after a while, the flavor gets redundant, but because here you have different sauce, I could eat an entire pool of this,” she said.

After some deliberation, Ross and Sunny screamed out Kaleena’s name as one of many who have beaten Bobby Flay. She had a new fan in Valentine, who said that hers was “such a fantastic seafood boil, it’s actually one of the best I’ve ever had … Please come to my house, come fishing with me.”

Maybe Bobby needs a trip down memory lane — courtesy of Food Network’s archives — and to the supermarket to practice with his Rodbenders Low Country Island Boil.