History YMMV / CutthroatKitchen

* NegatedMomentOfAwesome: In the episode "Kiss My Grits", first round is nachos. ''Chopped'' champion Chef Willen gets distracted and fails to get both tortilla chips and cheese in the pantry. To get around that, she tries making "Paleo diet" nachos, using skirt steak, avocados, and using oven-roasted crispy chicken skin in place of the tortilla chips. [[spoiler: Chef Willen gets distracted again during plating, and forgets to take her skins out of the oven, and Jet Tila eliminates her. Because one other chef prepared a dish that had raw shrimp, it's likely Chef Willen would've survived with the chicken-skin nachos.]]

* RetroactiveRecognition: Like Series/Chopped, some chefs from Series/HellsKitchen have competed on the show, such as Robyn (who also won her chopped episode), Cody, Clemenza, Tommy, Marc, Gabriel, and most notably Kori, who competed in the first season and won before going onto win the nineteenth season.

** Matthew Grunwald. He was as arrogant and hypocritical as he was in ''[[Series/TheNextFoodNetworkStar Food Network Star]]'', and [[TotallyRadical constantly saying "Hashtag" in front of other words]]. He is also responsible for not one, but '''two''' WhatAnIdiot moments, including ''paying over $31,000 for an empty salt shaker''.

** In Season 12, a chef injured herself during the competition for the first time in the show's history, slicing the tip of her finger off. The injury and blood were blurred out.
* WhatAnIdiot:
** In the Club Sandwich round, one chef spent over $15,900 over two auctions to give the sabotages of golf clubs and gloves that HAD to stay food-free to one chef. This would have been a wise investment had the victim been sent off. [[spoiler:But it didn't. Instead, the Italian chef put salmon and bleu cheese in the sandwich. In cooking (''especially'' Italian cooking), pairing fish and cheese is usually a big no-no, but the decision to use salmon and ''bleu'' cheese was beyond idiotic. In fact, the chef he was trying to sabotage mentioned this trope by name. [[HoistByHisOwnPetard He got sent off instead]].]]
** It's somewhat alarming how many chefs are frenzied in the pantry grabbing everything in sight - except for a major ingredient. Sometimes, a major ingredient ''in the dish's title''.
--> '''Chef Psilakis:''' "How am I gonna make Kung Pow Chicken without chicken?"
** In the third preliminary heat of Superstar Sabotage, Johnny Iuzzini forked over $17,000 to make his two opponents hold hands for the rest of the Croque-Monsieur round. Setting aside the fact that this left him with only $100 while it was still only round 2... he was playing for ''charity''. [[spoiler:He actually made out better by losing, because losing got his charity $2,500 while winning would have only gotten them the $100.]]
** A general one, but, for some reason, some chefs decide to add extraneous stuff to their dish that have nothing to do with the target dish and/or do a dish too many ways. Alton repeatedly warns contestants on this and other shows not to do that because the judge will have to consider all parts of the dish, and it could take away from the whole dish.
*** In "[=SaBOOOTage=]", Chef Skylar added a fruity ice cream (made from leftover Halloween candy) to her devil's food cake. Alton explicitly warned her not to include it. She ignored him. And got cut. Hell, in the ''After-Show'' even Jet Tila said that she could've won if she left it out.
*** In the final heat of "Superstar Sabotage", Melissa D'Arabian added a pasta to the side of her Eggplant Parmesan. Her Eggplant Parmesan was perfect, but her pasta was bad. She got cut.
** More so than adding extra ingredients, this applies to anyone who puts an object that is NOT food in their final dish as a decoration or otherwise. This move is considered by Food Network to be dangerous, and adding something like a plastic lure from a tackle box is grounds for instant disqualification from the show no matter what else happened that round.[[note]] It should be noted that this isn't exclusive to this show; other shows such as ''Series/HellsKitchen'' frown heavily on putting non-food items in a dish, even as a decoration.[[/note]]
** In a southwest salad round, one chef decided to use steak instead of lettuce. She didn't even try and toss the ingredients to make it look remotely like a salad; the final dish was a steak with salsa on it. She was eliminated due to not presenting a salad. Even as she left, she insisted that a salad should be whatever a person wants it to be.
** One chef in the first season won an auction that allowed him to steal one ingredient from each of his two opponents. He took the puff pastry of the female chef, but opted not to take anything from the other chef because he "helped" him in the first round. He eventually [[HoistByHisOwnPetard blew the competition to that chef]] in the finals when he made spicy teriyaki (a move he defended in his exit). Alton more or less implied this trope in the after show.
** One chef in the final round initially went all out and bid her entire remaining pot ($8,900) to force her opponent, who had more than twice that, to outbid her. On the next sabotage, she jumped the gun and accidentally bid her entire pot again even though her opponent's pot wasn't much bigger than her own now, meaning she would be walking away with absolutely nothing even ''if'' she won.
** For a Salisbury steak round, one chef had his meat supply switched out for a Jell-O mold full of mixed berries and ground beef. After melting it apart with hot water, he used the berries ''and'' the meat in his dish, presenting it as a "Salis-Berry Steak," and promptly got cut because the berry flavor was so overwhelming. When Jet Tila learned of the sabotage in the episode's after-show, he wondered aloud why the chef hadn't simply picked the meat out.
** During a Spaghetti and Meatballs round in Season 1, Chef Glick pays $6,500 for the right to confiscate all of a single ingredient type from one opponent. He goes to Chef Davidi, whose basket is crammed with boxes of pasta, and takes... the single bulb of garlic she got from the pantry. No one can believe that he chose the ''garlic'', including Alton and Chef Davidi herself:[[note]]Amazingly, this ''kinda worked'': Jet Tila called out Chef Davidi's dish for being low on flavor and specifically cited the lack of garlic, to which Chef Glick reacted with [[SmugSnake the smuggest grin imaginable]]. Granted, it didn't get Chef Davidi ''eliminated'', but still.[[/note]]
--> '''Chef Davidi:''' I've got all the boxes for spaghetti, and ''that's'' what you're gonna take?\\
'''Alton:''' ''(to Chef Davidi)'' I woulda taken every stinkin' piece of spaghetti you had.
** During the Carbonara round in "Evilicious: Canoe Jack City," one of the sabotages was to replace all of a opponent's eggs with huevos rancheros. Chef Matt asked if the eggs were runny and Alton answered by poking the yolks, causing them to run into the salsa covering the eggs.
--> '''Chef Matt:''' "What did they say: when you're in a hole, don't keep digging?"
** The first course of "Evilicious Tournament Finale" had a doozy; Chef Matt (yes, the same Chef Matt from above) manages to spend ''$31,500'' to take away a chef's ability to use salt. What does he do? [[spoiler:He gives it to the person who's supposed to be making ''his spaghetti and sauce'', on the "logic" that if their dish is worse, he will have the better component. [[LaserGuidedKarma He didn't, and got sent home for dry meatballs.]]]] Simon Majumdar was quite baffled by that one, stating in the After Show that "[Matt] should have been thrown out just for being a doofus."
** During the oatmeal raisin cookie challenge, Chef Rocky plays WrongGenreSavvy from start to finish. He attempts to "sabotage-proof" his recipe by making a cookie that requires as few things a sabotage could possibly take away as possible, including not baking it and only clumping some oats and raisins together with some syrup into a cookie shape. When he receives a sabotage that replaces all of his raisins with regular grapes, he continues with his plan and serves something that ''barely'' resembles an oatmeal raisin cookie, along with an unnecessary bowl of ice cream. For comparison, his opponent's only issues were not having quite enough oats in his cookies and only having one cookie on the plate. [[spoiler: Naturally, Rocky didn't win.]]
** The first round in "Carne Diem" tasked the chefs to make a French omelet. Chef Paul won the first two auctions (replacing each of his opponents' mixing vessels and forcing one chef to cook everything on a spiral-shaped spatula) and was spared from the third (strapping two chefs together with a French flag). [[spoiler:Paul not only overcooked his omelet, but he added tomatoes and a chakalaka sauce to a dish that judge Jet Tila thought didn't work with it[[note]]Interestingly, chakalaka sauce is very traditional on eggs in Chef Paul's home country of South Africa.[[/note]]. Despite having no sabotages, Chef Paul was the first contestant axed.]]
** In "The Full Monte Cristo", the contestants are challenged to make a Monte Cristo (a fried ham and cheese sandwich). Despite being a fairly simple challenge, Chef Jourdan has a ''lot'' of trouble with it. First, she attempts to get ''broccoli'' for her sandwich. Alton confiscates it, saying [[LampshadeHanging "I'm doing you a favor"]]. She then makes no effort to bid during the auctions, allowing a competitor to switch out her bread for French onion soup for a mere $700. After this, She learns later that she grabbed ''butter'' from the pantry instead of cheese, so the only cheese she has to work with is whatever was melted onto the soup. For her dish, she decides to serve a chorizo flipped-up French onion soup alongside an heirloom tomato and herb salad with her Monte Cristo. When Alton warned her that chefs have been sent home for trying to do two things, her response is a glib [[ComicallyMissingThePoint "Yeah? I'm doing three things."]] Finally, when she can't dry out her bread in the oven, she tries to hide the soggiest pieces INSIDE the sandwich. In the end, Judge Jet Tila chides her for the extraneous side dishes and tastes no ham and cheese in her sandwich, [[EpicFail resulting in Chef Jourdan getting sent home]].

** More so than adding extra ingredients, this applies to anyone who puts an object that is NOT food in their final dish as a decoration or otherwise. This move is considered by Food Network to be dangerous, and adding something like a plastic lure from a tackle box is grounds for instant disqualification from the show no matter what else happened that round.[[note] It should be noted that this isn't exclusive to this show; other shows such as ''Series/HellsKitchen'' frown heavily on putting non-food items in a dish, even as a decoration.[[/note]]

** One episode featured an Italian contestant for whom English wasn't his first language. When asked to make a dish of biscuits and gravy, he misheard Alton and made ''brisket'' and gravy instead. Was he eliminated for this mistake? No - his dish was judged as though brisket and gravy ''was'' what had been asked for. And he moved on to the next round because one of his competitors produced a dish that the judge didn't like at all ''and'' didn't resemble biscuits and gravy whatsoever. After this incident, Alton took great care to explain the following rounds in more detail to make sure such a mistake couldn't happen again.
** A Season 10 episode features a brash, older chef named Chef Kapo, who's a culinary teacher. When he eventually wins, he reveals his motivation:

** During a Spaghetti and Meatballs round in Season 1, Chef Glick pays $6,500 for the right to confiscate all of a single ingredient type from one opponent. He goes to Chef Davidi, whose basket is crammed with boxes of pasta, and takes... the single bulb of garlic she got from the pantry. No one can believe that he chose the ''garlic'', including Alton and Chef Davidi herself:

*** Amazingly, this ''kinda worked'': Jet Tila called out Chef Davidi's dish for being low on flavor and specifically cited the lack of garlic, to which Chef Glick reacted with [[SmugSnake the smuggest grin imaginable]]. Granted, it didn't get Chef Davidi ''eliminated'', and [[spoiler:Chef Glick lost in the second round due to both claiming a bottled sauce was his own creation and lazily stuffing his chicken wings with stringy carrot and celery ribbons.]]

** More so than adding extra ingredients, this applies to anyone who puts an object that is NOT food in their final dish as a decoration or otherwise. This move is considered by Food Network to be dangerous, and adding something like a plastic lure from a tackle box is grounds for instant disqualification from the show no matter what else happened that round. Other cooking shows such as ''Hell's Kitchen'' also frown heavily on this.

** One chef in the final round initially went all out and bid her entire remaining pot ($8,900) to force her opponent, who had more than twice that, to outbid her. On the next sabotage, she jumped the gun and accidentally bid her entire pot again even though her opponent's pot wasn't much bigger than her own now, meaning she would be walking away with absolutely nothing even if she won. [[spoiler: She didn't.]]
** For a Salisbury steak round, one chef had his meat supply switched out for a Jell-O mold full of mixed berries and ground beef. After melting it apart with hot water, he used the berries ''and'' the meat in his dish, presenting it as a "Salis-Berry Steak," and promptly got cut because the berry flavor was so overwhelming. When Jet Tila learned of the sabotage in the episode's after-show, he wondered aloud why the chef hadn't bothered to simply pick out the meat.
** During a Spaghetti and Meatballs round in Season 1, Chef Glick pays $6,500 for the right to confiscate all of a single ingredient type from one opponent. He goes to Chef Davidi, whose basket is crammed with boxes of pasta, and takes... the single bulb of garlic she got from the pantry. No one can believe this, including Chef Davidi and Alton:
--> '''Chef Davidi:''' I've got all the boxes for spaghetti, and ''that's'' what you're gonna take? \\
'''Alton:''' ''(to her)'' I woulda taken every stinkin' piece of spaghetti you had.
** Amazingly, he survived that round -- in fact, Jet Tila called out Chef Davidi's dish for being low on flavor and specifically cited the lack of garlic, to which Chef Glick reacted with [[SmugSnake the smuggest grin imaginable]]. You can't really say it worked, though, because Chef Davidi wasn't eliminated either. [[spoiler:Chef Glick loses in the ''second'' round, a chicken wing challenge. Forced to stuff his wings, he is called out by Jet Tila for lazily stuffing them with stringy carrot and celery ribbons and for trying to pass off a bottled sauce as his own creation.]]

** The first course of "Evilicious Tournament Finale" had a doozy; Chef Matt- the ''same Chef Matt from above''- manages to spends ''$31,500'' (the highest amount spent on a single item in Cutthroat Kitchen history up at that point) to take away a chef's ability to use salt. What does he do? [[spoiler:He gives it ''to the opponent who's supposed to be making his spaghetti and sauce'', on the "logic" that if their dish is worse, he will have the better component. [[LaserGuidedKarma Except he didn't, and got sent home for dry meatballs.]]]] Simon Majumdar was quite baffled by that one, stating in the After Show "he should have been thrown out just for being a doofus."
** Chef Rocky during the oatmeal raisin cookie challenge plays WrongGenreSavvy in this from start to finish. He attempts to "sabotage-proof" his recipe by making a cookie that requires as few things a sabotage could possibly take away as possible, including not baking it and only clumping some oats and raisins together with some syrup into a cookie shape. When he receives a sabotage that replaces all of his raisins with regular grapes, he continues with his plan and turns out something that only passingly resembles an oatmeal raisin cookie, as well as a completely extraneous bowl of ice cream. His opponent, for comparison, only had the problems of not having quite enough oats in his cookies and only ending up with one cookie on the plate. [[spoiler: Rocky doesn't win.]]
** The first round in "Carne Diem" tasked the chefs to make a French omelet. Chef Paul won the first two auctions--replacing each of his opponents' mixing vessels and forcing one chef to cook everything on a spiral-shaped spatula--and was spared from the third--strapping two chefs together with a French flag. [[spoiler:Paul not only overcooked his omelet, but he added tomatoes and a chakalaka sauce to a dish that judge Jet Tila thought didn't work together. Chef Paul was the first contestant axed.]]
*** [[spoiler:Interestingly, chakalaka sauce is actually very traditional on eggs in South Africa, where Chef Paul is from.]]
** Chef Jourdan's appearance in Season 10, Episode 1: "The Full Monte Cristo" reads like an itemized list of what NOT to do in Cutthroat Kitchen. The challenge in Round 1 is to make a Monte Cristo (a fried ham and cheese sandwich).
*** First, she gets stuck in the pantry. Alton takes her ''broccoli'', saying [[LampshadeHanging "I'm doing you a favor"]]. She apparently "had plans for it", but what broccoli would be doing in a ham and cheese sandwich is not clear.
*** She makes no effort to bid during the auctions, allowing a competitor to switch out her bread for French onion soup for a mere $700.
*** She learns later that she grabbed butter from the pantry instead of cheese, meaning that the only cheese she has to work with is whatever was melted onto the soup. Cue massive "OhCrap" moment.
*** Chef Jourdan explains that she intends to serve a chorizo flipped-up French onion soup and an heirloom tomato and herb salad with her Monte Cristo. When Alton warned her that chefs have been sent home for trying to do two things, her response is a glib [[ComicallyMissingThePoint "Yeah? I'm doing three things."]]
*** After she fails to get the bread dried out in the oven, she attempts to hide the soggiest pieces INSIDE the sandwich.
*** In the end, Judge Jet Tila chides her for the extraneous side dishes, and tastes beef and onion in her sandwich INSTEAD of ham and cheese, [[EpicFail and Chef Jourdan goes home]].

** One episode featured a contestant for whom English wasn't his first language. When asked to make a dish of biscuits and gravy, he misheard Alton and made ''brisket'' and gravy instead. Was he eliminated for this mistake? No - his dish was judged as though brisket and gravy ''was'' what had been asked for. And he moved on to the next round because one of his competitors produced a dish that the judge didn't like at all ''and'' didn't resemble biscuits and gravy whatsoever. After this incident, Alton took great care to explain the following rounds in more detail to make sure such a mistake couldn't happen again.

** One episode featured a contestant for whom English wasn't his first language. When asked to make a dish of biscuits and gravy, he misheard Alton and made ''brisket'' and gravy instead. Was he eliminated for this mistake? No - his dish was judged as though brisket and gravy ''was'' what had been asked for, he moved on to the next round, and Alton took great care to explain the following rounds in more detail to make sure such a mistake couldn't happen again.

** People don't like the fact that the "winners" of that show have frequently won a small pot of cash. Whereas other shows guarantee $10,000; $25,000; $50,000 or even $100,000; over 75% of the winners in this game win less than $7,500. Only TWO chefs were able to win the full $25,000 without counting the Judge's episode [[spoiler:in which Antonia Lofaso won the game with $22,000 under regular rules]] (and the second of which was only because there was only one round with actual auctions in the entire episode). The most money won in a single episode where the winner bid is $24,600.[[note]]Won by chef Eric Greenspan in "Superstar Sabotage: Heat Three"[[/note]]

** Alton's BeardOfEvil features in a meme comparing his clean-shaven Good Eats look ("You either die a hero...") with the Cutthroat Kitchen look ("...or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.")

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: A Season 10 episode features a brash, older chef named Chef Kapo, who's a culinary teacher. When he eventually wins, he reveals his motivation:
-->"One of my pupils just got diagnosed with breast cancer. I'm gonna give all of the money (around $10,000) to her."