Welcome to the Below Deck Mediterranean Season 9, Episode 13 recap! In this week’s episode, called “Chef Woes and Cabin Blows,” the Medicane rages on. Trapped at the dock by the wild weather, the crew has to get creative with entertaining the guests. Bri and Ellie make peace with each other while Ellie’s resentment for Aesha grows. Chef Jono commits a “fireable offense,” and Sandy finally hires a new crew member. Here are some of the highlights from Below Deck Med Season 9, Episode 13.
Onboard winetasting
Stuck at the dock by the storm, the guests can’t go anywhere or play in the water. Aesha planned a trip to a Greek winery, but they had to turn back when the streets were flooded. So now the chief stew must come up with some other way to entertain them. She asks if they’d like to do an impromptu wine tasting on board, and they happily agree. Alcohol fixes everything (to a point).
Since the Mustique is stuck at the dock for the night, the interior crew has to knock it out of the park with food and entertainment. Chef Jono is struggling with what to make for dinner since a couple of the guests have food allergies. Some of them requested sushi, but others can’t eat raw food, so he has to be very careful.
Captain Sandy walks by as Aesha is “rapping” descriptions of the wine they’re tasting. It’s kind of hilarious.
“Aesha has some skills that you don’t find on a CV,” Sandy interviews. “Not every chief stew can get the guests to smile when it’s pouring out, and all their plans have been canceled.”
Everybody enjoys Aesha’s wine tasting, but now they’re hammered. Are they even going to be able to stay awake for dinner, much less be able to taste it?
Chef Jono makes a major mistake
For their first course, Aesha serves tuna carpaccio, which is raw tuna. Isn’t there a guest who can’t eat raw fish?
After Aesha leaves the room, the allergic guest says, “It looks beautiful. I would eat it if I could, but I can’t eat raw fish cause it could kill me.” Yikes! How could Jono forget that?!
When Sandy hears about the error, she’s incensed. “I’m gonna handle that,” she says, heading to the galley.
“What the f*ck!” she interviews. “This is unacceptable.”
In the galley, she tells Jono, “One of the guests … raw seafood will kill her. And it’s in front of her. That’s a big screwup. It was on her preference sheet.”
“Yeah, it was,” Jono admits. “I apologize.” Sandy tells him to apologize to the guest.
“I’m really f*cking pissed,” Sandy interviews. “Never in my 35 years at sea have I had a chef feed a guest something that could actually kill them. This is a fireable offense.”
Aesha’s devastated. “This is such a huge fuckup,” the chief stew interviews. “I should be double-checking everything for Jono. But I am spread so insanely thin right now, I don’t know how I can functionally do that.”
“I feel terrible,” Chef says in a confessional. “I don’t know how I let that slip … [Though] I also have the rest of the dinner to get through, so I’m trying not to let it throw me off too badly. But I can’t help feeling sh*tty.”
Meanwhile, Sandy’s on the phone with Yacht Crew Replacement. “Norma, it’s Captain Sandy,” she says. “I need a new chef. Time frame’s, like, today.”
Ellie gets irritated
At the bar, Aesha reminds Ellie that she needs to keep things neat. No rags left lying on the counter, the white wine should be returned to the fridge, and just generally make it look nice.
“You’re not [working] at the local pub,” Aesha interviews. “You’re a bartender on a five-star superyacht. I don’t have time to keep repeating myself. At this point, I feel like I’m a one-woman show.”
When Aesha tells Ellie to “start clearing the plates,” even I know she means to go clear the dinner table. But here comes Ellie with a stack of clean plates. Why?
When Aesha explains she meant “clear the plates on the table,” Ellie gets annoyed. “I can’t win,” she interviews. “I’m starting to feel, like, ‘this big.’ I read a lot about leadership nitpicking. Like, how does that make me try harder to please you?” Um, maybe if you could just retain some of the instructions she gives you that would help.
Meanwhile, Captain Sandy’s on the phone with the boat’s owner. She asks if she can bring on a fourth stew now that they’ve fixed the leak in the forward cabin.
He says, “Let’s make that happen.” Aesha’s going to be thrilled!
Sandy catches Aesha eating standing up again and asks her, “Do you never sit for a meal?”
“I don’t,” Aesha admits. “I’ve got no time.”
“How would you feel if we brought in another stew?” Sandy asks.
Aesha thinks that would be “amazing.” She really needs someone with experience to take the load off. She went over 18 hours the previous day without a break. That’s insane.
“Let’s see what we can do,” Sandy smiles, and Aesha hugs her with gratitude.
Ellie complains some more
Sandy sees a window in the weather and decides to get the boat off the dock. Let’s give these people what they’re paying a LOT of money for!
On top of everything else, Ellie overslept. She shows up for her 9:15 start time at 9:25. After apologizing for being late, she asks Aesha if she can go eat.
“You start at 9:15, so you should have eaten before you started,” the chief stew says. But then she relents and says Ellie can go eat. “Just clear the breakfast table first.”
A short time later, one of the guests says someone left a phone in their cabin.
“Oh, that’s Ellie’s,” Aesha says. When she returns it to her, she tells Ellie she shouldn’t be walking around with her phone. Aesha needs hers for provisioning, but the rest of the crew should leave their phones in their cabins when they’re working.
“I’ve been working my ass off this entire season,” Ellie complains in a confessional. “I am aspiring to be a chief stew, so I wonder if she doesn’t like that? Aesha seems to be taking me for granted now. She’s recognizing my efforts less and less. My chief stew, instead of mentoring me, she’s treating me like I don’t belong here.” Ellie is starting to get on my last nerve.
A dessert disaster
While cleaning the guest cabins, Ellie and Bri decide they regret ever fighting over Joe. They’re both over him.
“Have you noticed how well we get along when Joe’s out of the picture?” Ellie asks. “I regret allowing a random man to make me look like a dumb bitch. He really did go back and forth between both of us. Played with your head, played with my head. That’s f*cked up. That’s not how you treat women.”
“This is the best interaction Ellie and I have had since the beginning of the season,” Bri interviews. “I do feel really guilty about ‘the bathroom incident’ with Joe. It can just never be spoken about. Ever.” Oh, but we will.
As Sandy heads off to bed, she gets a text from Norma. “Found you a stew that could start tomorrow,” she says. “Still no chef, but I promise I’ll have someone by tomorrow.”
The 25th-anniversary dinner goes well … until they get to dessert. The guests are hoping for a chocolate soufflé or maybe crème brûlée, but Aesha is disappointed to see what Jono has prepared.
“It’s a cookie/chocolate cake sandwich [and it’s] gluten-free,” Jono explains.
“It’s a cookie on a cake,” Aesha says with dismay. The scoop of ice cream doesn’t add a lot of excitement. Come on, Jono, your job is on the line. Can’t you do any better than that? That’s underwhelming.
And the guests agree with her. “That’s not what I wanted,” moans the woman whose anniversary it is. “You know what? Just take it back, ‘cause I don’t even want it.”
“To see a cookie with ice cream on it,” she continues, “when we all had on our preference sheets ‘soufflés, crème brûlée.’ Come on! It’s our anniversary.”
Chef dodges a bullet
After the guests leave, Sandy pulls Aesha aside for a chat. “How was dinner?” she asks.
“It was fine,” the chief stew responds. “But then for dessert, he did a chocolate chip cookie … Janie was pissed. It was so embarrassing.”
“I don’t blame her,” Sandy agrees.
When Aesha leaves, Sandy calls Jono to the bridge. Uh oh. Here it comes.
“I have to let Jono go,” Sandy interviews. “The fact that a cookie was served for a 25th-anniversary dessert. On top of everything, Jonathan served raw fish to the person who could die from raw fish. I should fire him just for that.”
But just in the nick of time, Sandy gets a text from Norma: “Sandy, so sorry. I can’t find a chef available right now.” Norma might just have saved Jono’s cookies.
When Jono arrives, they sit down. “So, serving the guests raw fish,” she begins, “that’s a fireable offense. I’m not gonna do that [today]. But this can’t happen.”
“Okay,” he responds, not realizing how close he came to losing his job.
“Now the dessert last night,” Sandy continues, “[the guest] was really upset. I’m not sure why a cookie would be served. Why didn’t you do a crème brûlée or whatever was on their preference sheet?”
He says he just ran out of time. They really should have a sous chef on these superyachts. It’s not fair for one person to be expected to create such amazing food without help.
But Jono promises to bring it for the rest of the season. He doesn’t know that the only reason he isn’t fired is that there’s no one to replace him.
The tip meeting
Despite the disappointment in the weather, the dessert, and Jono’s almost killing one of the guests, the tip is $25,000. Sandy also announces that now the forward cabin is repaired, they have room for another stew, who will join them later today. Ellie looks annoyed, but Joe smells fresh meat. Ugh. Keep it in your pants, Joe.
“Where is this coming from?” Ellie asks. “Do we need a new stew?” Um, hello. Did you not notice your boss working 18-hour days while you were sleeping late?
Bri just hopes for no more drama. And lucky Iain is getting his own cabin. Bri will bunk in with Jono, Gael will return to her original cabin with Aesha, and the new girl will move in with Ellie. Good luck, new girl.
While everyone else is happy to relocate, Ellie complains that she “can’t catch a break.” This is life on a yacht, Ellie. You don’t get a private room unless you pay for it.
For her part, Aesha interviews, “Someone new coming on board is good, ‘cause I’m being spread way too thin. But I know it’s gonna affect the dynamics of the crew. Ellie is seething in her cabin, and I feel this could mark the point where things go south with us. It could blow everything up. But at this point, I don’t care. I need the help.”
