I would just like to tell Yasmina that if she ever deliberately tried to feed me *r*p sandwiches in order to make 200% profit she would be fired at first bite. No boardroom necessary.

Outrageous.

You are right, profit or not, the utterly revolting nature of the sandwiches meant that this was not a business task, it was very poor business indeed. Maybe it tested other things - Margaret commented the team showed efficiency, and I suppose the whole thing is just one long aptitude test, designed to test different qualities.

Those sandwiches. I am still gobsmacked. The pancakes with soggy vegetables. The bread and tomato. Not lovely Italian bread and vine ripened roasted tomato - still not that expensive if they had gone to a market rather than a supermarket - but much nicer. Why do they buy from supermarkets? Are they made to? Because it is harder to make a profit from that surely, then if they were buying wholesale?

Usually when they mess up I love feeling superior and having a laugh at them but this one made me very cross! It was the deliberate way that she went about it that got to me. She just didn't give a damn about the service which she was giving and that can never be right. I suppose they can't focus on every skill every week, as you say, and she was efficient but honestly............... no words fail me.

The food was terrible. In central London there are loads of catering businesses that specialise in gourmet cuisine at competitive rates. The producers must force the customers to keep with the candidates because in the real world they would either not be accepted or fired as soon as they saw what rubbish they were serving.

I am with you froglet, I really am. It was not a good advert for her restaraunt, was it? I will be feeding you the cheapest produce on the market, because once I have flung a bazil leaf on top and grilled it, it will be well disguised and appear as fine dining.

She could have done lots of things, have you done a menu in your head? I have

I would have done palma goats cheese and dried figs in plama ham. Not that expensive, goes a long way, tastes delicious and very easy. I have lots of other ideas...

Oooh! Yummy. I bet you wouldn't serve it up on a bed of tired old cos lettuce either AND there would be enough on the tray to make them look worth eating.

I'm sure that you are right. It puts them in a very difficult position when they are given a poor service and have to decide how much money to dock.

I would not. I don't know why I wrote palma twice either, my menu would have been terrible, but the food good!!

I would also have got those tubes of croissant dough and torn of little bits to stuff with cream cheese and smoked salmon. And fruit dipped in chocolate. Blinis with an anchovy paste and olives. All easy and not that expensive. Little pots of a delicious hot pasta. Profiteroles.

It certainly wasn't. Her attitude seemed very bad - "They'll all be drunk so they won't notice. Just chuck some olive oil on it"

This is one of the things about The Apprentice, though. It measures performance on an artificial one-off task. The girls made a good profit, but as was pointed out on You're Fired, they'd have got no repeat business and in real life they couldn't have operated like that if they wanted to run a long-term business.

This is not a good thread IMO. They went out to make a profit. The competitive element of the show means that the team which makes the most profit wins and no-one gets fired. This is what she did.

She *excellently* rallied her team round with cries of 'DO you want to be in that boardroom?' etc

She managed all the bickering girls *fabulously* with an iron hand. No nonsense approach.

She budgeted *exactly* right - OK, a bit on the cheap side, but she wanted to win not make friends or get repeat business, that's not what it is about

She *totally* delivered what they were supposed to.

Complete dark horse made good IMHO. I never would have picked her out as one of the contenders, but after last week she is definitely in the running.

The boys made a *loss!!!!*

!!!!!

No she never, which is why the customer did not pay full price. They were supposed to provide good quality food yet it looked inedible. As stated earlier in reality, they would have been sacked on the spot and probably escorted off the premesis.

What amazed me was the fact that as a supposed restaurateur she seemed to have no idea what a canape actually was. In fact it was astoounding that not ONE of the 14 seemed to have ever been to a reception like they were catering and would have known what that one was.

And as for not knowing what a blini was...........

Incidentally - one of my DHs City chums was at the "Olympics" reception and he said it was absolutely dire. His description was that it was like walking into a tart's boudoir and the food was truly awful to look at and to eat.

Such as chicken wraps with no chicken?

The Apprentice seems to be there specifically to wind me up

I was a mature student who had to work my socks off whilst running a home and family at the same time and actually completed and passed the course which the last winner Lee couldnt take after a couple of months and lied about.

I also took the course to better my career prospects after working at hundreds of venues serving finger food and buffets.

In all my days I have never seen such a debacle as both teams served up.

I have seen far better food served up by self catering non professionals which far surpassed the so called professional restaurant project leaders expertise.

It is an off the cuff experience but if you run a restaurant, you should know what amount of ingredients to use, how to present and how to actually serve the food.

Let us know the name of her restaurant and expose it for the standards she has shown on the TV.

Sir Alan, I am fast losing respect for your judgement, perhaps it is better for you to make your millions behibng closed doors than to advertise the fact that you are not the oracle you purport to be.

You may make the money but we have higher standards than you.

I agree with everything here.
The Apprentice is not real life though. These are clearly not the best business talents that the country has to offer. It is a reality tv show with people desperate for a media career. Still entertaining though the format is a bit predictable and staged these days.

Already listed here
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...8&postcount=13

Thank you for that, well worth a look



It tarts up very ordinary dishes in flowery language, as they mostly all do

Call it what you will but rabbit pate is still rabbit pate.

Also, whichever way you describe it, budget tuna is budget tuna and first year catering students could have produced supremely better food than Yasmina & Co.

I can't believe she is an award-winning restaurateur

They should have served small vol-au-vents and small round flat blinis with smoked salmon on them and stuff like that - surely as a restaurant manager you'd think she'd have some idea about what to serve at such receptions

The food looked totally unappetising and the presentation was awful

Big wraps and huge ciabettas with tomatoes falling out of them are far too cumbersome

Even although it is RTV...it still holds up to an audience that will be swayed by what they see on this show.

And the fact that this person won on pure profit, but has clearly shown that she could care less for her customers by the cheapest produce at the highest profit...and then goes on to win, is clearly wrong, whatever way you want to look at it.

This person as an award winner of a restaurant and being shown her ways of achieving that on this show....and winning it..........................is all wrong IMO!

What a bland array of food. When the wraps, bruschetta etc was presented, it smacked of tomato overload with little variation. Dull, dull, dull... and coupled with a sloppy, dispassionate interest in the actual food..

Although I would strongly suspect that Alan Sugar would heartily approve of her thriftiness.

I have to say I'm also gobsmacked to hear that she's a restaurateur. My kids could have prepared a more appetising meal.

Her customers paid more than the boys' did. I don't understand why there is so much flack directed at her and so little at Rocky.

Both teams seemed to get contracts with identical values: £750. I think she figured both teams would take £750 and therefore the way to win was to spend less. As it happened, the clients clawed some of the money back, so it was possible to win on quality. Her quality was higher than the boys because the clients clawed back £375 from the boys and only £250 from her. (She took more at lunch time, too.)

I agree, I don't see why she's getting so much criticism compared to Rocky, who was just as suited as she is to this task, yet made a complete mess of it.

Yasmina probably takes greater care of the quality of her food in her restaurant than she did in this task, for all we know. The thing is, she was not running a long-term catering service, so having high quality food was not a priority. This was just for a task, in the short-term, her objective was to win it, so her priority was to be strict with costs and make a quick buck. Rocky went out of his way to make everything fancy with the props and the theme, when they didn't really matter, which is a main reason why he lost. He lost sight whilst Yasmina was completely focused on winning and making a profit.

I was amazed by the way this contestant had made it to winning the task! How the hell did she manage that? I would never buy her sandwiches, let alone go into her restaurant. The cheapskate food she used as well was appaulling. I would expect value for my money and not value as in goods.

Sounds about right. I never liked Amstrad. I thought the products were hissy sounding and rather on the cheap looking too. It's no wonder that 'Yasmina' what ever her name is, won!

It's simply because Rocky got his come-uppance.

The boy's team were worse than the girls and deservedly lost.

Nontheless, despite being an excellent manager and organiser Yasmina make a complete ballsup of the food. Both the ideas and execution were appalling and not what one would expect of a supposed professional.

I find it surprising that some people are prepared to overlook the poor food (which could easily have caused the girl's to lose if the boy's hadn't surpassed them in incompetance).

Had the boy's done a half reasonable job they would have won and Yasmina would have been out on her ear because she was very much the prime mover in that team.