Eliot goes undercover at a culinary school to take down a crooked investor who overcharges the students so he can stash his smuggled truffles.
Tropes stolen in this job:
- Big Eater: Played for comedy. Hardison isn't usually a big eater, but when Eliot's restaurant opens, we first see Hardison chowing down on a loaf of French bread, and later he's carrying a bell pepper with a bite taken out of it.
- Crack is Cheaper: Black-market truffle smuggling is a bigger business than some hard drugs, with just as many shady brutal types involved in it.
- Dull Surprise: It's not that the student cooks are unsurprised by Eliot beating the shit out of a goon trying to kidnap him, it's that he's been Eliot the whole time. They're concerned, but not surprised.
- Dumb Muscle: Rampone.Nate: Tell me, are you still getting them from France? Did Napoleon bring them to you on his horse?
Rampone: Napoleon's dead.
Lampard: [Beat] Thank you, Rampone. - First Time Feeling: Parker's arc involves her discovering the joy of experiencing art, rather than the material worth and value of it.
- Frying Pan of Doom: Eliot uses this on thugs attacking in the kitchen.
- Granola Girl: Sophie's cover for the job.
- I Can Live With That: Parker's having trouble with the fact that the others all have their passions, while she's still the weird kid. Nate draws it out of her.Nate: (softly) Parker? What's going on?
Parker: I just, I don't have a thing.
Nate: What do you mean, "a thing"?
Parker: Eliot has a thing. He loves food. Sophie loves theater. You have a sicko love of controlling people.
Nate: I don't have a sicko love...let's stay on you. - It's Personal: The client of this con is the one who taught Eliot how to cook.Eliot: He's one of the guys who kept me from falling all the way down, so now I'm telling the other guy why I'm gonna help him.
- Man Bites Man: Hardison does this to a mook.
- Not Worth Killing: Eliot goes absolutely berserk on Rampone, who beat up the client, to the point Nate has to calm him down.
- Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Before throwing down with Rampone, Eliot puts aside a plate of food and says, "I'm gonna eat that after I'm done with you." Rampone is not impressed, and has the audacity to toss a little seasoning on Eliot's steak before the fight starts.
- Pronouncing My Name for You: "Gar Slabdash, the 'n' is mostly silent."
- Squee: Hardison's not a food geek like Eliot, but then he sees the high tech gadgets in the training kitchen and he loses his shit, starts inventing wild, ridiculous new ways of fooding.
- Truth in Television: That high tech shit with the lasers and all that Hardison geeks out over? They're doing that. Chefs around the world are doing wild things with cutting edge tech to create new food experiences.
- Whole-Plot Reference: It's The French Connection with truffles instead of drugs.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Eliot's reaction to Hardison in his class.
