My Kitchen Rules fan favs Tommy Debenham and Rachel McCann were whisked straight to the Quarter Finals after coming second in the first round of Instant Restaurants.

That meant that along with round one winners, Rabha and Pradha, they’d be skipping round two of the Instant Restaurants.

While Tommy and Rach made it through the Quarters, they were ultimately eliminated in the Semi-Finals.

Looking back, the WA team aren’t sure that being fast-tracked and missing the experience of round two – as well as the judge’s important feedback – was beneficial to their game.

How did Tommy and Rach feel about skipping round 2 of Instant Restaurants?

“When we found out at the table we were so shook. We were speechless, we didn’t know what to say,” Rach told Chattr of finding out that they were in second place on the leaderboard and wouldn’t be taking part in round two of the Instant Restaurants.

“It was such a wonderful, exciting feeling. But at the same time, we didn’t know what it meant because everything was a secret about the rules.”

Tommy said that when they were told they were missing out on round two, the feeling was “bittersweet”.

“When we found out we were quite sad,” he said. “When we got home from finding out the exciting news we were like, ‘But this means we don’t get to travel with our friends for the next six Instant Restaurants’. We missed out on meeting all these new people and tasting all these different cuisines. so it was definitely bittersweet.”

“The judges do give so much really interesting and helpful critiques. And I think you can learn a lot from that,” Rach added.

What did they do in their time off?

Tommy and Rach and Radha and Prabha got some time to themselves while the rest of the contestants headed around Australia for the second time, along with the Gatecrashers.

Rach said that they split their time between getting some much-needed rest, as well as practicing their cooking together.

“We took a little bit of a break. It’s not easy, the competition is really challenging and there’s a lot of pressure.

“So it was nice to just have a little break and go home and be in our kitchen again and cook with each other and kind of reconnect with why we love to cook so much.”

My Kitchen Rules Australia 2023 continues on Monday and Tuesday night at 7.30 pm on 7 and 7Plus.

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