Head Chef Tzarina Mace Ralph may have had dreams of working in perfect tandem with sous chef Anthony Bird, but that dream went up in flames on the latest episode of Below Deck Down Under.
How to Watch
Watch Below Deck Down Under on Mondays at 8/7c and next day on Peacock. Catch up Bravo.
Captain Jason Chambers fired Anthony in Season 3, Episode 3 after learning that the confident and “disrespectful” sous chef had secretly accepted another job.
“So you can go today, this morning.” Jason told him. “Pack yourself up there.”
It all began when Jason added the position of sous chef for the first time earlier this season, believing that an extra pair of hands in the kitchen could bring the boat’s culinary offerings to the next level. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that Tzarina and Anthony may not be the perfect pairing he’d imagined.
From the start, Anthony seemed to take issue with Tzarina and the way she ran the kitchen, contending that he was doing more than his fair share.
“I don’t want to be taken advantage of here,” he told producers. “I’m organizing, I’m putting provisions away, I’m doing guest food, crew food, cleaning, the galley — I’m just doing everything.”
But Tzarina believed that Anthony’s ego was often getting in the way, as he seemed to be overly confident about his abilities.
“I was an arrogant sous chef years ago,” she said in her own confessional. “I worked under a head chef that really humbled me and it took five years to get his respect. I’ve done the grunt work and so I expect my sous chefs to do the same as well because it’s a slow, steady, and painful race. He isn’t as good as he thinks.”
Anthony and Tzarina argue over canapés and cocktails
After Anthony complained to others that all he’d been doing during his time on the boat was cleaning up after Tzarina, she angrily got up from the dinner table during a crew night off.
“This is really upsetting me because it’s the complete opposite of what I thought Anthony and I would be like,” she later told producers. “I saw us making amazing food together, having great banter and British jokes. I imagined us at the last charter and everyone cheering. He was gonna be my right hand man. F-cking ridiculous.”
On the next charter, she took a new approach, asking Anthony if he wanted to take on more responsibility and handle a guest canapés and cocktails outing on the beach.
“My mind has been racing so hard about how I’m meant to manage Anthony to make him do what his job is and what I need him to do,” she admitted. “It’s early in the charter season and I want Jason to see that I can manage my own department and I’m gonna make sure that Anthony and I are better than we have been.”
While Anthony jumped at the chance to prep the guest's food, he was upset that other tasks like unloading the provisions were still just left up to him and went to confront Tzarina in her cabin.
“Obviously, yeah, if I’m doing quite a lot of guest food, would it be alright to, like, have a little hand putting deliveries away and sh-t?” he asked her. “I just don’t want to get to the point where its like doing cleaning, deliveries, and then guest food as well and then crew food. I don’t want to suffer, like, a little bit of a burnout just yet.”
But Tzarina let him know that doing guest food was more of an opportunity than a responsibility.
“Doing guest food is optional, if you do it and it’s what makes you happy, you have to find time to do it,” she told him. “So you don’t get burnt out, would you rather (give) the canapé to the stewardess and you have a two hour lie down?”
Anthony found the “lie down” comment “a bit patronizing,” pushing the two even further apart.
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Why was Anthony Bird fired?
Not long after their argument, Anthony texted another chef to ask: “Do you know of any boats hiring? I don’t think it’s working for me here.”
Tzarina tried again to salvage their working relationship by letting him prepare some octopus for a guest meal, but the delicacy got overcooked and was inedible.
Tzarina let the mistake go, but Anthony still seemed done with the job.
“At this point, I’m just a bit over it,” he told producers. “Tzarina’s not a great manager and if I’m honest, I don’t respect her as a chef and I don’t feel like I’m being treated like a human, so I’m ready at this point to leave because I can’t take any more of this bullsh-t.”
The continued tension between the pair prompted a frustrated Tzarina to seek advice from Jason.
“There’s a lot of tension happening in the galley,” she admitted. "He won’t let me manage him at all. He’s like ‘I’m going to wash up here, I’m going to do that, and then I’m going to bed.’ I’m head chef. I’m head of department. He’s literally managing himself."
“If it’s not working for you, why don’t you just move on?” Jason asked her.
“I just don’t know,” she replied. “I want to see how he is tomorrow.”
Jason later expanded on his thoughts in his own confessional.
“It doesn't matter how good you are as a sous chef, the ego in Anthony shows disrespect, that’s not gonna last long,” he said. “We just may have the wrong sous chef for Tzarina."
While Tzarina may have been willing to give Anthony another shot, he was clearly ready to go. As soon as he got a text from another chef confirming he had another job lined up, he let Tzarina know he planned to leave the boat.
"I’m going to do this charter and the one after that and then out,” he told her.
But Jason and Tzarina decided they’d rather see him go right away.
“He’s disrespecting you as the head, been very short and sharp with you, and now he has a job and he’s leaving on his terms,” Jason said. “Let’s go get things sorted out.”
Jason told him he’d need to pack his bags and leave the boat immediately in the final moments of the episode.
To find out how the rest of the crew reacts to Anthony’s firing, watch Below Deck Down Under Mondays at 8/7c on Bravo.
