This is the very first episode of the original UK version of Kitchen Nightmares. The restaurant was called Bonaparte’s and the “head chef” was a 21-year-old kid named Tim who was so far out of his depths that it wasn’t even funny. Another memorable episode was this one, featuring a restaurant serving American soul food. The restaurant succeeded based on his advice, but then expanded too far, too fast and ultimately failed in the 2008-9 economic crisis.
I disagree–even in Kitchen Nightmares UK, he threw tantrums. Not as often, and usually provoked, but think of the season 3 or 4 episode with the flaming ex-actor running the seafood restaurant (Ruby…something. Ruby Tubes?) that had some guys underpants nailed to a wall. Or the spoiled Brit Chick who had the vegetarian place in Paris that her daddy bought for her? Now they provoked a tantrum, but the same Ramsay tantrums we’ve come to know are still there.
I can only handle watching MasterChef Junior. I think he holds back a bit on the criticism.
I dunno. He was on an episode of “Faking It” quite a few years ago, and he came across as helpful, supportive, and personally invested in the contestant’s success (the contestant was a short order cook in a roach coach, whose challenge was to convincingly participate in a cordon bleu chef’s competition in four weeks. He won, against two actual cordon bleu chefs, and none of the judges pegged him as the fake).
'Course, it wasn’t his show; he was just a guest mentor.
So which is the real Ramsay then? The helpful, supportive one, or the shouty maniac?
Even if his temper tantrums are scripted by the programme makers, he’s at least guilty of colluding with them. He’s surely influential enough to tell them he’s having none of that bullshit.
What annoys me is that, act or not, he perpetuates the idea that an effective way of managing people is to belittle and berate them. I’ve heard people use the excuse that high-class kitchens are super high stress environments, and the sweary bully style of control is necessary. Well I think that’s bullshit. The worst that can happen is someone has a slightly overdone carpaccio of vole or something. It’s not a fucking ER.
It is like my crazy addiction. The show is so bad, as I said in an earlier post just about everything is bleeped out, so there really isn’t a lot of dialogue to follow and the contestants, or bad actors whatever they are, are constantly trying to screw each other literally and figuratively. And yet, I continue to tune in. I probably need help, but I also find it to be a stress reliever because no matter how bad my day might be, I would never in my right mind speak to or treat someone the way the cast of HK’s does.
I stopped watching Hell’s Kitchen as well. One thing that I noticed was that in every competition, there would be a tie, or very little difference, between the two teams until the very last score. It was manufactured suspense, in other words. Plus all of the incompetence and poor results in the kitchen seemed manufactured; surely experienced kitchen staff would do a better job of adhering to the brigade system.
Yeah, it doesn’t exactly take an expert in the field to see what these people are doing wrong. 99% of their problems are due to simple, fundamental incompetence. They don’t know how and/or don’t care to do it correctly, and it’s unlikely they ever will. These places are already literally within a month or two of closing by the time Gordon Ramsay (or Jon Taffer, or Robert Irvine, or that bald hotel guy on the Travel Channel) shows up with a construction crew and a professional decorator to give the place a makeover. That’s almost never the correct solution, but it’s really the only one they’ve got (that they can sell to a TV network producer).
Actually, if you watch his early shows, like the UK version of Kitchen Nightmares or the sort of general cooking show that he had, or even the early seasons of US Kitchen Nightmares or Hell’s Kitchen he’s much different. He still curses a lot and occasionally rages, but it’s not the over-the-top ranting he does now, and he shows a lot of empathy and helpfulness. Early KN also doesn’t follow the strict formula that the modern one does, it seems much more real. At some point they discovered that “Ranting Ramsey” gets better ratings, though, so now everything he does is so over-the-top I can’t get into it.
Has anyone just said to him, in mid-rant, “OH SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!”?
Because I know I would.
I think in real life my purple prose would desert me and I would definitely go for this instead…and maybe the pepper mill.
No but in a recent episode of Master Chef a contestant told another contestant to just ignore the chefs shortly after Ramsay gave the contestant some advice. There was little surprise as to who went home.
Yeah–that was the baby-faced mental defective with all the bizarre football metaphors that made no sense.
Judge: How do you think you did?
Baby Faced Moron: I sucessfully completed the 28-sweep and made a touchdown*.
All judges: ??? da fuck??
*I actually have no idea what this means. My brother, who is to football trivia what I am to comic book trivia doesn’t get it and a google search doesn’t get it.
I am going to start using this. Thank you 
Crazy how it always ends up that way, isn’t it? I don’t think they could possibly make it any more contrived.
Oh good, I thought it was just me because I don’t watch football. 
You’ll see him ranting at the kids (without the swearing) in exactly one episode, during the obligatory team restaurant challenge. In this case though it seems more a way to snap a team out of whatever destructive feedback loop they’ve created for themselves.
It’s been my experience (based partly on previous threads on Iron Chef and other competition shows) that what you see on television is so heavily edited that what you’re seeing is a very small part of what actually happened. Which makes sense when you think about it, you’re watching a 40 minute show that covers 2 days of cooking and the in-between intros, rewards, chores, and punishments. Also, the contestants are coached beforehand and I’m sure they’re told “let it out on camera” to deal with their frustration. Not “Be courteous and polite to your fellow contestants”, that doesn’t get you watchable drama that makes viewers tune in! And if you sheeps don’t make any televised drama for us, we’ll edit it in!
Here’s a suspicion I’ve had about Hell’s Kitchen: I think the crew that sets up the Kitchen deliberately sabotages the ovens and some other equipment so that it works, then not works at random. You think, “If I was on that show, I’d learn to make Beef Wellington, those seafood things that look like marshmallows (I can’t remember the name off the top of my head), and the one or two other things that they always make”. These are professional chefs that in lots of cases are very, very experienced. Sure they’re in a new kitchen that they’ve never cooked in before, but how do you undercook this? It’s literally all you do for a few hours, shouldn’t it be routine?
Or maybe you’ve been told very strictly not to mention oven/stove errors, and by gosh, your oven temperature mysteriously kept going up and down! Not constantly, it just seems like once in a while you’re equipment just didn’t work right.
The other thing that made Ramsey yell at people a lot was not having impeccable timing. Someone else burned their food? You can’t just put yours out anyway, it’ll be a few degrees shy of the desired temperature by time the screwup redoes theirs. Then you’ll become the new screwup. Domino effect…
BTW I stopped watching all reality/competition shows years ago because every episode is exactly the same. Someone I know was watching Shark Tank a few weeks ago, and I am almost positive the judges’ close up reactions are only filmed once, then repeated for every contestant in every episode. Every episode is exactly the same.
The 28 sweep is a football play. It has the running back ( 2 ) hitting the hole outside the tight end on the right side( 8 ). He’s saying he got to the outside and managed to take it for a touchdown. It’s a fairly flashy play that usually either fails badly or is a big gainer. Now, how this relates to what he did I have no idea as I didn’t see the episode and I can’t think of anything I’ve seen on the show that deserves a football metaphor.
Just Google “28 sweep” and it’s right there in the first result (and a couple videos to follow.)