Just a guess, but with the massive number of plates that go out in a typical service, it’s simply not reasonable to assume that quality control will have 100% success in intercepting bad dishes. Especially since a lot of them come back for being under or over cooked, which can be difficult to judge without seeing the inside of the meat.
I am a chef and have run some pretty large, and well known operations. The number of plates served on that show is miniscule, even if they weren’t divided between two kitchens.
I’ve run kitchens in which I not only checked everything personally before it went out, but I closely supervised the prep and plating of everything…if I didn’t just do it myself.
It is very rare that I ever had complaints, other than customers unaccustomed to salmon prepared med to med rare. These were issues that were easily fixed, and were not the fault of my cooks.
I have to agree with an earlier poster that I don’t see anyone on that show that I would feel comfortable running my restaurant kitchen. Not without a good year of intensive attitude adjustment and total retraining.
Before Ramsay had fully become a “celebrity chef” the BBC did a documentary on his opening his first wholly-owned restaurant (he had just left the Aubergine which he had a minority stake in) and his quality control in that documentary was insane. At one point he fires a waiter because the waiter is drinking a bottle of water in the doorway to the kitchen and Ramsay thinks a customer may have been able to see the waiter when the door swung open. In another incident he makes one of his staff replate a dish because there is a fingerprint on the bottom of the plate.
I’m a little surprised when things go out of Hell’s Kitchen undercooked, but I get the impression that unlike when he was a practicing chef things sometimes go out without Ramsay checking them in HK, for example when he goes into one of his long diatribes against a particular contestant I doubt they hold dishes that are ready to go just to give Ramsay time to finish yelling.
It’s also worth noting in the entire 5-6 episodes of that documentary Ramsay is never once recorded saying a single positive thing about anyone who works for him. His sous chef is never really insulted or criticized but the commis and the chefs de partie are constantly being insulted and degraded. Unlike on Hell’s Kitchen it isn’t a two-pronged approach of insult and compliment, it is 100% insult. But I definitely concluded from the BBC documentary that if anything is “fake” about Ramsay it is the nice side he sometimes shows on Hell’s Kitchen (or maybe he’s just a lot mellower now that he’s ten years older and no longer has to run a kitchen every day.) Interestingly on the first episode of the documentary it actually shows a clip from another show in the UK that had people go into places undercover to record the “worst bosses” and I think that’s how Ramsay first came to the larger public’s attention.
They don’t actually run a kitchen if they win. Last year’s winner was given the position of “Executive Chef” at Gordon Ramsay’s West Hollywood restaurant. But Ramsay said in a magazine interview that the title was an honorary title that carried a $250,000 salary and meant that the contestant would indeed be working in the restaurant and learning–but someone else was the real person in charge of the kitchen, in fact near the end of the season Ramsay introduced some of the final contestants to the “real” executive chef who would be their boss.
I imagine it’s an identical situation with this year’s prize.
In general while Hell’s Kitchen is more entertaining than Top Chef I think of all the cooking shows Top Chef showcases the most talent. (Unless you count Iron Chef, which is a bit different format.)