My sense of GR, both from two seasons of this show and from Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare’s revisited, is that he really enjoys catching people’s bullshit and throwing it back in their face.
Sure, a lot of what he does is to get good camera moments, which will boost the ratings that maintain his salary, but I think he also wants to get his cooks out of the habit of deciding something is “god enough”, rather than pushing themselves to perfection, which is what they’ll need in a restaurant that will charge the sorts of prices the prize restaurant this season will.
He also has his own rep to uphold, and this person who wins is going forward with Chef Ramsay’s name on his CV.
Oh, c’mon. Like Survivor and Real World don’t have drama. I think Fox does a great job producing shows, and frankly if it weren’t for Married With Children and 21 Jump Street, network TV would still be more like Lawrence Welk and less like Prince.
Regarding Eddie, I don’t think Ramsey picked on him. Eddie never expressed feeling picked on. What suprises me is that he doesn’t pick on Aaron. Jesus, man, what does it take to be thrown off the show? He has cried like a fallen toddler, blown snot in the food, sweated in the fish, fainted, slept through a challenge, and gave people throat-stabbing fish bones to eat. He’s a complete mess.
I’m curious about something. They always show the contestants job from before the show, some are sous chefs, some are line cooks, I think one was an executive chef. So what’s the hierarchy of these kitchen positions and what do their duties usually entail?
Executive chefs are basically kitchen managers. Not all kitchens have them. They kind of exist to run the kitchens for big name chefs who lend their names or dishes to a restaurant but don’t spend too much time in the kitchen (like whoever runs Ramsay’s kitchens while he’s filming TV shows). Most of the time, the head chefs run the kitchens themselves.
Sous chefs are second in command to the head chef (or executive chef) and run the lines and/or expedite.
Line cooks are line cooks. They’re the grunts on the line (that was as far as I ever got). There are also prep cooks, who are kind of below line cooks (You have to chop a lot of onions before you’re allowed on the line) and pastry chefs who are kind of off on their own and might or might not have their own assistants (or more likely just share the same prep cooks with the line).
The lowest of the low are the dishwashers, also known as “dishdogs,” “dishtoads,” or a variety of other colorful sobriquets.
Interesting. So presumably someone who works as an executive chef or sous chef is probably going to have the better knowledge and experience for having advanced that far and therefore a better chance at winning this thing. I believe last season’s winner was a Sous Chef, what was the guy from the 1st season?
In my experience the hiererachy was F&B Director, Executive or Head Chef, Sous Chef, Line and Prep Chefs were one in the same. But that’s a Hotelier experience. Head chefs and sous chefs would expedite based on volume, otherwise they were either on the line, handling Banquets, doing Prep, or alternately doing planning, stock, and paperwork.
In the first season, Ramsey made it clear that he had little respect for the position of “Executive Chef” when it came to actual cooking. There was a contestant on the show whom Ramsey taunted mercilessly. “Wha’ a fing wuthless ti’le. Yew cahn’t ev’n toss a fing salad!”
If I were going on Hell’s Kitchen, I sure as hell would learn how to make ‘spot on’ Risotto and Wellingtons before I went. And I’d practice making my signature dish in 25 minutes or less.
That would be awesome! He’d screw something up in the kitchen, and then he’d come out to the restaurant floor, bawling, introducing himself and apologizing, then going off for a nap, leaving people without their food.