Gordon Ramsey has another show on BBC America called Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, in which he spends a week at a failing restaurant in the UK and attempts to help turn things around. I find it much more interesting. Some of the chefs on that show are really deluded.
For some reason, I find that the US reality shows tend to be competitions, while the UK ones do not. I prefer the UK format.
Having worked both in catering and in fine dining (about 2 years in total), I have to disagree that a chef has to behave that way. Getting frenzied is one thing; extreme verbal abuse, vandalizing someones property (like when the chef dumped food in that guys hat, not a chef hat his own property) and the like are inappropriate. Just because it does happen does not make it ok.
I think Gordon Ramsey has something of a reputation for losing his temper, but I suspect that some of this is playing for the camera and I’m sure that the contestants (including the guy with the hat) understand that behavior like this is part of the entertainment aspect of the show.
I think Dewey’s right. Of course he’s playing up his nastiness for the camera. I imagine he’s a lot like any number of high-performing perfectionist artist-types - prone to profane outbursts when someone isn’t living up to his expectations. I don’t think he’d have a show on Fox if he was simply “excitable.”
Ramsey has quite a reputation in the UK, and his shows on the BBC show a pretty acerbic (but less volatile) version of who we saw last night.
I’m pretty sure the diners are low-level actors trying to get some face time, and the producers probably tell them to talk shit, etc.
As usual the candidates are unlikeable gits. The men are all chest-bumping and annoying. The women are all “we want women in the final!” Excuse me, it’s a competition for one chef to be executive at the resort. Who gives a shit who makes it to the final, as long as it’s you? In fact, wouldn’t the women rather see a woman beat the crap out of a guy in the final 2?
I agree with DtC about Heather. She looks a little slimy to me. And why wasn’t Ramsey in her case about being careful in the kitchen? No-one burned her, she burned herself. I would think that’s worth a lecture. Of course the biggest loser was that ass Larry, who joins the pantheon of worthless African-American contestants on reality TV shows. He didn’t even appear to know what the hell was going on at any point in the show, until of course it came time for him to show his flabby tits in the hot tub with the women. Then he was stressed out to the level that he had to be hospitalized.
The cheering chick worked my nerves as well. Giacomo dodged a bullet but I think he will be the redemption character… he seems pretty serious and I predict a haircut in his future…
If not a haircut, then at least a bandana or headband.
I’ll keep watching this, but I wanted to put in another plug for “Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares”. It’s on BBC America on Wednesday nights (followed by “Bad Lads’ Army”, which isn’t bad either).
“Hell’s Kitchen” is the game-show type of reality show; “Nightmares” is the makeover type, in which Ramsey tries to help people who already run restaurants figure out why they aren’t making any money at it, and how they can start. It throws much more light than “Hell’s Kitchen” does on the sheer amount of work involved in running a decent restaurant, and how many different ways there are to make a mess of it.
I think the show is meant to have this underlying BDSM sort-of theme going.
I mean, have you noted the way they react to the master chef’s abuse? They are all like “yes, master” and “I’ll try harder, master” and then he makes them rummage through dumpsters, and they do it?
Yeah. Producers aren’t oblivious to these things.
Oh, I get that it’s on purpose. It’s also what will make me get up and change the channel to some less annoying background noise next time.
Hey, some people are into that sort of thing though. 
If it was BDSM, I’d probably stay.
It’s just some chef that acts like an asshole.
It’s funny the grand prize of this show is an Executive Chef position. On “Kitchen Nightmares”, Gordon always hates the Executive Chefs. He think they are a waste of money and basically just an administrator and he usually tries to get rid of them.
I think that Giacomo has a great shot at the prize, and something will be done about his hair.
The pastry in the face of Jean-Phillipe is from an upcoming episode, as others have speculated.
I like the way Chef Ramsey has no qualms about telling bitchy customers to go fuck themselves. If he weren’t such an ass, the drama would be almost non-existant.
I liked her too, but right now, I don’t think much of the field.
This is the first time I watched this - after Top Chef. I like the idea they’re actually running a restaurant instead of the “plan a wedding in half an hour” challenge.
What’s with the chef and his dislike of “hot” food. Is it that he misses the blandness of English cuisine? Or is there a subtlety to the complaint that I don’t get?
And what were they doing with the trash? It was enough to see them next to the bags without digging through them for kicks.
And the narrator sucks (actually, all of the editing sucks. I’ve been spoiled by the Amazing Race, I think).
Do the people just slowly get better every episode?
I thought it was mean of him to make the sweaty, out-of-shape guy be the waiter in the upstairs room. Not only was it mean, but it didn’t make the restaurant or Ramsay look good to have customers see him sweating and constantly out of breath. Ramsay is always hollering about how the food needs to be perfect when it goes out to the customers but then he makes someone who is a physical wreck serve it. That wasn’t smart. It was mean.
I too like the girl who burned her hand. I think her name is Tiffany. I don’t think it was grandstanding for her to be asking her teammates to finish her orders and telling what needed to be done next. She’s one of the most experienced people there, a veteran of professional kitchens. She knew they had to keep moving rather than be distracted by her accident. I think she performed admirably.
She’s also the one who told Victoria (I think) to quiet down when she started cheering. She later explained to her that you just don’t make noise like that in a professional kitchen. (Why the head chef can holler abuse at the cooks, though, is beyond me.)
I hope Giacomo goes far. He seems smart and is a nice guy, as well. I bet within the next couple of episodes he shows up with close to a buzz cut.
Wasn’t Ramsey making fun of the title “Executive Chef” on the show last season?
He’s not such a prick in his Nightmare show. In fact, I like how he takes some of the chefs down a notch. One show had a chef whos license plate said something like “gr8 chef” but all he did was reheat crap. He’s blunt and honest but he has a sense of humour as well.
I’d have dinner and drinks with Nightmare Ramsey but I’d tell Hell’s Kitchen Ramsey to bite me.
Are the diners in restaurant really actors? We figured out that they have to be… It’s all a set isnt it???
I admit the Nightmares show sounds better.
Not really. This isn’t what I’d consider a fair contest with rules and whatnot, hence my use of quotation marks around the word game upthread. For instance, Ramsey does unfair things on a whim, such as making the waiter guy rewrite his tickets while his kitchen waited. Also, in the second show, he chose a guy from the blue team and told him to pick a couple of candidates from his team, one of whom would be going home. Then he bitched at the two chosen ones for a minute, called up another guy to bitch at, then sent him home!
Anyway, the show will continue, you’ll see everyone displaying their worst behavior, and people get sent home until someone “wins”.
Her name is Heather. I think she has kind of an unfair advantage, having been a sous chef in charge of 12 people in a kitchen. The other people seem like they’ve only cooked for themselves.
I hope Giacomo is smart enough to cut his hair after Ramsay made at least 2 comments about not liking it. Gotta kiss ass if you want to win.
He’s done the same, or a near equivalent, in the previous series. I think the point is to head off too-blatant strategic gaming on the part of the ‘picker.’
As pickers have admitted in private interviews, you have two competing goals: get rid of the worst candidates (to keep your team as strong as possible) vs. get rid of the best candidates (to improve your own odds of winning.)
Just like Survivor strategy shifts as the game progress. In Survivor, first you ditch the weak and/or obnoxious, then towards the end you want to ditch the strongest and keep the most obnoxious. Popularity doesn’t come into play in Hk – except possibly for those Ramsey seems to like. I guess the best strategy is to keep an eye on your teammates and figure out who is best. Then as SOON as you have a plausible reason to ditch one of the ‘good ones’ – they have a bad night, screw up someone – nominate them to go and hope.
Because, as you’ve seen, Ramsey is God. It does you no good to nominate the two best people on your team when there is an obvious screwup that should have been nominated.
I like how there’s always that escape clause. Otherwise people would put up the one bad person and the one best person, to make sure the bad person was gone.