Yeah, it’s pretty much a given that first service is a complete and utter disaster and I wouldn’t put it past the producers to sabotage a little in their favour for that.
I got a little annoyed at Ramsay’s obvious intro set-up. He appears in the balcony, tells Jean-Phillipe to piss off, and the cooks to get their asses in gear.
Get it everyone? He’s mean.
Yeah, that was stupid. In fact, I think the show is incredibly scripted and lame and mean-spirited, yet I watch it anyway. I’ll let you know if I ever figure out why.
You like watching people sob into the food?
I prefer his other shows more (I started watching Kitchen Nightmares recently) but I like the trainwreck aspect I suppose.
Sometimes interesting to hear my Mom’s comments on it too (she was a pastry chef at a hotel when she was my age).
Well, my vote for why you watch it is because watching anyone who is that passionate about doing what they do well, while having a fantastic accent and great legs…
Huh? Sorry, I may have drifted off a bit…
Mmm, yeah that too.
See, I don’t know if I agree. I think I’m a pretty damn good cook, by, say, my standards. I enjoy the food I make, my wife appears to enjoy it, I’m pretty creative about it. That said, I very strongly doubt that I could even begin to approximate producing food of quality sufficient for a five star place. I don’t think any set-up is needed: take a bunch of cooks who think they’re a lot better than the probably are, throw them in a kitchen and ask them to cook to the quality and efficiency standards of a well-regarded, professional chef. They’re going to fail. You don’t have to set them up; they lack the skills. Take Ramsey’s kitchen staff from one of his real places and put them in that spot, and they’d succeed even given the identical physical conditions and quality expectations.
It would be like taking a bunch of really good playground basketball players and sticking them on a court with Kobe Bryant, and asking them to perform at a level suitable for a professional game. It’s not going to happen. No set-up or scripting required.
Over time, the people with the temperament and natural ability to do so will learn from what Ramsey is telling them during those dinner services, and they will get better at the job. This is one of the few reality shows I’ve ever seen where you can see genuine improvement in the participants who last; the people who made it to the end of Season 2 seemed to me to be much, much better cooks than they were at the beginning of that season.
A lot of people think the show is mean-spirited, but I don’t think it is at all. Ramsey rips the shit out of people when they do stupid things, rips them harder when they do stupid things more than once, expects people who are not as skilled as he is to listen to what he has to say and not tell him why he’s wrong, and provides utterly sincere positive feedback without fail when warranted. I actually think he’s a very good teacher; I’d love to have the chance to learn some of the things these people learn, and calling me a “fucking donkey” isn’t going to ruffle my feathers much, especially if I know I’ve been acting like a fucking donkey.
That’s why I said a little. There wouldn’t need to be much sabotage because they sabotage themselves by being overconfident. Plus nerves and Ramsey yelling… once they get past the freaking out stage (if they get past it) they find themselves becoming better and more able to handle the pressures.
Here’s something I wonder about: the first guy who was cooking risotto got into trouble for using water – and his excuse was that they had run out of vegetable stock.
He’s gets sent to KP, another guy moves into the risotto making role – and he apparently turns out dozens of plates of it that meet GR’s standards.
Uh. So where did he get the vegetable broth to make acceptable risotto, if they were out a minute earlier? It takes TIME to make broth.
It was a dirty trick, but that’s part of the game.
The strategy of HK, similar to Survivor, is to make the others look bad and get them kicked off the show. Not (as it should be) do as good of a job as possible to make your team win. That was Julia “problem”; she just wanted her team to do well.
Of course, Chef Ramsay is too busy to see what’s going on on that level in the kitchens. I’m sure he goes back and watches the episodes thinking, “I should’ve kicked that whiny bastard/bitch off.” But by then, it’s too late.
I predicted (at the beginning of the episode) the two women put up for firing were exactly the ones that were chosen. I hated Tiff; very patronizing toward Julia. And the other woman said in her early promo that she’d use her flirtyness to win. Screw that; just prove that you can run a restaurant.
BTW, do the customers pay for their meals? Or are they free (which doesn’t really give them too much to bitch about)? They oughta know that HK isn’t known for expediency, at least this early in the season.
After seeing some of season 1 on Fox Reality last weekend, I read an interview that said the “customers” were friends of the crew and ate for free. The free booze that they got (many never got anything but booze) was one of the perks that kept them from rioting.
They said a table tried to order pizza and have it delivered to the set, and JP got into it with the delivery people, the table that ordered it got 86’d.
They mention that in this article also Duke of Rat (the pizza ordering).
I only skimmed it, no real time to read it at the moment but its pretty interesting. I didn’t see any mention of pay, just that it’s invite only and it’s a set not a real restaurant at all (why did I think it even was a real restaurant? I don’t know).
I think Wah-tur Boy simply couldn’t see the pot of broth or be arsed to look for it or dare ask about it (Oh no, he’d look stupid if he needed help finding something in a huge kitchen he’s never been in before!) and used whatever other liquid he could find.
ETA: Oh, I’d love to have the chance to be in a kitchen with GR for an afternoon. Or even sitting on a park bench, chatting about food. Doesn’t matter - just give me .01% of what he knows, and that’d be useful.
It’s one thing to be arrogant and talented
and another to arrogant and untalented.
One team can’t fry an egg
the other team can’t boil water(to make a decent pasta)
I know how angry GR got last season about the raw chicken but now overcooking them…
Didn’t they choose what dishes they had to cook?
It’s a good thing GR didn’t see the red team parboiling the risotto.
It happened last year too. They are allowed to finished the food but not to reheat-the chicken or wellington is thrown out if the rest of the plate is not ready.
More here (this is the interview I read). It’s an interview with Season 1 winner Michael Wray.
Just remembered something…anybody have any guesses as to what the Major Twist is gonna be with the ambulance and the “Don’t die on me!” stuff they were doing?
The American version of Kitchen Nightmares is premiering later this summer (GR was interviewed in the LATimes and said he’s already gotten food poisoning twice and had a knife thrown at him, so I’m really looking forward to it).
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Julia could turn out to be one of the most competent cooks on the red team if they give her a chance, short-order cook is a pretty high pressure job. But one of the keys to winning this show is to be assertive. She would have impressed the hell out of GR if she’d come over and, instead of asking if she could help, said “GET OUT OF THE WAY, I CAN COOK A DAMN EGG WITHOUT F**KING IT UP.”
A lot of the contestants seem to have the wrong idea about this competition. Getting the food served requires teamwork, and for the first few weeks undercutting the competition is wasted, as the teams have a lot of deadwood (I’m looking at you, Aaron).
I knew that Heather was the winner last year in, like, the second episode, when she badly burned herself and, while they were dragging her out to the ambulance, she was yelling instructions to the rest of her team and telling her replacement what was up at her station.