I watch or have watched pretty much all the cooking shows there are, and you can’t generalize. Gordon is a freak anomaly from the dark side of the Planet Zephron. He’s more of a Reality Show than a real cooking show. Jacques Pepin, Lydia Bastianich, Patti Jinich, Sara Moulton, the whole America’s Test Kitchen crew, and even Chris Kimball–they’re all perfectly lovely. They do not berate or insult the audience, either the live one (if there is one) or the home audience. In fact, they’ll often say stuff like, “Here’s how I do it, but adjust for your own family’s taste,” etc.
There was a thread on here once asking what celebrity will you really miss when they’re gone, and I chose Jacques Pepin. He’s not only a brilliant chef but just a charming and funny guy. (How come he still has that thick accent after SIXTY years in the USA?? :dubious: ) Watching that man bone a chicken or chop an onion is poetry in motion. He talks about his mother’s restaurant–so sweet. When he had a show with Julia Child, he was so deferential to her and still held his own. And I’ll bet he could take Gordon down if he had to. Probably with just a look. But I digress…
In my opinion, Gordom Ramsay is very different on the shows on the Fox network in the US than he was when he was on programmes in the UK. I think Fox expects him to play up the yelling, cursing, angry persona. If you have about an hour, here is a link to a YouTube video of the very first episode of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, where he’s at a restaurant called Bonaparte’s in Yorkshire with an embarrassingly ill-prepared “executive chef” named Tim. I think the only time he raises his voice is when he’s served food that’s raw or, in the case of the scallops, spoiled.
Don’t know about TV shows, but I just found this German youtube channel: amerikanisch-kochen.
If you want a funny insight into how German’s might view American cuisine, Marshmallow fluff came here a couple years ago. According to the label, “the fluffernutter is the most popular sandwich in America”.
I don’t know the timing here - I don’t know when they aired or anything. Is this very first episode at about the same time as he signed his contract for US work or not? I ask because in non-cooking shows, at least, tone of show or character (even in a reality show, I’d assume) can change over several years. Though, of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if the change is just down the network desires, either.
Don’t forget the tightly wound Robert Irvine, who often seems extremely close to cracking open someone’s head like a walnut with those freakish arms of his.
I don’t think these guys have been mentioned (Nick Nairn & Paul Rankin) They’ve done several series including two set in the US and one in Canada, where they explore traditional dishes of the area they’re visiting. At the end of each program they prepare a meal for some of the people they’ve been visiting.
It’s quite lightweight and good fun
Same for Spain, although we get them in several channels.
There’s a specific episode from one of the cakes shows that’s got to have been repeated a thousand times: the team goes to London and has problems because the ovens aren’t marked the way they’re used to, ingredients which have the same name are somewhat different, others they’re used to buying by the gallon are not available (and none is sold by the gallon), etc. IOW, they encounter many of the same problems that people in Spain do when trying to follow what they’re doing or instructions from an American cookbook.