Wot no Hell's Kitchen 7/9/07?

Cafe Society
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[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Sometimes I wonder if the producers ever make him do extra takes to get a more “dramatic” performance. At times, it looks to me like he’s kind of faking the anger a little bit. I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t go a bit like this sometimes:

GR: This risotto is a bit overdone. I think you’re going to have to do it again. And use a little more salt this time.

DIRECTOR: CUT! Let’s do that again, but with a little more fire this time. Rememeber, you’ve had it with Nick. Your temperature is rising. You’ve got half a mind to shut down the service.

GR: OK.

DIRECTOR: And…ACTION!

GR: Cor…Taste this risotto, you fucking donkey. You fucking BURNED it. I wouldn’t serve this to my fucking dog. That’s it…SHUT IT DOWN!
[/QUOTE]

Having seen some of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America, he never talks your first-take way in the kitchen, although his behavior on Hell’s Kitchen is exaggerated from what I saw on the other series. He yells and screams and abuses, that’s his style. And people put up with it because he has been a big part of the fact that in Britain, you now only get horrible inedible food about 60% of the time, instead of 95% of the time, as previously.

I take his uncertainty at the Brad v. Jen bisque at face value. He knows and can easily deliver haute cuisine, but has too much business sense to value art over practicality. He once took a Kitchen Nightmare chef out to the streets in front of the pub where he was trying out frou-frou dishes, and demonstrated that the local populace, on whom he would have to depend for most of his business, were having none of it.

I get from that that, and from the rest of the series, that he leans toward simply getting basic good food on the table. I think Brad’s creativity did indeed give him pause, and while the chef in him appreciated that, the restaurateur in him realized that, while someone who ordered lobster bisque on the menu might be dazzled by Brad’s dish, but would be more likely to come back with friends if it had been more like Jen’s.

I’m really looking forward to him doing a Kitchen Nightmares on AmericanTV

42

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
He yells and screams and abuses, that’s his style. And people put up with it because he has been a big part of the fact that in Britain, you now only get horrible inedible food about 60% of the time, instead of 95% of the time, as previously.
[/QUOTE]
I sort of wondered about that. There used to be a show about English cooking called Two Fat Ladies or something like that. It was utterly disgusting from start to finish. It was like they’d run out in the morning and pick up road kill. Then they’d come back and toss in a buzzard’s head, a lizard’s egg, two or three rat’s claws, and a big slab of fatback. They’d stir it all up in a pot of boiling grease and then eat it out of a chicken’s butt. And that was just breakfast.

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[QUOTE=Liberal]
I sort of wondered about that. There used to be a show about English cooking called Two Fat Ladies
[/QUOTE]
That was the GREATEST SHOW EVER!!!. It was always so morbidly gross yet fascinating. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

linky

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[QUOTE=jrepka]
My brother found GR’s Wellington recipe on the official site for his BBC show The F Word (sorry, I don’t have the URL available right now). But the site included not only the recipe but a video clip of Ramsey prepping and serving the recipe.
[/QUOTE]

I can’t find the video, but here is the recipe. I modified this same recipe to use with a venison backstrap from last fall’s harvest, and it came out great. It was certainly the centerpice of my “Venison Fest” dinner. <Edit… Here is the video.>

To the 7/9 episode, I’m so glad that bitch is gone. I’d have driven my chef knife into her heart on the 2nd day if I was on the red team.

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[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
I take his uncertainty at the Brad v. Jen bisque at face value. He knows and can easily deliver haute cuisine, but has too much business sense to value art over practicality. He once took a Kitchen Nightmare chef out to the streets in front of the pub where he was trying out frou-frou dishes, and demonstrated that the local populace, on whom he would have to depend for most of his business, were having none of it.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think it’s the same one, but I saw a similar episode that I taped Monday. (Kitchen Nightmares is on another channel here a couple hours before Hell’s Kitchen. A whole night of Ramsey! Yay! I just taped it this week and only got around to watching it tonight though). He was in Glasgow and this restaurant was filled with French chefs and owned by a billionaire I think he was.. losing money hand over fist with the best produce and food, most of it flown in from France and just over the top.. he didn’t take the food out but showed the menu to the people on the street (they couldn’t understand what the food was.. hell I couldn’t from what they were saying) and had some inspectors come by from the guys who gave out michelin(sp?) stars because they wanted to get at least one.

In the end they simplified a lot, but not all of the dishes. Some were still way too many flavours (he was putting something like 12 flavours on a single plate..).

I gotta try and make risotto sometime. I watched someone else make it on some show.. forget the name, but he was giving his recipe. It looked really good (not that puke green of the pea risotto.. ew).

And I’m so glad Melissa is gone. I’d had enough of the harpy.

Is Rock trying out for that position now?

46

This might deserve a thread of its own, but BBC America has just begun running episodes of a new season of Kitchen Nightmares. The first episode concerns a guy running a fancy restaurant in a town on Costa del Sol popular with British tourists and expats.

As is often so (and this may or may not relate to the issue with the bisque) the problem seems to be the owner/chef’s desire to impress customers with fancy, complex menu items with a “wow” factor (i.e. prawns in chocolate sauce, banana-stuffed chicken) instead of simple, freshly-prepared, locally available foods.

In any case, it’s good to see GR cursing at people who actually need his help rather than just game-show contestants…