Kitchen Nightmares: Gordon Ramsay Takes a Bite Out of Culinary Crime
June 17, 2009 by Alexis
Filed under Food Glorious Food, TV, TV Reviews
“We’ve got fucking fur on fucking potatoes.”
This is one of Gordon Ramsay’s many gripes about the first restaurant he visits in the original UK “Kitchen Nightmares
Had I been left to my own devices, I probably never would have watched this show. I made it through the first episode of “Hell’s Kitchen
The general idea of the show is simple: Ramsay spends one week with a failing restaurant and tries to turn it around. The problems for most of the restaurants stem from the same basic ingredients – naive owners that don’t have the balls to confront their lazy, arrogant chef(s) whom are often attempting to serve “fine dining” cuisine without the skills to back it up.
Ramsay is fucking gobsmacked
The producers of “Hell’s Kitchen“ seem to have based their entire show around the first episode of “Nightmares“, culling Gordon’s signature “moves” directly from it – mainly berating the contestants and either spitting our their food or dumping it on them. (Episode 1 has an F-word count of 75, in case you were curious.) However, unlike “Hell’s Kitchen“, in which Ramsay comes off as fake, melodramatic, and a bully, “Nightmares” shows Ramsay as someone who is passionate about food and the restaurant business. His anger is warranted. The chefs and owners in “Nightmares” are essentially throwing money away. After a few minutes of watching the chefs in action, I generally feel like they have it coming, and some of them are producing such disgusting food that I’ve questioned ever eating in a restaurant again. While he may engage in a bit of theatrics (like when he dumps an unsatisfactory dish into a potted plant), he genuinely cares about saving these struggling restaurants.
Overall, “Nightmares” is really entertaining, especially for a food show. It focuses more on the practical side of the restaurant business, and though it has a documentary style format, it still has the life-and-death feel of an elimination show without the phony judges and politics. The actual public ultimately decides whether these businesses succeed or fail. Ramsay is brutally honest, but the asshole knows what he’s talking about.
Chief Plonker on Wed, 8th Jul 2009 9:00 pm
Kitchen Nightmares is definitely the best of all the Gordon Ramsay shows and I would guess the one that shows the true Gordon! His passion for food, his intolerance for stupidity and incompetance as well as his desire to teach young, keen chefs is obvious. Unfortunately some of this doesn’t come through in the heavily edited US version – so get the UK version if possible.
I managed to pick up the first 5 series on DVD for forty dollars Australian at Christmas time – bargain!
Also new Hell’s Kitchen starts June 21 on Fox.
Go Chef Ramsay on Sun, 17th Jan 2010 4:37 am
The idiotic look on the home chef’s face as Ramsay is boxing his ears is priceless, absolutely priceless.
This is what happens if you surround yourself with idiots. But let’s keep some jobs open for these poor buggers. They’ll get a paycheck and we won’t have to work with them, or god willing, for them.