Kitchen Nightmares: Gordon Ramsay Takes a Bite Out of Culinary Crime

“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“, which is finally available on DVD.

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” a few years ago, but Ramsay was such an unbearable prick I couldn’t stand to watch another. “Kitchen Nightmares” came highly recommended by a friend with good taste in television (Hi Justin!), so I decided, begrudgingly, to watch.

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.

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.