Turning up the heat in the ‘Kitchen’
A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I ate dinner at the Waterfront
restaurant in Rodeo. Our meal was horrible. The rib-eye steak I
ordered well done came out cold and rare. After I cut all the fat
off I was left with three bites. My baked potato was cold and
undercooked. The square of butter that was put on there would have
taken at least a day to melt.
Turning up the heat in the ‘Kitchen’
A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I ate dinner at the Waterfront restaurant in Rodeo. Our meal was horrible. The rib-eye steak I ordered well done came out cold and rare. After I cut all the fat off I was left with three bites. My baked potato was cold and undercooked. The square of butter that was put on there would have taken at least a day to melt.
Her meal wasn’t any better. She ordered the Cajun seafood pasta that was supposed to have mussels, clams, prawns, scallops and snapper. She got a bowl of spaghetti with three shrimp. When she asked the waitress where the rest of the ingredients were the response was, “I don’t know.”
“This place needs Gordon Ramsay,” I said as we drove home.
Gordon Ramsay is a chef and the star of “Kitchen Nightmares” on FOX. The premise of the show is that Ramsay sets out to help failing restaurants become a success. This is an Americanized version of “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” which ran in the UK for four years.
After watching this show, you may never want to eat at a restaurant again.
Ramsay was born in Scotland in 1966. He played professional soccer when he was 15 for the Glasgow Rangers FC from 1982-1985. After three years he quit and completed a degree in hotel management. He opened up his own restaurant when he was 31. In 2001 his restaurant was voted the best in the U.K. He now owns eight restaurants in the U.K. and four in the United States.
So the guy knows what he’s talking about.
He is well known for his bad temper and his almost constant use of the “F” word. On some episodes it seems like most of his dialogue is bleeped out. Most American viewers know him from his previous FOX series “Hell’s Kitchen.”
He’s a tough guy who is not afraid to tell it like it is. I like him because he will get right up in someone’s face and let him or her know if they are doing something he doesn’t like. He doesn’t discriminate. He yells at men, elderly women and basically anyone who gets on his bad side.
When he goes to a struggling restaurant the first thing he does is order a meal. That way he can see how the wait staff works, look at the menu and try the food. Sometimes it goes OK, like in the BBC version when his meal at a soul food restaurant is one of the best he’s ever had. Other times it doesn’t go so well. The shepherd’s pie at the restaurant Finn McCool’s in the Hamptons made him run into the bathroom and throw up.
From just one bite he knows every ingredient in his meal. He can tell if something is fresh or frozen. He really gets mad when he asks the owner of Sebastian’s in Hollywood if his calamari is fresh and finds out that it is frozen after tasting it.
His next move is to go into the kitchen and watch the cooks. He flips out when he finds that one chef is using packaged minestrone soup. When he asks one cook why he uses powdered mashed potatoes the answer he gets is “it tastes OK with a little butter.” He finds cooks who prepare meals days in advance. He can’t understand why Sebastian’s advertises fresh oven cooked pizzas, but uses frozen dough and a microwave.
In one episode Ramsay does a taste test and the chef can’t taste the difference between beef, chicken or pork when he is blindfolded. He has another chef try some pasta dishes and nearly cracks the guy in the head when he prefers a cup of noodles to fresh pasta. That same chef has a license plate that reads something like A#1CHEF.
At Finn McCool’s he watches a chef drop a chicken wing on the floor and toss it back into the fryer. When he confronts him, the cook says the heat from the oil will kill any germs. You can see the veins popping out on his neck as he tries his best not to strangle the cook and shove his head into the deep fryer.
Most of the problems he encounters are lazy chefs, a wait staff that can’t communicate with the kitchen or first-time owners who don’t know what they are doing.
His main goal is for people to have pride in their work. He wants them to use fresh ingredients. He wants them to make great meals and he wants them to succeed.
Most of his ideas are great and seem to work. The restaurants turn themselves around and business becomes better. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Lela’s closed because the owner was in too much debt and couldn’t cover costs. It was sad because Ramsay had really turned the place around.
I prefer the BBC version because Ramsay is more involved. He narrates the show while on the American version there is an unknown narrator. His first person narration provides insight into his personality and really makes the show. In the BBC version they have follow-up where Ramsay goes back to the restaurant after a few months to check up on them. They don’t do that in the U.S. version. The U.S. version is more interested in watching Ramsay yell and fight with the chefs and staff.
Still it’s a great show. It’s one of the best on TV this year. My friend who doesn’t watch TV recommended it to me and I’ve been hooked on it since. Now if Ramsay can turn around the Waterfront restaurant I’ll be happy.
“Kitchen Nightmares” airs Wednesday nights on FOX and daily on the BBCAmerica channel.
