[Sca-cooks] OOP: Hell's Kitchen

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jun 20, 2006, at 5:12 PM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

> Well, i started watching this season's run of "Hell's Kitchen".
> Months ago, when i heard that "Our Gunthar" didn't make the cut, i
> was disappointed. Once i saw the new show, i was really glad he
> wasn't there.
>
> Last season, one could actually learn a little about cooking. This
> time, it's much more like a standard "reality" show. It's nastier in
> every way. I'm learning nothing about running a kitchen or cooking
> food, whereas last year, there was at least a modicum of information.

Maybe dribbles here and there. I was cringing when they had people  
cutting -- what were they supposed to be, precise, 10-ounce  
"sirloin" (actually loin) steaks, and NO-friggin-BODY had a scale???  
And this is a new, state-of-the-art kitchen? No, it's just a  
meaningless challenge concocted by the evil to take advantage of all  
but the brightest bulbs in a very dim string.

It's swelteringly hot in that kitchen. Obviously you don't want air- 
conditioned-breezes blowing on your hot food, but it's also an open  
kitchen. You can sit in the dining room and watch the cooks work.  
Unless they're doing something rather advanced with the airflow, it's  
either not quite that hot in that kitchen, or they're doing something  
to make it even worse than it needs to be.

>
> This time there are an equal number of men and women, and they are
> divided into teams based on gender. The only bright spot for me,
> actually merely a faint dull glow in an otherwise thick and murky
> atmosphere, is that the women have won every challenge... but from
> the teasers for next week it looks like not for long.

I believe it was the women who were unable to produce an entree in  
the first service, and had somebody kicked out -- I think nobody won  
the first one. My son tells me there are now three people gone.

One thing I think I found the least believable were the "candid"  
interview shots of the contestants claiming that they had what it  
takes to handle Chef Psycho, that they had great skills and that the  
chef would be putty in their hands.

Hel-LOOO!!! This is a "reality" TV show based on the tribulations of  
opening a restaurant. Why would the chef _ever_ lift a finger to make  
something easy? When would he fail to do anything he could to make  
their lives difficult? Is it possible these people are legally  
allowed to vote and drive a car in the US, and aren't smart enough to  
realize why they are there, and that there is no TV show without  
their sufferings? I mean, who goes on one of these programs thinking  
it's going to be easy, and that some basic cooking and people skills  
are going to fully prepare them for what's coming?

I know what I would say, and I have a suspicion of (approximately)  
what Gunthar would say in response to that question: Chef Ramsey has  
been a calculating SOB for most of his professional life, and now  
he's going to be working hard at it, because now, for the first time,  
it's really part of his official job description. My job is to  
survive that and thrive on it, and I've dealt with worse. We'll see.

But I imagine that's not what the producers of the program want their  
contestants to say. I was pleasantly surprised to note that one of  
the contestants who had predicted that Ramsey would be putty in her  
hands (there was some implicit suggestion of the employment of  
feminine wiles) was the one who got badly burned and continued to  
help keep her team together. That was good, but Ramsey said he had  
never seen that before in all his years in restaurant work. I'd call  
it a prerequisite, and I suspect he's either not being honest about  
that, has been extremely lucky, or is Bobby Flay.

> I enjoyed last year's run. This year, patooey. Don't waste the
> electricity. Or come over to my house and jeer at it with me on
> Monday evenings :-)

Sounds about right...

Adamantius (who can recommend any number of cool food-related movies  
on DVD if people need to see cooking on their TV screens)