[Sca-cooks] OOP: Hell's Kitchen
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Tue Jun 20 15:21:23 PDT 2006
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)
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