I like cooking shows as much as the next guy (well, ok, maybe a little more than the next guy) and I have a soft spot for some reality shows as well. So, I've been having a great time watching Cooking Under Fire — a cooking/reality show airing, of all places, on PBS. In this show, there’re three judges, Ming Tsai, Todd English and Michael Ruhlman. Tsai is the host of several cooking shows, English owns multiple restaurants in New York and Ruhlman is a successful food author.
There’re twelve contestants and they each cook dishes for the judges; a contestant is eliminated after each round and the winner will be awarded a job at one of Todd English’s restaurants in New York. In some ways, this is my favorite variety of reality show — sure, it’s rooted in reality, but each of the contests is merit-based rather than just luck. So, simply the best cook wins; it's not just a matter of seeing who can balance on a log the longest or something equally obtuse.
Cooking Under Fire is an excellent show and I look forward to it every week. Then, I heard about another cooking-based reality show, Hell’s Kitchen which airs on Fox. This too features a set of aspiring cooks that want to win a job in the host’s restaurant (in this case, there is just a single judge/host, chef Gordon Ramsay). The difference this time around is that Ramsay is an asshole.
I had my TiVo record the premiere episode last night and I eagerly sat down to watch it later that evening. The show opened with the obligatory meet-and-greet where the contestants were in their finest attire in some ballroom drinking sparkling wine as they tried to get to know one another. A little while into the evening, two of Ramsay’s sous chefs were introduced and they addressed the group. They informed the group that the contest won’t be easy and that chef Ramsay demands perfection… blah blah blah.
At this point, they revealed to the contestants that the contest was starting right now and that they had to prepare their “signature dish” for chef Ramsay using the adjacent kitchen. As if riding the cliché wagon for all its worth, the sous chef with the shaved head then yelled to the group, “What are you waiting for?! Go!”. So, the group rushed off to the kitchen to prepare their dishes (still in their fine clothes, of course).
Now, it would have been one thing to have each of the contestant’s kitchen attire (“chef’s cloak”?) on hand, but that wasn’t the case. More importantly, though, the contestants didn’t have access to their own knives; rather, they had to scrounge around to find some knives to use within the kitchen. To you and I, knives are probably pretty similar from one to the next. But, through watching countless cooking shows — all in the name of research, natch — I’ve learned that chefs consider their own set of knives a unique personal asset.
Or, put another way, foisting an unfamiliar set of knives upon a chef would be like requiring a developer to use an foreign editor. Say you like to use Crimson Editor or maybe HTML Kit but then your boss forced you to use Emacs all day? Well, how do you like them apples?! Not so much fun, eh? (And, before the Emacs guys jump on me, I only used your beloved editor as a hypothetical example; feel free to substitute Vi there if you would feel better.)
To show such disrespect for these aspiring chefs astounded me. But, it didn't end there. After everyone’s dishes were ready, Ramsay began tasting them. He walked over to a pasta dish and started by asking who prepared it; a guy in his mid-20s stepped forward and stated that it was “Andrew’s Awesome Penne” (though I have a hunch about the fellow’s name, I’m not certain I remembered it correctly). In any case, Ramsay tasted the food and then spat it out into his hand.
Granted, this guy is probably used to “the best of the best” but that gesture was simply unnecessary. Of course, Ramsay began berating the guy at this point for what he considered a lousy dish and I just (beep-boop-boop) deleted the show and its Season Pass from my TiVo. I’m all for reality shows with civility and especially reality cooking shows; but where does this acridity come from? Maybe I should’t have expected such high standards from Fox.
san dimas high school football rules!
go vim!!!
(and down with emacs…)
Hi, pooky. Your comment was “this close” to being marked as spam (imagine me holding my index finger and thumb close together). But, I then realized that it was kinda on topic, in the broad sense — so, it lives to see another day ;).
my mom has been raving about the Cooking Under Fire show for a couple of weeks now. We don’t get it in Germany, of course, but I’m hoping to catch it at some point while I’m in the states.
The funny part was the guy who stoop up to the waiter and said I have a PhD in music! HA! That was hillarious and also sad. What does this guy think? A PhD makes him superior to all the people around him?
It’s funny: Your reaction is exactly what the producers of these shows want: It’s all about the drama, people getting pissed off on how things are done in the show. There’s no such thing as a “reality Show with civility”, it’s just not their purpose. Their purpose is to create drama, unfortunately that’s what most producers think the public wants and they may be right..sad times we live huh? I don’t believe in reality shows being real. Like one guy from those “Real World” MTV shows said: “Once you put a camera on anyone, they stop being “real”.”
Clearly you do not have much experience in the restaurant business. Being a top chef is a 1000 times harder than what is seen on most “reality” cooking shows.
What you perceive as the head chef being an asshole is simply a small glimpse into the real world of restaurants.
He is an extreme example, but this is how most are ran. It is almost necessary since customers always demand perfection. And never give any patience for even minor mistakes. If your food fails, so does your business.
I would demand nothing less myself if I was about to hand over an entire business to someone.