Static Zombie

Hell's Kitchen

Somehow Hell's Kitchen flew completely under my radar last season. Now that Top Chef has drawn to a close, I need my weekly fix of "reality" cooking-- and Hell's Kitchen caught my Tivo's attention. The buzz on the show has always been that chef Gordon Ramsay is an abusive tyrant to the aspiring contestants, but when you consider what's at stake-- a position as executive chef (with a share of the the profits) at a mulitmillion dollar restaurant at Las Vegas' new Red Rocks resort-- the contestants have ample reason to grin and bear it. But after seeing the dozen hopefuls, you have to wonder if Red Rocks' human resources shouldn't stick to a more traditional interview process. Most of the candidates seem woefully underqualified for the job. Then again, I'm sure the legal eagles have made sure the "executive chef" title can be honorary at the restaurant's discretion if the winner proves not to be up to the task.

I've been told the set for the show is a television studio that was completely remodeled for the show, incorporating a fully-functioning restaurant with double kitchen (so two teams can compete) and a dormitory for the contestants to stay in for the duration. They did a terrific job-- the restaurant looks fabulous. I'm particularly fond of the colored tile work and may use something similar for my upcoming kitchen remodel.

The show almost lost me at the outset, however, when Ramsay began sampling the players' signature dishes (which he gave them 30 minutes to prepare). He was gratuitously cruel, eviscerating each dish before even tasting them and subjecting the chefs to pointless degradations. That kind of mean-spirited television may be Fox's bread and butter, but it's not my cup of tea. But I started to wonder if that group humiliation process was casting Ramsay as the drill sergeant and the players as the army recruits fresh off the bus-- a bonding experience to bring the chefs together against a common enemy and fire them up to prove their worth.

If insults was all the show had to offer, it wouldn't be worth my time. But when they moved on to actual kitchen work, the show became vastly more interesting. Unlike Top Chef, these people are working in a "real" restaurant environment, with "real" customers to satisfy. These aren't trumped-up challenges like making gourmet food from a Kwik-E-Mart, this is a real night's service on a real restaurant line. And for someone like me who's curious about the world of restaurant cooking, the show suddenly became compelling. Ramsay may be abusive with his tirades, but he's not wrong-- the player-chefs (many of whom had no restaurant experience, so the deck was stacked against them to begin wtih) were horrible. All Ramsay appeared to be doing was holding them to a high standard. Having never worked in a kitchen, I have no way to know how preposterous the whole situation is to begin with. It certainly seemed like they were given adequate time to prepare. But the show was undoubtedly cast with inexperienced chefs for precisely this reason, to give Ramsay plenty to shout about in the opening weeks as the clueless wannabes who are way out of their league get eliminated one by one.

As much as I enjoyed Top Chef, it was clearly a game. The challenges were fanciful and only tangentially related to the real world of cookery. Hell's Kitchen also has all the artifice we expect in the reality genre, but the skills it's asking for-- and showing us-- feel more real. Who's cut out to not just work in, but run, a high-pressure, high-quality commercial kitchen? And what does it take to be that person? I'm looking forward to finding out.

Oh, and for the record... my money's on Heather.