Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Devil Can Cook



My most favorite show ever (ok, maybe not EVER) is back on the air and is, and I really mean this, better than ever. The stakes are higher. The contestants are cockier. And the star is more frightening than ever. No my friends, I am not talking about "Dancing With The Stars." The show that makes me giddy every Tuesday, the show that makes me chuckle in diabolical delight whenever I see a teaser is "Hell's Kitchen". Chef Gordon Ramsay's vulgarity spitting, garbage can kicking, raw meat throwing contest to see which jackass out of a group of jackasses he can shape into a highly refined cooking machine and give a prized executive chef to is back for it's fourth season.

So if you haven't been following this season thus far, let me catch you up. This season's prize is bigger and drastically more important to Chef Ramsay than the other three seasons combined. Why you ask? Because this season's prize is the Executive Chef's position at Ramsay's own new restaurant in Los Angeles. So not only is he grooming someone to run a high profile five star restaurant, he is choosing someone to run HIS restaurant. So far we have had three failed dinner services, someone almost catching the kitchen on fire, and someone serving raw chicken to a child. Already kicked off are a lazy misogynist, a woman more concerned with her makeup than her cooking, and a guy who couldn't even boil pasta. One contestant's "Signature Dish" served to Chef Ramsay on episode one was a plate of veal tartar, raw egg, caviar, and white chocolate. Yeah, you read that right. And this guy is still on the show. It's a mystery.

Chef Ramsay is in fine form, hurling obscenities and over-cooked hamburgers across the kitchen as these two teams struggle through yet another dinner service. There still seems to be some dead weight to shed, (veal tartar and white chocolate guy gets my vote) but eventually Ramsay will hack away until he finds the prime cut. The guilty pleasure of this show is to see Ramsay finding just the right combination of choice adjectives to abuse these "chefs" who seem to constantly let him down. Now, before you go on about how cruel and disrespectful he is, Ramsay is choosing the person who will be in charge of his restaurant, and this person must meet his rigorous and exacting standards. It is going to be an exciting season. Enjoy the show.