FINAL GIRL POP CHAT

Happy happy joy joy for BBC – America! I’ve had a bit of a crush on celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey since the first season of “Hell’s Kitchen”, there’s just something about cranky British men that I dig. He has a rugged Daniel Craig-ish vibe about him and he can cook – together these are the two most important qualities I look for in a man. I discovered “Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares” while flipping around one Sunday during a marathon airing of the show leading up to the next season. Now, they are making an American version this show called simply “Kitchen Nightmares”, but it can’t possibly be as entertaining as the BBC original.

The set up is that Ramsey goes to failing restaurants all over the UK and revamps their menu and business practices within a week. Hilarity ensues when Ramsey starts in on the often clueless and inexperienced chefs and owners blasting them for their stupid financial decisions or pretentious menus. Of course, there is always a bit of resistance on the restaurant to change, even though they were the ones to request the help. Ramsey can seem abrasive and harsh but its more like tough love to rouse the workers into doing something drastic. His food philosophy is solid – use local, simple and fresh ingredients and don’t overwhelm your customers with elaborate presentations and garnishes or too many flavors. One newbie chef was pairing sausage with apricot mashed potatoes! Another owner was buying her food from a local grocery store instead of buying wholesale from a local farm, costing her twice the amount.

I’ve been a waitress or barista on and off for about 8 or 9 years and anyone who’s ever worked in the food business will immediately recognize the signs of a dying restaurant. I think the statistic is that 90% of new restaurants fail within the first year. Those aren’t great odds. It makes you wonder why anyone would want to start such a risky business venture in the first place. In most of the episodes its clear that the owners have a real passion for food, but no head for details, which is where Ramsey comes in.

The thing is that even though the chefs and owners get defensive and angry at Ramsey it’s in this particulary British way where they either repress it or manage to sound polite while they are cursing back at him. I wonder what’s going to happen when he comes to New York and tries to bully some of the chefs we have in our local establishments. He may be tall and imposing in the UK but in Brooklyn he is  liable to get stabbed getting up in the face of a surly line cook.

In general, you can’t go wrong watching just about any food show on TV – “No Reservations”, “Top Chef”, or “Next Food Network Star”. My second favorite show, “No Reservations” follows deliciously sinewy chef Anthony Bourdain as he jet sets around the globe sampling local cuisine from Iceland to Vietnam. Sometimes this includes eating rotten fermented shark meat or slurping down the still-beating heart of a snake which of course is supposed to make you more virile and “strong”. He is the Hunter S. Thompson/Lou Reed of traveling chefs but funnier and more sober, sometimes. Bourdain wrote the bestselling Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour, two compulsively readable books which offer a testosterone soaked glimpses into the life of chefs and line cooks. I used to buy extra copies of Kitchen Confidential and hand them out to waiters and chefs I worked with, everybody loved it.

It’ll be interesting to see how Ramsey fares outside of “Hell’s Kitchen” with his Americanized TV show. He’s already being sued by one of the first restaurant owners who claims that tales of his chef’s incompetence was exaggerated for dramatic purposes. Perhaps this remake will prove to be a more risky venture than the rest of Ramsay’s three star restaurants constantly opening around the world.