Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

Wow, I hate to say this but I watched this week's episode of Kitchen Nightmares on Fox and it was awful. I pray that in time the show may improve or maybe this is the simplicity that American viewers like, celebrity and over-the-top. Overall I have a concern for the show compared to the original BBC show as well. Gordon Ramsay and his BBC staff did not put the kind of money into these restaurants that they are doing in the Fox version. It was more about "bloody hell your kitchen sucks." and let's figure out how we can get this chef improved. I'm not too convinced as of yet that putting a lot of money and a new menu into a place really helps the poorly trained staff.

Okay so I sorta liked the first two episode because, well they were soooooooo bad. Peter, the namesake of Peter's, needed to cut down on the "juice" in the first episode I think. The kitchen was abysmal and I felt bad for the staff. They seemed like they were capable though of running a great establishment after the "makeover" as long as Peter got off the roids. One issue I had however it that other than buying a whole brand new kitchen for the chef, there was little concentration on him. Granted the walk-in was a piece of junk, but there was rotten food in there, that's not a bad cooler, that's a bad chef not rotating his stock and throwing away bad inventory.

The second episode featured the newly named Purnima. Holy smokes have you ever seen a kitchen so disgusting in your life? I don't even know where to begin, rotten rotten ROTTEN food along with cockroaches, bugs galore, piss-poor management, guys in the kitchen who don't know the difference between pork and beef or even vegetarian cuisine, wow. I have to be honest, you can give a corpse a face-lift if you want, though but in the end you still have a dead person which is what I fear for this place. Yeah they got rid of Martin the GM and they brought on the consulting chef for the kitchen, but you are still dealing with the same people who let the place get the way it was. Even if the GM had let things go, he had a staff of people who themselves let things go, and again... can't tell the difference between pork and beef, or maybe it was lamb, I don't think anyone knew and I'm not sure I want to ever find out.

Now we come to The Mixing Bowl. I made sure I visited their webpage before the episode came on, uninspired homogeneous dull food in a uninspired dull town. The place just seemed like it had no soul from the get go. I think what Gordon said from the beginning was the most accurate, just close the place. Everybody had a poor attitude to start but ummmmm the manager Mike seemed too "well-placed" and over-the-top. Over exaggerated personality, crying, screaming, or heck maybe he just has manic-depression. Also the scene where he went off and stormed outside was taped to make it look like he was screaming during service, but on his way out the door one could tell that the tables were empty, omg and the fake crying. Then how often do you see a line of people coming all at once from the parking lot, or maybe off a bus? The taping is made to look like certain things are happening on different days, but many times I could tell it was all taped at once and split up for the appropriate segments.

Gordon Ramsay just seems really fake as well, just exaggerated and not real, but is this what the audience wants perhaps? I also think the f-bomb is dropped more times in an episode of Deadwood. He may be known for that, God knows I drop my fair share while cooking in the kitchen, but I don't even think an obvious professional like Ramsay would be talking like this in reality in normal conversation and that makes this really fake to me.

Other things in general I have to say I don't like that horrible voice-over guy that they use on Hell's Kitchen, why is he on here, am I too dumb as a viewer to see what is going on? This was not part of the BBC version, nor were the ridiculous sound affects that are supposed to make me realize something went wrong, DUH I just saw the issue, don't need to sound effect. The other thing I really don't like is that unlike the BBC version, Chef Ramsay does not come back to visit the restaurant a month later to see if things are still working out. I'll give a couple more weeks, but it just might end up like this last season of Hell's Kitchen with me, unwatched.