Hell's Kitchen

[Doctor Who?]

I don't think anyone this season should be allowed in a kitchen,this may be the most screwed up bunch ever to turn up on this show.

[stansimpson]

I don't think anyone this season should be allowed in a kitchen,this may be the most screwed up bunch ever to turn up on this show.

I think last season (or was it the season before?) that everyone was just helpless.  Remember that one big, fat asian dude who broke down to tears the very first night?  At least the blue team this season has been holding steady (esp after the team switching).  I mean, as soon as the red team got Benjamin, both teams seemed to really click together whereas seasons before, they struggled to complete a first service for several several episodes and then they had to whittle it down to 5 till people started working well together.

[Doctor Who?]

Yeah I guess last season was worse.

Well tonight they started working well together after what's her name left,I guess we will have to see what happens next.

Next week's episode looks interesting.

[anais.jude]

I liked Nilka's pouty breakdown

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Been avoiding this thread because I've been SO behind in episodes but I've finally caught up....

I liked Nilka's pouty breakdown

Liked it too...and that she tried to get him to take her back.  The girl's got bollocks.  I think it was cool that Ramsay said goodbye this time.  She hung in a long time and was never put up for elimination (that I can remember anyway).

And Autumn is STILL flying under the radar?

Ben is all talk - except during service. Poor Jason deserved a little bit better. And Holli and Jay all over each other is making me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Ramsay is still Ramsay...and that's mainly what we're here for.

This other program however...."Masterchef".   They're starting out like "American Idol"...which I'm not happy about at all.

Seriously, you've got 100 aprons and you're acting like you're not afraid you're going to give them all out before you see everyone?  Or that you'll send someone good home and have aprons left over at the end?  They know who is and isn't staying and this is "theater".  And all of this crying and the sob stories....*gag*  They do the little bio things about a contestant coming up and we're supposed to believe that they went to the time and trouble to film something at home with someone who ISN'T going to make it into the competition?

And then it looks like it's going to turn into "Top Chef" with non-professionals.  Which as long as Ramsay's the one keeping an eye on them it could be good.  The other two....the other chef and the restaurant owner who reminds me of the investors they used to have on "Shark Tank" on ABC....not so much.

Speaking of ABC, they've scheduled "Wipeout" up against "Masterchef".....   They rerun "Wipeout" on Saturdays sometimes but....

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Anyone catch the premiere tonight?

So I guess they're casting this show to include 30 to 50% psychos intentionally now?

BTW....anyone as disappointed in "Masterchef" over all as I was?  This could be the first Ramsay show I haven't finished recording and may dump the episodes I have.

Meanwhile, he's launched another show in the UK called "Ramsay's Best Restaurants".  Only watched the introduction.  They got recommendations of restaurants around the UK and they're going to have them compete against each other.  The first episode is Italian restaurants. Does make me wonder though as they evidently bus in their own people to do the judging - and then have the entire bus load descend on the place and expect the place to take care of everyone at once...  Gotta sit down and watch this.

[stansimpson]

Anyone catch the premiere tonight?

So I guess they're casting this show to include 30 to 50% psychos intentionally now?[

Yes!  Sabrina and Raj are absolute mental cases.  I thought Raj was eccentric, but now I'm thinking he's got the lowest IQ (and possibly EQ) of anyone there.  Sabrina is going to be cancer for the Red Team. I really want to see her voted off but the opening of the first episode shows she's going to make it very interesting.  And what's with the lady with the breakdown?  I swear it looked like she was having a stroke.  Overall... it's a mixed bag of psychos and crazies.

BTW....anyone as disappointed in "Masterchef" over all as I was?  This could be the first Ramsay show I haven't finished recording and may dump the episodes I have.

I watched a couple eps. I've seen every ep of Kitchen Nightmares (US and UK series) and every Hell's Kitchen season... and just don't have the interest for it.     It's interesting... but there's something about it that just doesn't have any pull for me.  Even less than Ramsay's "The F Word".

Meanwhile, he's launched another show in the UK called "Ramsay's Best Restaurants".  Only watched the introduction.  They got recommendations of restaurants around the UK and they're going to have them compete against each other.  The first episode is Italian restaurants. Does make me wonder though as they evidently bus in their own people to do the judging - and then have the entire bus load descend on the place and expect the place to take care of everyone at once...  Gotta sit down and watch this.

Perhaps it's "Master Chef" that has disappointed me, but that doesn't sound that interesting.  Maybe a commercial for it will entice me or sumthin.

[gbeenie]

I enjoyed Master Chef. And I love The F Word (the pig season was my favorite).

And I'm seriously beginning to wonder if Raj has Asperger's.

[stansimpson]

Just watched the latest episode.  2 eps in and already some wildly strange moments.  Notice this is the first time a contestant has left for undisclosed medical reasons (I swear Antonia had a stroke)?  And what's with all the guys unleashing on Raj?  Looks like something was edited out.  The guy's a Lenny Small man-child with the auspices of a grown man.  They don't realize this?  Also, I gotta hand it to Vinny for telling the customer not to order sides.  The problem was that he got caught.  After 2hrs, I'd certainly do everything I in my power to get my customers faster service.  But Ramsay was also right cuz, ultimately, Vinny is meddling with the meals (and that's something only Ramsay should do). Makes me wish Ben got more of a tongue lashing for calling out orders last season.   

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

I don't get sending Curtis home without a chance to come up and defend himself.

Yeah, he screwed up the sushi - but his partner in the challenge Trev didn't do any better.  He just lucked out that he didn't get that station.

(and yet, Trev has the nerve to sit in front of the camera and bitch about Curtis not being able to make sushi?)

Also, btw....you'll notice that neither of the women who screwed up the sushi challenge were put on that station for dinner service.

Anyway....about Ramsay's Best Restaurant....

In some ways, it's part Kitchen Nightmares for good restaurants.   He puts two restaurants through their paces.

First with 30 people bused in all at once for dinner.  Ramsay watches over the whole service just like he would in a KN..

Then by sending in a mystery diner with a hidden camera (two hidden cameras actually since someone at another table ends up providing a different angle).  These diners aren't out and out pains in the ass but they do intentionally make some demands just to see how the front staff and/or the kitchen handles it. Ramsay then has each restaurant in to see the tapes and he critiques them as they watch.

Finally, he has both kitchen crews into his own restaurant to serve a meal.  And then he decides a winner over all between the two. First episode was two Italian places and the second was two East Indian restaurants.

I haven't looked it up to find out how many parings there will be in the season but at the end all the winners will compete against each other.

Right now my only major complaint is that these places are in the UK so even though I'd really like to try one of Indian places, I can't.

If you find the "F Word"/"Cookalong Live" Ramsay to be less than and only like the "Hell's Kitchen" version....this isn't for you.

[Artie]

This is off-topic but seems like a good spot to discuss it

Did you anyone see the Chopped Champions finale on Food Network last night? 

That was a great hour of TV - four great chefs all being challenged to do their best work.  No fighting, no "drama" just real skill being put to the test.  That's what "reality" tv should be.   

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

I love "Chopped" but I don't have the Food Network anymore....and they don't stream their stuff (as far as I know).

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

I feel sick....   

Another Ramsay TV chef suicide

September 28, 2010

A New Jersey restaurateur once featured on Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" -- and told by the TV chef that his debt-ridden eatery was "about to swim down the Hudson" -- was eerily found floating in the river after jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

Joseph Cerniglia, the 39-year-old owner of Campania in Fair Lawn, is the second chef to commit suicide after appearing on one of Ramsay's high-heat, reality-cooking series.

Cerniglia -- once the executive chef at Manhattan's famed Gallagher's Steak House -- had been deeply in debt when his Italian eatery was featured in the first season of "Kitchen Nightmares" in 2007.

During the series, foul-mouthed celebrity foodie Ramsay would verbally bash down-on-their-luck restaurateurs in hopes of getting them back on track.

"Your business is about to f - - king swim down the Hudson," the brash Brit berated Cerniglia, a married dad of three who lived in Pompton Lakes.

Ramsay fumed about the eatery's huge portions, lousy food quality, poor service and the sophomoric antics of the kitchen staff.

"Why did you become a chef-owner if you haven't a clue how to run a business?" Ramsay railed at Cerniglia.

Cerniglia conceded that "Campania definitely has its share of problems, big problems."  He noted that the once-popular restaurant had fallen into desperate straits.  "I'm financially in trouble -- the debt of the restaurant alone is overwhelming. My personal debt -- wife, kids mortgage -- that's a lot of debt," he moaned on the show.  "I owe my purveyors about $80,000 right now in cold, hard cash . . . I can't see us going on another year."

Cerniglia's wife, Melissa, sobbed during the show, "People like us put everything on the line for a dream, and I just want to see him have the time to succeed.  If this business fails, we will lose everything."

Cerniglia's business managed to survive after Ramsay made a series of changes and held a grand reopening.  In fact, patrons yesterday said the eatery had been thriving.

"The place is really doing well -- the parking lot is packed on weekends," said a woman who works at the tanning salon next door.

Another salon worker, Evelina Grzymala, 22, said Cerniglia was grateful to Ramsey for helping him turn his business around.

"[Cerniglia] said Ramsey was intense but that he turned out to be a nice guy, that in the end, he helped him out," Grzymala recalled.

I was pulling for these guys so much.  Such a beautiful family.  And they were on the "Revisited" show and things were going so much better for them.

Found out about this from this article...

Rachel Brown, "Hell's Kitchen" Suicide: Was Reality TV to Blame?
Posted by David W Freeman

Suicide claims more than 34,000 Americans every year, and it looks as if two recent victims had one thing in common:

Both were former contestants on a reality show notorious for dishing out tough love to aspiring chefs.

Joseph Cerniglia, 39, of Pompton Lakes, N.J., apparently leaped to his death yesterday from the George Washington Bridge, the New York Post reported. The owner of a restaurant in suburban New York, Cerniglia had appeared in 2007 on "Kitchen Nightmares," a show that subjected struggling restaurateurs to harsh criticism from English foodie Gordon Ramsay.

In 2007, 41-year-old Rachel Brown reportedly shot herself to death after appearing on "Hell's Kitchen," another show that featured Ramsay.

Ramsay is famously tough on contestants.  "Your business is about to f - - king swim down the Hudson," Ramsay told Cerniglia, the married father of three, according to the Daily Mail.

Does that kind of talk drive people to kill themselves?  Probably not, says the former president of the American Academy of Suicidology, Dr. Robert Yufit.

"My guess is that both of these people had major problems before appearing on the show," Yufit told CBS News. "I would almost bet that the show itself should not be held responsible. I would say say that the show might have tripped off something else that was going on in their lives.

Yufit, a Chicago-based clinical psychologist, said he wasn't acquainted with the particulars of the deaths. But, he said, the ways Cerniglia and Brown apparently killed themselves suggest that both were determined to die.

"Shooting yourself and jumping off a bridge are extreme situations where death is almost a certainty," he said. That's not the case with pills and other, less violent forms of "self-harm, he said.

IMHO....IF there was any connection at all for either incident, it could have been that people who go on these shows sometimes think that being on these shows is going to transform their lives for good and forever. That they're going to be the next Elizabeth Hasselbeck...a woman who got a TV job (she's not qualified for) and married a quarterback because she ate bugs on "Survivor".

And when it doesn't live up to what they've built up in their minds it's going to be, they get depressed.

I'm not saying that's what happened in either of these cases - just a possibility.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/0e8qDvbsH5g?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/0e8qDvbsH5g?fs=1&amp;amp;hl=en_US</a>

[Compound]

Ow. Well, I was just popping in to note that Season 3 & 4 of Hell's Kitchen would be released on DVD in the next few weeks, but now I'm just kind of sad.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

When I saw the headline at first, I'd guessed it was the guy at the Handlebar....this really surprised me.

Another thought....Ramsay's been doing KN in the UK longer than in this country...and one season of Hell's Kitchen as well...

No one there has gone to that extreme.  And if you saw the one with Allan Love (Ruby Tate's) you thought he might have tried it right there on camera, he was that stressed.....

So if you're going to make any connection of suicide to the show, what does that say about Americans?