Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted is produced by National Geographic. If you are like me and generally watch all of his shows, then it will remind you of Gordon’s Great Escape, which lasted two seasons except it feels more gimmicky like the producers of this show are desperately trying to fill the hole left by Anthony Bourdain, which is frankly impossible. Ramsay and Bourdain were like apples and oranges. Bourdain became famous because of his writing, not his food, which was great. His fans loved his soul, which is why he was able to professionally translate his success outside of the kitchen into a career onscreen. Bourdain had a knack for fitting in everywhere and preferring humbler establishments though he was welcome and fit in to the fancier venues. He had a mischievous, boylike quality to his journeys, but also a mature empathy with the underdog though as he got older, his privilege would occasionally unconsciously peek out, which was understandable for a man who had so many things going for him…on paper. He may have liked dive bars, but he was also at home in a library, curious about every aspect of the world in an intellectual way that he then applied in the real world.
In contrast, Ramsay is known for his personality and his cooking. They are inseparable. He says what everyone wishes that they could say to incompetent people, but we are really getting a peek at the way that he talks to himself. Ramsay is hungry in a way that Bourdain never was. He came from a working class family and had to fight to get what he has, but he never gets comfortable, stops enjoying the trapping of success or would eschew the establishment. He is always working, looking for validation and seeking approval. He is willing to put on a show. His shows geared towards the home crowd are generally more natural than the ones geared towards Americans, which hype up his mean reputation, but miss that the point for him isn’t sensationalism, but being perfect and being accepted. I’ll never forget an episode of Hell’s Kitchen when a contestant genuinely wanted to get rough with him, and Ramsay is clearly not about that life if he ever was. He is a good boy putting on a show pretending to be a badass when he would much rather cook, collaborate or mentor other professional chefs, play with kids and get accolades. Dress him in leather, litter metal guitars throughout his soundtrack and have him ride as many motorcycles as you want, he isn’t that person. He also isn’t the person that you want to be an international food ambassador because even though he means well, he is not diplomatic at all.
The good news is that Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted is not such a disaster as Gordon’s Great Escape. It consists of six episodes set in Peru, New Zealand, Morocco, Hawaii, Laos and Alaska. Even though Ramsay never claimed to be an adventurer, the series is determined to make him act like one. It feels as if the show scouts went to every destination, found the most extreme physical challenging ways to gather food then set his itinerary. In every episode, a local chef meets with him then puts him on an unofficial, week long scavenger hunt to get to know the local cuisine, the people and the land so that he can get ingredients for the competition, though it is not always characterized that way, between him and the local chef at the end of the week to see whether or not Ramsay has mastered and surpassed his hosts.
Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted is determined to make any region seem sparsely populated with few manmade impositions on the landscape with the exception of the Moroccan episode, which I’m guessing is Ramsay’s favorite because he could speak the language, relate to the locals more and enjoyed the food. The show is determined to make Ramsay seem like the rugged, food obsessed chef willing to do anything to get the best ingredients, but Ramsay is who he is, and he will act like a kid and spit out anything that he does not like, especially if it is a creepy crawly. My mother, who watched the series with me, asked during the Hawaii episode whether or not people had houses, and I have actually been to Maui and Hana so I was able to confidently reply affirmatively. In the Alaska episode, they cook in the freezing outdoors but in another shot, it is clear that a large house probably has a kitchen that would do just nicely. This series is determined to play up the primitive, untouched by Western civilization trope even if it is not true without tackling the negative side of this implicit explorer narrative. In the New Zealand episode, the majority of his hosts/judges looked European so he casually assures the audience of the episode’s authentic, local credentials by mentioning that most of the hosts are of “mixed descent” without the necessary follow up question-by choice or not?
My favorite episodes of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted are the ones in which the local chef is a woman because they are so confident that he is not competition because he is on their turf whereas the male chefs are just like Ramsay. The Moroccan chef said, “You’re too white for hotness,” which he protested, but if you have watched him judging on his multiple shows, he and his fellow judges will occasionally complain about over seasoning so yeah. I sympathize because my mouth wants spicy flavor, but my stomach takes after my dad and says cut that nonsense out. The guys take the competition to heart and clearly have something to prove when most of the locals who are judging are too polite to dash the hopes of a guest.
I hate the competition gimmick in Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted. I’m not someone who often decries or notices appropriation, but the idea that after a week in a foreign location you can master the nuances of the cuisine and beat the locals feels like the food equivalent of The Last Samurai or Avatar. It is just absurd. I suspect that he always finds himself wanting, and when he does and should lose these competitions, it also plays directly into Ramsay’s insecurities. Can’t the series just let him experience something unfamiliar without imposing a competitive construct over it? The only time that it amused me was in the first Peru episode when neither the local chef nor Ramsay had any idea what was going on because the judges were speaking the local indigenous language, not Spanish! Ha! Colonizers got dunked!
I’m not going to pretend that I’m not going to watch any show helmed by Ramsay other than Hell’s Kitchen, which I’ve managed to successfully quit. I even liked his book and watched his home cooking show, but I don’t think that Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted is the best use of his talents or fully satisfies the curiosity of an audience interested in learning about other countries and cultures. The format is too wedded to the explorer adventurer trope while blithely ignoring the negative implications of that trope.