Yes, I’ve seen the British version, and it is superior to and less gimmicky than the US version of Hell’s Kitchen. I’ve been watching Hell’s Kitchen since 2005 for one reason: Gordon Ramsay, but as a new season begins, even I have to wonder why I’m still on board.
For those of you living under a rock, a group of real life professional chefs live together and compete to become Ramsay’s head chef at one of his restaurants. The professional chefs are initially divided into teams, the blue versus the red team, and usually these teams are divided by gender. When the field narrows, everyone is placed on a black team and competes as individuals.
Hell’s Kitchen is a lot like most reality TV shows than a cooking show. The majority of the show focuses on contestants’ testimonials about personal interactions with other contestants and their reflections on the competition. The opening competitions usually have very little to do with cooking and a lot to do with participating in some humiliating exercise with a limited amount of time devoted to cooking a dish which Ramsay then judges with an occasional fellow culinary celebrity or average person who gets to judge because FOX decides to cater someone’s wedding or sweet sixteen or prom or honor everyday heroes like firefighters. Whichever team wins gets to go on some day trip reward away from the kitchen and the losing team usually has to do something gross like dig through trash or eat disgusting things and prep both teams’ kitchens for dinner service.
The highlight of Hell’s Kitchen is dinner service when both teams get led by Ramsay to complete dinner as if they were in a real restaurant. The diners may or may not get fed depending on the teams’ performance and act outraged as if they are paying for the meal. Sometimes celebrities happen to make reservations (through their publicists). Ramsay is always surprised by how awful the contestants are at cooking and screams profanity laced instructions at them all night. The reason that it is great is because how many times have anyone had to politely tell a coworker that they were messing up and to please correct it. Ramsay will just straight up tell a person that they suck and why.
Unfortunately in more recent seasons, I’ve noticed that Ramsay can be more of a cause of the drama than the remedy. A calm dinner service suddenly gets explosive and nerve-wracking when previously competent chefs fall to pieces when Ramsay is looking for something to criticize. Sometimes he chooses the less competent or experienced chef for the more malleable one. Contestants who make a first-time mistake are eliminated whereas inferior contestants are given another chance.
Ramsay knows more than me about cooking and creating a successful restaurant than I ever will. I know that Ramsay continues to work with contestants who have lost on Hell’s Kitchen and really cares about food. Ramsay actually likes the people that he works with and wants them to do well. Unfortunately the rush for ratings is beginning to outweigh the quality of the contestants and Ramsay’s feedback. Contestants who would have been eliminated in previous shows (I’m thinking of one woman who dumped an ashtray’s contents on a fellow teammate) for violating the show’s rules stick around longer than necessary.
I’m still going to watch the latest season of Hell’s Kitchen, but it will stay in my watchlist unwatched longer than it ever has before.