Fox's "Hell's Kitchen"

Any DUers here ever work in a kitchen with a chef like that?

I don't think that I could ever work for an asshat like that.

... but I don't know why they have to ruin a potentially good show with the SimonCowell/PauliAndDaddy/Etc/Etc faux blowups.

I guess it sells.

or so say the English parents of a friend of mine. But just watching the way he treats people would be enough to keep me from patronizing his establishment.

and I'm damn thankful I did - they taught me more about being passionate, striving for perfection, and not making mistakes than most any other ones I worked for.

But on the flip side, I had a couple bosses/managers who were incredibly gentle, zenlike, and also taught me just as well about striving for perfection and being passionate.

I'm damned thankful for both - I'm a much better person for it.

It's the squidgy ones, the unpassionate ones who are assholes like Ramsay (but without the passion and the need to drive his people to perfection), or were apathetic but nice, or otherwise didn't care about the work, or about leading, or about mentoring, that I've had to work under, work with, and work around that made me sick to be around them.

I would happily work under him any day.

...but now I love him. He's passionate about his craft, and he demands excellence. He's actually not a prick at all outside of the kitchen. He's even making an effort to ensure his kids aren't food snobs.

... but don't you think that the blow-ups are played up for the camera? I certainly do.

Sure - a chef will throw a hissy fit when things are done improperly - but it doesn't happen on a schedule.

He's got this Gunny Hartman image he's got to live up to now.

.... I guess you have to put up with some theatrics to watch anything on TV any more.

Actually, if there was less focus on the temper-tantrums, I'd like the show a lot better. But I'll watch it occasionally anyway -because chefing is cools stuff.

This "reality show" mentality has really taken over TV though. There was a PBS series of series -the last series being "Ranch House" where folks were put up in a recreation of an 1850s Texas ranch house and told to play cowboy.

The show had huge potential, and earlier series in the series were not bad. But on this one, they spend SO much time on the personality conflicts and other crap, all of it banal and predictable IMHO, and failed to address the real issue of the show - ie what was a cowboy's life really like at that time.

I'll be glad when this "phase" is over, if I live that long :)

It's basically the same type of competition with fewer fits. Plus, Ming Tsai, who is fucking brilliant, is one of the judges.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cookingunderfire/about/index.html

... but I'll get a Season Pass and check it out, thanks :)

Chef Ramsey He used to be on the vege of a professional soccer career before moving into the kitchen.
He has/had a program on BBC called Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares where he would go to a run down or on the verge of closing restaurant and work with them to bring it back to par. He would take a week or soemthing to instill and help and would return a few months later to see how it turned out. Good show!

Or so I've been told. You deal with it, or go work someplace less intense... like as an air traffic controller or brain surgeon. However, his staff in his real restaurants are incredibly loyal to him... the two sous chefs on HK are two of his real sous chefs.

I love Hell's Kitchen... I'm so glad they brought it back this summer.

Not much on Fox was worth watching anyway.

They're extraordinarily difficult to work with. However, there is (usually) a passion behind the craziness (or a coke habit,) and I've actually come to appreciate some of the madness.

Makes for some good stories--and regulars absolutely live to come into really high-end crazy-chef places and dish about the latest hijinks.

:D

the impression this is the rule rather than the exception.

Excellent book by the way, recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060934913/qid=1151370263/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/103-8496490-0516634?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

treat employees like that. That man deserves an ass kicking right there in fromt of everybody.