Tuesday, June 05, 2012

The phenomenon that is Gordon Ramsay

Last night I watched Hell's Kitchen and Master Chef, two reality restaurant/cooking shows hosted by UK restaurateur and chef Gordon Ramsay.

In Hell's Kitchen, Chef Ramsay winnows down chef hopefuls vying for a head chef position at one of his many restaurants. In Master Chef, Ramsay and two other judges host home cook contestants who compete for a lucrative prize and the title Master Chef. In his other show, Restaurant Nightmares, Ramsay is invited by struggling restaurant owners to come in and point out the issues that are causing the restaurant to sink and turn it around with his tried and true solutions.

I was thinking last night as I watched two hours of Ramsay, with Hell's Kitchen and Master Chef back-to-back episodes, aside from wondering if I will continue to take a steady diet of profanity and adrenaline the Hell's Kitchen episodes are known for, is that it is quite an accomplishment for one person to have three simultaneously or concurrent running television shows. I was not aware that Hell's Kitchen had been on for ten years. (I'm always late to the cultural party). Monday night's opener was season three for Master Chef, and Kitchen Nightmares has been on for five. So who IS this guy, Gordon Ramsay? I knew little about the person I had decided to spend so much time with. I watched this 4-minute biography and was suitably impressed. For a chef to have earned so much television exposure, of course he had to have had the cooking chops and business acumen to back it up. (Insert, "Elizabeth, Duh!" here). Below is a short bio of Gordon Ramsay, if you care to watch. I thought it was really interesting.




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