Comparing Kitchen Nightmares

            Gordon Ramsay, a Michelin star chef, has a burgeoning American television career. He currently stars on four different programs for the Fox network including: Kitchen Nightmares, Hell’s Kitchen, Masterchef, and Hotel Hell. Ramsay’s personality on these shows exhibits itself most often in explosions of profanity and verbal abuse directed at incompetent restaurant owners, employees, and chefs. I would not be surprised to one day hear that Ramsay has impaled a chef with a sauté pan. Ramsay’s ascendency in television began in 2004 with the British version of Kitchen Nightmares. Yet the Ramsay that first appeared on that program greatly differs from the more recent savagely brutal incarnation seen on television today.

            After watching the British version of Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsay’s love of food and cooking becomes eminently apparent. He frequently cooks with the chefs of the restaurants, helping out during dinner services, going with the chefs to local vendors or farmers markets to discuss the importance of simple and local cooking. Some of the best segments of the show featured Ramsay providing the chefs with a small collection of ingredients and demonstrating how they could transform those simple and generally cheap ingredients into flavorful dishes. Additionally Ramsay devotes a significant amount of time to discussing with the chefs where their cooking went wrong. In some cases, the chefs were incompetent, lazy, lacking inspiration, or cooking above their abilities. He then works with them to improve their skills and prepare a menu consummate with their skill level. In some cases, Ramsay simplifies the menu to where many of the dishes were prepared beforehand, leaving the chefs to plate and serve the dishes. He takes the time to instruct waiters and owners on the finer arts of service, including how to take orders, how to turn tables over so that customers do not have to wait, and how to stagger service as to not overwhelm the kitchen with orders. Ramsay investigated the reputation of the restaurants within their communities to uncover why diners avoided these establishments. This insider’s perspective into restaurant management gave the show a unique hook. It offered insight into how and why restaurants succeed or fail. Ultimately the British version of the show was about the food.

            The American version abandons this focus on the food and emphasizes the manufactured drama that epitomizes so much of the American reality TV landscape. Delusional owners, startling incompetent chefs, and familial dysfunction rule the day—the show sensationalizes the worst parts of a show about failing restaurants could offer.  Episodes open with Ramsay cursing and swearing about the disgustingly low quality of the food. The food at these establishments is often frozen or poorly prepared. He then investigates the kitchen and “shockingly” discovers the restaurants’ unhygienic conditions. Ramsay confronts the owners with these problems. The owners, who themselves have a tenuous connection to reality, deny the problems exist or shift the blame to others. After fits of screaming and cursing, Ramsay compels the owners to admit the failures of the restaurant. The owners’ problems are often familial or psychological in nature and the show excessively hypes them in “Coming Up On” segments. With the restaurants’ problems seemingly resolved, the transformation of the restaurant begins. It relaunches with a new menu and rides off into a hopefully happy sunset. The emphasis on food and the restaurant industry that Ramsay articulated in the British version of Kitchen Nightmares disappear under a veneer of vulgarity and falsely produced emotional catharsis.

The British Kitchen Nightmares offered a provocative insider’s investigation into the ups and downs of the restaurant industry, while the American version exemplifies mediocre reality show fare.