TV cooking contest shows

[Blarg]

Agreed on everything you said. Gordon Ramsay has to wheel out his abusive schtick regularly for program demands, and the cooks they chose were far from top of the line. I don't think they need to be for the purposes of the show. All the show needs to do is provide a cook, not show us top cooks.

Surprisingly, I've seen Ramsay be quite complimentary numerous times this season, which I saw virtually none of last season. He compliments Rock fairly constantly.

Next Food Network Star is a bit of a puzzle. The cooks are obviously not top level, and don't seem ready to be televised authorities. When getting quizzed on a basic ingredient like canned tomatoes, one contestant is completely flustered and starts babbling. Then again, their job is not just to cook, but be photogenic, clear, and personable on screen. So cooking is a demonstrably smaller part of their job. On screen, it may finally be nonexistent, as there are plenty of shows in which the host doesn't cook at all. So the show moves in multiple directions at once, which multiple ways to succeed or fail, and those all have to be measured at once with some sort of balance.

Bourdain's entries on the show, on the link, have a lot of good things to say about the show.

Top Chef this season seems interesting, and the contestants are notably good this year. It's the cooking contest show I like the most because it is the most serious and has the sexiest hostess(so much for serious, on my part!).

I'd love to see those old Gordon Ramsay BBC shows. I'm going to check to see if they have any of them at Netflix.

[katyseagull]

Ever since you made this post it seems I've been watching the Food Network channel more. Today I watched them make some great sandwiches and cheesecakes. The other day it was authentic ravioli. Yum! It's making me really hungry. I am going to try to catch Next Food Network Star tonight for the first time.

About Hell's Kitchen, I was sort of wondering why we keep seeing those same Wellingtons. I guess I'm finding the show rather boring. I want to watch people cook, not sweat onto customer's plates. Gordon Ramsay makes me very stressed out.

Question for all you chefs out there, is a busy restaurant kitchen really this stressful? I'm sort of surprised they have so much trouble timing things right. I mean how come they keep overcooking their meats?

[Blarg]

Katie, if you have not read Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential, you really should give it a try. It's absolutely hilarious in many places, and gives a really intriguing look at how the business really runs and what it's really like at all levels. If you have any interest in cooking shows or just like a pretty hilarious, sometimes rude romp through what is for most of us a different world, you'll get a bang out of that book. I've read a couple others of his, and he's just a pretty fun guy and a really good writer. He's got a real gift for skewering pretentious stuff yet really grooving on people trying to do high level things, including some that he knows he'll never be able to do himself. Reading him raving about Thomas Keller, often called the best chef in American and maybe the world, is a wonderful take on the kind of high artistic levels a chef can reach that I wouldn't have been able to understand without his help. Reading him rip a new arsehole into people who crow about being vegetarians but then have the nerve to cook vegetables in really crappy, indifferent ways is a hoot I can relate to, as well.

Food Network Star is on tonight, Katie, and I think it's the final episode for the season. I'm sure Bourdain will also have a very interesting blog post on that, too.

[katyseagull]

[ QUOTE ]
Katie, if you have not read Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential, you really should give it a try. It's absolutely hilarious in many places, and gives a really intriguing look at how the business really runs and what it's really like at all levels.

[/ QUOTE ]


Thanks for the recommendation, Blarg. Definitely sounds like something I would enjoy. I will look for it this week. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


Ok so I watched two episodes of Next Food Network Star. This show was a lot of fun. Way better than Hell's Kitchen. I won't give away any spoilers just wanted to say I really liked the format. I got to see the differences in style between the contestants and learn their strength and weaknesses which is a lot more than we learn from HK. This is the kind of show I want to watch.

With regard to last week's show, I found it interesting that Jag didn't make one entry that the judges liked. And what was with his chicken wontons dipped in vinegar? Who does that? Yuck.

Amy's chicken with goat cheese and mushrooms looked really good, as did her comfy looking stew. She seems like a very strong contestant. Clue me in on why she wanted to go home the other week.

[Blarg]

I've been watching so many of these shows I'm forgetting some particulars, that among them. I do know that she was whining on and on about being away from her daughter, as if it was going to kill the both of them. It looked like craven attention-wh*ring/sympathy mongering to try to get around her screw-ups. I think it was just doing badly in one of the competitions and not knowing how to take it without cracking up.

Both she and Jag seem to be really easily able to segue into near breakdowns. I wonder about these guys' stability and resourcefulness under pressure. Really, all of the last four have blanked out or screwed up under pressure pretty notably. As in, not just not cook well, but really spaz out on a personal level.

[RunDownHouse]

I completely agree with Bourdain's post about HK in the link Blarg posted. I watch both Top Chef and Next Food... but watched only a single episode of Hell's Kitchen before deciding I didn't care to see it again. Watching funny people be funnily cruel can be really funny. Watching Gordon Ramsey be cruel is painful, especially when there isn't quality cooking to offset it.

[Blarg]

Well, they kicked off Amy, who seemed way ahead of Jag. This one really shoulda been between the ladies.

Then they brought her back! Wow, a relief for her, and a bit of torture tambien.

Also, Jag's contrition seemed nothing of the sort. Saying you're sorry when you're caught and have no other choice isn't impressive.

Jag has lots of stage presence, but he screws up his cooking pretty regularly, and dissed the network. The blonde girl dissed her other teammate. The only one who didn't screw up the last challenges in one way or another was the person they kicked off.

Can't wait to read Bourdain's blog entry on it.