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HerbyN at 7:34AM on 08/06/09

You nailed it. I agree exactly with everything you said.

This show is my little guilty F**king pleasure.

couldn't disagree more... love Hell's Kitchen and find Ramsay to be more "passion" than bully (he grows on you). i'm not just a fan of this show, but also his F-Word show on BBC America. the more you watch him the more you realize that he has a sincere love of food and his "edge" comes more from being frustrated when others don't treat the craft with as much care and respect as he feels it deserves.

back to Hell's Kitchen, though... i find it to be diverting, fun and entertaining. characters make interesting viewing, and the rag-tag group of people they select (some admittedly with little or no culinary skill selected only for their "entertainment value" as true incompetents) make the show interesting to watch for me. admittedly this show isn't so much about cooking as, say, Top Chef, but that said, i find Hell's Kitchen way more entertaining. a guilty, guilty pleasure, i know...

I say ~ "different strokes for different folks."

The show was mildly entertaining the first few seasons with the obvious head cases and reality show wannabes populating the show. (Dewberry still remains a family favorite with his Scarlet O'Hara-like wilting and getting the vapors.)

Now, it's just profanity laced shouting and dumb posturing. Curious that anyone watches considering the current job situation in the country and Ramsay as the tyrannical boss. Who needs that?

it's nothing but entertainment don't you people get it. you watch rachele, paula, and alike they are not chefs they are celebrity's that sell cook books. they can't cook anything without being taught how on camera. carey jones don't watch any more hell's kitchen because you don't get it because your a total ass hole NOW PISS OFF.

While I have watched his show in the past,I don't any longer for the simple reason that his vocal rants are getting more and more frequent, more intense and more personal. You can only tell some one that they are stupid, dumb or to piss off so many times before they reach the breaking point. As each season progresses, the verbal barrage gets more intense and belittling. Usually with no outward rationale for it (as far as we can see) on any given show one particuar chef is in the line for fire for that particular day, sometimes for several that follow depending on that chefs reaction to the ire of GR.The pattern seems to emerge that he takes a disliking to one chef or another and then rides and berates them until they crack and end up leaving the show. Tell me to piss off once, maybe twice, I'd blow it off; call me stupid and criticise my skill set without telling me why; I'd chalk it off because of who it came from but to do it week after week?? Sorry, but my redheaded, Scots-Irish temper just might get the better of me and I'd wind up giving GR a set too like he'd not seen before. THEN I'd hand him my jacket and run, not walk out the door and not give it a moments pause of regret beyond the fact that I allowed my self to get into that situation in the first place. No one, regardless of their skill set deserves to be belittled and treated the way he treats those contestants, no one.

Watching Hells Kitchen has also become very painful for me. I could literally feel my blood pressure rising during the show. It is a sad statement when GR feels that this is the sort of reality tv that Americans want to watch....and he is probably right about a good portion of the population. I missed the first season of HK, caught it a few months ago on the Reality TV cable station....it's amazing how much more laid back GR was....not as much screaming and insulting.....kinder, gentler and nicer. I guess Fox told him that's not what Americans want to see.

Not sure if this has been addressed in prior posts, but, yesterday (7/26/09), the New York Daily News ran an article about Danny Veltri, last year's Hell's Kitchen winner. Seems Danny does NOT have his own restaurant in the Borgatta. He is currently working as a sous chef for Stephen Kalt in a restaurant in Atlantic City, NJ. Instead of building a new restaurant for Veltri, the Atlantic City landmark turned to master chef Stephen Kalt and asked him to take some existing space and turn it into a new eatery. Fornelletto opened earlier this month. And Veltri was hired as one of Kalt's SOU-CHEFS.

I enjoy Hell's Kitchen. I'm not a fan of the vulgarity, fake drama, and bad cuts. I like the show because of the contestants. There are always a few strong cooks, normally silent until they have to speak out, that are worth watching.

Hell's Kitchen is skill based. But it challenges the contestants to do more than just cook. They have to prove they can cook, can work at any station in a brigade, they can work with anyone, they can run a brigade, they can create their own dishes, and finally they can run a brigade serving their menu. They are given very little support. The victories tend to be time away from the kitchen, while the punishments revolve around the boring, hard, and repetitive tasks in the kitchen.

@Traveller - you MUST have been upset. I can't imagine eating a jar of grainy mustard by itself! No, capers would be my choice, I love em.

BTW, congratulations on getting that dissertation over and to an old broad like myself, a "B" sounds pretty damned good.

Altoids? You must be kidding!

When my sister & I went backpacking around Europe we were on a VERY limited budget... many times we arrived by bus in our next foriegn city, late at night, hungry & unfamiliar. I remember eating peas & corn cold out of the can after shopping at the 24-hour food mart in Barcelona... Dining on red wine & dark chocolate and jumping on the beds in our Paris hotel room... Eating Brie out of the package with a Swiss Army knife... Popping Pringles & chugging Fruitopia at 6am after a night of dancing & drinking in London...

Definately pints of icecream, gelato, sorbet, etc, many nights watching movies with my best friend, or doing a late-night "icecream run" with my sister & splitting a litre of Oreo...

I used to bake peanut butter cookies & eat them out of the pan

Pickles, pickled beets, pickled onions, relish, sauerkraut, olives, salsa, pasta sauce, condensed tomato soup, curried spinach, mushy peas, pie filling, peanut butter, jam, whipped topping, salad dressing, eggless mayonnaise, ketchup, bbq sauce... and yes, margarine...

PS I'm totally underweight, so I can justify eating an "entire" anything, including bags of cookies, a McCain cake, a frozen cream pie :)

Have you tried cold-brewing coffee? It's much better than just cooling hot coffee...much more flavorful. The NY Times did an article on it a while ago, but I found it through Smitten Kitchen's post: http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/08/cold-brewed-iced-coffee/

Sooo easy and so good!