The Day The Cooking Died … It Was Today on ‘The Rachael Ray Show’

I only discovered this “show in a show” at the very end (thankfully). Apparently for the past bunch of Mondays, The Rachael Ray Show has been having a cooking competition called “Hey, Can You Cook?“. This morning was week four of four and the day they crown the winner. Apparently it began with five contestants and we lost one each week. If you’re that interested in a chronology of events, visit the link above. Otherwise, for me, I’m just talking about the last show … because if I had to actually look at any of the others I’d no doubt hurl.

Yes yesterday the cooking died on television when (and it’s scary when you really can’t blame the contestant) some guy won a challenge by making hot dogs and scallops as his (to quote Rachael) fine dining upscale challenge. The contestant he beat out made hot dogs and spaghetti in case you were curious.

Oh and Gordon Ramsay was there as judge. Yes, Gordon next to Rachael. And there he was judging a (cough, choke, spew) “haute cuisine” challenge. Wow payback really is a b***h. (Go check out the video here where he talks about Rachael as the woman who abbreviates things and puts food in her breasts — referring to the way she gets the food out to prepare on her cooking show.)

Even so, I still felt sorry for him, I mean: dogs with pasta, scallops and weiners. I think I’m going to lose it.When he saw what they were going to cook and what he was going to eat he said “Oh, my”. I know how much he wanted to say something more appropriately Ramsayian like “**** me!” — because he was, basically.

The guy who won gets a trip to Paris and four days at a French cooking school. I can’t wait for them to ask him “and what meal did you make that got you here?” Hopefully when he replies the culinary instructors don’t all die from strokes and embolisms.

(Apologies to Don McLean!)

How the contestants really tried
with their hotdogs cooked and fried
Rachael this I can’t abide
The day the cooking died

Oh bye bye my homemade baked pie
scallops and weiners just made me cry
need a stomach pump and an ambulance ride
Screaming “this’ll be the day that I die;
Oh, this’ll be the day that I die.”

Ramsay Says Use Local, Seasonal Foods or Be Fined - But His Menus Fail

Sometimes you gotta wonder what the problem is with Gordon Ramsay. Does he open his mouth and spew out stuff and then think about it? Does he do things knowing he’s going to look like an idiot afterwards? Even if his own house were in order and if he indeed really did mean things from the heart, just who does he think he is to try and get legislative fines introduced for anything?

Yes, Gordon Ramsay shot his mouth off on Friday and now, with the weekend having passed and critics having gathered, they’re firing back. Looking at things as they are at the moment, Ramsay has managed to anger every United Kingdom cook and chef who wasn’t already annoyed by him.

You see, his general message was rather well-intended. Um, we think. From Friday’s Telegraph, Ramsay was saying that

the industry [is] at risk of “spiralling out of control” as food is flown into the UK from all over the world. Ramsay, whose restaurants include Maze, Petrus and Foxtrot Oscar, said chefs should be confident enough to remove a dish from the menu if the right ingredients were not available.

He said: “Chefs should be fined if they haven’t got ingredients in season on their menu.” “I don’t want to see asparagus in the middle of December, I don’t want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home grown.

This is where a decent thought turned into draconian craziness though:

There should be stringent laws, fines and licensing laws to make sure produce is only used in season. If we get this legislation pushed through the Houses of Parliament then the more unique this country will become.”

Ramsay said he had spoken to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown briefly about the issue and warned that buying food from abroad made cooks lazy. “If we don’t restrict our movements within this industry of seasonal produce only, then the whole thing will spiral out of control,” he told the BBC.

It didn’t take long for the country’s cooks and chefs and media to retaliate. From Saturday’s Telegragh came:

But Ramsay was accused of hypocrisy after it emerged that more than 15 unseasonal ingredients – including blackberries, parsnips and fennel – are currently being served at his own restaurants and would fall foul of a fine. [….]

Anthony Worrall Thompson, a television chef, was also circumspect: “I trawled through his menus from Claridges and Maze and there were at least 15 items that would have warranted a fine,” he said. “The principle is right but as for fining, I think it is a bit of a nonsense – he likes to keep in the limelight.”

It’s the Guardian’s comments section that Interneters are having the most fun pointing our Ramsay’s own restaurant flaws though:

Poster benbush wrote: “Leaving aside steak flown in from Japan and the USA (bring it on), the raspberries in the quail salad are maybe a little early? And which red fruits are in the Eton mess exactly. Presumably Padron peppers wouldn’t be shipped in from Padron would they? And all those apples they’re using must have been keeping well … What a chump.”

HowardV followed up with: “I heard the story on the radio this morning and immediately thought, ‘Oh no, Gordon again.’”

‘Hell’s Kitchen’ Computer Game for Ninetendo Wii/DS Available Soon

Hell’s Kitchen to me, in many ways, is a bit of a “guilty pleasure”. It’s low-brow, it’s about humiliation. Screaming chefs and morons who think they’re chefs. It’s in many ways a bit sick — and I have to admit I just so love it.

Want to have that “good time” feeling all year round? Now you can with the soon-to-be-launched Hell’s Kitchen game for the Nintendo Wii and DS! We’ve known about this game since last July, but honestly when it was scheduled to come out at the same time or right before HK hit the airwaves this year, and then didn’t, and with zero word anywhere on the Net about it for seven months, we thought this must be another case of vaporware.

Now that it has a site up and has just been linked off the Hell’s Kitchen’s Fox website itself, it’s obviously coming out soon for real. That’s two now. You’ll recall we already told you about the Iron Chef America game due out for the Ninetendo as well. At this point the question is with no Top Chef game anywhere on the radar, how long before we see one on the horizon?

But back to this game. There’s an Arcade Mode where you sever as many diners as possible before Chef Ramsay closes you down. and Career Mode where you work up from s one to five star establishment. As you progress through the game you actually get real Gordon Ramsay recipes. And, naturally, along the way you get screamed at in that real Geordie accent.

One question though …. Why is it every reinterpration of Ramsay seems to purposely make him look uglier? Ok, surely ol’ craggly face ‘ere isn’t exactly the prettiest boy on the block. (At a net worth of about $120 million does he need to be?) But, that said he’s not that fugly a mug either. But note how on the Hell’s Kitchen website they make him look meanier and scowlier, and in the computer game version of him he gets still gnarlier looking. I swear the game one looks to me to be part Ramsay, part Sting (after a five-day hangover) and part blowfish.

Star Restaurants: Benoit Opens in NYC; De Niro, Ramsay Buy Hotels

In the past month’s restaurant happenings, the top story — many folks have been looking forward to this for as long as a year — is that Alain Ducasse has at last opened a stateside outpost of his casual Paris and Tokyo bistros of the same name: Benoit in the space that was formerly La Côte Basque at 60 W. 55th St in Manhattan.

The restaurant retains the polished, old-world look of its former self and feature a collection of antiques sourced from Ducasse’s personal collection. Executive chef Sebastien Rondier will serve a traditional French bistro menu with classics like roasted chicken with French fries mon ami Louis-style, steak au poivre with pommes soufflés, tarte tatin, and for dessert, vanilla profiteroles with warm chocolate sauce. To drink, there will be a 300 bottle wine list as well as a collection of Champagne martinis like Le Crazy Horse, made from blueberry vodka, lemon juice, mint and champagne.

Originally scheduled to open 10 days prior (nothing new about restaurant openings being 6 days to six months late!), the official launch was Thursday, May 1st. Gordon Ramsay was among those who made it there opening night.

In other restaurant news: Award-winning French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten has opened a new branch of Spice Market by Jean-Georges in Istanbul at the recently opened W Istanbul in Akatlar district on April 8. Spice Market has won critical acclaim wherever it opened around the world. Its menu, especially prepared for Istanbul, was expanded to include traditional tastes from Turkey. The restaurant carries southeastern Asia’s culinary culture to the heart of the city …

Five years after a chilly Atlanta reception and a string of bad reviews, celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse is closing his Buckhead restaurant at the end of April. Rumors of its closing have circulated for months, but Atlanta-based restaurant owner and chef Tom Catherall confirmed Emeril’s was on the chopping block and its location at 3500 Lenox Road was primed for his new Asian-concept restaurant, Aja …

And now the latest trend: Restaurateurs opening up hotels too.

Robert De Niro plans to open Nobu Hotel, a Japanese-themed hotel-condo complex housing an outpost of the famous restaurant, in the financial district. … And Gordon Ramsay is also getting involved in the hotel business, having just purchased a 10-room boutique called York & Albany. His friend, chef Angela Hartnett will be running the kitchens, though.

News Bites: Roker Show in Fall; Jamie Top UK Chef; London Mayor Ramsay ?

We just, I mean literally just the other day posted about ten new food shows coming on the Food Network and wham we found yet another one. This time we found it through the casting call pages. The current working title of the show is Food: True Life and would be on FN via Al Roker Productions, so you can guess who the host of the show might be. From the casting call:

Food Network is looking for amazing food related stories for a groundbreaking new series! (Just so you know, really, this was originally in all caps the entire sentence and had three exclamation points after it. It really did.) Do you or someone you know have an amazing food related story to tell? Do you know someone who has gone from being homeless to the owner of their own restaurant, makes pop art out of pineapples, or eats nothing but peanuts? Do you know someone who is battling food fears or phobias? Has food helped to cure an illness, changed the course of your life, or helped to inspire you in some dramatic way? We are looking for all types of stories even those that are odd or humorous to feature on and upcoming series for the Food Network. Casting is underway, so Email a brief description of your story with your contact information and picture of yourself ASAP to michaelraptis@alroker.com

In other news, “Jamie Oliver has beaten his culinary competition to be named the most iconic British chef of all time.” From the Manchester Evening News:

The 32-year-old TV chef and scourge of the Turkey Twizzler is now a bigger name than chefs of the past, who have changed the way Britons cook, as well as his contemporary rivals. Delia Smith, 66, whose reputation as the nation’s cookery queen began to crumble when she advocated tinned mince and frozen mashed potato in her latest TV series, ranks second in the poll. Gordon Ramsay’s foul-mouthed reputation does not stop the 41-year-old restaurateur and Kitchen Nightmares star from scooping third place.

In case you’re wondering the list when like this: 4. Rick Stein, 5. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, 6. James Martin, 7. Nigella Lawson, 8. Keith Floyd, 9. Nigel Slater, and, 10. Elizabeth David. And if you would like to know who made 11 through 20 and in what order … go read the article.

So Jamie gets the position of “Top Chef”, but it’s Gordon Ramsay who the people want for Mayor of London! A recent poll of who besides the two actual candidates running would Londoners like to see had Ramsay come in at an amazing 31 percent (which is as high or higher than what the real candidates running currently have in the real polls.)

Little Britain star David Walliams came in a distant second, with almost 15 percent of the votes, whilst the former Mrs McCartney, Heather Mills, took the title of ‘Least Desirable Celeb Mayor’ with less than one percent of the vote:

Kate Moss: 4.05%, Kelly Osbourne: 7.05%, Prince Harry: 13.87%, David Walliams: 14.68%, David Beckham: 7.05%, Heather Mills: 0.92%, Madonna: 3.35%, Gordon Ramsay: 31.21%, Hugh Grant: 7.40%, Other: 10.40%

Other celebrities nominated by public: Richard Fairbrass, David Tennant, Katie Price, Stephen Fry, Prince William, Gary Barlow, Mick Jagger, Richard Madeley, Paul McCartney, James Nesbitt, and Jeremy Clarkson.