Over the past two days, our favorite three food reality shows were on … Hell’s Kitchen, Last Restaurant Standing and Top Chef … so let’s check each one out and see what happened.

Hell’s Kitchen

Took long enough to kill Craig! Whew, finally! Yeah, I noticed the over-tanning myself on last night’s episode. That’s what happens when you have a Brit in California. hehe

I do think Ben might be correct though. Seems Ramsay is out for him, and Ben is no better and no worse than most of the others. Matt on the other hand is definitely destined to go in the next two episodes I think. Him and Corey.

I do think this is another example of where if the (stupid) host of a show would look at the footage they shot he’d see things differently.

Last Restaurant Standing

Which brings me up to Last Restaurant Standing. While I still enjoy the show greatly, and I am pleased to say the judging is working out well too (aka, I agree the contestants who are left — there are at this point three restaurants now left open from the original nine — I have to say that not only does Raymond Blanc likewise need to look at the footage shot on his show to get things right, but that he’s become the last thing I ever imagined. Raymond Blanc seems to be the world’s very first French prude.

You heard me! Last week he chided the twins for doing a can-can. This week he told however Lloyd and Adwoa their love shack was tacky. Raymond are you sure you’re French? You sound like a bloody Puritan. Sure you don’t want to give out Scarlett “A”s to the contestants next week? If I say “penis” will you blush? How about veejayjay?

Turned out if he had either better info from his three assistants or watched the film shot for his own show he would have seen the girls can-can was cute (they were wearing pants) and that the love shack thing they cooked up also (admittedly surprising) turned out cute, not at all tacky. But you know, much better to go with your gut feeling than to actually judge something on it’s merit, Blanc. And scary to know a Frenchmen’s gut feeling is anything like yours. Have a prune danish and gets some Viagra. Maurice Chavalier is turning in his grave.

Again, at least the right folks are in the final three. Jeremy and Jane, Grant and Laura, and Jess and Laura. Time to call a winner then.

Well as far as I can see, Jeremy and Jane may be talented but their eight-course-meal thing never flew, and they are constantly advised to turn things around and they don’t. I’m not sure how they made this far as Jeremy also has gone against the eel idea and last week insulted the folks with the microwave meal. I just can’t see how they can win. Grant and Laura like the other three seem to always have a crowded restaurant, but that Scottish-meets-French cuisine still seems so strange I don’t know how it can fly. Jess and Laura I’ve enjoyed from the start. They seem to come up with the best ideas each week — even though Raymond says they don’t stretch, I disagree with him — and yet others seem to get the star for improvement. Supposedly they are “stagnant” which is better than everyone else who has gone up and down. Plus last week they started to turn tables, which is an improvment over stagnant. If they don’t win, I’ll be shocked.

And so with the winning couple picked — and we’ll see how I did with that in two to four weeks depending on how the show handles future eliminations when it gets down so low. So that out of the way, back to Chef Blanc. It took me over twelve weeks to find something negative to say about this show. Seriously, jokes aside. Raymond, you’re in England yet you have the stiffest upper lip than anyone around you. Sheesh. Take the stick out, stop acting like a eunuch, and remember you’re supposed to be French: live it up a little.

Top Chef

On Top Chef, again, the right one went home. How can you serve bread that’s too hard on one side and mushy on the other? How can you take a plate of asparagus and make cheese take center stage? At last the lesbian couple is gone. (Now wait, I have nothing against lesbian, lesbians couples nor those two in particular.) I sincerely liked both Zoi and her … It’s just THEY made themselves so inseperable it always seems we have to keep hearing about the other one all the time. I would have been no more and no less annoyed had they been a hetero couple. It was just so annoying. And so yeah, glad it’s over.

Stephanie. She’s on the top, she’s on the bottom. These group events can really kill people. Bullet dodged. Spike actually showed he has talent. Which proved that at least he belonged on the show. Knew he had to have some. Scary how time goes on I’m starting to like him more (or dislike him less, or something).

I think Although Antonia and Lisa were put among the bottom folks for not properly following the rule set (the criteria they were given was polish sausage) and they decided that was too plebian and to use the “improv” rule and improvise with chorizo.

While at first that did seem to go a bit against the rule, what they said in the other room was brilliant!. They said something to the effect of had they actually followed the criteria precisely, had they given then say polish sausage and beer, then they would have been criticized for not acting like the chefs they are, and would have been criticized for not improvising. Really. They hit that totally on the head! That’s exactly the way it would have turned out in an “alternate reality” sorta thing

Amazingly, Spike actually cooked something that demonstrated talent. Who knew it was possible? Btw, now that we’re down to nine …. that suggests to me we must be two weeks away from Top Chef’s annual “Restaurant Wars”!

{24 Apr 2008}