Hell's Kitchen TV Show

From LoveToKnow Reality-TV

Take one celebrity chef renowned for his decidedly un-sunny disposition, and a team of young chefs of varying skill levels, and you have the recipe for Fox's Hell’s Kitchen TV show. This US remake of the British series of the same name offers contestants a major prize – a job as an executive chef at a top restaurant.

Hell’s Kitchen TV Show – The Premise

Hell’s Kitchen features British chef Gordon Ramsay as he auditions young chefs for a chance of working as an executive chef in a top restaurant. The restaurant in question is supposed to be a Ramsay-owned restaurant, but after taping, winners are sometimes placed in different restaurants than were advertised on the show. In later seasons of Hell’s Kitchen, winners were given the choice between accepting $250,000 in prize money without accepting a job or working for a year as a chef in a restaurant Ramsay places them and earn that $250,000 as a salary.

In early seasons of the show, 12 chefs started out in the competition, but that number was later increased to 16. The chefs always have very different backgrounds. Some are classically trained, some are short order cooks and workers in fast food restaurants, some are culinary students, and some are nannies, personal chefs and even amateur home cooks. Typically, a class system emerges amongst the chefs, with the classically trained cooks looking down on the other kinds of chefs and so on. The less trained chefs have traditionally done very well in the competition, despite the drama and tension behind the scenes.

Every week, Ramsay eliminates one chef from the competition until there are only two left. The two finalists compete in a grand finale event from which Ramsay selects the winner.

Hell’s Kitchen Challenges

After an initial challenge which involves cooking their signature dish for Ramsay, chefs are split into two teams, usually along gender lines. Every show begins with a team competition that typically involves some sort of culinary knowledge or ability challenge, such as filleting fish or identifying spices. The winning team from the first challenge usually gets some sort of prize, often involving time with Ramsay, while the losing team has to do extra work, such as prepping the food for dinner service.

Dinner service is the main challenge on the show. The Hell’s Kitchen set is designed to be a real, functioning restaurant. The restaurant opens for business, and customers are seated at tables that are split between the two teams in the kitchen. The teams must complete a dinner service under the watchful eye of Ramsay. Especially early in the competition, the teams frequently fall behind in dinner service and botch recipes and orders. Ramsay tastes most dishes before they go out, and he throws away things he doesn’t like. If a team is falling behind, Ramsay might move the contestants around to different stations. When the service falls behind irreparably, or if the food is not up to his standards, Ramsay shuts down the restaurant mid-service and sends the customers home.

Ramsay selects the winning and losing team after each service. The losing team nominates two people for elimination, and though Ramsay is supposed to choose between these two, he often makes his own decisions about elimination and sends home who he thinks did the worst job, even if they are on the winning team.

Ramsay also sometimes eliminates someone mid-service if they cannot keep up or if he doesn’t like their attitude. His gruff persona is a constant presence on the show, and he frequently belittles, mocks and swears at the contestants if he doesn’t like the way they are handling themselves in the kitchen.