I'm a huge fan of reality television shows. I love Survivor and the Amazing Race, but I like most of them. It's a true guilty pleasure for me. I don't know if you've ever watched the Fox TV show Hell's Kitchen, but if you've never seen it, I can bring you up to speed in a couple of sentences.
The idea of Hell's Kitchen is that chef Gordon Ramsey, a really foul mouthed British chef with a $100 million + restaurant empire and an ego to match, humiliates, abuses and otherwise mistreats a bunch of aspiring young chefs. Each week one of the chefs gets kicked out of Hell's Kitchen and the last one standing at the end of the season gets rewarded with a job as executive chef at one of Ramsay's many restaurants. If you think about Donald Trump's show The Apprentice, only with food instead of real estate and with a huge mean streak thrown in, you'll pretty much have the idea.
The other thing you need to know is that the Michelin Red Guide is the worldwide authority and bible of gastronomy. It rates the best handful of restaurants in the world between one and three stars. If a restaurant is awarded a single Michelin star that places it in the upper echelon of restaurants on the planet.
Ramsay's restaurants have already been awarded a total of 14 Michelin stars and only two other Chefs in the world, both of them French, hold more stars than he.
Oh, you also need to know that the French take the whole food thing seriously, very seriously. The French president has even gone so far as to ask the UN to name French cuisine as part of the world's heritage.
So, here's where these things intersect. Last year Ramsay opened his first restaurant in France, Gordon Ramsay au Trianon, at Versailles. Naturally, the French being French, it opened to fairly hostile reviews. One famous French critic labled it "Gordon Ramsayland". The French mocked it for being out of Paris and said it would only appeal to tourists and not the more discerning French people.
Well Ramsay just got the last laugh. He just became the first British chef in the 109 year history of the Michelin Guide to win two stars for a restaurant in France.
If you want to take a peek at his very pricey menu click here.
So the next time you turn on the TV and Hell's Kitchen appears, you'll know that this dude really does know how to cook or knows how to hire people who can.
2 comments:
SO can we eat there???? Or can he just make a guest appearance on out bateau.......
The dude is like Emeril Lagasse in New Orleans. His name may be on the door of a whole lot of restaurants, but it's a pretty safe bet he won't be near any of them on any given night.
He has restaurants in Dubai, New York, Vegas, London, etc., etc.
Besides, did you look at the prices on that menu? Yikes!
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