TVSquad

So I woke up this morning and I thought to myself, "you know what we need more of on television? Food competition shows! 27 just isn't enough, we need a 28th."

Then I saw the preview for Food Network's new show Chopped, which debuts in January and will be hosted by Queer Eye For The Straight Guy star Ted Allen. Contestants on the show will have to make a three course meal out of a series of ingredients that the show gives him or her. The loser has the title of the show done to him and he is served the following week with a wine that Allen will choose (perhaps a 2001 Rodney Strong Cabernet Sauvignon?). The show will have a panel of judges, a money prize, yippity-bippity-do, etc.

What's more entertaining than seeing acclaimed British chef Gordon Ramsay go ballistic on Hell's Kitchen contestants and inept restaurant managers? Seeing a 9 year-old Gordon Ramsay go ballistic on inept restaurant managers and his own mom.

That's the gist of these two videos (after the jump) from Caterer.com, a hospitality job site. The first one shows a little Gordon Ramsay (great hair) getting ticked off at the "anemic" school lunch his mom has packed for him. The second clip shows him out at an anniversary dinner with his parents, where he freaks out on a waitress and her boss when the food doesn't arrive on time, even though the restaurant is completely empty.

I know these were made as promotion for Caterer.com, but they should include them as extras on any Ramsay DVDs and show them on his TV shows as well. He even has his own web site.

But does he swear? If he doesn't, then a big component of the TV show is lost, wouldn't you say?

Yesterday marked the release of Ubisoft's Hell's Kitchen: The Video Game (the FOX show has been advertising the game for the past several weeks). Chef Ramsay does the voice for his character, and the game actually sounds rather cool, if it works the way it's described. Players go through three rounds of cooking (preparing the food, cooking it, and then the service), and Ramsay judges you. He can shut down the kitchen if you're not doing well, and you even get an "Advanced" mode where the customers become jerks and send the food back. Go through certain levels and you get access to special Gordon Ramsay recipes.

Some of our readers have pointed out in the comments section of the Hell's Kitchen episode reviews that Chef Gordon Ramsay shouldn't pick any of the contestants to be the winner, because they aren't talented enough. I think some of them clearly aren't executive chef level yet, though I think some of them could be away from the weird pressures of reality TV. The winner of the show gets $250,000 and the executive chef job at the new London West Hollywood. Unlike other seasons, this winner will actually work as the head of one of Ramsay's own restaurants, so there is a lot riding on this.

But what if he didn't pick a winner?

(S04E08) "Shut up...and I mean that from the bottom of my heart." - Chef Ramsay, to Christina

This episode brought back a lot of memories for me, flashbacks to the day 20 years ago when I cut my finger while slicing linguica on a slicer. Matt does the same thing tonight (via knife) while slicing pancetta. Funny how both the pancetta and linguica are both sorta flesh-colored. I didn't cut the tip of my finger off (though I did go to the emergency room). Matt did cut the tip of his off yet didn't go to the emergency room. If I remember correctly from the episode, he also didn't find the tip of his finger. What exactly did they do with that pancetta?

Looks like FOX likes food, reality shows, and people who swear a lot.

The network has ordered another season of the Gordon Ramsay restaurant show Kitchen Nightmares. The show is in its first season right now, and is actually doing rather well considering it has been up against the hype of the new Bionic Woman, Criminal Minds, and the Grey's Anatomy spinoff Private Practice. This means we'll see a lot of Ramsay on FOX in the future, since Hell's Kitchen is on the network and does well in the ratings too.

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!

After only one episode, it looks like some people might already know the winner of FOX's Hell's Kitchen.

Bodog.com has suspended betting on the reality show after the odds on one of the contestants went from 7-1 to 2-1 very quickly. After the jump, the name of this contestant. (AGAIN, SPOILER AHEAD!)

Nice guys will always finish last while Anthony Bourdain is on the scene. If you don't the know the chef turned best-selling author and Travel Channel host, than you've been missing out. Bourdain brought gonzo to the kitchen, or out of the kitchen as the case may be. His first tome Kitchen Confidential was a Hunter S. Thompson-inspired machismo trip through the world of haute cuisine. Chefs are bad asses in Bourdain's world of sex, drugs and rock and roll. They are the magic men (and the occasional woman) who conjure the sacred from the profane. The journey between the raw and the cooked is not for the feint of heart.

Now that Bourdain's got a few seasons at the Travel Channel under his belt, it's no surprise that he should feel compelled to hold forth on the relative merits of food on television.

Man, Top Chef has gained some serious momentum these past few weeks. The hazing incident, the tight-lipped complaints about Padma, the crappy, producer-driven elimination of Sam in favor of an Ilan vs. Marcel match-up. (Got spoilers? Oh, yeah, but don't click here unless you want to know who gets paprika-ed in the end.) Today's Top Chef bombshell - Padma's a pothead, and I'm not referring to her affinity for Le Creuset cookware. According to our friends over at Best Week Ever, Padma enjoys toking up on the set. Allegedly, this was a fairly regular occurrence.

It is tough being a model in the kitchen. Your taut bare midriff is a cooking oil accident waiting to happen. Your chainmail bikini plus all those flying knives equals nothing good, and don't even get me started on the whole stiletto/non-slip mat combination. Ex-model and Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi has bravely faced down the hottest of kitchens all season, and for what? She's getting nothing but guff from the ousted Top Chef competitors.

Reporting to New York Magazine, cooks Ilan Hall, Cliff Crooks and Sam Talbot have all turned tight-lipped and a wee bit sour at mention of Padma's name. When asked about her culinary taste, Hall turned to the Bravo publicist at his side and asked, "Um, are we allowed to say disparaging things about Padma? No. She's beautiful. Mostly, she just explained things, and she did a good job at that." Commenting on her attire, Crooks suggested that around a working kitchen, poor Padma would either be a "fire hazard" or "get hurt." Somebody's got to be the face of this competition, people. Give Ms. Salman Rushdie a break.

Interesting piece by Noel Murray over at The Onion's AV Club. He calls Hell's Kitchen entertaining, but "one of the least transparent of the competitive reality shows." He argues that we always see the personal lives of the contestants on shows like Survivor and Project Runway, but that the players on Hell's Kitchen seem to have no life before or after the show.

But Hell's Kitchen comes from that weird extra-dimensional Fox TV Reality realm, where contestants have no apparent life before or after taping begins-aside from the inevitable glimpse of family members during the finale-and even the game itself seems completely stage-managed. I know Gordon Ramsay's a real dude-I've watched his terrific BBC series Kitchen Nightmares-but I've rarely been convinced that that any of the show's competing chefs have any real interest in cooking for a living, or that their "customers" are anything more than Fox employees and Hollywood extras. (I did see last season's runner-up Ralph on Iron Chef America, though who knows what happened to Michael, who in some kind of shady back-room deal took an apprenticeship with Ramsay over his own restaurant.)

Readers, do you agree?

(S02E06) I'm typing this between 9 and 10 at night, and it's still in the upper 80s and unbearably humid. So, really, the last show I want to watch is something where people in long sleeves and pants are running around a hot kitchen, sweating, cooking hot food under pressure. Makes me feel even worse, as I search for even a hint of a breeze outside my apartment window. Ugh.

The women's team is hurting (Rachel was voted out last week), and the blue team is gloating that they are going to mop up the floor with them.

(S02E04) Finally! Chef Gordon Ramsay says what I - and most of America, I'm sure - have been saying since the first episode: these contestants aren't chefs, they're just a bunch of fast food cooks, and none of them are fit to run a multi-million dollar restaurant at a billion dollar hotel. Yes! One of the truer moments in reality TV show history.

This week the teams not only have to get through their fourth service, but also have to make lunch for the first time - for several screaming, hyper kids.

(S02E03) If I'm ever picked to be on a reality show (in a bizarre world where I would actually want to do such a thing), I'd have to get my opening credits look down cold. I don't know what I'd pick to do, maybe just a quick turn like Jack Lord used to do on Hawaii Five-0, or maybe just a calm smile. But the contestants on this show...what exactly did the director/cameraman tell them to do? "OK, the camera's on you now, act like the biggest asshole in the world." Seriously, what's with all the cocky smirks and nods? Gah. It's bad enough that we have to sit through a way-too-long "previously on Hell's Kitchen" opening, every single week, but we have to see these people smirking at us in the opening credits each week?

(S02E01/S02E02) As the second season of this reality show begins and the players are introduced, I'm really not sure who the hell deserves a multi-million dollar restaurant at a billion dollar Las Vegas resort (Red Rock). Seriously, which of these people would you entrust that kitchen to? Maybe Heather? The others don't really impress.

Here's the rundown on the other contestants and the first meals they make for chef Gordon Ramsay: