TVSquad

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.

Before I started watching the British Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America, someone told me that this is a kinder, gentler Gordon Ramsay. One that doesn't swear as much as he does on FOX's Hell's Kitchen. And they were right, he doesn't swear that much. He swears a lot more.

But you do sense that he cares about getting these restaurants going again. The premise is this: Ramsay travels around the U.S. and helps to fix screwed up restaurants. I worked in many kitchens over the course of around 11 years and they were all screwed up in some way or another, so I'm sure he'll have an endless supply of places to fix.

Remember a while back when we told you about Gordon Ramsay being sued by a restaurant manager who accused the celebrity chef of making up scenes and catastrophes for Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares? Here's an update.

A Federal Judge in Manhattan has throw the case out of court. However, this doesn't mean that the case is over. The two parties now have to go into abritration to resolve the conflict. And the lawyer for the restaurant manager says that he expects the case to go back to court at some point.

But it does mean that Ramsay is now free to film the next season of Kitchen Nightmares. The show airs in the U.S. on BBC America. I haven't seen the show yet but I hear that Ramsay is a little nicer in this one and there's a huge reduction in the amount of F-bombs thrown in the kitchen.

This review confused me for a moment. New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni gives Perilla, the restaurant owned by first season Top Chef winner Harold Dieterle, one star out of four. Now, if you're talking about movies or TV shows or albums, that's probably the "poor" category. But the way Bruni and the Times do it, it actually stands for "good" (if you get zero stars or just get a "satisfactory" rating, that's a bad thing). I wonder what four stars means? Best meal in the history of the universe?

Super chef Gordon Ramsay has admitted that he goes to fast food places like Burger King and McDonald's and orders food at the drive-thru...in secret. He goes in a car with tinted windows and calls ahead. Though I wonder who but a celeb would call ahead for a meal at Burger King or McDonald's.

He says that "there's something very sexy about the way they flame grill a Whopper." Um, alllllrighty.

But he's really not a fan of fast food establishments. He says the food is bland and that it's bad for you. Another famous chef, Marco Pierre White, recently said that McDonald's offers great value and Ramsay calls that "utter crap."

The new season of Hell's Kitchen premieres this Monday on FOX.

This poll in the UK edition of Esquire isn't too much of a surprise I guess. I can understand why chef and TV host Gordon Ramsay is the most admired guy, especially in a popular, "of the moment" sort of way. But what I find funny is that he beat scientist and author Stephen Hawking, a man that has literally changed the way we look at space, time, and the universe.

Other people on the list after Ramsay (17%) and Hawking (14%) are Ray Mears (a TV survival expert - probably unknown to many of us here in the U.S.), who got 11% of the vote, new James Bond Daniel Craig, who also got 11%, and comedian/writer Ricky Gervais, who somehow only got 9% of the vote.

The new season of Hell's Kitchen, the U.S. show that Ramsay hosts, starts on FOX, June 4 at 9pm.

[via TV Tattle]

Well, this news is going to make some people very, very happy.

Kitchen Confidential, the comedy that was on FOX last year for about a minute and a half is coming to DVD on May 22. Not only will the two disc set have the four episodes that aired on the network, it will also have the nine episodes that never aired. Extras will include cast interviews and a trailer.

I found this show rather disappointing. It was OK, but just not as funny or involving as I thought it would be. Of course, this was based on two or three episodes, so I'll make an effort to check out the rest. Michael Vartan, Bradley's Cooper's costar from Alias, guest starred on one of the unseen episodes as a French chef. The show also starred Nicholas Brendon, Bonnie Somerville, John Francis Daley, Jaime King and Frank Langella.

When fighting broke out in the Middle East recently, chef, author, and TV show host Anthony Bourdain found that he was trapped in Beirut with his crew. They were filming an episode of the Travel Channel series No Reservations. Bourdain and the four people with him were stuck in the city for a week, and eventually found their way back to the U.S. Bourdain held a chat at The Washington Post web site recently.

Bourdain not only talks about the food he tasted there, but also offers a view of the people he encountered, in a way you might not see on the cable or network news coverage.

[via Bookslut]

Everyone here at WIN is very excited about the launch of our new blog, Slashfood. As you can probably tell from the title, it's all about the world of food and drink. Like you, we here at WIN love to eat and drink and talk about what we eat and drink. New restaurants, recipes, food hacks, industry news, celebrity chef gossip, fun foods, food porn. You name, we'll cover it.

Mmmmmm. Go check it out.