The Married Guy Cook

I can’t remember the name of the Hell’s Kitchen winner offhand, but I’d still love to dine at Louis Petrozza’s place, and I still think he’d be cool to meet, much like Rock Harper.

I wrote elsewhere about an odd Hell’s Kitchen dream I had last night. Meant to mention it here earlier, for anyone who might be interest.

Not much time, as I am about to make supper here myself. As predicted, it’s Petrozza versus Christina, with Corey gone at three. Respectable, and apparently she was better than my impression of her had been. I do think it was an easier decision that he made it appear, because as always, it came down to the pass, and Corey was easily the worst.

Christina was smart to realize what the challenge was going to be and think about and discuss the ingredients of the dish while dining with her parents.

It was amusing Ramsay called Christina a cheerleader, because Deb has been doing that all season, as a type, at least, perhaps worse if she never actually was one.

It’s a tough call, and there are a variety of skills being tested. Christina would be Heather the second, only less obviously competent up front, more of a talented newbie who lucked out. Petrozza would be the “hey, they let an old guy win for once” winner. Christina would keep the alternating male/female pattern. Petrozza would set them free from it.

Petrozza would seem to be perfect and would definitely be my choice, except the lackadaisical, forgetful tendency. That can be sharpened off and balanced by supporting staff.

Christina is more capable of leadership than I might have expected, but would need some polishing of her own. For her, though, it’s the start of a career, with a bang, and she’d have incentive that Petrozza, being established in his own right, might not.

I’m perhaps rooting slightly for Petrozza, but it’s not going to bother me either way. Presumably we’ll see a lot more of how each of them really are during the finale.

In the course of this, I was looking at the Hell’s Kitchen Wikipedia article and associated season articles. It’s interesting to note that Heather is done with her spiffy contract and is working as “a chef” at nowhere significant. It’s interesting to note that Michael, who famously accepted and then withdrew from an offer to work with Ramsay, and eventually got a plum restaurant gig as executive chef on the strength of his win, is no longer in that position. You just never know.

I have been remiss about posting on this season of Hell’s Kitchen regularly, so now we’re about to see the top three be pared to two finalists.

I just have a few things to say about the last couple episodes.

Bobby I had pegged for a finalist, despite their making fun of him in the very first episode, and his apparently poor leadership skills the first time those were tested (perhaps enhanced through editing). The catch was whether Hell’s Kitchen would break the alternating sexes and/or races mold. Did you really think a woman would win American Idol this year? Least of all a black woman? If they follow the pattern, the script, the storyline, this year’s winner will be female, or at least white. Bobby winning would have broken the pattern and shown they ry not to follow one (or are doing the opposite). Jen winning, well, that would almost overplay the pattern thing.

Petrozza I had pegged for cannon fodder at the outset, shades of Dominic, but he has been steady, if not always clearly outstanding, more similar to Rock Harper than I’d noticed until just lately. And why does he go by his surname, Petrozza, rather than his first name, Louis?

I fear I’ve always liked Christina because she’s cute, but she also seems competent and not as obnoxious as Corey. The two of them have both had their moments of pure bitch, but I perceive Corey more so. I like to like the winner. It still bothers me that Michael won the first season, because I found him too annoying, however competent.

Hell’s Kitchen really played it close to the vest this year, disguising the fact that anyone had sufficient ability to be worthy of winning. I’m still skeptical, but the past couple episodes, particularly the final four, really showed there’s more there than we’d seen. I figure they didn’t want a repeat of Heather and Rock being obvious finalists from near the beginning of the season. Entirely aside from the issue of the winner being leaked, as happened last year.

At this point, I see it being Petrozza versus Christina, with a slight edge to Petrozza. However, if it’s Corey versus Christina, I think Christina takes it, and if it’s Corey versus Petrozza, I think Petrozza takes it. If Jen had somehow made it that far, I don’t think she had a chance. I am so glad she’s gone. They famously edit people to be more annoying than they really are, but I got the impression Jen didn’t need much help.

Hell of a way to conduct a job interview.

The top three is a very telling episode, when each one calls and runs things for a while. Christina could fall apart on that, but Corey strikes me as weaker.

As for the challenge, lunch for 80 pregnant women, what about the issue of soft cheeses and shellfish and whatever? It struck me as odd for the contestants to go into that not aware there might be restrictions. Not that the risk is high, but hey.

I haven’t been posting about it regularly, as I might normally. That’s in part because it was on adjacent to American Idol, in part because of the kids going crazy when we dared try to watch 2 hours of TV, in part because I just haven’t been posting as zealously, and in part because this season… Yawn.

We are now down to six contestants.

There is no clear indication who will be the finalists or who we should start rooting for. I don’t know if that’s poor contestants, or great editing, perhaps influenced by the leak last year that Rock had won, and the fact that most of us reacted to that with “duh, it’s obvious nobody could beat him.”

It seems clear they cast the show with a small number of likely winners rounded out with people who have no chance, or who even fit specific roles, even if editing is required to mold that.

It seems clear that Bobby is a prospective winner, but they did shoot him down right at the beginning, if only to mislead us, he appeared incapable of being a team leader early on, and he would violate the unofficial rule of alternating specs of winners. He’s male. He’s black. So was Rock, just last season. Not right, and maybe they’re going off script because we expect it, but we expect him not to win based on Rock winning last year. In fact, we expect a woman to win.

I had a positive impression of the woman who left after being burned too severely to continue, and wondered if they were losing one of their prime prospects with her.

I was about to type “the last two women,” which tells you what I think of Jen, because I was thinkin g of the two other than her. I thought Jen might be one of the qualified contestants, but she seems just to be designated bitch and not as capable as she imagines herself. The other two women are coming to impress me enough to think it could be one of them in the final. Even both of them. And who knew, you can dislike each other but work well as a team! It should be interesting to see what happens after the switch back of Jen and Matt to their original teams.

I thought there might be something unexpected to Matt, and he’s shown sense a couple times, but I believe he’s there mainly for character. The previews made it appear his week to go will be the next one, but they’re so misleading with previews, it could be Jen, or someone less expected.

Petrozza is really off the radar. He seemed to be in a class with Matt, yet now appears quietly competent and thoughtful. Could it really end up Petrozza versus one of the girls? Probably not, but he seems almost a wildcard.

At any rate, the show doesn’t seem so great this year, but apart from giving us contestants who are more seriously qualified and less cast to expected parts, I’m not quite sure what I’d do to help it.

You know, I love Hell’s Kitchen, notwithstanding how boring it’s been this year, and the lack of evidence that any of the cast - face it, they’re cast - are qualified to win (which may be good acting and editing, after Heather and Rock were too obvious, even before Rock’s win was leaked). I also loved the first season of the American version of Kitchen Nightmares. Both are more about business than cooking, especially the latter. Gordon Ramsay is a big part of the reason they are good.

Thus it’s sad to see him completely losing it, assuming he’s not being quoted wrongly or out of context. There are plenty of reasons to use local and iin-season, even emphasize it. One of those would be marketing. Good business. However, in addition to the questionable hype about “carbon footprint” and debunked global warming hysteria that’s all about grabbing power, the more efficient production, greater variety, and global flow of food has been a boon to human health and longevity.

I meant to add that I lose a lot of respect for anyone who goes all “there ought to be a law” over something, because no, there ought to be very few laws. To suggest that it’s in any way acceptable to fine restaurants over the seasonality of what they serve is heinous at best.

So. We watched the first episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares the other night. It was good, and so cool to see him in another format. If anything, the episode length was too short really to show enough of what happened, but I supposed better to keep it from getting bogged down.

The chef reminded me way too much of my friend Adam as he looks now.

I was pleased to see they found a sore need, in this case kitchen equipment, and installed it for the participating restaurant. I was also pleased to see that they cover more than food and management, and seem to help jump start future marketing. Then again, deciding on a menu, look, approach, price and quality level is all marketing, too.

Just as this is a show more about management and business than about food. If you were expecting a foodie show, you were probably disappointed.

There had to be some behind the scenes heart-changing activity we didn’t see on screen. Peter was an absolute mess, and his turnaround at the end seemed awfully abrupt. He was THE problem in a nutshell. Managerially, most of the rest was a morale problem, and he was the main source.

You get a morale situation like that, you get employees simmering with anger all the time, still working for you only out of inertia. Then nobody cares if they do a good job, and it makes them feel even worse to not care and to do wrong. It’s a spiral that can take someone being about as blunt and earth-shattering as Ramsay coming in was.

I look forward to seeing more of them.

Title inspired by the flood of search hits I got last week after the first half of the finale. To keep up the sequence, the proper title of this post would be something like:
Hell’s Kitchen 2007, Episode 11 - The Actual Finale

For my non-search readers, pardon the couple weeks of nothing but Hell’s Kitchen. I’ll try to get back to posting normally soon.

Of course, the funny thing about the “who won” queries is that anyone who didn’t take pains to avoid being spoiled knew early in the season that Rock Harper would win, due to the gambling scandal leak of the winner. That’s entirely aside from it being fairly obvious from the earliest episodes of the season that it would be a finale of Rock versus someone (he and I both thought it would be Melissa, initially, and last night Melissa showed some of why we thought so when she was shocked by Bonnie’s relaxed attitude toward the menu planning, even if she did have trouble cooking the prawns), and it being fairly obvious that he had been cast as the winner. Producers of reality shows cast the contestants and make demographic choices. A man wins one season, so let’s try to cast such that a woman will win the next. Now let’s cast for an ethnic win, preferably male. None of which makes Rock less competent or deserving. He is the most deserving, most well-rounded winner of the entire series so far. It’s just that in casting and editing the season, the powers that be tried to ensure it would be Rock.

Nor did the leak make the season less enjoyable, if only for frequent train wreck values of enjoy, since so many of the contestants were clearly placeholders wh never had a chance, and at least one who was cast as a possible winner ended up off the show unexpectedly soon.

Despite knowing who won, despite wanting Rock to win, we were nervous for the two of them at the end last night. I had crazy visions in my head of the Rock leak being fake and Bonnie being the surprise winner after all. And she wouldn’t have been an outrageous choice, however unexpected.

Both did a good job designing their restaurants. I’d say it was a toss-up which I’d prefer.

I liked Rock’s menu better, but both were no doubt tasty. He did a far better job planning and prepping his crew on how to make the stuff, showing the management skills that made him deserving of executive chef. Bonnie’s lounging around in the dorm was shocking.

Bonnie had the better crew. At the end, Rock wished he had won the challenge and first choice, as he would have picked Jen first. That would probably have given Rock a team of Jen, Brad and, tossup with Vinnie here only because of her meltdown, Julia. Which would have given Bonnie a team of Melissa, Vinnie and Josh. The main thing is Bonnie would have gotten Josh.

Rock did a great job managing his crew initially, telling Josh he trusted him and knew he could cook, so go do it. Josh let him down and then he was a bit slow to fix the problem. It seemed as if Ramsay helped Rock a lot more than Bonnie, which even if not true would be an odd editing choice in terms of appearing legitimate. Overall, Rock was good with his people.

Bonnie not as much. She had some good ideas, and the rah rah cheerleading can probably be useful in that situation, but at other times she and they weren’t communicating, or were back to bickering and overreacting. Seemed like Julia and Bonnie were both capable of such intense focus that they could simply stop noticing when someone addressed them, which comes out seeming obnoxious when it’s not intended so.

I’d have picked Rock, based on their performance in the final service and all, but Bonnie wasn’t a pushover. She should have a world of opportunities open to her. If she lost it on just one point, it would have been on poor planning that allowed her to run out of key ingredients early. Running out? It happens. She just wasn’t even close. That’s a big management skill yet to be developed, which as far as we could tell from the editing, wasn’t a problem for Rock. She also had food come back. If Rock did, they didn’t show it.

I grew to regard Bonnie highly and be proud of how well she did. She’ll go far. That was what the finale was about, ultimately; seeing how close it would be, and it was closer than it should have been.

So who won? Again, Rock. Rock Harper. Executive chef and father of absolutely adorable kids. Yay Rock! Green Valley Ranch will be fortunate to have you. If not, the publicity from a season of Hell’s Kitchen is priceless.

I hope they shake up the formula a bit next year.

Well then. I haven’t posted since last week’s Hell’s Kitchen post. How lame is that?

Last year, the finale was two hours, one night, but shown as two episodes, with the first hour barely worth watching. This year it seemed the finale would be but an hour, which done right isn’t sufficient.

Nope. It’s spread between two weeks. This was better than last year’s pre-finale recap episode, and it took them through the challenge and through selecting their teams.

They each get to design a restaurant in half of Hell’s Kitchen, and couldn’t be more different in opinions. Bonnie is impressive in her certainty.

That carries through to menu planning. Bonnie had a whole list ready to go and sounded sure of herself. Rock was at a complete lost what to put on the menu apart from his odd yet intriguing signature dish of crabcake and fried chicken.

They are interrupted for a trip to Vegas, where they do the challenge to determine who goes first when choosing sides for basketball. Er… when choosing their teams for the finale service.

Bonnie makes a yummy-sounding seafood pasta dish. Rock makes an intriguing if oddly plain sounding crabcake and fried chicken dish. Prominent chefs, celebrities and past winners sample each, leaving them tied. Their prospective future management from the resort where they will be indentured if they win holds the tie breaking vote and, by an apparent close call, goes for Bonnie.

Would Rock have changed anything by calling Jen first over Brad? Anyway, the teams split between the sexes, with Bonnie having easily the better team. This is one of the ways in which the competition will be unexpectedly close. He’ll win, but Bonnie is a genuine challenege.

They brought back the last six eliminated, rather than including any of the early eliminations to torment the finalists with those who were especially bad. Julia is a wildcard. She’s inexplicably emotional over not being one of the finalists herself, not realizing that she was cast as this season’s Elsie, with making the finals being improbable. She’s also rooting for Rock. She’s professional enough to chill and get down to business, and Rock would probably have been smarter to snag her as his second choice rather than Vinnie.

That’s basically where they left it. They didn’t even show any kitchen construction crisis yet.

It’s cool, we have another week to watch. It’s bad, we anticipated but didn’t get a finale.

And then there were two.

Hell’s Kitchen has its finalists and we’ll see who won next week. Not that it’ll be a surprise; just a matter of interest to see how close the second place person comes.

The challenge this time was picking a random classic American comfort food and making a gourmet variant. Cool idea. Gordon Ramsay introduced his mother, who brought in a yummy looking baked macaroni and cheese as an example. Then Ramsay showed his version, all lobstered and fancied up. I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer hers.

Bonnie got franks and beans, something I always enjoyed but she never heard of as a combination. That was funny; her agonizing over it, but the result looked great.

Jen got fried chicken. Oddly enough, I don’t think of that as a comfort food. I think of it as almost an exotic or special food. We never had it when I was a kid, short of whenever we first started hitting KFC as a major, rare, huge, special treat. Which is probably why I still think of fried chicken as a big treat and something unusual to make. I’m not sure my grandmother ever even made fried chicken, but I know we never had it at home. I had fried smelts as much as I had fried chicken as a kid.

Rock got spaghetti and meatballs. I think I might have had the hardest time picturing something upscale to do with that.

What I’d like to know is what were the choices under the two extra domes. I wouldn’t expect mac and cheese to be one, since that was the example. Maybe meatloaf? Maybe hamburgers?

They all did creations that looked and sounded good.

No surprise, they brought in their mothers to do the tasting and judging, without knowing who had done which dish. Jen’s chicken won, though it was amusing seeing Bonnie’s mom not want to stop eating Bonnie’s dish.

This was the episode where the prize was a shopping spree with a $1000 certificate at a fancy cooking supply store. Jen was cute, marveling at the stuff. They did a great job getting the amount almost dead on. This year there was no gify buying for the other contestants, at least not on camera. There was also no bitching and moaning in jealousy from the others, which was nice. After seeming like a worse crew this year, they’ve really shaped up.

Rock and Bonnie had to clean the dorms. Bonnie whined amusingly and bossed Rock around. He can be patient. On her part, it’s almost more like a schtick than how she really is.

If it wasn’t already clear, just as there was more than “pastry chef” to Jen, there was more than “nanny” to Bonnie. She doesn’t do much nanny work and is really a personal chef. I’d like to be able to afford a personal chef! Well, except then I’d spend it elsewhere and enjoy cooking even more myself. Except being able to afford that implies maybe being too busy to cook. It’s a vicious circle.

This episode’s service was the one testing their lead chef skills, as far as managing the activity of the team, calling the orders, plating and quality control.

Jen failed the larger quality control test, but wasn’t bad overall.

Bonnie was remarkably good at that aspect of things, and got raves for presentation, which is no surprise. She was arguably the best of the three, though there wasn’t wide variation.

Rock wasn’t nearly as good as I’d have expected, being an executive chef already. He caught the quality problems and was overall competent.

They got through the whole service and the diners seemed happy. There were a few goofs beside the intentional ones, but it’s a far cry from even a few weeks ago.

They each had to think about and be able to make a case for why they should stay. When they came back for the elimination and made their statements, Bonnie’s was probably the best and most coherent, followed by Rock’s. Jen had trouble getting past something akin to “because I wanna.” We’ve seen a lot of that this season, when people were asked why they should stay. Future contestants should remember this is important, and when it’s close can make a difference who stays.

Gordon Seacrest faked out Rock, making him think he was going and then saying he had to be in the final. Well, duh. How can Rock win if he’s not in the final?

Chef Ramsay made sure they all knew they done good and should be proud, including Jen, who landed in third place. It an honorable place to be, and I had a feeling once she won the challenge that she’d be leaving.

Bonnie is no fool, and has obviously seen Hell’s Kitchen before, which many of them seem not to have done. You could hear her asking Jen, when they were hugging, if Jen would be on her team. They bring back some of the other contestants for the final and each finalist “hires” half of them. It’s like gym class all over again.

I can’t wait to see the final. I think I’m more excited than I was for Heather and whatsername last year. But Rock will win. What I want to see is how well Bonnie does. Whatever happens, her options are much wider open now than remaining a personal chef. By comparison, Jen already had done quite well for herself and may not have so much upward room. I figure Bonnie has gained a lot of confidence simply by having made it this far, and will be far more of a challenger to Rock than we would have suspected weeks ago.