Gordon Ramsay's TV empire: Introduction, Next Level Chef and Food Stars

Gordon Ramsay’s rapid rise to fame in America might have been in the works for a while but my personal recollection from 20+ years ago states that American Idol (specifically Simon Cowell) is to thank.
I’m fairly sure that they first aired a preview for the show during American Idol, perhaps even saying “from the same people that brought you American Idol” or Simon Cowell… Simon has mellowed out considerably over the years but for his first several seasons of the series, he was the mean British guy who had no qualms about telling people they could not sing, didn’t move or dress well for the stage, etc. And he’d come up with the most elaborate quips and burns to do so. “It sounded like a cat jumping off the Empire State Building” is one I’ve always remembered.

Anyway, Americans were so taken by this hyper critical Brit, having a Michelin star chef with an accent yelling at chefs vying to work in one of his restaurants somehow felt like the next logical step. America has only gotten weirder with their ideas of reality tv since then.
He did have a bit of reputation before that across the pond. He was promising soccer/football player permanently sidelined by injury and found his true calling in the kitchen and people learned fairly quickly he had a temper that made him notorious.
Long story short- the Gordon Ramsay reality show empire was born and still going strong.

It’s crazy to think now how I was not a fan in the beginning. I hated the whole idea of these chefs constantly being disparaged and yelled at for committing the most minor infractions during a dinner service. 
At least in Simon’s case, his critiques were mean but most of the time he was right and these people that couldn’t sing shouldn’t be anywhere near a microphone. 
But with Gordon, mind you, I’d never worked in a professional kitchen, but it felt more personal. I certainly didn’t like the idea of having a boss coming down on you constantly every time you screwed up. I’m someone who thrives on compliments or at least constructive criticism… this kind of approach would just make me want to quit and choose a different career path because I’d crumble under the pressure.
So I can absolutely understand why this approach isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (no pun intended cuz he’s from the UK or anything)- the idea that the pressure cooker that is a Michelin star kitchen pushes people to greater heights than they expected. Overcoming adversity, etc. 
At some point at the end of season 1 (I don’t know if I ever watched all of it but i definitely saw the finale and disagreed with who won), something clicked and I understood the concept and I’d been a lifelong fan since.

I’d watched pretty much every one of his shows with the exception of Uncharted. Just because I’m not a fan of those Travel channel type food shows Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain made famous. Also I had to draw a line somewhere cuz it’s too much.

A few months ago, I drew another line…

Next Level Chef

This series just had its third season this year. For those unfamiliar, it’s a team competition featuring Gordon, Nyesha Arrington and Richard Blais as team captains and mentors. The prize is a year of mentorship from all three.  

The “level” part comes to play in a construct of three different kitchens connected by an elevator. The basement with inferior lighting, stoves and equipment, the mid level kitchen and the top tier fancy kitchen with all the best equipment. But the greatest advantage- there’s a platform of ingredients that makes its way through the levels and top tier gets first pick and obviously the basement gets stuck with the lesser quality ingredients. Most of the mayhem happens when it’s time to put your finished plate on the platform at the end of the round because you only have 30 seconds to do so. Some people have vaulted or thrown their plates to barely make; one or two were unfortunate and were automatically sent to the elimination road because they missed the platform completely.  

Why I’ve decided to stop watching… all three winners have come from Gordon Ramsay’s team. If I hate anything in reality tv (and sports- looking at you, Tom Brady), it’s seeing the same result over and over. Why bother watching if we know ahead of time who’s going to win? Singing competitions (which is a post onto itself) were something I used to love but gave up watching for similar reasons. 

In the case of Next Level, I just couldn’t help but think- why have these two other chefs (successful in their own right, by the way) here at all if he’s just going to crown himself the winner of his own show every time? It just didn’t seem fair. This is also the reason I quickly tired of Beat Bobby Flay or Alex vs America on Food Network. The whole point of these shows is for “mortal” chefs to take out these culinary superstars and they almost never do. Almost no suspense at all makes for very dull television. 

One quirky thing that happened one episode had nothing to do with the show itself but our local channel. For the first 15 minutes or so, all we heard was the score in the background. As if the sound board switch for the microphones were all switched off. I had a funny exchange with someone on Twitter over this once I learned I wasn’t crazy for imagining it.  We had to put on subtitles to see what the heck was going on before it was ultimately fixed.

Food Stars 

This new series only had two seasons so far. I was having similar apprehensions this year because Lisa Vanderpump was joining as a team leader and I honestly expected the same result. Thankfully this year’s winner did not come from team Gordon but whether I’ll stick around for another year is still up in the air.
The idea behind it is shining a spotlight on food entrepreneurs and the winner gets a mentorship for selling/distributing their product or service.

My only real complaint with the series was the winner of the first season. He’s a nice guy and a great salesman but I didn’t have any idea what his product even did until the final 3 all got their storefronts to do a dry run with the general public. The moment Gordon chose him and explained why, I couldn’t help but groan. It’s basically the futuristic idea of food being in pill form but it’s with liquids and 3D printing that could revolutionize the food and drug industries. Great if it works of course… I just hate that every celebrity has seemingly sold out to the environmentalist agenda where they preach at people to reduce their carbon footprint NOW or you do nothing and that makes you a bad person. I mean, I don’t litter and I recycle. 30 years ago, that was enough. God, I’m old…

Admittedly I was also a bit annoyed that a guy won when there were two women who deserved it just as much. Caroline had her own spaghetti sauce business and Lan gave up her 6-figure pharmaceutical job to promote her Laotian tea business. They butted heads early on and Caroline was the villain a lot of people online hated but I really did like both of them. 

In our house, we watch a lot of Food Network and really enjoyed Food Network Star where they work to find their new personality for the channel. (Also, like the singing competitions, they fell away from their initial mission statement in later years) Food Stars was sort of a return to that original concept and I enjoyed all of the various challenges. 

This is one show where I can actually go over the things I’ve learned because there’s some interesting things to take away from it. Especially for someone like me who isn’t business and sales savvy. Or particularly good when it comes to public speaking.

Two of my greatest takeaways:

1)   1) If you’re selling a specific type of food or drink, be sure to provide an alternative version.

Examples being if you’re selling coffee, provide decaf. If you’re running a bar as part of your task that day, you need to provide a non-alcoholic option. No joke- the teams who didn’t provide the alternatives for these challenges lost. They had other issues of course but when patrons leave discouraged over this, it’s a deal breaker.  

Also in the case of the bar experience challenge, the person who stepped up to be bartender only turned 21 recently and his drinks were not well received. I commend him for stepping up but he had to realize he was out of his depth.

Just for a quick side-bar:
This is true across a lot of these competition reality shows with team challenges and bares repeating. If you’re going to step up to be leader, take charge. Don’t just sit on the sidelines and let chaos happen without making an effort to fix it. It’s also a pet peeve of mine when people don’t step up to be leader and spend the whole challenge criticizing the leadership. It’s part of the adage where people who let bad things happen without stepping in are as reprehensible as the people committing the act in the first place. It’s not always black and white in real life but on reality tv, it shows poor character to criticize without offering a solution. It’s better to make the effort and fail than do nothing at all.

And 2) this is so crucial it needs to be in all caps:

READ THE ROOM 

When you’re presenting for a particular audience or working in a certain environment, know your clientele. Because you can create the worst impression and end up packing at the end of the day. 

Season 2 had a few challenges where the losing team lost on this parameter. One was a trade show where they were demonstrating new products and the losing team approached their audience like they were running a tv informercial at a sports bar. Way too casual and it put off a lot of people who were there as professionals getting a demo from, what they assumed to be, other professionals.  

There was another challenge that even threw me for a loop because it showed me something I never considered. For season two, they were hosting the competition in London. The challenge was about creating a new chocolate bar and a marketing campaign to accompany it. One team was thrown a major curveball from their mentor Lisa Vanderpump. (She may be a Real Housewife with a lot of plastic surgery but she was very smart- I was pleasantly surprised). In the UK, it’s against the law to market sweets to children under the age of 13 and their ad campaign was initially geared towards kids. They tried to pivot and use the angle that it’s marketed to adults who want to reward their kids. But it wound up a failure all the same (plus the judges all agree that the candy itself was WAY too sweet).

The most killer challenge, which put both of these 2 things to the test, was also a pretty bad idea. I’d seen this across Gordon’s other shows and because it had nothing to do with the goal of this particular series, it just reeked over shameless self promotion. Hey, just because I gobble up Gordon Ramsay shows like candy corn in October, doesn’t mean I agree with EVERYTHING he does. Considering how badly this edition of “restaurant takeover” went, I’d be highly surprised he did this again on any show not called Masterchef. (That’ll get its own entry in due time).

The teams took over one of Gordon’s breakfast establishments for a couple hours. Some were servers and others worked in the kitchen.
If you thought Gordon had high standards for Hell’s Kitchen, you haven’t seen anything yet. This establishment was so ritzy with its white tablecloths that all of the table settings were precise down to the millimeter. Waiters had to carry a white handkerchief and it’s used for polishing silverware and such. One of them accidentally dropped hers on the floor- and proceeded to clean silverware with it in the view of the diners. She also got criticized by the matri’d for being way too casual with the customers. No joke- this place is so fancy even the way you take orders is scrutinized. The proper procedure is “may I take your order”, not “what can I get you” or “what would you like”… needless to say, she was sent home at the end of the challenge for her inability to read the room and adapt.

The morning went so badly that a second person was sent home. Honestly it was a long time coming but he really deserved it this time. First off, he was one of those people who never stepped up to be leader and was critical of those who did. He had 10 years of fine dining experience but he decided instead to be a server than cook… I understand wanting to do something different but I’ve seen this happen across reality tv and go terribly wrong. You should always play to your strengths. (Singing competitions have a similar thing where early favorites have gone home because they decided to experiment with genre at the wrong time). 

Because if your team loses and the head of the show finds out you could’ve stepped into this role and didn’t- you’re out. Considering what this guy was sent home for, I doubt being on kitchen duty would’ve have made a difference but his antics were shady as heck.  This particular issue revolved around special orders. As far as vegan diets go, I don’t take issue with people who follow those guidelines except when they do it to be trendy. But for many, they do it out of solidarity for a spouse or because they have to. 

Case in point- someone requested blood sausage to not be on his breakfast platter. This was ignored and the diner sent it back. The blood sausage was taken off the plate and the same plate was brought back to the diner, only to be rejected again. In the exit interview, the person said they were a long time patron, was disappointed by how this service differed from the ones prior and “I will not be coming back.” 

I can understand some people watching this and rolling their eyes because an entirely new dish had to be made because the blood sausage was touching the other food on the plate… but this was a really big deal. My overall impression was that none of the people who made the special orders requests did it to prove anything to anyone. This was a case of “the customer is always right” and ignoring this had consequences.

On top of all that, several diners were there for two hours and walked out because they never got their food. The whole challenge was a complete mismatch for this particular series and never should’ve been attempted. 

 Next Time: Gordon Ramsay does his own spin on the reality TV renovation brand