Hell's Kitchen is a popular reality show where you get to work with the world-renowned — and
frighteningly intense — chef Gordon Ramsay. Personalities can clash and contestants are left
scrambling. Get ready to take the ride and see some of the most awkward moments from the show.
Anyone who's watchedRamsay on his slew of reality shows, from MasterChef to Kitchen Nightmares,
must know that he's never been one to mince words. By now,
every contestant surely realizes this, which is why their worst
nightmare must be finding themselves on the receiving end of one of his epic reprimands.
Alas, Hell's Kitchen wouldn't be as popular as it is if the host
was a soft-spoken beacon of positivity who built everyone up as often as possible. No,
viewers tune in to see Ramsay tear into the fearful faces of those trying to
impress him. So, you'd better believe he held nothing back in the pilot episode.
At one point in the episode, Ramsay stood in front of covered dishes cooked by all the contestants.
One by one, he revealed each meal, called the contestant who cooked it to the table,
and gave a brutally honest opinion of their work. When one contestant,
an executive chef named Chris, approached the table to see how his
cedar plank-cooked salmon fared, he was met with a brutal Ramsay insult
almost immediately. After hearing Chris's description, the host was unimpressed.
"I think you're a plank. Well, I don't really know what that means chef. Plank means 'an idiot.'"
After tearing apart the salmon dish, Ramsay instructed Chris to "be a good plank,
and get back in line." Ouch! It may have been one of the worst dishes to come out of Hell's Kitchen.
No one can argue about how hard it is to impress a chef with a resume
full of Michelin stars. But, when it does come time to step up to the plate,
you have to do everything you possibly can to make sure you take a swing at that
metaphorical pitch and crank it out as far into the outfield as you can.
Even though it's tough to ensure every single nook and cranny is covered in a chaotic kitchen,
much less on a reality show set, the basics must be done well,
lest you incur the wrath of Ramsay. One contestant named Michael realized he completely missed
something very basic about his scallop dish and quickly learned how awkward things could get.
Once Ramsay pulled the metal lid off the dish, Michael timidly approached the table.
The host stabbed a scallop with his fork and held it up to the contestant,
who almost instantly knew that he had screwed up big time. Ramsay, confused at what he was seeing,
asked Michael what it was. Michael answered by saying it was the roe.
As anyone who likes scallops knows, the roe, or eggs, are always removed before serving.
Ramsay forced Michael to take a bite of the roe. Even though the contestant told
Ramsay he didn't think it's was that bad, the host swiftly told Michael,
"You've got a palate like a cow's backside."
When you bring a bunch of random people together on a reality television show, the
casting directors know exactly who they want on set. After all, drama sells, so the personalities
of the people selected will likely clash over the course of the show. Fights get ratings and, even
though it's a bummer that people have to quarrel, it's kind of the point of reality television,
at least if you're being honest with yourself. The contestants chosen for Hell's Kitchen are
no different and so they have frequently found themselves at odds over their culinary strategy.
During one lunch table team meeting, things got heated quickly after Chris, an executive chef,
tore into fellow contestant Jeff over kitchen efficiency. As Ramsay often loudly reminds
everyone, efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to restaurant service.
Chefs who are little more than an efficiency roadblock do not go unnoticed. Chris,
clearly upset by how Ramsay felt about his team's kitchen performance, began to vent,
with Jeff singled out as the source of the problem. Jeff asked Chris,
"What do you have on my ass today?"
He then got up from his seat in anger while Chris implored Jeff to wait while he finished
his sentence. Needless to say, Jeff disagreed with the point Chris was making and stormed off,
leaving the rest of the team to sit around the table in ultra-awkward silence.
People who have never made their own pasta have no idea how much energy it takes to produce all
those strands of starchy goodness. Home chefs make the easy choice of buying the
premade dry stuff because tossing a handful of fettuccine into boiling water is a heck of
a lot easier to prepare. But, in order to know just how talented the show's contestants were,
one Hell's Kitchen challenge involved two teams making their own pasta as quickly as possible.
The dough went flying and fistfuls of flour were hucked back and forth over the raw
sheets of pasta during the challenge, but each team cranked out as much of it as they
could within the time limit. And, once they finally churned out the individual strands,
they had to carefully drape them over the arms and head of one chosen contestant who
stood carefully while the pasta was piled on top of their appendages.
Once time ended, viewers saw a team of relieved contestants along with the
spaghetti monsters they had just created. It was an entertaining challenge to watch,
but you couldn't help thinking the people holding the pasta felt like culinary coat racks.
When you work in a fast-paced kitchen, there's no time to deal
with anyone who doesn't show up with their game face on. Well, one of those aspects of
a game-face requires a person to know what they can and cannot throw into the garbage.
It'd be the worst thing in the world to suddenly realize you accidentally threw away something
pertinent to a dinner shift, but that's exactly what happened to one contestant named Jimmy.
Jimmy was frantically trying to get a lobster dinner and a halibut dish finished on the fish
station he was tasked with managing. In the midst of the craziness, Jimmy took a tray of
cooked lobster tails and mindlessly dumped them into the garbage, thinking it wasn't needed for
the remainder of the service. Jimmy was dead wrong. Within minutes, Ramsay desperately
asked the kitchen where the lobster was. Jimmy said, quote "it was sitting there".
Jimmy was likely very aware that he had just screwed up big time. In an effort
to keep his station clean, he had tossed the expensive crustaceans into the trash.
Ramsay demanded answers and Jimmy had to cook up more, but everyone in the kitchen knew
who was to blame. You couldn't help but feel terrible for the frantic contestant.
One of the worst moments in the flurry of kitchen chaos is when a meal is prepared
long before the rest of the table meals are ready and therefore requires a re-fire.
That means the entire dish needs to be remade because it's inevitably going
to arrive at the table cold, and that's precious time gone.
Wasted time is something a Michelin-starred chef simply does not accept, which is why
Ramsay lost his cool on a team of chefs who were barely keeping their heads above water
when it came to making creamy, delicious risotto. When time is of the essence,
attitudes inevitably get snippy and workers need to step up their hustles.
Ramsay was in serious need of two risotto dishes that a table had been waiting on for too long.
When the plates finally made it to the window, Ramsay examined them and was more than annoyed
at the contestants. The host shouted as he dug through the pan of risotto with a fork and said,
"That's not right. It's not a good job!"
He pointed out that every grain of rice was visible and there wasn't enough butter.
Simone, the chef in charge of the risotto,
told Ramsay she was ready to re-fire the dish altogether. Ramsay screamed at her,
"No! Not re-firing. Finish it!"
Simone managed to get the dishes finished, at least,
but she did so with her tail between her legs while her peers watched her embarrassment.
Mutiny among kitchen team members often can't be avoided. Different people come from different
backgrounds and not everyone has the same kind of work ethic. Those varying styles often come
out during the intensity of a restaurant shift and, when two very different methods clash,
fireworks can occur. During one episode, a contestant named Joy gave teammate Beth
a brutal tongue lashing. The other team members looked on at the exchange with
disgust, but no one else wanted to find themselves in the middle of such drama.
Obviously, no one on the show worked with Beth while she was in action at her hometown
job. But the tactics she employed in the kitchen on this particular day made it seem like no one
would have wanted to do so. It was almost as if it was her first day around kitchen
ingredients and equipment. Joy, talking loudly enough for the whole kitchen to hear, said,
"How about we go service without her? I don't even care. Really? Ya know what? I don't care."
With that, Beth marched out of the kitchen while the rest of her teammates stood around in
awkward disbelief that they had to now pick up the additional slack. Beth vented to several
of the other teammates in the hallway, but the damage to the dinner shift was already done.
One of the perks of knowing a world-famous chef is snagging reservations at a restaurant they run.
Not only will you get assigned the most attentive servers in the place,
but you're likely to try some off-the-menu specialties direct from the chef.
It's good to be the ruler of the kitchen. Plus, having the ability to impress
friends and family with your culinary creations is even better. This is why when one contestant
prepared dishes for a very particular family, Ramsay got extra aggressive in his reprimand.
That particular family, by the way, was Ramsay's own wife and
daughters. That's right. The man who carries the reins of the entire show
and decides who's next on the chopping block invited his family into the Hell's Kitchen
restaurant for a nice evening out. This is why, when contestant Vinny fell behind
on a risotto meant for Ramsay's family, he felt the heat of Ramsay's anger like no one before.
The host frantically shouted at Vinny saying he needed, quote "the f----ing risotto!" as other
teammates scrambled around the kitchen. The skillet Vinny handed Ramsay was old.
Big mistake. As Vinny walked back to his station, Ramsay said,
"Hey bozo, come here, you! Yes, Chef. What happened? Shut your fat East Coast mouth. Yes,
chef. This table you just sent me that s--- for happens to be my family!"
Vinny managed to embarrass the last person you
ever want to humiliate in a kitchen: the executive chef.
One of the things you can expect when you look at a menu is that the options you're
browsing are exactly what you'll receive should you order them.
And why would that expectation fall in any other direction? It's printed on the menu, after all.
One expectation no hungry patron should ever walk into an establishment feeling, is the item they
order through the server isn't what's written on the menu. That's why contestant Krupa dropped
the ball immensely when it came to her veal stew. Let's just say Ramsay couldn't meet her halfway.
Blue team member Krupa stood alongside a red team member to display their
dishes to a panel of chefs, as well as host Ramsay. She nervously unveiled a veal stew,
which one judge told her after his first bite,
"Not surprisingly it tastes a hell of a lot better than it looks."
This backhanded compliment was immediately countered by Ramsay,
who gave Krupa one of the most embarrassing comments ever:
"That, madam, is not veal. That's filet mignon."
Once Ramsay called out Krupa on her massive blunder, the contestants waiting behind
her dropped their jaws, and for good reason. Krupa, being a private chef,
had no idea what possessed her to grab the filet and not the veal. She claimed
she was aware of the difference, but her awkward mistake said otherwise.
Chaos is a natural state of being when a high-profile kitchen is firing on
all cylinders. Even when service is going smoothly on the floor,
one look at the kitchen might convince you otherwise. Anyone who's worked in a busy
restaurant knows that everyone is trying to keep the sinking ship afloat for another night
and, as long as nothing absolutely insane happens, it's usually a manageable feat.
However, the occasional bump in the road hits every kitchen and it can hit hard and
fast, sending the whole operation into freefall.
This is exactly what happened in one episode when a customer requested a rare beef Wellington.
A freefall ensued, as did the immediate kitchen panic amongst contestants.
Contestant Brad, who was manning the beef Wellington station,
wasn't exactly honest when it came to the temperature of the dishes.
Although he assured his kitchen staff the beef would be done within two minutes,
Ramsay wanted to get a visual preview of the end product. He asked Brad to turn over each piece,
and lo and behold, they were charred black. Pointing to Brad, Ramsay promised him,
"If you give me them... anemic piece of s----, I'll f---- throw it up your ass sideways!"
Not exactly the sentiment you want from the man
determining your future on the show. As Ramsay kicked the oven in anger,
you could tell everyone around wanted to shrink into their metaphorical shells.
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