Posted by Ottawa Citizen Canada on July 08, 2008 at 11:06:04:
It's decision time in Hell's Kitchen: who will survive Ramsay's basting?
Alex Strachan, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Hell's Kitchen is hellzapoppin' TV, as reality shows go.
TV's most addictive culinary flambé comes to a fiery climax tonight, as hot-tempered Chef Gordon Ramsay picks one of two chefs - Louis Petrozza, 47, a catering director from Charlotte, North Carolina, or Christina Machamer, 25, a culinary student from St. Louis, Missouri - as the executive chef of his new Los Angeles restaurant, London West Hollywood.
As faithful followers of Hell's Kitchen know, if they were watching last week, the new chef won't have free rein in the London West Hollywood kitchen at first. Chef Ramsay may be angry, but he isn't crazy. The new executive chef, whoever it is, will be at the bidding of one of Ramsay's more experienced chefs to begin with.
As a cooking show, Hell's Kitchen may not be particularly instructive - it hails from Fox, after all, and not Food Network - but it is entertaining. Wildly, addictively so. Ramsay's temper is something to behold. And the show is careful to surround Chef Ramsay with incompetents, halfwits, morons and borderline sociopaths who, based on the onscreen evidence, have about as much business in a fast-moving restaurant kitchen as Carrot Top has in King Lear.
You may not care who wins Hell's Kitchen tonight, Machamer or Petrozza, but as casual TV goes it really is a fascinating contest. They're a study in contrasts. Machamer is young, impetuous, energetic, ambitious, emotionally brittle, talented and inexperienced. Petrozza is older, calculating, easygoing, charming, laid back and has decades of kitchen experience to fall back on. Machamer is quick to anger and is easily frustrated; Petrozza is slow to offend, but is given to bouts of depression. (9p.m., Citytv, Fox)
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