404_dinner_0098previewNo doubt many of you are already familiar with Gordon Ramsay.  In this country, he’s most well known for being the angry British dude on Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. And hey, those shows are pretty good.  I mean, I generally like cooking shows that don’t star Bobby Flay, and I generally like angry British people (remember, I watch a lot of Premeir League Football) so those are both made for me.  Some months ago I stumbled across a show with Ramsay where he was in a kitchen and, instead of yelling, he was actually cooking…OK, he was yelling and cooking at the same time, but he was doing more of the former.

The really interesting thing about the show is that it does not hinge on just a single premise.  There is a main focus, making a three course meal for 50 diners in the F Word Restaurant, but interspersed with that are a variety of other pieces that makes for one of the most disjointed, yet informative, food shows in existence.

The F Word Restaurant seats 50 diners.  Gordon, and a team of four other non-chefs (known as brigades) must make a three course meal for the restaurant; appetizer, entre (with side dishes) and desert.  The diners in the restaurant get to decide, after each course, whether or not they want they want to pay for said course.  The scores are tallied as they go with the best possible score being 150 out of 150, or getting every diner to pay for each of the three courses.  Each brigade consists of at least one semi-famous person (or in the case of Brigade McFly, four semi-famous persons) and they are all related/connected in some way.  The highest scoring brigade gets to return at the end of the season.  This portion of the show takes up about half of each episode and is really the heart of what’s going on.  More than that, though, it’s pretty interesting to see him in the kitchen cooking with amateurs.  I mean, yeah, you still get the potty mouth you expect.  One of my favorite moments from the current season is when he collectively called the aformentioned McFly, McShit, only to later upgrade them to McMediocre.

This season, in the last episode, Ramsay will be serving veal in the F Word Restaurant.  But not just any veal, oh no, but veal from two calves raised especially for the show (usually we get one segment per episode on said calves) in a cruelty free environment.  The lucky calves will also be served with beer that Gordon is brewing himself.

Each episode also sees Ramsay out in search of unique and uncommon food.  So far this season he’s hunted wild boar, caught wild catfish and salmon (and smoked said salmon inside a weird three wheeled European car), gone diving for sea urchin, and caught elvers (young eels), among other things.

Inside the F Word Restaurant, he also squares off with celebrities (a different one each week) against their signature dishes.  In one episode, for instance, British MP David Blunkett makes a shepherds pie to stack up against one of Gordon’s.  The two dishes are taken out, side by side, to five random guests in the restaurant and, after anonymous taste tests, a winner is proclaimed…not surprisingly, it’s usually Gordon.

And yet there’s more! Each episode also features Gordon out convincing someone that eating healthy can be easy.  In the most recent episode, for instance, Gordon made burgers for a crew of firemen and, in one earlier episode, paid a visit to British boxer Ricky Hatton.

The really great thing about the show is that, unlike Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, it’s not an hour of just one damn thing.  The various parts of the show are interspersed so that it doesn’t ever feel stagnant and, in fact, in all the parts not centered on cooking in the F Word Restaurant, you see Ramsay’s love of food and cooking really come out as he interacts with such a large variety of people.  It’s a truly fascinating show if you have any interest in food and, best of all, you can get every recipe from the show right here (well, they haven’t put up any from the current season yet, but there are three prior seasons).

Just in case you don’t believe me, here’s the first part of the brigade McFly episode from earlier this season.

kilian01

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