Hells Kitchen vs Top Chef

I've been watching loads of Top Chef lately and I couldn't help but make comparisons with Hell's Kitchen. So I thought I'd compare the two shows and decide which is better!

Contestants (or Cheftestants as I read somewhere!)
Top Chef win this hands down, the competitors are all talented and have a decent amount of experience. Hell's Kitchen picks less talented individuals, sometimes even picking people who work in waffle houses or steak houses.

The Prize
Top Chef offers a cash prize of $10,000, a feature in Food and Wine magazine and the opportunity take part in a 'food classic' whatever one of those may be! Hell's Kitchen claims that the winner gets to become head chef at a 5 star hotel's restaurant. Are you kidding me? There is no chance any 5 star establishment is going to allow a reality show contestant to be the executive chef in their kitchen! Besides the proof of the pudding lies with previous contestants, Heather from Season 2 was named senior chef not executive chef at Terra Rosa (she's now a sous chef in Season 6!) and The Rock from season 3 had only a year as head chef at his location before his contract expired and it appears season 4 champ Christina isn't doing anything major either. So it appears that HK sometimes bends the truth when describing some of the prizes!

Challenges
Hell's Kitchen has a few challenges which are always fun to watch including the taste challenge where they are blindfolded and have to guess the ingredient by taste alone. But mostly the challenges are pretty basic like how to prepare shrimps or who can make the most fresh spaghetti. Meanwhile Top Chef's challenges seem to be fairly different each week usually involving creating dishes with various ingredients pre-selected by the guest judge. My favourites include the challenge of creating something using ingredients from a petrol station and a vending machine!

Format
HK starts off with the men vs the women who have their own kitchen and have to cook for a dining room full of customers where as TC chefs in the most part cook for themselves (although team challenges seem to appear more as the seasons go on). HK is probably a more pressurised enviornment and with so many personalities and a foul mouthed, bad tempered head chef makes for some major drama!

Hosts/Judges
TC has Padma Lakshmi as the host of the show, she's not bad, very easy on the eyes and seems to know a fair bit about fine dining. However, someone needs to be fired for having Katie Lee Joel as the host in season 1, she was truly terrible. The main judge is Tom Collichio, personally I've never heard of him but he seems like quite a fair judge and definitely knows his stuff when it comes to cooking. Gail Simmons from Food & Wine Magazine is the other judge, she's kind of annoying but not too bad in small doses. On HK, obviously Gordon Ramsey is the master. Despite the fact that the show concentrates on portraying Gordon as an agressive loud mouth bully, he seems to pull it off without being disliked. In the UK version of HK, a more supportive and friendlier Gordon was on display, something I believe is closer to his real identity. Other bit part players include the sous chefs Scot and Gloria (who has since been replaced by Heather from Season 2) who have very little screen time and Jean Phillipe the Belgian Maitre d' who has become more and more of a comedy actor in recent years.

Verdict
Although HK is enjoyable, I personally believe it has started to become too formulaic. Every season we have a couple of hopeless cases, one guy who has to drop out for medical reasons and lots of shouting and swearing from Gordon. Top Chef, despite being a cooking show at heart has had some pretty major dramas to keep the viewers entertained. The challenges are more creative and tougher and the cheftestants have a lot more expertise when it comes to cooking.

Top Chef wins it!

Hell's Kitchen UK - Finale

I was surprised Linda won the contest as she appeared to be the weaker chef of the two finalists. I was firmly rooting for Ade but it wasn't to be. I watched this series with zero expectations but was surprised at how entertaining it turned out to be. Claudia's inclusion over Angus was a disappointment but other than that it was still a solid series. Hopefully for the next series they can get a few more faces in so we can eliminate celebs quicker!

Hell's Kitchen UK - Series 4 episode 3

Watching the third episode (yes I'm sticking with it for now!) all I have to say is that Jody Latham is an utter dickhead. He is so cocky, arrogant, smug and annoying. Early favourites are Ade and Bruce.

Hell's Kitchen UK

Having watched the first two episodes of the latest series of Hell's Kitchen UK and I have to admit I am probably going to leave it there. Firstly it looks like the budget must have been slashed because the format has now changed with only one kitchen and 8 celebs. Probably the worst change has to be the ommission of Angus Deyton in favour of the rather annoying Claudia Winkleman.

Another gripe I have is the fact that Marco Pierre White is forced to act like some kind of psycho and he is often either sharpening his knife or walking around like he's just murdered someone and really enjoyed it. Last series Marco was very supportive which complemented the abrasive part of him. As for the celebs involved Ade Edmondson is probably likeable and already Anthea Turner and Hubby Grant Bovey are extremely annoying and smug. The others are OK and it's always funny listening to Miss Dynamite's accent!

Not sure if I'll carry on watching or switch to Hell's Kitchen with Gordon Ramsey for series 6.

Hell's Kitchen - Series 5 Finale

I fell so behind with HK that a new series was already in full swing and I still hadn't watched the finale of series 5. Part of the reason for my HK rejection was the fact that it was abundantly clear that Paula and Danny would be the two finalists. I must admit I was a little surprised that Danny won it in the end as Paula had been pretty impressive during the entire process. Bring on HK 6, hopefully it'll be a bit more engaging than this last one!

Hell's Kitchen Day 3 & 4

Day 3 started with Chef Ramsey testing the contestants on their knowledge of meat. They had to label 12 types of meat correctly. The second part of the challenge was for the teams to identify which type of meat came from which part of the cow. The guys won the challenge and headed off for their treat while the girls had to first unload a truck full of meat before having to eat various gruesome animal parts.

HK was turned in to a steak house for the evening and steak house worker Giovanni took the meat station in the blue kitchen but his efforts were less than stellar. Meanwhile, Andrea took charge in the red kitchen and led her team to victory. The guys nominated Seth and Charlie and Chef Ramsey got rid of the latter.

Day 4 started with a breakfast challenge where both teams had to cook breakfast for 50 child cheerleaders and footballers. The guys lost the challenge and Seth was blamed be his team mates. Back at the house, Danny and Ben went at it, Ben lost his cool and and told Danny "You couldn't even cook my ****".

The girls went for their treat and the guys were left to do their prep - they didn't complete it. Dinner service was a crash crash with Coi in the Red kitchen feeling the wrath of Chef Ramsey. In the Blue kitchen, enemies Ben and Danny both got an earful and while Seth got an extra special bollocking for wiping his face and then wiping his pan. Ramsey announced both teams as losers and told them to nominate two people for eviction.

Back at the house and Coi openly admitted that she had been terrible, Carol chipped in to say that had Lacey been on that station, it would have been ten times worse! The contestants lined up in front of Chef Ramsey, the boys picked Seth and Ben whilst the girls picked Lacey and Colleen. With Lacey and Colleen both up for nomination, I feared the worst for Colleen but chef picked off Seth. But there was one final twist before the end, Lacey was moved to the mens team much to the joy of Carol.

HK day 2

After last night’s elimination of Wil, a number of the boys weren’t too pleased at having to spend at least another day with Seth. Day 2 started with an early wake-up call for the contestants, they were assembled outside HK where they viewed the wasted food from the previous night’s service. But Ramsey must have been in a good mood because he didn’t make them swim in it, instead the two teams had to find fish out scallops from a couple of tanks, unfortunately for Colleen, she got very intimate with the scallops.

The challenge was for the contestants to extract the scallop meat, the winning team being the one who could produce the most scallops that met Chef Ramsey’s approval. The boys won by a single scallop. The girls were left to rue their loss as the boys were set to go off on a boat ride. Shortly before the guys were to set off, Ramsey called in Big Robert and advised him that he would not be able to travel with the rest of the team because there was a 300lb limit per person on the boat. I thought this was a little tacky in the sense that this could have been done off camera, making the fat guy feel bad wasn’t really the way to go. But Chef Ramsey appeared to soften by allowing Robert to meet the guys at the Island by taking the ferry across. So we cut to scenes of the boys having fun with Gordon and Seth being extremely scary with all his Ramsey related knowledge. Meanwhile Robert crosses in to the island via the ferry only to be met by the boys and Gordon and told that they are heading back! What a pointless task? Why make Ramsey look like a dick for picking on the fat guy?

Meanwhile lazy Lacey felt the wrath of her teammates when she failed to come down for her team’s punishment. As the teams cleared up after the prep work, Ji twisted her ankle. La was concerned for her team mate, what she should have been more concerned about was the fact that she had been cleaning the floor seconds before the accident occurred, it was all her fault I tell you! During service Colleen got her customary bashing from Chef Ramsey and I have to admire Colleen’s resolve in the face of such criticism. Meanwhile Ji soldiered on despite being in excruciating pain helping her team finish a full service. The boys did likewise and were declared the winners.

Back in the dorm the bitch fest began, Carol went on the attack against Lacey, but truth be told, Carol was not great shakes in the kitchen, at least Lazy ass Lacey has shown some potential. The girls elected to put Lacey and Ramsey’s favourite Caollen up for nomination. But the twist came moments before Ramsey was about to fire Colleen (well he didn’t say it, but we all know he was itching to get rid of her), Ji asked to go as the pain in her ankle was too much. Ji got a send off that’s usually reserved for presidents, whilst Lacey and Colleen live to fight another day!

Hell's Kitchen Season 5

The foul mouthed Brit is back with another season of Hell's Kitchen and according to the blurb at the start, this season has the best candidates in HK history and it's the most exciting season to date. In that case either the contestants on HK series one were really bad or they say the same the thing every year!

This year 300 of the finalists were invited to HK where the final 16 were chosen. Those 16 were then made to cook their signature dishes before Gordon humilated them. Most of the participants seem to have some sort of culinary background ranging from executive chef to line cook.

The first nights service saw Carol from the girls team (who called themselves Team Saffron) and Giovanni from the boys team (The Blues Brothers) to work front of house. Carol seemed to excel in the role whilst Giovanni started off badly and maintained this level for the remainder of the night. Meanwhile Coi and Lacey went at each other minutes before the doors to HK had opened. Lacey said that she wanted to show people that she wasn't just a pretty face. Huh? This girl is delusiuonal, she isn't even pretty! The service went from bad to worse as Colleen and Robert both struggled to get out their starters, meanwhile a power outage in the restaurant caused a delay in service but allowed the would-be chefs some respite from the raging Ramsey. But once service resumed Wil on garnishes found himself the scapegoat in the blue kitchen whilst Colleen in the red kitchen found herself in hot water, unlike her pasta which was raw! Ramsey called for an end as the punters started to head for the door.

Ramsey declared the girls the winners, the deciding factor being Carol's performance on the floor. The guys went back to the dorm to slug it out and decide who would be nominated for elimination, eventually deciding on Seth as the main culprit along with Wil who nominated himself. Ramsey made quick work of the two losers and dispatched Wil in to the abyss much to the other mens disappointment.

It's difficult to make much of the first few series as far as charcters to go but Gordon obviously doesn't have much time for Colleen, the personal chef trainer who hasn't worked as a chef before! Her number will be up pretty soon. Meanwhile Lacey comes across as lazy and it won't be long before she gets the boot. No really likeable characters at the moment so I'll give it a few more episodes before I decide on who I like.