Kitchen Nightmares Dreams

It's been several years since there was a show on TV that I actually went out of my way to watch. In fact, I can't think of a single one in the past 10 years that I actually got excited each week about watching.

Until now.

For some reason I have become addicted to cooking shows lately. It started when I was in the US last autumn and the hotel cable system got the Food Network. I found myself spending most of my hotel room time with the dial alternating between the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and the Food Network. When I got back home I realized that AFN carried a few of the more popular shows from the Food Network and I started half-heartedly watching them. One such program was called Hells Kitchen and although AFN advertised it non-stop with teaser trailers, I just had no interest in checking it out. Boy I wished I had as it features an unforgiving world class chef named Gordon Ramsey.

I first became interested in some cooking show with Chef Bobby Flay and another called "$40 a Day" with Rachel Ray. I was hooked instantly. It got to the point where, when I woke up on the weekends, I would check the TV schedule to see if there were any kind of cooking shows coming on soon.

Well anyway, long story short, about a month ago AFN started showing a program called "Kitchen Nightmares" and in the past few weeks it has become my weekly addiction. Chef Gordon Ramsey is a world class chef, perhaps the best in the world. He has opened million dollar restaurants and has the magic touch like no other chef in the world has...in short, he is not just a world class chef but he is also a brilliant restauranteur, someone who knows how to make a restaurant successful. "Kitchen Nightmares" plays on all of his strengths and each episode has him spending a week at some generic restaurant that is underachieving and on the verge of bankruptcy. After a week he turns the restaurant around but never without plenty of drama, conflict and push-back from the restaurant's owner and staff.

Apparently the show is an Americanized version of the original British "Kitchen Nightmares". I know this because, as is my custom, I went to Youtube to search for clips and most of what I found were clips of the original British version. But no matter...Chef Gordon Ramsey is freaking awesome to watch, his passion for food cooked and served perfectly is just astounding and the root of plenty of entertaining clips featuring no shortage of vulgarities and demeaning diatribes against those would-be chefs that he deems not worthy of being in his kitchen.

The wife and I were talking earlier tonight and I told her that maybe she should start spending more time with the two boys in the kitchen; if, by some miracle, they don't end up being professional soccer players, maybe they could have a future as TV culinary stars...