samkydd

I quite enjoyed the last Hell's Kitchen, mainly to play a game of "who the hell is that?" when the "celebrities" were introduced as I hadn't a clue what most of them did. This time round they've got another disparate bunch but at least I recognised some of them; Anneka Rice, Jim Davidson, Paul Young, Barry the Boxer and that funny-looking flat faced bird off Emmerdale.

Unlike Gordon Ramsey, the chef this time round doesn't swear, but he doesn't do anything else much either. Marco somebody or other, looked the epitome of the stressed out chef with the huge personality. But after watching a couple of shows you then realise that rather than being rather enigmatic he's just a bit of a dullard!

Some blonde participant bloke who I'd never seen before took Marco to task over using the expression "a Pykey's picnic", saying that it was a rascist remark and that many of his traveller and gypsy friends would take offence. Rather than incite yet another reality show "cause celeb" on rascism, Marco was not impressed, bothered or interested and so to save face the bloke left the show, probably realising that he was acting like a bit of a twonk.

Angus Deayton's dry, droning and obvious-humour commentary gets on your nerves as well. He seems to have made a career out of talking like Edmund Blackadder. By Thursday my interest in the show was waning, and you'd probably find more entertainment value and personality in a rain sodden bus queue!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Dame Starry

Yes, I think I have actually watched about one and a half programmes in total so far. I usually look in on the first one just to see who they are passing off as 'celebrities' in a desperate attempt to get a 'full quota'!
The idiot from an old 'BB' series started off by accusing Jim Davidson of being homophobic- which I'm pretty sure he isn't! At least Jim doesn't have half a ton of fake tan and mascara on in the kitchen!
Lee Ryan merely served to make himself look both stupid and plain ignorant - maybe the makers of 'BB' planted him there! Sadly, The CRE (Campaign for Racial Equality) has come into the argument backing Ryan - 'though I personally believe that an organisation which is 'selective' in what it actually considers racist is not fit for purpose.
I have read and heard a lot about the great Marco but never seen him before - and found that I really like him. He is straight, fair and doesn't suffer fools gladly - but he doesn't have to hurl abuse and foul language at people in front of a camera to get noticed - Ramsey, take note!
It'll be interesting to see who wins though.

Starry x.

Carmel

I have watched this as well although im sorry Marco to me is very Rude the way he talks to people someone gave their opinion on the food and was thrown out for his comments which to me where fair and not at all offensive. Is this not the whole point of the show to let the customers comment on the food they had been given when really they are not allowed to express any opinions or they will be shown the door, so even if the food is awful they have to grin and bear it or else what is the point of the show then.

Marky B

For me it is just another cookery programme with an over egotistic chef....like as if we need another one.
Ta Ta
Marky B

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

AdrianTurner

I find Hell's Kitchen virtually unwatchable - the time sequence is harder to figure than Last Year in Marienbad and the incessant ad breaks disrupt the show even more. And it's not about food or cooking but about psychology. I turned on simply to watch Marco and from the postings above it's clear that some of you don't quite know who he is. He was the very first celebrity chef and ran a small restaurant called Harvey's on Wandsworth Green. It rapidly won two Michelin stars and became the hottest table in town. Marco even made some TV programmes for Thames TV, hosted by Kay Avila, who was subjected to Marco's blistering talent as well as his incredible rudeness and diffidence. More than once the hapless Avila suggested they just call it a day, and then they called in Keith Floyd who seemed to have a becalming effect on Marco. In these 15 year-old programmes (which I have just transferred to DVD) you can see Gordon Ramsey, sweating in Marco's kitchen and saying nothing. Ramsey, you see, was Marco's protege. Anyway, Marco then switched to a grand hotel - the Hyde Park in Knightsbridge - and quickly won his third Michelin star. A few years later he quit, at the age of 38, burnt out at his own stove, and went on to create a mini-empire of restaurants. I think he was a brilliant chef and an extrordinary brooding presence whose tabloid private life has left him pretty much in turmoil. He's the only reason to watch Hell's Kitchen. It's Cooking as a Film Noir.

thirdlady

I love hell's kitchen especially looking at marco

A.S.Carroll
"Happiness isn't sold in bottles you have to achieve it in your own lifetime!"

Steve Crook

Well anything's better than looking at (or listening to) Gordon Ramsay

There was a good pi$$ take of him in the "Best of French and Saunders" that they showed on Friday.

I am always reminded on one of those "top ten" shows someone did about breakfasts of all things. When it came to croissants and coffee, Ramsay said that he hated it when people sliced open a croissant and spread butter in there. "They're made with lots of butter" he said.

Yes, Mr Ramsay, I know how they're made, but I still like to spread butter (and thick apricot jam) inside them. If he doesn't understand hedonism then he's got no right to call himself a chef

Steve

Dame Starry

Steve, I couldn't agree more with you - especially if you warm them in the oven first and the butter melts away when you spread it on................Mmm!

Starry x.

samkydd

When I were a lad bread n' drippin' was our most exotic bijou snackette, followed by a steaming mug of tea to clear some of the grease lining the sides of your throat!

I can't be doing with all this continental cuisine. The only reason the French are so big on sauces is to disguise the fact that the meat they're eating is often of very poor quality, and if it wasn't they wouldn't need to corrupt it so much with sickly sauces!

I went into a restaurant in La Rochelle and they even had an equine menu. Various bits of pony being cooked, how awful! Still, each to his own, horses for courses!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

penfold

I always make a point of trying one of the local specialities when I attend a film festival in Italy....Horse Pizza. The flesh is dry cured and then shaved...quite tasty. I think of it as my revenge on the beasts that should have won, didn't, and cost my shop a small fortune....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

samkydd

There's an awful lot of food snobbery around in the UK, and people will eat aything as long as it's not British! But people forget that our traditional menu has evolved over hundreds of years to suit the conditions of the country.

Food containing lots of animal fat was essential for people working out in the cold and damp, especially up t' north. A lot of the meat bought was the cheapest because working class folk couldn't afford proper cuts, and so belly pork, pig's trotter, tripe, various offal etc were essential.

Here on the warmer south coast people tend to eat lots of ice cream and pink seaside rock, and if the weather turns cold sometimes they stay indoors in amusement arcades eating Candy Floss!

Instead of burger chains selling all sorts of bits of a cow ground into a pulp and griddled as burgers, why not sell fast food roast beef in a bun! A decent slice of beef with mustard or horseradish, full of the good stuff that gives you energy and keeps you going and not a Stars n' Stripes flag in sight!

Instead of tasteless bleached bits of chicken in a bucket with chips, why not Shepherd's Pie! Good quality meal, easy to cook and can be served in a disposable container with a plastic fork, great stuff! But no, unless it's from Lebanon, Italy, India or France and difficult to pronounce correctly we all turn our noses up at it!

Especially people from places like Camberwell Green and Crouch End who would dearly love to be French and aspire to owning a damp, rat infested chateau and drive around Provence in a tatty old Renault 4 van wearing black berets with the rear doors swinging open and a French Stick poking out of the roof, and converse almost fluently the old woman at the boulangerie, who was a Nazi collaborator in the war!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

penfold

True enough, but there was also a tradition of families keeping a couple of pigs - one for the table, the other for the market; and if you had your only remaining pig slaughtered, you would use all of it; the best flesh smoked or cured for ham and bacon for the winter; the head for brawn, the offal used fresh,or for such as chitterlings, faggots, and what bits remained for sausages, the blood for black pudding.
As the saying went, Waste not, want not....and there was plenty of want in those days.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

penfold

But genuine traditional continental cookery is much the same as ours, just uses different herbs and spices....do you think 19thC Italian or French peasantry was any better off econonically than the British working class??
As my figure will attest, I'm a big fan of British traditional cooking too...it's just we don't, for some unknown reason, eat horse here.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

samkydd

Yes, my Mum used to buy a sheep's head from the butcher and she'd ask him to leave the eyes in so it would see us through the week! Boom Boom!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

batman

There's a shop near Norwich Market (next door to the Sir Garnet Wolsey pub) that does exactly what you describe ... and jolly good it is too!

Bats .

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