Forget Top Chef: Welcome to Hell

Published on Monday, March 5, 2007, by Stephanie365 / Edit Post

Is anyone else sick to distraction with constant updates about Top Chef? Here’s an idea: let’s just leave that damn show fallow for awhile, okay? Because that way we won’t go utterly insane before we have to jump back into the whiny frying pan next season.

Instead of really caring where Ilan is, or what gentleman’s club (read: strip club) Marcel is working at in Vegas, I spend my time more pleasantly employed. I imagine what Gordon Ramsay and a well-placed toasting fork would to do to every last cheftestant on this past season of Top Chef. Further to that, the new season of Fox’s competitive cooking reality show, Hell’s Kitchen, in all its fabulously profane glory, will start airing on June 25th.

Meanwhile, news is that London chef, Marco Pierre White, who seems to be building his career by constantly riding the coattails of the chefling he once made cry in his kitchen, has announced his own reality show. It’s called, oddly enough, Hell’s Kitchen. Oh, and do you want to know the premise?

As the presenter of Hell’s Kitchen, to be broadcast later this year, White will follow the format of putting 10 celebrities from different walks of life through their paces in his kitchen.

Now why does that sound so bloody familiar? Give me a minute, maybe it will come to me.

Speaking of his one-time student, White confirmed [his friendship with Ramsay] had become strained in recent times.

“If someone doesn’t enrich my life, I don’t want them to be part of my life. He has nothing to contribute to it,” he said.

Nothing to “contribute” except that very few outside of the UK would even know who Marco Pierre White was if it wasn’t for the fact that he can’t seem to shut up about his “one-time student.” Consult your pockets, dude, because I’d say that mounting a parallel show that HAS THE SAME NAME is pretty frigging “enriching.”

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  • Actually, Stephanie, Marco Pierre White is a more senior and chef than Gordon Ramsey in everything except television exposure in the US. And as it's been pointed out by another poster, he's not "copying" a show invented by or for Ramsey. He is in fact simply following up. As for making a rather rude and hasty comment about Ramsey, he's known for this type of thing. Incidentally, in other...+READ

    Actually, Stephanie, Marco Pierre White is a more senior and chef than Gordon Ramsey in everything except television exposure in the US. And as it's been pointed out by another poster, he's not "copying" a show invented by or for Ramsey. He is in fact simply following up. As for making a rather rude and hasty comment about Ramsey, he's known for this type of thing. Incidentally, in other contexts, he often praises him.
    My chef (RB) taught MPW once, but as Marco points out in his memoirs, he's too gentle a personality to be suited for Hell's Kitchen.-COLLAPSE

  • For right now, I'm delighted to know that Ramsey and Hell's Kitchen will be back, and I've marked it on my calender.

    FWIW, I wouldn't mind if the 'other' Hell's Kitchens appeared on BBCA. Dang, I wish I controlled advertising revenues.

  • I definitely stand corrected on the show, but as to who has more issues with the other, I think that's a matter of perspective.

  • Exactly. It helps to get one's story straight before passing judgment. Besides--Gordon is the one who needs to work out his issues, not MPW. See below.
    "When asked if he is obsessed with White, he replies, 'Well, I don't wake up in the morning thinking about him, but…' and then he disappears into deep thought."
    http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/wfi/foodpeople/chefs/0703030.asp

  • Hell's Kitchen is a serialized show in the UK, which each year is presented by a different chef. Ramsay was first, Gary Rhodes and Jean Christophe Novelli shared the honors the second time, and now the baton's been passed to Marco. It's not a parallel show at all - it's the same one. Perhaps that's why it all sounds so familiar?

  • Marco Pierre White also taught Batali a thing or too and is pretty well-known in England for his restaurants and well, temper.