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" Back in December of 2006, on the day before Gordon Ramsay was to open his namesake New York City restaurant in the London hotel, I interviewed him on television for an hour, and I found him to be the single most intelligent chef I&amp;#039;d ever met. Not once in that hour did he ever swear. He was nothing less than an articulate spokesman for himself. Asked about how he&amp;#039;d run the new restaurant and his flagship in London while also doing television shows, Ramsay said, &amp;quot;I am willing to be a whore with my show, because it supports my commitment to the only two restaurants that have my name on them. When I&amp;#039;m not doing TV, I will be two weeks in London and two weeks in New York to make them the best I know how to do.&amp;quot; Noble words, except it didn&amp;#039;t seem to happen quite like that. The night after opening the New York restaurant, Ramsay flew back to London for a society wedding, and then on to Las Vegas for months to do his TV show. Three years later, he sold the financially-troubled New York restaurant, as well as branches, with his name still on them, in Los Angeles and Paris. Now, three years after that, Ramsay is far more famous for his TV shows than for his open-&amp;#039;em-close-&amp;#039;em restaurants around the world (not to mention his knife sets). So whoredom has paid off, royally. True, the demands of TV production keep him from boiling water, but, as George Santayana once observed, &amp;quot;Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.&amp;quot; Evidence of a forgotten aim is patently obvious in the new, most vicious season of Hell&amp;#039;s Kitchen (premiering Monday night on Fox), in which the entire production is geared toward the flaying and cursing-out of the most inept bunch of allegedly professional cooks ever assembled.      Despite there being nine cooks on each team (females against males), they are seemingly incapable of producing a single edible dish in under two hours. One has to wonder, where did they get these people from? Some are executive chefs at country clubs, others caterers, the rest from restaurants you&amp;#039;ve never heard of \u2014 all competing to be head chef at Ramsay&amp;#039;s new steakhouse in Las Vegas. The callow producers carefully chose obese cooks, tattooed cooks, bearded cooks, bald cooks, one cook who looks like Gwyneth Paltrow, each filleted by Ramsay in two- to three-second dismissals that all contain his signature &amp;quot;F&amp;quot;-word. At the start, they are asked to truly commit themselves to the show by shaving their heads, which turns out to be a prank. Then, at what seems like breakneck speed, enhanced by music that sounds cribbed from Mission: Impossible, each contestant cooks up a dish that is presented to Ramsay, who tastes a tiny morsel of the protein \u2014 chicken, meat, fish \u2014 wholly neglecting the accompaniments on the plate, pronouncing most of them &amp;quot;crap&amp;quot; and asking, &amp;quot;Are you really a chef somewhere?&amp;quot; Like Sacha Baron Cohen doing Borat, Bruno, and the Dictator, Ramsay never breaks character, playing the curly-blond, demonic sadist, screaming his head off with frustration, aghast at the ineptitude of those he labels imbeciles. But unlike Cohen, who is a satirist, all Ramsay has in his arsenal is foul-mouthed invective, none of it instructive, none of it in the least entertaining, unless your idea of entertainment is to watch his and the contestants&amp;#039; mouths bleeped every two seconds. One cook starts hyperventilating. Another, on getting a nod of approval, flutters and gasps, &amp;quot;That was like the best orgasm ever.&amp;quot; (One also has to wonder which director plied that line.) Ramsay spits the food into the garbage. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re crap, you&amp;#039;re crap,&amp;quot; he says, not referring to the food. &amp;quot;Disgusting!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Get the [bleep] outta here!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Get the [bleep] upstairs!&amp;quot; After these lashings, the teams split off to cook a meal for guests in the restaurant, yet after two hours, the women have barely gotten a scallop appetizer out, and the men can&amp;#039;t even plate a Caesar salad. From what hospital kitchens did the producers recruit these bozos? I take that back: Hospital food always goes out on time. None of this nonsense would give a viewer any sense of what it&amp;#039;s like to work in a professional kitchen, and chefs I&amp;#039;ve spoken to despise the show because it gives their profession and skills a bad name. Pro-wrestling is more believable, though not so bloody: Next week, the promos promise fights and kicks. If only there was a scintilla of wit, a moment of enlightenment, a sense that Ramsay can speak English without cursing twice in one sentence. When I think back to that interview with Ramsay, as articulate a chef as I&amp;#039;ve ever met, I can only shake my head now and paraphrase John Ford&amp;#039;s play title: &amp;#039;Tis a pity he&amp;#039;s a whore. PLUS: More John Mariani on Esquire&amp;#039;s Eat Like a Man Blog and John Mariani&amp;#039;s Official Site "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a14233/hells-kitchen-season-10-review-9257195/>