The F Word’s back on TV in the UK.  This TV series presents a very different side of Gordon Ramsay than Americans get to see on Hell’s Kitchen, where he basically plays a cartoon version of himself.  On the F Word, he’s still an alpha male, still arrogant and aggressive, but he also tries to educate and support, advocating for food-related causes that are important to him.  This season’s twist is that he and his staff are holding a competition seeking the best independent restaurant in Britain.  He got nominations through the BBC web site, checked out the nominated restaurants and each week holds a competition between the two restaurants he and his staff have judged to be the finest in a particular cuisine.   The first week Italian, second week Indian, third week French, next week Chinese.  Generally he’s been pitting an old school establishment against a place with a revisionist slant and so far, the revisionists have been winning.  Even though it’s a bit ironic seeing a figurehead of a corporate dining empire promoting independently owned spots, it provides the valuable lesson that there is plenty of fine dining to be had by looking a little bit farther afield (and I suppose these places offer little or no threat to his troubled empire).

(Don’t get me started on show regular Janet Street-Porter, someone who may or may not be respected on television in the UK, I have no idea, but after more than 30 years on the air speaks with an almost impenetrable accent (“talks inside her mouth” as a friend once described another friend) and, well, just don’t get me started.  Except to note that she was born Janet Bull, has been married four times and for some reason retains the surname of her first husband; I’m guessing because it sounds more posh than Cvitanovich and less Jewish than Sorkin. )

Celebrity guest on the second episode was British comedian Lenny Henry.  I didn’t know that he’s married to Dawn French – they’ve only been married for 25 years; it takes me some time to catch up.  Two talented, hilarious people – I can only imagine what their dinner conversation must be like.   Anyway, as I watched, I was reminded of his 1990s TV series Chef!.

Talk about an ahead-of-its-time series, this sitcom about an overbearing, obnoxious, obsessive chef d’cuisine was made in the early 1990s, before the age of 24-hour-per-day food cable networks and celebrity chefs.  Chef! encompassed 20 episodes across three series, was based on an idea of Henry’s and written by actor/writer Peter Tilbury.  Blackstock is the head chef at a high end French restaurant located somewhere in the English countryside.  He has two Michelin stars at a time when they were probably something of a rarity in the UK.  And he, his wife and an old school chum working in his kitchen are the only blacks in the village.

The best part of the series is that Tilbury provides Henry with dialogue worthy of Black Adder.

  • Somebody bring me a knife, very long and razor sharp. I need to castrate the person who made this sauce and I don’t want to cause any unnecessary suffering. I’m not a vindictive man, I’m not out to cause pain, but with this man’s DNA in the gene pool, humanity is doomed.
  • You are a pea-brained, prat-faced, pompous, pillock-headed cretin. If you took an intensive course of intelligence injections and studied till you drop, then one day you might make it to moron third class failed.
  • Everton, let me explain things to you. In the world of cooking, I am Einstein. Lucinda is Isaac Newton. And you are a mud-dwelling unicellular bit of jelly with a predilection for consuming its own excrement.

As opposed to the Gordon Ramsay we get to see on Hell’s Kitchen – the worst insults he manages to come up with are generally “donkey” or “cow”.   If Blackstock served as any sort of inspiration for Ramsay, Ramsay pales by comparison.

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