The Plonker Club

The far inferior American sister show to Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, will air on Channel 4 Feb 12 at 9pm only weeks after the third season of series premiered in the USA. First to get the now reduced three day Gordon ramsay treatment is the Hot Potato Café in Fishtown, Philadelphia.

Watch at your own peril!

Chief Plonker
The Plonker Club
The Unofficial Gordon Ramsay Fansite
www.theplonkerclub.com

Follow us on twitter at @theplonkerclub

It’s no secret that I don’t like the US verison of Kitchen Nightmares – that much and now that the ‘visits’ seem to be cut down to three days in this third series – all of the goods bits have been stripped out. No more cooking lessons, looks at innovative promotional ideas and the other charms of the original UK version.

While unhappy restaurant owners aren’t anything new, here is something interesting from the owner of the restaurant which is to be featured this coming Friday – Paul Bazzini of Bazzini’s. He isn;t complaining about being mis-represented or unfairly targeted – he just wishes that he was a part of the makeover!

While he is very thankfully of the work done to secure the future of the family business but missed out on the face to face consultations we have grown to expect. He says that he spent “hours of the taping waiting off-site”, then simply led into his made-over kitchen to start service.

Part of the fun for me is watching Gordon teach the chefs, create recipes, work with kitchen staff etc but here is seems it is even artificial than I ever thought. As Bazzini said “you have no interaction with Ramsay at all. He comes with a very big machine of assistants and helpers. The only time that I ever spent any time with him was on camera.”

Very disappointing! Get the full story at http://theridgewoodblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/run-for-your-life-chef-gordon-ramsay.html

I’ll still watch the show, but remember it for what it used to be!

Chief Plonker
The Plonker Club
The Unofficial Gordon Ramsay Fansite
www.theplonkerclub.com

Follow us on twitter at @theplonkerclub

Kitchen Nightmares returns in midseason and lands the Friday night at 9 pm timeslot, taking over for the cancelled Dollhouse, which wraps up its run on January 22nd. However, it’s likely a good thing that FOX is choosing to rest Hell’s Kitchen for the time being. I assume they’ll wait to bring the format back until summertime and I hear that they have two cycles of the reality competition cycle already in the can.

For all of us whose local programmers don’t allow us to see all of Gordon Ramsay’s shows any time near their original airing, have to date had to really on the internet, whther it be torrents or video sites like Youtube. But as Youtube cracks down on copyrighted materials – access is getting harder and harder, unless your local broadcasters also broadcasts on the internet (usually only within the home country though)!

To the rescue come Channel 4, the UK station which airs almost all of Gordon Ramsay’s television shows (and was one of the first to also streamshows over the web). There is talk of a deal with youtube to display contents of Channel 4’s catch up service, 4oD, via the now Google-owned YouTube. Read more…