Entertainment, TV, Television - Army Times

Can’t stand the heat? Tune in to TV kitchens

Do too many cooks spoil the pot? Not this summer.

Call it the season of the chef.

“Ratatouille,” the Cyrano de Bergerac tale of a budding Jacques Pepin trapped in a rat’s body, is burning up the box office. And Hollywood hopes that a knife-wielding Catherine Zeta-Jones will satisfy food lovers in “No Reservations,” opening July 27.

The small screen also is serving up three sizzling TV culinary competition series: “Hell’s Kitchen,” “The Next Food Network Star” and “Top Chef 3 Miami.” The programs, now in their third seasons, continue to sate viewers.

Can you cook up that kind of entertainment in your own kitchen? I don’t think so.

Here’s a quick rundown on the programs.

Hell’s Kitchen

9 p.m. Mondays on Fox (www.fox.com/hellskitchen).

Top toque: The star is professional screamer/devil incarnate Gordon Ramsay, a Michelin-star anointed chef who has his name attached to 17 international restaurants and pubs.

Premise: Great Britain’s Beelzebub of Cooking brings a fresh batch of 12 culinary recruits to his seventh circle of the stove. The cooks always tend to be a bunch of screw-ups who can’t make a proper Beef Wellington or a dish of creamy risotto. Foul-mouth Ramsay goes ballistic, wrinkles his face like a Shar-Pei and sometimes tosses plates. Diners wait endlessly for their meals in the Hell’s Kitchen restaurant and complain that it’s taking too long. Someone usually stabs someone in the back. Someone goes home. Blimey.

Prize: Top chef position at an Italian restaurant in the Green Valley Ranch Resort, Spa and Casino in Las Vegas.

Catch phrase when getting the boot: “Take your jacket off and get out of Hell’s Kitchen.” (The flame-out is literal; the cook’s photo is set ablaze.)

What’s good: Major kitchen meltdowns and tears. Aaron, a chubby retirement home chef, blubbered his way through several episodes before Ramsay gave him the heave-ho. But, maybe it takes a crybaby to know a crybaby. According to a Salon.com article, Ramsay’s mentor — and now bitter rival — chef Marco Pierre White, once published a picture of Ramsay crying in a corner after a bad night of service.

What’s not so good: Ramsay’s short-tempered, schoolyard-bully routine can play old, and his vicious taunts — “you donkey!” — are brutal.

This fall, Ramsay is set to begin fixing restaurants in “Kitchen Nightmares.”

Top Chef 3 Miami

10 p.m. Wednesdays on Bravo (bravotv.com).

Top toques: Suave James Beard Award-winning chef/restaurateur Tom Colicchio is head judge. Unfortunately, he is assisted by mush-mouth actress/cookbook author and soon to be Salman Rushdie ex-wife Padma Lakshmi. Food & Wine magazine’s Gail Simmons shares judging duties with this season’s much-welcomed addition, Ted Allen, the culinary expert from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.”

Premise: Easily the best of the culinary competition programs. Fifteen chefs land in Miami, where they compete for immunity in a quick-fire challenge — usually something weird, like making a dish out of vending machine food. The fun begins with the even more challenging elimination round that involves shopping and cooking. Colicchio messes with the chefs’ heads when he strolls into the kitchen and asks all kinds of questions. Judges line up winners and losers, and the boos and bouquets fly. Sometimes — if viewers are lucky — an unhappy contestant snaps.

Catch phrase when getting the boot: “Pack your knives and go.”

What’s good: Contestants have impressive résumés and have worked in some of the country’s finest restaurants. The cockiness quota also is pretty high, which always leads to a much-anticipated Colicchio slap-down. Guest judges — Anthony Bourdain, Eric Ripert, Suzanne Goin, Wylie Dufresne — are a who’s who of the culinary world. When Alfred Portale, the New York King of Tall Food, made an appearance, who knew he was so short?

What’s not so good: Guest judges give their cookbooks out as prizes. Please. Check those egos at the door. Strange hairstyles are a constant, and contestants this season have opted for some truly unfortunate faux-hawks.

The Next Food Network Star

9 p.m. Sundays on the Food Network (www.foodnetwork.com).

Amy Finley won the most recent round, but the show begins anew in October.

Top toques: Food Network suits Bob Tuschman and Susie Fogelson decide the winner, along with a litany of Food Network “stars” and sometimes strange guest judges, such as former NBA star Darryl Dawkins and actor Joe Piscopo.

Premise: Have you ever watched Emeril or Rachael or Paula and thought, “I could do that”? Yeah, well, so have the 11 contestants who compete each week in all kinds of culinary competitions, such as playing Iron Chef.

Prize: A Food Network show. How much of a prize it is remains to be seen. Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain has joked that winners are handed the “Sunday morning ghetto slot.” (Note to Emeril: Your job is safe. For now.)

Catch phrase when getting the boot: Judges defer to the winner, as in “the person that will be moving on to the next round is ...”

What’s good: More meltdowns, more tears. (Is that a prerequisite to being on a culinary competition program?)

What’s not so good: Giada DeLaurentiis’s eye-rolling speech about being honest with the audience while flashing her ever-present and much-affected smile. Former Marine Josh Adam “JAG” Garcia allegedly told a few tall tales that came back to burn him. Marine Corps Times checked into Garcia’s background and found out he was never deployed to Afghanistan, never finished culinary school and apparently lied about his military rank.