CHEF Gordon Ramsay
THROUGH the years, Gordon Ramsay has established himself on TV as a “terror” chef and program host who loves to badger, harass and even (mostly, threaten to) assault less than proficient cooks and cooking tilt contestants.
In “Hotel Hell,” Ramsay expands his peevish purview to include lodging places, with similarly scathing and sarcastic consequences!
A telecast of “Hotel Hell” that we tremblingly and timorously viewed recently showed Ramsay descending like a predatory vulture on a small five-room inn near a historic tourist site, to evaluate the quality of its service to its patrons.
Unlucky for the inn’s daft and ditzy owner and lucky for the “shocking” show’s ratings, the lodging and eating place was a veritable compendium of the worst possible “service” imaginable:
The neurotic and perhaps even psychotic owner ran it like an extension of her home, and thus felt that she could do whatever she pleased, and prospective diners and lodgers just had to like it or lump it!
For one thing, if you rented one of her rooms, you couldn’t put your clothes in her cabinet—because it was full of her own wardrobe and doodads!
So, where could you put your stuff away? There were hooks behind the door for that purpose—gee, thanks for the generous and thoughtful “amenities”!
Worse, the whole building was in a state of disrepair, with cracks on the wall that weren’t fixed but merely painted over—with garish “murals” and landscapes that crumbled at the merest touch!
When Ramsay insisted that the money he paid for the room entitled him to use all of its furniture, the owner was forced to remove her stuff and put it in big garbage bags to be temporarily deposited elsewhere.
Her literally excess baggage impediments were so voluminous that they filled eight huge garbage bags! Horrors!
When Ramsay got to the hotel-resto’s kitchen, the horrors turned to terrors, because the establishment’s way of handling and cooking food wasn’t just unsanitary, but also potentially death-dealing!
For instance, grilled whole chicken was bought at a grocery and kept in a freezer for as long as six months, before it was thawed, reheated and served to a clueless customer!
The already notoriously temperamental Ramsay was positively livid when he discovered this cost-cutting “procedure,” and he screamed and tore at his hair like a volcano in full, fierce eruption, with insults flowing and flying out of his mouth like lava! It was quite a sight.
“Hotel Hell” has become popular precisely because of its clever combination of snide and volatile host and absolutely execrable hotels and restaurants, chosen to elicit his worst and most vicious critiques.
Aside from its big, colorful display of “horror and terror,” the program does go on to suggest and implement reforms that make things decidedly better.
But, we daresay that it’s the horrid, torrid “before” that makes viewers watch the show, transfixed—not its more equable and beatific “after!”