Kitchen Nightmares Coming to Austin?

I got a call last week from the one of the producers of Kitchen Nightmares, the Fox network show starring the dyspeptic Chef Gordon Ramsey. It appears they want to shoot some episodes in Austin and wanted my recommendations of local restaurant scenarios that would lend themselves to the take-no-prisoners mindset of the program.

It was readily easy coming up with a dozen or so candidates and I hope that the show winds up acting on some of them. One great choice would be Ronald Cheng’s Chinatown. I would pay an admission fee to watch the egotistical and often rude Ramsey go up against the mercurial and often quite stubborn Cheng. It would be like watching the Dim Sum version of the Hatfields and McCoys.

Another good foil for Ramsey would be Clay McPhail, the proprietor of El Arroyo (lovingly known as “The Ditch”). Clay’s got a sense of humor along with a bit of a temper that might tame the tempestuous Brit.

The show was going to shoot at the iconic Bakehouse in South Austin several years ago but they apparently couldn’t get the restaurant staff to sign off on the legal document that promised no bodily harm would befall Ramsey during filming.

I personally think that the Kitchen Nightmares show is very amusing in a kind of T-Rex-devouring-the-unfortunates-in-Jurassic-Park kind of way. It’s certainly more fun that watching the guy on the Food Network’s “Man vs. Food” make a glutton out of himself each week. This has to be the most imbecilic offering I’ve seen on TV. The host goes in search of some monumental eating challenge each week, and in front of a crowd of frenetic and apparently anesthetized food fans, stuffs more crap into his yap than I would think humanly possible. Win or lose, he then holds a press conference after each show (probably after he has purged in the best Roman orgy tradition). That the guy doesn’t weigh 1500 pounds amazes me.

Anyway, we’ll keep you posted on which restaurants in our area choose to joust with the chef from Hell. Should be fun!